Cars, Culture, and Tactical Technical Communication

Abstract

This article examines two cases of technical documentation occurring outside of institutions. Using a framework derived from de Certeau's (1984) distinction between strategies and tactics and Johnson's (1998) concept of the user-as-producer, I analyze communities surrounding Muir's (1969) How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive! A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot and Champion's (2000) Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250. These communities engage in tactical technical communication, especially in the form of technological narratives that participate in broader cultural narratives about technology.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 107 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.