Community repair in the circular economy – fixing more than stuff

ABSTRACT

In the circular economy discourse it is stressed that products ought to be repairable and that repair work is assumed to be growing. However, repair can be organised and performed in different ways – by corporate entities, independent repairers, laypersons and communities. Some corporations are integrating repair and maintenance into their offering, while simultaneously restricting consumers to open, repair or modify their products. In opposition to such developments, there is a movement for “right to repair”, which works for consumers’ legal rights to repair and modify products, pushing for the free availability of spare parts and manuals. Recent years have also seen a growth of repair cafés and other forms of DIY community repair spaces. This paper explores the discourses of DIY community repair through two Swedish case studies – an NGO-led nationwide repair campaign and a local government initiative of open DIY repair spaces. Our case studies show how DIY community repair works towards enabling all, particularly marginalised groups, to participate and live well in a low-impact future. In contrast to the mainstream circular economy discourse, the purpose of community repair is not only about repairing broken stuff and reducing waste, but about building social relations and practicing non-consumerist forms of citizenship. By elucidating these different perspectives on repair – who is to perform it, with what skills and for what purposes – we highlight how the transition to future, more circular economies, can be enacted and steered in ways that allow for different roles and powers for citizen-consumers.

KEYWORDS:

• Community repair
• right-to-repair
• circular economy
• do-it-yourself
• power

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the special issue editors for constructive comments and our colleagues Martin Emanuel and Nils Johansson for valuable feedback on a draft version of the paper. We would also like to thank Felix Schulz for contributing to the empirical material and all interviewees for sharing their insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See for instance https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto, retrieved October 1, 2020.

2 See Ellen MacArthur foundation website: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy-diagram, retrieved October 21, 2021. In an earlier version of the diagram (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2013, 24), maintaining was attributed to the user, but this has been changed in later versions.

3 For instance corporations as H&M and IKEA are situating repair services visibly in their flagship stores and store windows in Sweden 2020.

4 https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Intro, retrieved November 12, 2020.

5 See https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/fixagrejen/, retrieved 27 October, 2020.

6 From the campaign video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fhzj_re4A&feature=emb_title, retrieved 27 October, 2020.

7 For the housing company Bostadsbolaget’s description of its three Fixotek units, see https://bostadsbolaget.se/for-hyresgaster/fixoteket/, retrieved Oct 22, 2020.

8 Ibid.

9 These are public fridges with leftover food, organised by the network Solikyl working for a gift economy, see https://solikyl.se/about/, retrieved 22 October 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Mistra – The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research – through the research programme Mistra Sustainable Consumption.