https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3171-5442
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ABSTRACT
This paper presents the findings of comparative research into the labor, organizational and spatial practices of a new kind of hybrid civic spaces that we refer to as “social impact-driven repair shops.” These are an emerging typology of urban spaces dedicated to repaired and up-cycled items that also go beyond the functions of a traditional shop. Significantly, these shops are run not purely for economic reasons, but rather to position themselves as local, socio-political interventions aiming to confront the environmental impacts of waste, support ethical and affordable consumption, alongside providing new opportunities for employment. We focused our fieldwork (2017–2019) on three such “repair shops”: ReTuna Återbruksgalleria in Sweden, The Loop in the United Kingdom and RiMaflow in Italy. We discuss the differing labor and spatial practices taking place within each while highlighting some of the tensions that emerge, and the implications for some of the wider debates in repair studies, “green work” and circular economies. We conclude by identifying two divergent and potentially antagonistic circuits of repair which we name “repair as solidarity” and “repair as poor economy,” which we propose as a lens to better grasp the different logics underpinning the transition to circular economies.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A housing association (UK) is a non-profit organization that owns, rents and manages housing. They primarily offer housing to those on low-income who require support with their housing.
2 Fly Tipping is a British expression to refer to the illegal dumping of household waste, especially of discarded furniture, on the street.
3 The Marcora Law (1985) instituted a fund that can be made available to workers laid-off by a bankrupt private company so that they could purchase it and convert it into a cooperative enterprise. This institutional mechanism would have allowed the workers at RiMaflow to buy the plant in Trezzano without resorting to illegal occupations, yet they decided against this option.
4 Since our visit The Loop has been placing a greater emphasis on knowledge transfer, activating a number of DIY workshops and skill sharing initiatives.
5 This is achieved by manufacturers withholding spare parts, withholding specifications or using bespoke components that all pose barriers to independent repair.
6 We draw here on Martina Low’ conceptualization of space, which brings together Marxist theories of space as product of dialectical relations as well as emphasising the spatial qualities of social practices as formative of both structure and agency.
7 In the context of English history, this term evolved to “represent all of the ways which the mainly settled laboring poor made ends meet” (Tomkins and King Citation2003, 13).