Mending The Commons With The Little Mesters
The subjects of this paper are the Little Mesters of Sheffield, UK. The Mesters are selfemployed master craftspeople whose day-to-day work is dependent on repairing, recycling, and maintenance, in Read More »
Seduction By Contract
In this accessible and well-structured book Bar-Gill takes a close look at the credit card, mortgage, and cell-phone markets. He shows why contracts in these markets look the way they do, what is Read More »
Capitalism Unwrapped
In a compelling paper that appeared in 2007, Slavoj Zizek recounted the following anecdote, funny and disconcerting at the same time: Italian leftist journalist Marco Cicala had confessed him that Read More »
Ease Of Repair As A Design Ideal: A Reflection On How Open Source Models Can Support Longer Lasting
Last spring, a series of online newspaper and magazine articles highlighted the story of the American farmers, who were hacking their tractors using Ukrainian software bought online (Naughton, 2017). Read More »
Spelman Cups: Attitudes To The Past
Technically there are five of you, but actually only four. Really you are three and one other. None of you are really broken, but all are damaged, bar one. Small, glazed, white, glossy. Three old, Read More »
Music, Desire And Affective Community Organizing For Repair: Note For The Piece ‘Le Désir Est Un
This note is part of an assemblage of which the main part is musical. If, as Nietzsche (2003: 6) puts it, music doesnt need any extra-musical material to acquire meaning, this text aims nevertheless Read More »
Repeating Brokenness: Repair As Non-reproductive Occupation, Improvisation And Speculation
Repair is commonly associated with improvement, with making better, with fixing. But what happens when it is impossible, and even undesirable, to fix what is broken? Or when we are not only incapable Read More »
The Right To Care: Entering Outside In The Southern European Crisis Of Welfare
In these notes, we share the questions and challenges around care and health that emerged in the research project Entrar Afuera (Entering Outside, 2016-2018), a multi-site and multi-format dialogue Read More »
Repairing The Community: UT Califas And Convivial Tools Of The Commons
In this essay, I take up the tension between an always-present infrastructure of repair and maintenance and the opportunities for autonomy present when commodities break by proposing we engage in Read More »
Repair Practices In A Virtual Smartphone Community: Fostering More Sustainable Usage Through
In recent decades, consumer culture has turned the mobile phone into a marketplace icon. Despite consumers’ fondness for the functionalities of these devices, mobile phones come at a considerable Read More »