Values in Repair

This paper examines the question of "values in repair" -- the distinct forms of meaning and care that may be built into human-technology interactions through individual and collective acts of repair. Our work draws on research in HCI and the social sciences and findings from ethnographic studies in four sites -- two amateur "fixers" collectives' in Brooklyn and Seattle, USA and two mobile phone repair communities in Uganda and Bangladesh -- to advance two arguments. First, studies of repair account for new sites and processes of value that differ from those appearing at HCI's better-studied moments of design and use. Second, repair may embed modes of human interaction with technology and with each other in ways that surface values as contingent and ongoing accomplishments, suggesting ongoing processes of valuation that can never be fully fixed or commoditized. These insights help HCI account for human relationships to technology built into the world through repair.

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