Labour power in the repair shop
Graziano, Valeria and Trogal, Kim (2022) Labour power in the repair shop. Capitalism Nature Socialism. ISSN 1045-5752 (In Press)
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This paper presents the findings of comparative research into the labour, 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 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 labour and spatial practices taking place within each, 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.
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