Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough

Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough
Title Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough PDF eBook
Author Francisco Martínez
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 339
Release 2019-09-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1789203325

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Exploring some of the ways in which repair practices and perceptions of brokenness vary culturally, Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough argues that repair is both a process and also a consequence which is sought out—an attempt to extend the life of things as well as an answer to failures, gaps, wrongdoings, and leftovers. This volume develops an open-ended combination of empirical and theoretical questions including: What does it mean to claim that something is broken? At what point is something broken repairable? What are the social relationships that take place around repair? And how much tolerance for failure do our societies have?

Design/Repair

Design/Repair
Title Design/Repair PDF eBook
Author Eleni Kalantidou
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 319
Release 2024-02-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3031468627

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This collection of essays sheds light on repair as a disposition to material culture and a practice rooted in diverse sociocultural experiences. It provides an in-depth exploration of how repair manifests itself through the different lenses of governance, grassroots activism, transformative design and community-led initiatives. Most importantly, the chapters demonstrate how place-based approaches can reveal blueprints for social impact in circumstances of growing environmental and social precariousness.

Fixing Motorcycles in Post-Repair Societies

Fixing Motorcycles in Post-Repair Societies
Title Fixing Motorcycles in Post-Repair Societies PDF eBook
Author Gabriel Jderu
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 165
Release 2023-03-10
Genre Travel
ISBN 1800738781

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Most social science studies on automobility have focused on the production, usage, identity construction and aesthetic improvements of personal means of transportation. What happens if we shift the focus to the labour, knowledge and social relations that go into the unavoidable moments of maintenance and repair? Taking motorcycling in Romania as an ethnographic entry point, this book documents how bikers handle the inevitable moments of malfunction and breakdown. Using both mobile and sedentary research methods, the book describes the joys and troubles experienced by amateur mechanics, professional mechanics and untechnical men and women when fixing bikes.

Thrift and Its Paradoxes

Thrift and Its Paradoxes
Title Thrift and Its Paradoxes PDF eBook
Author Catherine Alexander
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 232
Release 2022-04-08
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1800734638

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Thrift is a central concern for most people, especially in turbulent economic times. It is both an economic and an ethical logic of frugal living, saving and avoiding waste for long-term kin care. These logics echo the ancient ideal of household self-sufficiency, contrasting with capitalism’s wasteful present-focused growth. But thrift now exceeds domestic matters straying across scales to justify public expenditure cuts. Through a wide range of ethnographic contexts this book explores how practices and moralities of thrift are intertwined with austerity, debt, welfare, and patronage across various social and temporal scales and are constantly re-negotiated at the nexus of socio-economic, religious, and kinship ideals and praxis.

Peripheral Methodologies

Peripheral Methodologies
Title Peripheral Methodologies PDF eBook
Author Francisco Martínez
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Pages 176
Release 2021-04-27
Genre Computers
ISBN 1000213587

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This book examines how the peripheral can be incorporated into ethnographic research, and reflects on what it means to be on the periphery—ontologically and epistemologically. Starting from the premise that clarity and fixity as ideals of modernity prevent us from approaching that which cannot be easily captured and framed into scientific boundaries, the book argues for remaining on the boundary between the known and the unknown in order to surpass this ethnographic limit. It shows that peripherality is not only to be seen as a marginal condition, but rather as a form of theory-making and practice that incorporates reflexivity and experimentation.

A City Is Not a Computer

A City Is Not a Computer
Title A City Is Not a Computer PDF eBook
Author Shannon Mattern
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 200
Release 2021-08-10
Genre Architecture
ISBN 0691208050

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This book offers a reassessment of "smart cities" and reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers. -- Publisher's description.

Remaking the Human

Remaking the Human
Title Remaking the Human PDF eBook
Author Alvaro Jarrín
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 289
Release 2021-04-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1800730322

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The technological capacity to transform biology - repairing, reshaping and replacing body parts, chemicals and functions – is now part of our lives. Humanity is confronted with a variety of affordable and non-invasive 'enhancement technologies': anti-ageing medicine, aesthetic surgery, cognitive and sexual enhancers, lifestyle drugs, prosthetics and hormone supplements. This collection focuses on why people find these practices so seductive and provides ethnographic insights into people’s motives and aspirations as they embrace or reject enhancement technologies, which are closely entangled with negotiations over gender, class, age, nationality and ethnicity.