[Themaintainers] Research interviews regarding norms and values in repair

[lee vinsel]

Hey, everybody!

A team of researchers at Lancaster University (UK) and Linkoping University
(Sweden) have started a neat project on repair and values, and they are
looking to interview folks. I think MANY people on this list would make
great interviewees for them, so consider reaching out to them. More detail
and contact info below.

Hope y'all are doing well in these crazy and troubling times.

Lee


Our team from Lancaster University in the UK, and Linkoping University,
Sweden, is *investigating the role of repair within ideas of circular
economy, and sustainability, from a cultural perspective.* Policy makers
tend to see repair is merely a desirable, but instrumental, tool for
extending product life and reducing material resource throughput. We think
that this an incomplete view, and one which could lead to unintended
consequences or rebound effects. We think it critical that research and
policy better consider *why humans engage in repair (and maintenance)
activities*, and how we engage with the subjects of those activities.


We are currently *trying to identify practitioners and scholars of repair
who would be willing to be interviewed about the norms and values that are
involved in their repair work*, and about their aspirations, expectations
and fears regarding repair. Our geographic scope is global, and we’d
particularly like to reach beyond Europe and the US. We have particular
interests in including those whose repair work addresses restoration of
ecosystems, or reconciliation (repair of relationships), as well as those
whose work focuses on material things like buildings, consumer goods or
cultural artefacts. We are aware of diverse and rich cultural
understandings of repair, across domains like historic building
conservation, ecosystem restoration, medicine, dispute settlement and more.
And even considering repair of material artefacts of functional use, it’s
clear that for many practitioners – especially in makerspaces or repair
cafes - repair has much to do with questions of attachment or identity, for
example.


We want to try to capture some of that richness by *talking with people who
are willing to reflect on what repair means to them* (whether as a scholar,
or a practitioner, or a user of repair services). We’d like to talk to
people involved in right-to-repair campaigns, or working in/running repair
cafes, or working with post-conflict reconciliation, truth commissions, or
alternative dispute resolution (all contributing to ‘repair of
relationships’), or working on rewilding, ecosystem restoration or species
reintroduction. We’re also really keen to try to pick up some cultural
diversity: it’s immediately clear that repair has different cultural
emanations in different countries, but we know very little about how it
varies across huge swathes of the world. So we’re interested *to talk to
people that are within, or have heritage in, as wide a range of cultures as
possible*.


Interviews would be carried out by phone/video-conference, take about 1
hour, and be recorded, transcribed and anonymised for subsequent analysis.
The methodology has been approved by the University’s ethics committee. In
a subsequent phase of the project we plan to hold deliberative workshops,
bringing together practitioners, scholars and policy makers. The interviews
will not only provide valuable data for our research, but will also help us
design the deliberative workshops and, ultimately, advise policy makers. *If
you’d be interested in being interviewed for our project, please get in
touch, and feel free to suggest suitable dates and times in the coming 2-3
months.*


If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, or my
colleague Johan Niskanen, by email or phone


Duncan McLaren: +44-739 430 6068, d.mclaren at lancaster.ac.uk

Johan Niskanen: +46-700 896 591, johan.niskanen at liu.se

More information on the project:
https://liu.se/en/research/repair-in-circular-economy



-- 
Co-Director
The Maintainers
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