[Themaintainers] Book release: Dr. Smartphone: An Ethnography of Mobile Phone Repair Shops

[Nicolas Nova]

Hello all,

Just wanted to bring this new book on smartphone repair practices to your attention: it’s called "Dr. Smartphone: An Ethnography of Mobile Phone Repair Shops”, that I wrote with my former colleague Anaïs Bloch. 

At the intersection of anthropology, STS and design this book is an investigation of smartphone repair places (shops mostly, some hackerspaces and repair cafés) in Switzerland. It’s the conclusion of the Mobile Repair Cultures project (https://head.hesge.ch/mobilerepaircultures/) that we conducted between 2016 and 2019 at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD).

Given that this research was funded by a public institution here in Switzerland, the Swiss National Research Fund, Open Access is mandatory (which is great!)... so here is the PDF of the entire document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okqly2p1pq1sdcu/2020-DrSmartphone-nova-bloch.pdf?dl=0
(it can be bought on the publisher’s website https://www.idpureshop.ch/web/catalogue.aspx?cat=62 or in some book shops).

Some more information and visuals are here: http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2020/12/21/new-book-dr-smartphone-an-ethnography-of-mobile-phone-repair-shops

As you will see if you look at the digital version of the book, the format we chose (a series of portraits with lots of visual content, followed by a more academic perspective) is not common, as we tried to innovate on that front. In part because it was a great way to interact with the research participants in the repair places. It also means that we had to go to a more design/art kind of publisher to experiment with this format…

Best regards,

Nicolas Nova