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…