Electronics repair in London: thinking through alternative circular economies | Julia Corwin

Julia Corwin is Assistant Professor of Environmental Geography at LSE. Julia will be presenting the paper Electronics repair in London: thinking through alternative circular economies.

Abstract

Repair collectives, DIY events and right to repair movements are increasingly drawing attention to unsustainable cycles of production, consumption and disposal, and the potential for repair to reorient our relationships with the things in our lives. Repair work offers both the skills and more broadly a relational approach to work and the material world that can provide insight for working towards a more just socio-ecological future – a world in which we might collectively maintain and repair the things and infrastructure around us. While repair activism is putting repair ‘on the map’ as offering an alternative economic and material vision of the future, Juila’s research focuses on the substantial work of repair that is happening in small neighbourhood repair shops across the world.

In this talk, Julia will discuss her ongoing research in London on electronics repair across the city, which aims to map and account for the work of neighbourhood electronics repair shops in London. These shops are predominately run by recent immigrants, who do everyday environmental labour with little recognition (and sometimes face distrust and suspicion). Julia will outline two works-in-progress papers stemming from this research. The first draws from site visits and interviews with repairers across London to show the breadth of these shops across the city and demonstrate their substantial contributions to reuse and repair economies, extending and revaluing the lives of things. The second paper focuses on more theoretical interventions, to consider what an alternative circular economy might look like, in which reuse and repair are centred rather than continued cycles of commodity production.

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