Toward a repair movement? Fixers trying to mend the relationship between production and consumption

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE
Author/s Lorenzo Giannini
Publishing Year 2014 Issue 2014/48 Language Italian
Pages 11 P. 89-99 File size 174 KB
DOI 10.3280/SC2014-048009
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Over the past five years we have seen the emergence of a new kind of phenomenon that we might include under the term of ‘repair events’. Every event share the same structure, that is bringing together people with broken objects and people with the necessary repairing skills. Repair events are now quite widespread in several European countries. The paper outlines the brief and recent history of repair events and then focuses on the meanings around which repairers frame their identity as a collective, through a content analysis of their Facebook profiles, websites and blog, showing how fixers’ collective and organized practices are substantially placing them as a new kind of mediator in the conflictual relationship between producers and consumers.

Keywords: Fixers, planned obsolescence, content analisys, production, prosumerism, repair events.

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Lorenzo Giannini, Verso un movimento di riparatori? Il tentativo di ricucire il rapporto tra produzione e consumo in "SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE " 48/2014, pp 89-99, DOI: 10.3280/SC2014-048009