Rethinking Repair by Steven J. Jackson

“Here, then, are two radically different forces and realities. On one hand, a fractal world, a centrifugal world, an always-almost-falling-apart world. On the other, a world in constant process of fixing and reinvention, reconfiguring and reassembling into new combinations and new possibilities—a topic of both hope and concern. It is a world of pain and possibility, creativity and destruction, innovation and the worst excesses of leftover habit and power.
”The fulcrum of these two worlds is repair: the subtle acts of care by which order and meaning in complex sociotechnical systems are maintained and transformed, human value is preserved and extended, and the complicated work of fitting to the varied circumstances of organizations, systems, and lives is accomplished. Repair in this connotation has a literal and material dimension, filled with immediate questions: Who fixes the devices and systems we ‘seamlessly’ use? Who maintains the infrastructures within and against which our lives unfold? But it also speaks directly to ‘the social,’ if we still choose to cut the world in this way: how are human orders broken and restored (and again, who does this work)?”

-Steven J. Jackson