Mapping the Right to Digital Repair: Tensions, controversies and political ideals
Author(s): Sebastian Abrahamsson
Wednesday 14 | 13:40-14:00
Room: TP54
Session: Environmental sociology
E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream globally. In a bid to solve the problem with discarded laptops, smartphones, tablets and other digital decives, the Right to Repair has come to be framed as a viable way forward. But what is the Right to Repair? It is a social movement that joins concerned consumers, professional repairers, farmers and other groups together in an effort to reclaim the things they own. It is, in other words, about consumer autonomy and creating the conditions of possibility to tinker with products. The Right to Repair is also a political ideal that is currently being translated into legislation in the EU and across states in the USA. In current waste management policy, the Right to Repair gets articulated as part of efforts to create circular flows of materials and resources. A driving force behind such legislation, in the EU, is the creation of a repair market on the one hand, and giving consumer the possibility to make sustainable choices on the other hand. Finally, the Right to Repair is also a design ideal in the sense that repair relies on products and technologies that are repairable, modular and flexible.
In this presentation, I map and analyse these versions of the Right to Repair to show the various and heterogeneous concerns that push and pull this "right" in various directions and with various consequences. The aim of this mapping is to show how these concerns (e.g. consumer autonomy, sustainability, efficiency) shape the right to repair, a public issue, that get translated into policy and legislation. Doing so I pay special attention to 1) what gets lost along the way of such translations and 2) why the struggle to achieve a right to repair has (so far) gained success.