Repair, Consumption, and Sustainability: Fixing Fragile Objects and Maintaining Consumer Practices

Abstract

Abstract Repair is an overlooked but important aspect of consumer behavior with implications for the social and environmental sustainability of consumption. This ethnographic study examines the interplay of repair and consumption by analyzing when and how consumers repair the objects they use. The analysis examines how conflicting and complementary practice elements can lead to object replacement and disposal or, alternatively, facilitate object repair and extended use. Results unfold how consumers calibrate their routine activities around the continually changing material capacities of objects. Consumers engage in repair as a response to worn or damaged objects that misalign from and often disrupt ongoing practices. Repairers, including consumers and professional service providers, attempt to adjust object capacities in ways that realign disrupted practices with the routinized ways that consumers do them. When successful, repair sustains consumer practices by avoiding prolonged disruption and unnecessary waste. However, conflicts between production, consumption, and repair can hinder the efficacy of repair interventions and shape whether and how consumers repair the objects they use. The article explains these challenges and concludes by discussing their implications for studies of repair, consumer practices, and sustainable consumption.