Keeping Consumer Products Alive: Commoning Knowledge for Repair

• In Event: Commoning Knowledge: Regeneration Through S&T

Abstract

The privatization of once-public knowledge exemplifies 21st century times. A ubiquitous yet little observed example is the scientific and technological knowledge embodied in consumer products. Until the 1980s, many people remained skilled and knowledgeable enough to repair their household technologies, from washing machines and radios to clothes and shoes. Or they could seek out the expertise of repair shops in their neighbourhoods. Since then, manufacturers and corporate designers have made their products increasingly difficult to fix, to strengthen their control over intellectual property rights, force consumers to buy more products, and use their lucrative repair businesses. John Deere, for example, stops farmers from being able to change the electronics and programming for its agricultural machines. Drawing on STS scholarship of expert politics and community-based science, I investigate the ways in which knowledge commons are being brought into existence around the ‘right to repair’ movement. Across the United States, Europe, and Australia, a growing number of community groups and networks are calling for a legally mandated right to repair technologies. As part of their efforts, they are creating a range of new commons to gather and share ‘repair knowledge’, underlining the importance of access to knowledge – indeed, perhaps re-asserting sovereignty over knowledge. In Australia, for instance, ‘men’s sheds’ have materialized as a reinvigorated community institution in which older people can pass on their skills to younger people. I consider examples of whether and how such commons are basing their identities and communities around knowledge, and how their knowledge-sharing may acquire greater legitimacy vis-à-vis powerful corporations.

Author

• Alastair Iles, UC Berkeley