Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough: Ethnographic Responses (Paperback or Softback)

Exploring some of the ways in which repair practices and perceptions of brokenness vary culturally, Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough argues that repair is both a process and also a consequence which is sought out―an attempt to extend the life of things as well as an answer to failures, gaps, wrongdoings, and leftovers. This volume develops an open-ended combination of empirical and theoretical questions including: What does it mean to claim that something is broken? At what point is something broken repairable? What are the social relationships that take place around repair? And how much tolerance for failure do our societies have?

Francisco Martínez is a Lecturer in the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, and member of the editorial team of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. He has edited several books and is the author of Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia. An Anthropology of Repair, Forgetting and Urban Traces (UCL Press, 2018), which was awarded the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

Patrick Laviolette is the co-editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. With his work, he has developed an interdisciplinary understanding of material and visual-culture studies, as well as medical and environmental anthropology.