Analog labour in a digital world: Repair and jugaad in India’s used electronics economy

Speaker: Julia Corwin, Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

 

This paper draws on ethnographic research on India’s used electronics industry to explore the improvisatory and creative work taking place in electronics repair shops. Based on ethnographic research in Delhi, this paper begins from the observation that, contrary to reports of e-waste handling in India’s informal sector as unskilled and hazardous, India’s used electronics economy is based in and driven by creative economies of reuse and repair.

Dr Corwin explores used electronics industries through the interactions between diverse, flexible and ever-changing materials and creative labor practices, which she argues constitute and thus enable the industry as a whole. Repair workers often refer to their labour as “jugaad,” a Hindi term used to describe inventive and improvisatory work borne of necessity and with limited materials. This repair work is emblematic of broader processes of making, grounded in collaboration and creative labor practices that demonstrate the inseparability of ourselves and our work from the world at hand.

Using jugaad-labour as a prompt, this paper understands repair work as demonstrating work with things as based in compromise rather than control, facilitated through experimentation and interaction. Looking at repair and jugaad therefore has implications for a critical politics of expertise, as repair prompts us to examine haptic experience - functioning through improvisation and negotiation - as foundational to all labour.

Tea, coffee and cake will be provided in BH(NE) 6.05 before the seminar (12:30-13:00).

*If you are external to King's and would like to attend this event, please contact the event organiser.