Competing narratives
In this section, we explore the different narratives of change expressed by the interviewees for the Repair Cafes and describe how the work of Repair Cafes will lead to societal change answering the research question, “What are the narratives of change expressed by participants of Repair Cafes and how do they compare with socio-technical transition literature?” These narratives are anti-regime and have the same frame of consumer criticism noted by Kannengießer (2018). As several interviewees explained:
“Throwaway society blames the society. For me, it is more a throwaway production that does not produce in a sense that enables repair” (FN13).
“What I see there is that we voluntarily made ourselves slaves of the monetary moment. Essentially, it was always like that but not on that global scale as it is right now” (IN7).
Interviewees generally felt that a sustainable society would come about through individuals changing their behavior and that Repair Cafes offer a platform for inducing that change. As one interviewee explained, ‘When [the people] go home, they are definitely better informed and mostly happy. Then they disseminate this [the idea of repairing items]’ (IN2). Through individuals joining the Repair Cafe, they envision their movement spreading. Beyond this, the narratives of change the interviewees described generally fell into two camps: (1) those who believe a change in the regime will come from their movement growing which we will call ‘the niche growth narrative’ and (2) those who believe the change in the regime will come from external pressures on the regime which we will refer to as ‘the external shock narrative.’ Both of the narratives were present in all of the Repair Cafes and sometimes both were present within one interview (such as IN2, IN7, IN10).
The first vision of change, the niche growth narrative, is contingent upon the Repair Cafes reaching as many people as possible. ‘I think if everybody is mending his stuff then it wouldn’t take long to start seeing effects like what consumers want. They don’t want disposable things.’ (IN10). This narrative argues that the pure existence of the Repair Cafe movement and the number of people who participate in the movement shows dissatisfaction with the current regime. Policymakers will pick up on this dissatisfaction and, by acting as representatives of those people, design policies that force manufacturers to undertake more sustainable practices and decouple them from pure economic interests (IN7). These new policies will result in more repair, potentially through producing longer-lasting products or through people being encouraged to repair, thus acting as a countervailing force to the current regime of planned obsolescence.
As a result of this narrative, they see the number of participants as reflective of the movement’s influence and ability to contribute to a transition. Thus, when asked, 81% of respondents to the survey would prefer as many people as possible participating in Repair Cafes, even if that participation was superficial and short term. However, interviewees felt that at the moment the Repair Cafes did not have enough members to cause change (IN1, IN2, IN6, IN5). As one interviewee described it:
‘The people who are interested use and know about [sustainability alternatives], but what percentage is this? Maybe three percent. The rest continues to throw away their smartphones’ (IN9).
Nonetheless, most interviewees believed that Visitors to Repair Cafes will spread the idea of repairing items to their friends and family. This belief is also reflected in that 88% of total respondents to the survey predicted that the movement will grow in the next 5 years.
The second vision of change, the external shock narrative, was more critical of the Repair Cafe movement leading to change. Thus, while interviewees articulating this narrative believed people would join the Repair Cafe movement as an expression of dissatisfaction with the regime, they did not believe that policymakers will respond to this. Instead, they believed that the regime is so entrenched that industry and policymakers will continue to ignore the Repair Cafe movement and only an external shock could cause regime actors to change their ways. One interviewee described her view:
‘The construct of the human being, how I call it, is not [a precautionary thinker]. It only starts acting when seeing the abyss and even then it is difficult’ (IN7).
In particular, those who push this narrative believe that policymakers will only respond to an external shock outside of the Repair Cafe movement and express a general disillusionment with the regime. One interviewee suggested rising prices because of depleting resources would make repairing items more appealing and could be one potential shock (IN10). However, some interviewees believed that even with an external shock to the system, current regime actors would still have a much larger say in the outcome due to power dynamics (IN9) and thus an external shock is not a guarantee of a transition towards more repair.
Participants and their roles
Since the number of participants is highlighted by both narratives of change, we explored who participates in Repair Cafes and what role they perform. Repair Cafes consist of hierarchies with differentiated roles, responsibilities, and voice. The Repair Cafes exist within the context of the current regimes and they thus often reflect the same power structures; namely, they are dominated by privileged hegemonic masculinities which have more of a voice within the organization than non-hegemonic masculinities or femininities. The roles within a Repair Cafe case roughly be divided into 3 role categories based on roles identified by the interviewees as well as observations: organizers, volunteers, and visitors. These roles within the Repair Cafe were quite inflexible and moving between these roles within most Repair Cafes was unusual.
The position of organizer was held somewhat equally among men and women (Fig. 1a) and is somewhat more often held by younger individuals (see Fig. 1c). Although the position of organizer within an organization is a position of power as they assign tasks to others, this position was not considered desirable by the interviewees because of the perceived time commitment. The organizers generally received little to no help from the volunteers or visitors in the administrative tasks of the Repair Cafe. However, as they were the sole organizer of the Repair Cafes, they had immense control of the direction of the Repair Cafes and the volunteers did not question that authority in interviews nor were they observed challenging it during participant observations.
The second position within Repair Cafes is volunteer, which is a position that requires working together on a team. Volunteers can generally be divided into two groups: technician volunteers who act as ‘experts’ work on repairing items and organizational volunteers who set up food and other necessities. However, while the technician volunteers were present in all Repair Cafes, only 4 Repair Cafes had organizational volunteers. The technician volunteer work is often mentally challenging and rewarding with the volunteers learning from other disciplines and attempting tricky repairs. These volunteers saw the Repair Cafes as a place to socialize with like-minded individuals and find self-affirmation. The volunteers in a Repair Cafe can become close:
‘Over time a fixed team has developed. Everybody knows each other and sometimes you meet outside the Repair Café’ (IN1).
Volunteers were more likely to have a negative view of the impact of their Repair Cafe and were more likely to express the ‘external shock narrative’ than other positions. The volunteers were more educated than any other user group (Fig. 2). Most volunteers cited empowerment as a reason for volunteering and 21% of volunteers who responded to the survey listed learning about repair as their motivation for participating in a Repair Cafe (Fig. 3). In the words of one volunteer: “[It is about] empowerment. Just teaching the people how to have fun with repair and help to overcome existing fears” (IN2). Volunteers had some say in the direction of the Repair Cafes and at least 3 Repair Cafes held annual meetings for the volunteers, however, interviewees did not describe any tools the organizers used to identify the needs of the visitors.
The last position held within the Repair Cafes was that of visitor. In most Repair Cafes the visitors had very little say in the running and development of the Repair Cafe. In some Repair Cafes, the only way for a visitor to have input into the Repair Cafe was through feedback forms (Green RC, RC 9). Otherwise, the visitors were generally excluded from decision processes, with the exception being the Bike Repair Cafe as they organize more meetings and get-togethers that included visitors.
While it was theoretically possible for a visitor to become a volunteer within all of the Repair Cafes, it was only reported in three cases (Green RC, Organized RC, and RC 9) where visitors moved from a passive role as a consumer of the Repair Cafe’s services to more active involvement within the Repair Cafe. For the visitors at the other Repair Cafes, the interaction with other positions is transactional and visitors only visited the Repair Cafe when they needed something repaired. Many visitors had a more optimistic opinion of the future of Repair Cafes than the volunteers and were impressed that people are engaging and making their contribution to a more sustainable society (FN1, FN5, IN4, IN7). Visitors were less likely to feel a sense of belonging to the Repair Cafe (46%) compared to 85% of volunteers and 71% of organizers who responded to the structured interview.
In most of the Repair Cafes (except the Bike Repair Cafe), the organizers and volunteers spoke of their Repair Cafe community as not including the visitors. Nonetheless, when probed as part of the in-depth qualitative interviews it became clear that the visitors often had some repair knowledge and thus could potentially contribute to the Repair Cafes movement not only through becoming an organizational volunteer, but also a technician volunteer. The visitors who participated in the qualitative interviews commented that they while had some repair experience, they lacked either knowledge of certain technologies or tools (IN4, IN7). As one interviewee explained:
‘I could always do a lot of [repair] things by myself. But due to the new technologies I notice more and more that I am not able to do some of those repairs and I also lack the courage’ (IN4).
This shows that many of the visitors are performing the role of the non-expert in need of the ‘expert’ technician volunteer to help them. Visitors were also more likely to say they visited the Repair Cafe to save money and less likely to say they visited a Repair Cafe to help people or to meet new people (Fig. 3).
There are significant demographic differences between the user groups of the Repair Cafes and that plays into the power relationship among them. In particular, volunteers were disproportionately male whereas visitors were disproportionately female with 59% of visitors stating they were female while 73% of volunteers stating they were male (Fig. 1a). Moreover, none of the female respondents to the survey reported that they felt like they had sufficient contact with the Repair Cafe compared to 18% of the male respondents (Fig. 4) and female respondents were more likely than male respondents in the survey to claim they had no interest in further participating in the Repair Cafe (Fig. 4).
A partial explanation for the differential in male and female desire to participate further in the Repair Cafe may be the unequal power relationship between the genders within the Repair Cafes, which were observed particularly in the male-dominated Repair Cafes (such as FN2, FN9, and FN10). During participant observations, we observed subtle discouragement of female visitors such as being subjected to ‘mansplaining’ and a female researcher was referred to as ‘little girl’ rather than by name. Further, male volunteers appeared to be more likely to encourage male visitors to attempt to personally repair their items than the female visitors which is in contrast to the stated goals of the Repair Cafe networks to empower people to start repair on their own (Netzwek Reparatur-Initiativen 2017). For their part, the interviewees explained away the general unsociability of some of the volunteers as nerdiness: ‘The basic type of a Repair Café volunteer is like a nerd that has rather problems with social interaction, I guess’ (IN2). Identifying the volunteer group as nerdy and geeky is an expression of non-female masculinities (Zékány and Cerwonka 2011).
Women who volunteered with the Repair Cafes were often seen performing the stereotypical female roles of ensuring a nice atmosphere and offering food and drink. This is similar to the gendered division of labor Rosner (2014) found among repair movements in California. This highlights the role of women within the Repair Cafe as taking care of the more menial tasks which allow for the often male technical volunteers to perform the role of ‘expert.’ In both RC9 and RC5, female volunteers repaired clothing further emphasizing stereotypical gendered division of the work within the Repair Cafe movement.
In contrast to the issues described above is the Repair Cafe that was exclusive to women (RC11). Interviewees said that this Repair Cafe was founded because of the male-dominated Repair Cafes where women often find themselves unwelcome. In RC11 the user group roles were not as predefined. Thus, everybody helped with the food, everybody asked everybody for help, and visitors helped other visitors with repairs. As an example of the fluidity of the roles, during one participant observation, the organizer could not be present on that day and a volunteer was able to step into that role.
Integrating different social classes was also seen as a problem in some of the initiatives (FN5, FN7, FN10, FN13). Interviewees from the RC7 in particular, which is supported by a university, said that its reliance on the university acted as a deterrent to non-academics and students from participating. Some Repair Cafes (RC 6, 7, 8) struggled to include all social classes as visitors as well as volunteers. Nonetheless, one organizer (IN1) reported success in recruiting unemployed technicians to their Repair Cafe. While Fig. 1b gives the impression of a fair number of indigent and low income individuals who participate in the Repair Cafe (20% of total respondents indicated they had no net income), observations of the Repair Cafe indicate a high number of students and retirement age individuals are boosting this number for whom income may not be indicative of their social class. However, the higher level of education of the volunteers compared to the visitors (Fig. 2) is indicative of class differences between the two groups. For example, around 70% of the volunteers have a bachelor's/master's degree in comparison to around 50% of the visitors. The lower socio-economic status of the visitors, when compared to the volunteers, indicates that again hegemonic masculinity of an “expert” technician volunteer has a role in discouraging less educated from participation.
The Bike Repair Cafe, which focused on refugee integration, had the least problems integrating different social classes. The Bike Repair Cafe was open only to asylum seekers from Monday to Thursday, and on Fridays, the Repair Cafe was open to everyone to repair their bikes. Money raised on Fridays is used to finance the repairs for the refugees. The Bike Repair Cafe organized events to specifically integrate the refugees, like bike excursions, joint dinners, parties, etc. Additionally, two refugees became technical volunteers in the Repair Cafe and one was given a part-time job (up to 450€ per month) and was, therefore, present almost every day in the Repair Cafe. Thus, because of this specific effort and focus on integrating refugees the Bike Repair Cafe was better able to integrate lower social classes into their Repair Cafe than other Repair Cafes.
The differences in power among the different roles, coupled with a lack of mobility and differences in gender makeup, contribute to a situation where a fixed group of mostly male ‘experts’ have more say in the shared vision of the Repair Cafe than the mostly female visitors which use the service. On top of this, the differences in social class between those with power within the Repair Cafes and those without further emphasizes the power differences among the different groups within the Repair Cafes.