Recent years have seen the proliferation of second-hand economies, networks of sharing and exchange, and creative and shared efforts to extend the lifetime of products. There are rapidly growing landscapes of thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, swapping events, neighborhood or large-scale Internet sharing networks/platforms, share boxes, or shelves on sidewalks, foodbanks, food-sharing places, or repair cafés just to mention the most common ones. This chapter examines exemplary elements of such a landscape of reuse, repair, sharing, and care in the southern German state capital of Stuttgart. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce a repair café project, a thrift store, and a city-run gifting website. I ask questions about these projects’ work and reach, their origins and histories, motivations of organizers, workers, activists and/or customers, and the contributions these projects and efforts can make to help create ecologically and socially more sustainable and just cities. Theoretically this chapter addresses questions of the role and potential of individual projects of reuse, repair, sharing, and care in the remaking of cities, consumer cultures, and urban economies at large. Do small projects informally connect to create a larger, more influential, and effective new, regenerative economy? Can small efforts trigger larger cultural, political, and economic transformations that are necessary to build regenerative and just future cities?

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Fixing Coffeemakers and Giving Away Couches: Urban Economies of Reuse, Repair, Sharing, and Care in Germany

  • Petra Kuppinger

摘要

Recent years have seen the proliferation of second-hand economies, networks of sharing and exchange, and creative and shared efforts to extend the lifetime of products. There are rapidly growing landscapes of thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, swapping events, neighborhood or large-scale Internet sharing networks/platforms, share boxes, or shelves on sidewalks, foodbanks, food-sharing places, or repair cafés just to mention the most common ones. This chapter examines exemplary elements of such a landscape of reuse, repair, sharing, and care in the southern German state capital of Stuttgart. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce a repair café project, a thrift store, and a city-run gifting website. I ask questions about these projects’ work and reach, their origins and histories, motivations of organizers, workers, activists and/or customers, and the contributions these projects and efforts can make to help create ecologically and socially more sustainable and just cities. Theoretically this chapter addresses questions of the role and potential of individual projects of reuse, repair, sharing, and care in the remaking of cities, consumer cultures, and urban economies at large. Do small projects informally connect to create a larger, more influential, and effective new, regenerative economy? Can small efforts trigger larger cultural, political, and economic transformations that are necessary to build regenerative and just future cities?