Repair in Circular Economies (RICE)

RICE ran from 2019-2021. Jonas Anshelm and Johan Niskanen at Linköping University, Sweden worked with me to investigate how cultural variation in practical ethics and norms of repair might impact on the interpretation, implementation and contestation of the concepts of circular economy.

COVID19 impacted on our research, so study visits were replaced with interviews and online deliberation. Nonetheless we enjoyed rich engagements with practitioners and theorists of repair, exploring practical ethics and norms of repair in contrasting disciplines, and generating lessons and recommendations for the effective development of circular economy policy from a better understanding of the normative motivations and constraints influencing repair practices.

Publications

The political economy of circular economies: lessons from future repair scenario deliberations in Sweden. J. Niskanen & D. McLaren (2021) Circular Economy and Sustainability.

Repair for a Broken Economy: Lessons for Circular Economy from an international interview study of repairers. J. Niskanen, D. McLaren and J Anshelm (2021), Sustainability 13(4), 2316. 

Reconfiguring repair: Contested politics and values of repair challenge instrumental discourses found in circular economies literature. D. McLaren, J. Niskanen, and J. Anshelm (2020). Resources, Conservation and Recycling: X. Vol 8 

Local conflicts and national consensus: The strange case of circular economy in Sweden. J. Niskanen, J. Anshelm and D. McLaren (2020). Journal of Cleaner Production 261: 121117. 

RICE was funded by the Swedish research funder FORMAS