Repair across Africa

Mending, Making and Material Care

Paul Wenzel Geissler, Aissatou Mbodj-Pouye, Charline Kopf, Lotte Meinert (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

345 Seiten

2026
Intellect Books (Verlag)
978-1-83595-256-6 (ISBN)

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Examines repair as a dynamic social, material, cultural, and economic practice. Spanning diverse African contexts, it explores how mending connects labour, urban lives, and historical memories, revealing the artisanal skills and relational dynamics that underpin everyday acts of material care and transformation. 150 col. illus.

An exploration of the multifaceted practices of repair across the African continent. Moving beyond a simple understanding of repair as fixing broken objects, this volume explores the cultural, social, and economic dimensions of mending and material care. It considers repair as a relational act that bridges past and future, blending tradition with innovation.

The collection spans diverse African contexts, from urban centres to rural areas, showcasing how repair intersects with labour, urban life, natural and spiritual environments, and historical memory. Essays explore themes such as the role of repair in mitigating the wear and tear of time, addressing environmental disasters, examining colonial and postcolonial histories and their implications for urban transformation, and highlighting the artisanal skill and ingenuity behind these practices.

Contributors draw on anthropology, architecture, history, and critical urban studies to illuminate how repair can be a form of resistance, care, and adaptation in a rapidly changing world. Richly illustrated and methodologically innovative, Repair across Africa highlights Africa's global relevance by situating its practices within broader critiques of late capitalism and the Anthropocene.

Illuminates the connection between symbolic and material repair, particularly in light of the ongoing debates about colonial legacies and reparations owed to African societies for the harms done by colonialism. Essential reading for scholars and practitioners interested in material culture, urban studies, and the politics of sustainability.

Charline Kopf is a postdoctoral fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on West Africa, with particular attention to infrastructures, mobilities, and labor dynamics in the region. Her current project examines the intersections of particles, pollution, protest, and industrial history in Senegal, with a focus on dust. Wenzel Geissler teaches at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He mainly works in Eastern Africa. He is interested in the physical remains of modernity, research and scientific knowledge, and health and livelihood in East Africa's rapidly changing social and natural landscapes. Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye is an anthropologist at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France, with fieldwork sites in West Africa and France. Her current project examines how mobility is conceptualized in the region of Kayes, Mali, through a study of a radio station and its sound archives. Lotte Meinert works at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University. Her research centers on Uganda and issues of health, land, post-conflict, gender, generations and time.

Introduction:

Living Repair: Mending and Material Care in Contemporary Africa

Charline Kopf, Wenzel Geissler, Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, Lotte Meinert

1. Kobeta Toles:

Re-pairing Mobility on Congo’s Inland Waterways

Peter Lambertz

2. Cobbling Together a Life of Repair:

Deciding How to Deal with Loss at a Burkina Faso Market

Sarah-Jane Phelan

3. A Car on the Street Named Desire:

The Significance of Material Breakdown and Repair for Brokering Change in South Africa

Evelien Storme

4. Pulled Lines and People’s Connections:

Infrastructural Extension as Layered Repair in Cape Town

Angela Storey

5. Below the Infrastructural Breakdown:

Electric Repair Work as Skilled Improvisation and Its Moral Entanglements

Kirsten Nielsen

6. Repairs Under Tension:

Negotiating Risks and Connectivity in Mobile Phone Repair in Bamako

Issa Fofana and Issa Togola

7. Turn of the Screw:

Unhinging Power Relations Through ‘Unauthorized Repair’ in Lomé’s Mobile Phone ‘Black Market’ Dékon

Janine Patricia Santos

8. Hacking to Repair?:

Smartphone Repair in the Kariakoo Market, Dar es Salaam

Christian Medaas

9. Timbila:

Tracing Mozambican history through a musical artefact, its repair and reinvention

Sara Morais and Gianira Ferrara

10. La Casa Verde:

Heritage, Colonialism, and (Un)Repairing in Equatorial Guinea

Alba Valenciano Mañé and Laida Memba Ikuga

11. Under Repair:

Undoing Colonial Fascist Legacies in Addis Ababa Through Critical Architectural Preservation

Emilio Distretti and Abel Assefa

12. In the Absence of Repair:

Architectural Métissage and Forced Labour in Colonial Congo

Simon De Nys-Ketels and Robby Fivez

13. Maxaquene Khovo Students House in Maputo:

On Social Repair and Material Decay

Silvia Balzan

14. Narratives of Mending, Repair and Transformation in West Africa:

Encountering Freedom Park Lagos

Ola Uduku

15. Repair and Relief:

'Building Back Better’ in Post-Cyclone Idai Malawi

Tanja Hendriks

16. The Time of Being in Between:

Mending, Repair, and Social Change in Turkana, Northern Kenya

Sam Derbyshire

17. Dogon Objects:

To Throw Away, to Repair ... or to Collect

Eric Jolly

18. Adobe Walls and Leaking Pasts:

Vital Ecologies of Mending and Repair in Niger

Adeline Masquelier

Afterword:

Breaking Down Repair

Brenda Chalfin

Notes on Contributors

Erscheint lt. Verlag	24.4.2026
Zusatzinfo	150 Halftones, color
Sprache	englisch
Maße	170 x 244 mm
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	1-83595-256-9 / 1835952569
ISBN-13	978-1-83595-256-6 / 9781835952566
Zustand	Neuware