Accelerated cycles of production, consumption and discard, and the extensive availability of cheap mass-produced goods have led to increasingly quick processes of replacement through which a large number of things is rapidly discarded. Eventually, this has created a new problem, which is the increasing overflow and multiplicity of wastes, with materials that cannot be turned into value in a straightforward manner.

On the other hand, past things often deserve a second chance. Chairs, cars, umbrellas, houses, relationships, you name it. In some cases, they had fallen apart because of wrong use or design, because of being available too early or too late, done with materials that are not good enough, or in turn because of not being subject of maintenance work. While working on how to give a second chance to things, we can learn the way objects are made, their vulnerabilities, and eventually how they can also be re-designed. However, repair is hardly considered for future projections.

An ethnographic attention to fixing interventions allows us to comprehend the processes and conditions under which certain things acquire socio-material stability against the grain. Also, it shows that repair work is socially and politically-loaded by putting things to some order and by activating other kinds of relations. Indeed, the repair of things contributes to stabilise human life insofar as they give it a continuity and order.