Repair and reuse: Misalignments between stakeholders and possible users

As part of the circular economy, grassroots initiatives from the social and solidarity economy (SSE) that promote reuse, reemployment and repair could be seen as ‘local sustainable initiatives’ and as citizen-based contributions to sustainability transitions that require favorable conditions to emerge. Despite a diversity of existing solutions, repair and reuse activities remain limited due to social, institutional and technical lock-ins. This study relies on two French case studies and mobilizes a theoretical framework that combines pragmatic sociology and science technology studies. The study illustrates that there are different modes of commitment to repair and that repair initiatives appeal primarily to people of the militant mode of commitment. Even though a rather broad range of citizens is somehow committed to the practice of repairing, repair initiatives generally fail to attract this broad range of citizens because the type of citizen commitment that they assume occurs only at marginal levels.