Exchange, obligation, accountability: Moral orders of technology repair in Kampala, Uganda
For scholars of technology repair and moral economies, this provides a detailed specification of informal rules in repair practices.
This chapter introduces the concept of 'moral orders of repair' based on ethnographic fieldwork in Kampala's mobile phone and computing repair markets, identifying three key dimensions: fair exchange, collaboration across hierarchy, and relational accountability.
This chapter develops the concept of moral orders of repair, defined as the specific norms, rules, values, and expectations that structure and support joint work and exchange in repair worlds and other spheres of collaborative practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in mobile phone and computing repair markets in Kampala, Uganda, we identify three key dimensions of moral orders: fair exchange, collaboration across hierarchy, and relational accountability. We show how moral orders provide a detailed specification of informal rules gestured as implicit in moral economies, and how these rules inform the practical and ethical work of repair.