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Mobile Phone Repair Knowledge in Downtown Kampala: Local and Trans-Local Circulations

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Repair Work Ethnographies

Abstract

Lara Houston’s chapter is based on sustained ethnographic fieldwork in downtown Kampala, Uganda’s capital, in order to examine the mobilization of multiple resources in and for the repair of mobile phones. Due to the constant evolution of mobile phone technology, local repair shops do and have to rely upon various online networks that provide and circulate the kind of knowledge required to achieve swift and satisfactory phone repair. Through detailed descriptions of actual courses of repair work, Houston shows how local practices get entangled with global knowledge networks. Thereby, she both extends the observed situation, as mobile phone repairers do, and recasts the notion of situated action.

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Houston, L. (2019). Mobile Phone Repair Knowledge in Downtown Kampala: Local and Trans-Local Circulations. In: Strebel, I., Bovet, A., Sormani, P. (eds) Repair Work Ethnographies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2110-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2110-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2109-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2110-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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