Becoming a repair entrepreneur: an ethnography of skills training in Brazil

Liliana Gil

Third World Quarterly, 2024, vol. 45, issue 4, 640-657

Abstract: Santa Efigênia in São Paulo is an important Latin American hub for buying and selling electronics. This article draws on long-term fieldwork to discuss repair training in the neighbourhood. While scholars have looked at formal and informal educational spaces, this article looks at a new kind of institution that creatively combines aspects of street repair and high-end information technology services. Individuals from all over Brazil seek out this popular private school with the expectation of becoming self-employed cellphone technicians. The article starts with a description of repair practices in Santa Efigênia and an analysis of the barriers to and accessibility of repair knowledge, including for the female ethnographer. It then centres on the school’s training sessions, examining how students are prepared to become repair entrepreneurs through a mix of technical skills and para-technical concerns with ­aesthetics, logistical speed and networking. I show that this school redraws communities of practice, bringing new actors into repair while excluding others along social divisions of race, class, and gender. Engaging with critiques of the neoliberal push for entrepreneurship in development, I consider the contradictions of this institution, concluding with a discussion of how this case offers insights into the democratisation and dissemination of repair knowledge.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2023.2207006 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:45:y:2024:i:4:p:640-657

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2023.2207006

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().