Repair Matters

Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in which organisational life takes place as a political question. This special issue is interested to map the ways that repair can contribute to organisational models alternative to those centered around growth. In order to explore the politics of repair in the context of organization studies, the papers gathered here investigate issues such as: repair as a specific kind of care and socially reproductive labour; repair as a direct intervention into the cornerstones of capitalist economy, such as exchange versus use value, division of work and property relations; repair of infrastructures and their relation with the broader environment; and finally repair as the reflective practice of fixing the organizational systems and institutional habits in which we dwell. What emerges from the diversity of experiences surveyed in this issue is that repair manifests itself as both a regime of practice and counter-conduct that demand an active and persistent engagement of practitioners with the systemic contradictions and power struggles shaping our material world

The Archaeology of Enslavement in Plantation Jamaica: A Study of Community Dynamics among The Enslaved People of Good Hope Estate, 1775-1838

The “slave village” occupies an important place in New World plantation archaeology, though one in which the variation of experience and the internal social organization have yet to be thoroughly addressed. Through archaeological investigation, this dissertation explores the social dynamics and institutions created by enslaved people to negotiate their domestic circumstances. In many plantation settings, enslaved people lived in dedicated villages or the rear-yards of plantation houses. their domestic boundaries were prescribed, but the life they created within those boundaries was by and large a product of their own sense of sociability, domesticity, and ingenuity. The ways in which people created, divided, and decided on the everyday tasks of life, and positioned themselves in relation to others, reveals much about the domestic strategies they created to navigate and negotiate the conditions of enslavement. I develop this research through an archaeological investigation of three related sites in northern Jamaica. Each site represents domestic spaces of enslaved people tied to Good Hope estate, a 2000-acre sugar plantation that operated from the mid 18th through the early 19th century. Upwards of 500 enslaved people labored at Good Hope at any one time, living between these three separate sites. While most of the enslaved labor force lived in a central primary village, the second smaller village and the urban quarters housed the plantation’s enslaved domestic servants. Archaeological investigation of these three sites provided the data necessary to understand enslaved domestic life as it concerns household organization, consumer choices, the implications of labor roles, physical and social mobility, and the degree to which the plantation’s laboring population organized itself into a distinct enslaved community. This pursuit of community, as a social process, developed and maintained through everyday dwelling, guides this research. By revealing the “enslaved community” as constrained from the outside, though socially constituted from within, this dissertation develops methods, measures, and socio-cultural insight into how forcefully aggregated populations develop social institutions to navigate the often horrific conditions imposed from the outside. Together, this study demonstrates how slavery was an attempt to dehumanize, but failed in that project. Innovative and strategic measures allowed a systematically exploited group of people to reclaim humanity through a social world carved out by and for enslaved people in the dwelling space of the plantation regime

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Environmental cost accounting methodologies

The importance of so three-pillar sustainability (environmental, economic, social) in decision making and research is rising as can be seen in the accelerated pace of published sustainability studies, socie-tal climate goals and the growing adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as well as envi-ronmental management schemes in companies. The depletion of certain resources and possible fu-ture legislative changes may raise prices of certain pollution types and may be driving companies towards more sustainable operation through environmental management accounting (EMA) where identification, allocation and management of environmental costs are key elements. Especially life cycle methodologies are needed to evaluate and verify value chain specific targets and development goals. There is a demand for more comprehensive understanding of the value chains due recent development needs of various production processes and new application possibili-ties of value verses separated from side flows and bio-waste: each action should add value to the product or to reduce production costs in order to make the development of value chains possible. According to the target of bio-economy, natural resources should be used and recycled effectively in both the economic and environmental point of view. The lack of a detailed economic assessment next to the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) limits its value in the eyes of decision makers who always need to consider economic priorities and not only the social and environmental ones. In addition to LCA a comparative look at the costs and revenues of products, systems and ser-vices (Life Cycle Costing, LCC) for the entire chain creates opportunities to find the most critical points to minimise environmental impacts and production costs and add value. Also, integrating these environmental impacts and costs to environmental-economic methods (Environmental-LCC & Societal-LCC) together is required for sustainable solutions. However, E-LCC and S-LCC methods are still relatively young: the definitions of even basic terms can vary from study to study and there are no international standards for conducting them. Further development of E-LCC methods and their results becoming mainstream could enable environmental effects (positive or negative) impacting product prices in the future, either by taxation or change in consumer demand. The methodology development work needs identification, allocation and management of com-pany’s internal environmental costs but also monetarizing externalities (e.g. environmental impacts). So far, there is no consensus on how to best assign relative weight to different environmental impact categories in monetary terms. Even though many databases and methods exist, there is still a need for new customisable valuation systems and databases that could more reliably provide valuation for different aspects of various ecosystem services or products. Assessments should always clarify what aspect of the assessed site exactly is valuated, and with what assumptions or data. Kestävyyden kolmipilarimallin (ympäristö, talous, sosiaalinen) merkitys päätöksenteossa on kasva-massa, minkä voi havaita kiihtyvässä kestävyystutkimusten julkaisutahdissa, yhteiskunnallisissa ilmas-totavoitteissa ja yritysvastuun (CSR) sekä ympäristöjohtamisen yleistymisessä. Resurssien ehtyminen ja tulevaisuuden mahdolliset lakimuutokset saattavat nostaa tiettyjen saastetyyppien hintoja sekä ajaa yrityksiä kohti kestävämpää toimintaa ympäristöjohtamismalleja (EMA) hyödyntämällä jossa avaintekijöinä on ympäristökustannusten tunnistaminen, allokointi ja hallinta. Erityisesti elinkaarimenetelmiä tarvitaan arvioimaan ja tunnistamaan arvoketjujen tietyt tavoit-teet ja kehitystarpeet. Kysyntää ketjujen kokonaisvaltaiselle ymmärtämiselle luo tarve arvoketjujen ja korkeamman lisäarvon tuotteiden kehittämiselle sivu- ja biojätevirroista: jokaisen toimenpiteen ket-jussa tulisi lisätä tuotteen arvoa tai pienentää tuotantokustannusta jotta arvoketjujen kehitys olisi mahdollista. Biotalouden tavoitteiden mukaisesti luonnonvaroja tulisi käyttää kestävästi ja kierrättää niin talouden kuin ympäristön näkökulmasta tehokkaasti. Yksityiskohtaisten taloudellisten tutkimus-ten puute elinkaarianalyysien (LCA) rinnalla vähentää sen arvoa päätöksentekijöiden silmissä, sillä taloudelliset prioriteetit pidetään aina mukana päätöksissä, ympäristötekijöistä ja sosiaalisista teki-jöistä huolimatta. Ympäristövaikutusten arvioinnin (LCA) ohella vertailtavat elinkaariset tuotteiden, järjestelmien ja palvelujen kustannukset ja tulot (Life Cycle Costing, LCC) luo mahdollisuuden löytää kriittisimmät pisteet ympäristövaikutusten ja kustannusten vähentämiseksi, sekä lisätä ketjun arvoa. Lisäksi näiden yhdistäminen ympäristö- ja talousvaikutuksia yhdessä käsitteleviin menetelmiin (Environmental -LCC ja Societal-LCC), on tarpeen kestävien ratkaisujen aikaansaamiseksi. Tästä huolimatta, näitä ympäris-tö ja sosiaalisia vaikutuksia käsittelevät laajennetut elinkaarikustannusmenetelmät ovat edelleen suhteellisen nuoria: jopa peruskäsitteiden määritelmissä on vaihtelua tutkimusten välillä, eikä mene-telmien toteuttamiseen ole olemassa kansainvälisiä standardeja. E-LCC-menetelmien jatkokehitys ja niiden tulosten valtavirtaistuminen saattaa tulevaisuudessa mahdollistaa ympäristövaikutusten (posi-tiivisten tai negatiivisten) vaikuttamisen tuotteiden hintaan, joko verotuksen tai kuluttajakysynnän muutosten myötä. Menetelmäkehitystyö vaatii yrityksen sisäisten ympäristökustannusten tunnistamista, mutta myös ulkoisvaikutusten (esim. ympäristövaikutusten) rahamääräistämistä. Toistaiseksi tutkimuksissa ei ole yhteisymmärrystä siitä, miten ympäristövaikutuskategorioille voisi parhaiten suhteellisesti pai-nottaa näiden rahallisen arvottamisen mahdollistamiseksi. Vaikka arvotusmenetelmiä ja tietokantoja on olemassa useita, on silti olemassa tarve uusille tutkijoiden muokattavissa oleville arvotusjärjes-telmille sekä tietokannoille, jotka voisivat nykyisiä luotettavammin arvottaa kohteita ja tuotteita. Tutkimusten tulisi aina selkeästi ilmaista, mitä puolia tutkitussa kohteessa tarkalleen arvotetaan, ja mihin oletuksiin sekä tietoon perustuen.201