Everyday mundane repair: banknotes and the material entanglements of improvisation and innovation

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the conceptualization of everyday repair with a focus on banknotes, a ubiquitous and mundane technology in constant need of maintenance and repair. Through a design anthropology approach, we examine how practices of repairing banknotes are entangled with discourses of innovation that manifest in everyday life. This is complemented with a short ethnographic account of how damage, care and repair of banknotes in Chile are articulated through mundane everyday life activities.

Keywords

• repair
• banknotes
• innovation
• ethnography
• materiality