IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

The “Epiphaniou Scrap Metal” processing plant prides itself on “the only machine on the island of Cyprus that can turn a car into a ball of metal.” The site appears as a carefully curated collection of used materials separated and arranged in neat mounds, awaiting “responsible recycling.” Following the material flows from this site, however, suggests connections to traffic and smog-producing transportation affecting local communities. Recent reports of large on-site fires also suggest covert waste management practices. In light of the European Union’s end-of-life vehicles directive, this paper explores car repair and maintenance practices as networked events associated with wider scales of production, consumption, and disposal. Through multi-sited (Marcus 1995; Yaneva and Mommersteeg 2019) ethnographic accounts of car accidents and subsequent refusals to repair, and through an ANT approach, we see how the negotiations taking place between the mechanic, the driver, the owner, and the insurance company multiply the ecologies of car repair and disposal in Cyprus. Tracing the material flows of these practices reveals a) a reliance on migrant-worker networks and their associated legalities, b) questions of value vs repair costs and the possibility of disposal without direct consequence, and c) expanding ecologies of car dumping grounds forming suburban micro-environments. This approach rethinks infrastructural repair and maintenance beyond the locally situated practice centred around questions of material negotiations and expertise (Henke 2000; Sanne 2010; Denis and Pontille 2014; Denis and Pontille 2018) towards a networked set of events (transporting, compressing, dumping, exporting), and how the refusal to repair can extend said infrastructures beyond their immediate arrangements.