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# Repair of Unstable Sociomaterial Relations: A study on librarians' and social workers' practices in addressing the needs of their clients

Johanna Sefyrin¹[0000-0002-9626-6772] and Mariana S Gustafsson²[0000-0001-6099-4252]

1 Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
johanna.sefyrin@liu.se

2 Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
mariana.s.gustafsson@liu.se

¹jay@kishigami.net, ²shigenori.ohashi.ur@hco.ntt.co.jp,

³katarino@gj9.so-net.ne.jp,

⁴shigeru.fujimura.wg@hco.ntt.co.jp,

⁵atsushi.nakadaira.hy@hco.ntt.co.jp

**Abstract.** In this paper we address the increased digitalization of the fabric of modern welfare societies, and the expectations on individuals to be independent and digitally capable that follows from this. We focus on enactments of repair aimed at maintaining the lives of individuals situated in unstable sociomaterial relations in the context of social care and a public library in Sweden. The purpose was to explore enactments of repair in two Swedish empirical contexts: one in a social service setting, and one in a municipal library setting. The analysis was conducted with the help of the concept of repair, understood as maintenance or transformation. We conducted interviews and observations in these two settings and analyzed these with the help of the concept of repair. The analysis shows that in the context of social service, repair was enacted differently in relation to different interpretations of existing legislation concerning minimal livelihoods, and that in the context of the public library repair was enacted in relation to expectations of the library visitors to become digitally independent. The analysis showed that in both of these contexts repair was enacted as maintenance rather than as transformation.

**Keywords:** repair, life sustaining web, social services, libraries, digitalization.

## 1 Introduction

Digitalization of welfare services and public administrations increases the demands on citizens and other members in society to be enough digitally capable to be able to find the information they need, to navigate in the ecosystems of digital services provided by various public and private organizations and to maintain the complex sociomaterial relations they are immersed in [1, 2, 3, 4]. In digitalized societies digital technologies are
Autres

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essential in the thick sociomaterial fabric in which humans are situated, and increas-
ingly difficult to disentangle from other relations. The term sociomaterial, based on
Suchman [5], is used to indicate how the material and the social are closely entangled,
and that the boundaries between them are enacted in practices, rather than given. Barad
[6] instead uses the term material-discursive, and Haraway [7] material-semiotic. In this
paper we focus on repair, defined by Jackson [8] as “the subtle acts of care by which
order and meaning in complex sociotechnical systems are maintained and trans-
formed”. In this short formulation Jackson includes in repair both maintenance – the
practice of maintaining existing orders and relations – and transformation, those prac-
tices which serve to change the existing, as a point of departure for innovation and
change of the status quo. Also Henke [9] distinguish between repair as maintenance
and repair as transformation. Here we focus on repair since humans, things, systems
and relations break down, they grow old, sick, are worn out or are damaged. That is
part of the cycle of life and death in naturecultures [10, 11], including partly digitalized
systems and environments constituted by technologies and humans. Repair in terms of
and “infrastructural maintenance… contribute to stability and order (or the appearance
of order) through regular processes of engagement and tinkering with things” [12].
Jackson [8] includes care in his definition of repair, and also Buser and Boyer [12]
understand repair as a form of care. Joan Tronto writes about care as: “everything we
do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possi-
ble. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all that we seek
to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web” [13: 103]. Our point of departure is
that humans are situated in and constituted by unstable sociomaterial relations – a “life
sustaining web”, relations which are in need of more or less constant care and repair
[14, 8, 9, 4]. This life sustaining web increasingly include digital technologies, services
and systems (together with access to clean water, electricity, sanitation, housing, hos-
pital care, medicine and schools and many other things). In this paper we focus on hu-
man vulnerability and the repair work that is required when the life sustaining web
threatens to rupture, so that it can continue working, or be transformed when there is
need for that, in order to continue being life sustaining.

Based on this our purpose is to explore enactments of repair in two Swedish empir-
ical contexts: one in a social service setting, and one in a municipal library setting. In
the social service context, we studied how social workers worked to repair the life sus-
taining webs of their clients; individuals situated in life sustaining webs threatening to
rupture since they did not have a paid job and depended on financial aid. Some of the
clients were coping with psychosocial problems, had been out of the labor market for a
long time due to different illnesses or addictions and had lost their entitlements to the
general insurance allowances. In the library context, we studied how library employees
worked to repair some of the digital issues in the life sustaining webs of their visitors,
who needed access to digital welfare services provides by for instance the Swedish
Social Insurance Agency, the Swedish Public Employment Service, the social services
or the unemployment fund, private banking, as well as maintaining relations to friends
and families through digital channels. These can be understood as two different cases
in which repair was enacted in different ways.
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## 2 Previous Research and Analytical Framework

Jackson [8: 223] (2014, p. 223) underscores that “the world is always breaking, it’s in its nature to break. That breaking is generative and productive”. He asks who “fixes the devices and systems we “seamlessly” use?” and argues for the need for articulation work (with reference to [15] Star & Strauss, 1999), “the myriad (often invisible) activities that enable and sustain even the most seemingly natural or automatic forms of order in the world”. A central argument which he brings forward is that repair of that which is breaking down is a prerequisite for innovation and transformation of the existing, and he thus situates repair as an ongoing practice necessary to maintain some sort of stability in life, as well as for change. Repair is especially central in a world in which resources are scarce and it is necessary to reuse and recycle [8] (Jackson, 2014). Jackson [8] emphasizes that even though repair is a necessary practice in ongoing efforts to care for and sustain human life, it is often placed in the background in favor of design and innovation of the new, also when repair practices are part of processes which result in something new. This relates to the difference between repair as maintenance and repair as transformation mentioned above. This difference is also underscored by Henke [9] (2007) who argues that “[r]epair as maintenance is an attempt to solve problems by ‘tweaking’ elements within the structure of a system, keeping much of the system intact while remedying the trouble. Buser and Boyer [12] distinguish between preventive maintenance and repair as something which is done when infrastructures fail or are break down. Repair as transformation is a more radical set of changes to the actual ecology, in which the very relationships between culture, practice, and environment are substantially reordered” [9: 138] (Henke, 2007, p. 138). Henke also underscores that when repair concerns maintenance practices these generally serve to repair existing power relations, that is, to maintain these, while transformation serves to challenge and reconfigure these relations, and hence give way for other power relations. Houston et al [16] (2016) place the concept of repair in a human computer interaction (HCI) context, and underscore “the contingent nature of repair work” and how technologies routinely break downs and hence require repair of relations between humans and computers to be maintained. These authors relate repair to infrastructures which, as underscored by Star and Ruhleder [17] (1996), tend to fall into the background and become invisible, when they do not break down, that is, when they are not repaired. Jackson [8: 231] (2014, p. 231) relates repair to ethics of care, “routinely forgotten relations of humans to things in the world ... an ethics of mutual care and responsibility”. Care can be understood as a notion which includes practices and doings aimed at taking care of human and non-human bodies, and the preconditions for life, and indicates the necessity and embeddedness of such practices in everyday life [13, 18] (de la Bellacasa, 2011, Haraway, 2016). The concept of care [11, 14, 18] focus on the intimate, fragile and entangled relations between humans and non-humans [18, 5, 6] (e.g. Haraway, 2016, Barad, 2007, Suchman, 2007), and involve concerns for gendered hierarchies and excluded actors, positions and identities. While care includes not only practices and doings, but also the often complex and sometimes painful affections involved in this work [11], the concept of repair as we understand this, relates more to the material aspects and activities involved in caring [8, 12]. These activities involve
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maintenance and transformation of the complex entanglements of humans with non-humans, the infrastructural and biological, natural-cultural webs of relations that make it possible for humans to co-habitate this world with nonhumans or other-than-humans, that make up “the fabric of biological and social existence” [19] (Martin et al, 2015). This “fabric of biological and social existence” includes human relations to technologies and infrastructures that enable everyday life in a digitalized world [16, 17, 2] (Houston et al, 2016, Star & Ruhleder, 1996, Karasti & Blomberg, 2018).

## 3 The Method

Our analysis is based on two case studies [20] on public servants' work to support individuals' access and use of welfare services. Both the municipal libraries and the social services are financed and run by the municipalities in Sweden, making them part of the same organization and political governance. The library case is based on empirical material consisting of a series of 29 observations, seven semistructured interviews with library staff and managers, two focus groups with asylum seekers taking introduction to society course run by the library and several feed-back meetings with library personnel and visitors in two Swedish municipalities (Linköping and Norrköping) (see table with an overview of the empirical material below). The material was collected during the years 2018-2019. The Income support case is based on empirical material consisting of seven observations, a total of 25 interviews, workshops and meetings with social workers and their management in three Swedish municipalities (Motala, Norrtälje and Nacka). In addition documentary material supporting library work and income support services was consulted. This material was collected during 2020.

<table><caption>**Table 1.** Collected data in two case studies/welfare services.</caption><thead><tr><td>Method</td><td>Municipal Libraries</td><td>Income Support</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Interviews</td><td>7 (library staff and managers)</td><td>20 (social workers, management)</td></tr><tr><td>Meetings</td><td>1 (Library management, librarians)</td><td>6 (social workers, management)</td></tr><tr><td>Focus-groups/workshops</td><td>2 (asylum seekers)</td><td>2 (social workers and the manager)</td></tr><tr><td>Observations</td><td>29 (during 2018-2019)</td><td>7 (2020)</td></tr></tbody></table>

The material from the library case has previously been analyzed in terms of care [4], and when we found research about repair, we were interested in exploring what this would add to an analysis. Thus, in terms of analysis, we have operationalized the concept of repair to make it work in the empirical context of the paper – the social work and library case. These are somewhat different cases, with different focus, and while digital technologies are central in the library case, other issues are in focus in the social work case. Hence repair in the library case concerned digital issues which were often related to relations with public organizations and authorities, while in the social service
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case repair concerned social problems and relations, and problems with economy, work,
and health. We understand repair as something which is enacted to maintain or trans-
form those life sustaining webs of relations which humans are situated in and consti-
tuted by, and which include human and other-than-human bodies, such as digital tech-
nologies.

We make each case in part to illustrate and reflect upon how public servants from different professions (in a social work and library context), based on different professional norms, legislation, and organizational practices, worked to, in different ways repair the life sustaining webs of their clients and visitors. We do not make comparisons within the cases or among municipalities, instead we discuss the two cases on public servants' work and relate them to the concept of repair.

4 Enactments of Repair in the Social Services

Based on the Swedish Social Services Act [21] (SFS 2001:453), income support ser-
vices are designed for the people whose life sustaining webs for some reason does not
work as such and aim to support and coach them towards sustainable livelihoods. Man-
aged by the municipality administrations, the services are based on principles of equal-
ity of living conditions, economic and social security and active participation in society
[22] (Gustafsson & Wihlborg, 2019). Individuals' responsibility for their own lives is
a main principle in the Social Services Act [21] (SFS 2001:453), upon which the front-
line public officials, in this case most often social workers (but also increasingly other
professions), base their decisions for support and coaching. In addition, like all public
services they follow the Local Government Act [23] (SFS 2017:725) and the Adminis-
trative Procedure Act [24] (SFS 2017:900). The social workers rely on the mentioned
legislation which define when someone is entitled to a specific kind of support. This
legislation specifies what, up to a minimum standard, is included in the life sustaining
web: food, clothes and shoes, leisure and play, hygiene articles, children's insurance,
consumables, daily newspaper and telephone, and internet connection [25] (the Na-
tional Board of Health and Welfare, 2021). Also digitalization is included in this legis-
lation, and understood as part of the life sustaining web, but the support is not sufficient
for expensive telephones, computers or internet connections. In practice, front-line pub-
lic officials' repair practices aim at maintaining the life sustaining webs of the clients
by providing economic support and advice on how to meet daily needs. Some of the
clients need not only economic support but have problems with physical or psychical
health or social problems which make it harder for them to find and hold a job, and thus
need repair also of social relations, such as help in order to be able to find and hold a
position as an employed. In this context we understand the clients as situated in socio-
material webs which are on the verge of rupturing – or have already done so – and are
in need of repair.

The Swedish Social Services Act is a national legislation, but the social services are
administrated by municipalities, which have a certain amount of freedom in their en-
actment of the legislation. Based on our study in two municipalities, we found two
different approaches in social work: one with a focus on employment and integration
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in the labor market, and another, more ‘traditional’ approach, focusing not only on em-
ployment, but also on psycho-social aspects of life – a more encompassing part of the
life sustaining web. The former seems to be a limited version of the second, broader
and traditional approach which takes into consideration the full life situation and rela-
tions of the client, not only the economic aspects thereof. These two approaches can be
understood as different enactments of repair, one limited to the economic dimensions
of the entangled sociomaterial relations that the clients are situated in, and one which
concerns a larger amount of these relations. One of the interviewed social workers de-
scribed her work in terms of social problems and economic problems as being related:

> "... people come to us with social problems, where the economy is perhaps a consequence of their social problems. And then I think you should meet someone who works with social services and who has the relevant education. You should not meet... a labor market coordinator. I do not think it is right for those we meet. Because even if it's work for many ... many times, like I said, I think, the economy is a consequence of you having social problems....We work on the basis of the Social Services Act. We will not become job brokers, or like case workers at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency with templates, and things. Without us having to make individual needs assessments, no matter what you apply for, you have the right to have the matter tried" (Interview, Senior Social worker)

We also studied digitalization in the social services, and the municipalities in our study
are either preparing or have already automatized entire or parts of the case management
in income support. In the Swedish Income support services, the most known model,
applied in Trelleborg municipality, made possible reallocation of time and personnel
resources to coaching the clients towards reintegration on labor market [26], but auto-
mation is currently implemented in more than 24 Swedish municipalities. Such changes
bring with them new questions and challenges for the public servants' work. Standard-
ization of processes is a pre-requisite for automatization, but there was a tension be-
tween those who understood social work as rule compliance, and those who understood
it as something far more complex. This tension showed up when IT-developers demon-
strated new functionalities for case management, while the social workers interrupted
to ask myriads of questions relating to a diversity of dimensions of their cases. Tensions
raised from a partial, black-or-white perception of what decision making on the cases
involved on behalf of the IT-developers, and the social workers' difficulties to see what
parts of the process could be standardized. Here it became obvious that the IT develop-
ers saw only a rather simplified part of the complex reality of the clients which the
social workers saw, and that this affected how they viewed repair in this context.

Based on this material we could see three different enactments of repair; one related
to traditional social work which encompassed the economic situations of the clients as
well as the psycho-social aspects of their lives, one which was limited to only the eco-
nomic aspects of the clients' lives in terms of work integration and employment, and
one in which IT developers working with automatization of the legislation and organi-
zational practices in social work understood this rather simplistic, as they attempted to
reduce an entangled reality into something that could be standardized. For the clients
these repair practices resulted in different decisions with regards to their entitlement to
support. In those practices which were based on the more narrow, economic, view of
the clients lives the clients received economic support but no help with finding a job or
nurturing social relations, while in those practices which were based on a more encom-
passing view of the clients' situation, the client received help with such issues too.
These two different practices were involved in the digitalization process too, and if the
IT developers had their way, it seems as though the narrower view of the clients would
be built into their design. In Henke's [9] (2007) terms, these repair practices can be
understood as closer to maintenance than to transformation, since transformational re-
pair would require changes on a system level. However, for an individual client help
with issues such as nurturing social relations and finding a job might be a form of help
to self-help, which for the individual could be transformational, if this leads to a
strengthened capability to individually repair the life sustaining web which one is situ-
ated in.

5 Enactments of Repair in a Library Context

Public libraries act in accordance with their mission of folk education in the spirit of Democracy and work to ensure individuals' access and use of information [27] (SFS 2013:801). The Library Act establishes the role of public libraries in promoting transfer of knowledge, free opinion building and universal participation as key values in the life sustaining web of a democratic society [27] (SFS 2013:801). In the context of advancing digitalisation and the diversification of digital needs, libraries are to support digital literacy as a democratic value [28] (Swedish Library Association, 2015) and work for digital inclusion, which in the Swedish context is obviously understood as an important ingredient in the life sustaining web. The mission is also meant to address the diverse needs of those who lack the capacity to acquire the information needed in their livelihoods, due to economic, social, technical or other reasons [28] (Swedish Library Association, 2015). The law is clearly specific about libraries' mission of paying particular attention to persons with disabilities and national minorities in their access to information. The public library mission also includes increasing knowledge on 'how digital technologies can be used' in order to access and use information.

Libraries are open to everyone, but among those who are most frequently asking for
help concerning e-services or other IT-related needs we found partly the same individ-
uals who apply for income support [29, 4] (Gustafsson et al., 2020; Sefyrin et al., 2019).
Their questions often concerned the need to print something, for instance a withdrawal
of their bank account in order to ensure that they were entitled to economic support
from the social services, or to ensure that they had applied for the required number of
jobs and were entitled to unemployment insurance fund. Their errands were sometimes
private, but often related to other public agencies and digitalized welfare services, webs
of relations which needed to be maintained in order to keep being life sustaining. Their
questions and needs showed that seemingly simple digital issues such as log-in pass-
words and electronic identification use, were central in their life sustaining webs, and
were complex issues which they needed help with. One of the librarians told us about
the kind of questions that library visitors might ask, a seemingly simple question which turned out to be rather complex after all:

"Mm. And there it gets, if it's somewhat more advanced stuff, then, if often turns out that the other staff refers to some of us who work with [IT] guidance, who are somewhat more used to these things. But if it's things that we see that "Yes, but this, this takes time" then, then we use to say that "Yes but then you will have to book an IT guidance session in that case, because we cannot solve this immediately" kind of. But one, kind of one might, be such a simple thing as a print out, like, one comes with a phone "Here, I want to have this" and then... yes but one, doesn't have the password to the mail, so one cannot log in to the mail and print out from our computers. Then one has to download an app... to be able to print out, then perhaps one cannot download the app because one doesn't have... one isn't logged in to a Google account on the phone, for example perhaps one had it [the phone] from a friend and it's not fixed. And then it might become a whole... very much ado about something that simple, so. (Librarian 2)

Most of the visitors came to the library for help because neither friends or family, nor the other involved organizations would or could provide the kind of help they needed. The library employees believed that some visitors came to the library also because they were lonely. These visitors' questions to the library employees made visible how entangled they were in digitalized relations both to friends and family, but also with other public and private organizations, contacts which were often digitalized. The library employees made their best to repair these visitors' partly broken sociomaterial entanglements [4] (Sefyrin et al, 2021). Helping visitors with digital issues has become an increasing part of the library employees' work since at least the beginning of the 2000s, and the library employees understood this as part of their democratic assignment in relation to the Library Act [27].

The library employees offered repair of some of the digitalized relations which were part of the life sustaining webs which their clients were situated in. The main aim was to help the visitors become more informed and capable of solving digital issues on their own, but many of the visitors, we were told, came back for help with the same or similar problems. In this context repair practices were enacted in relation to more or less explicit expectations of the visitors to being informed and capable citizens in a democratic society in which the exercising of rights (such as accessing the benefits of public welfare services) and obligations are increasingly entangled with access to and knowledge of digital services, technologies and infrastructures. Repair in this sense was related to maintenance of relations which were partly or fully digitalized, rather than to more transformational repair practices which in Henke's [9] (2007) terms would require change on a system level. However, as in the case of the social services, for an individual, help provided by the library employees could, when this work as the intended help to more individual capability to solve upcoming digitally related problems, be a form of repair as transformation on an individual level.

During the pandemic many municipal libraries closed down in order to decrease the risk for infection, and the librarians we talked to did not know where their regular
visitors went during the pandemic, or where they turn for help with repair of their digital problems. Since these (former) library visitors were situated in rather vulnerable positions, there is a risk that their vulnerability was further reinforced by the pandemic.

# 6 Discussion and Conclusions

Seen through the lens of repair, the enactments of the social workers as well as the librarians can be understood as repair of the complex, life sustaining web which Tronto [13] writes about. In the context of the social services repair was enacted in relation to expectations concerning agency and independence, to the capability of independently becoming financially and socially self-sustainable. In this sense, the repair enacted by the social workers can be understood as repair in terms of maintenance, that is, in order for the life sustaining web to keep working as such, even though this might be on what in a Swedish context is understood as a minimum level. It became clear though that these expectations were enacted differently in different municipalities, also when the decisions made in the social services were being developed and translated into automated digital systems. In the context of the library, repair was enacted in relation to expectations of being, or becoming, an independent, informed and capable citizen, who is capable of navigating in a digitalized society in which exercising rights and obligations is entangled with digital technologies. In a highly digitalized society, the capability to manage digitalized relations with various public and private agencies, as well as private relations (friends and family) is understood as central aspects of the life sustaining web. Also in the library context the repair practices we learned about can be understood as closer to repair as maintenance than to repair as transformation. However, on an individual level, repair in the form of help from the social services as well as from the library can be transformational, as long as this repair helps the individual to more independently managing the relations s/he is situated in. A central observation from this study is that since the life sustaining web is unstable and fluid, it requires recurrent attention of skilled maintenance workers, and through the lens of repair also social workers and librarians can be understood as such maintenance workers. Researchers who study infrastructures [e.g. 15, 17] often underscore how those who work with the maintenance and repair of these are often invisible and undervalued, as infrastructures are invisible until the break down. Therefore, we underscore the importance of making visible and acknowledging the repair work enacted by the social workers and the librarians.

# Acknowledgments

This research was made possible due to the publicly funded projects 'A digital Norrköping for everyone. The library's mission to work for digital inclusion in a society with new challenges', funded by Norrköping's research fund, and 'Automated decision making in social services: a study of institutional, organizational and professional tensions in the introduction of robotic process automation in the Swedish Income Support', financed by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.
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