Makeshifting matters: How consumer informal production reconfigures consumption practice

Abstract

Consumer informal production (CIP) refers to practices where individuals make or modify their own consumption goods, bypassing market offerings and professional services. It includes craftwork, do-it-yourself (DIY), repair, and makeshifting. Our study adopts a practice-theoretical lens to distinguish among CIP practices and explore those that are market-autonomous; practices that transgress market praxis without reliance on its resource provisions. We conducted a netnographic study on gambiarra, the Brazilian makeshifting, investigating how this highly market-autonomous CIP impacts established consumption practices. Our findings reveal that the ingenuity and resourcefulness in makeshifting d..