Betwixt Gatherings—The Tools

And yet old. Before—once you think about it, surely long before—the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and axe; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger— for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug ones you can’t eat home in—with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. (Le Guin et al., 2019)

Introduction

The sociological taxonomy of workers at Mahakama Ya Friji is premised on the control of the means of production. In earlier chapters, I focused on labour and labour relations. In this chapter I explore the tools used during value appropriation from e-waste.Tools imply control over the production process: control of and over the time and space of labour; control of choice on how and when and what to do. What defines a crafter or collector’s labour are the skills that they must acquire and the vital tools needed to put those skills into action. Tools are central to labour assemblages and relations with material objects. While relationships on the industrial shop floor are parasitic between the owners of the tools and the workers, it is different at Mahakama Ya Friji. Tools are the junctures, the gatekeepers of the energy and skills of the crafters that interact with materials to produce a craft, an object, or a product. Tools have the same agency as on the industrial shop floor. However, they do not give the workers on the factory floor the same power and freedom that they do at the workshop (Wendling, 2009).

Tools are emancipatory. Owning them is owning one’s labour. Master crafters decide when to work or when to take a break. Such freedom is enjoyed neither by apprentices at Mahakama Ya Friji nor by the workers on the industrial factory floor. The degree of control of

the production process is associated with ownership of the means of production. At the workshop, this means owning the vital tools needed for production. However, I am well aware that even though crafters might enjoy a certain degree of freedom and control over their labour and the means of production, they are still entangled in the structures and networks of capitalism. They cannot just stop working. They have to labour for survival.

Tools are very important in e-waste recycling. The value-toxicity dichotomy discussed when it comes to formal and informal practices is negotiated along the lines of the methods and tools used to extract value from e-waste. In these negotiations, tools become political:

which tools are appropriate and for which practices. Practices like burning, chopping, shredding, and incineration are embedded within the tools used. What is considered proper and improper during e-waste recycling is entangled with the tools and methods or practices used.

As political artefacts, tools are entrenched with power, authority, and hierarchy and also determine the methods used, thereby influencing political discussions about what is proper e-waste recycling and how it should be done (Winner, 1980). For master crafters at Mahakama Ya Friji, apart from knowledge and skills they possess, access to specific tools, especially crucial ones or those bought at dear prices, position them higher in the power hierarchy. For example, in formal ‘advanced’ recycling facilities in Europe, the Autosort Fines Optical Sorter machine defines the politics and practical engagements with electronic waste. On the Van Dyk Recycling Solution company’s website, this is how the Autosort Fines Optical Sorter is presented:

Electronics Waste Recycling or high-volume E-scrap processing and sorting need the right tool for the job. That tool is the AUTOSORT Fines Optical Sorter! The TOMRA AUTOSORT Fines machine is the machine of choice for electronics waste recycling or E-scrap processing. It is so precise it can accurately find and sort precious metal e-waste pieces in the 1–2 mm range. It acts as a ‘Swiss Army Knife‘ to produce a clean

metals fraction, clean green circuit boards, upgrade your plastics fraction, and clean up your aluminum and other precious metals. It utilises 4 different technologies combined in one unit to improve your electronics recycling end products, whatever they are. (Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, n.d.)

‘Precise’, the ‘right tool’, ‘clean’, and ‘accurate’ are some of the keywords from the company’s website advertising the Tomra Autosort Fines machine. These words are not just technical, they are political, reflecting properness set against improper tools like those used by my walimu at Mahakama Ya Friji. However, when tools are discussed, they appear as a means to an end, used to produce or shape something, not an end in themselves (Graham & Thrift, 2016; Harper, 1987; Henke, 1999). Tools make statements that help us understand labour relations, identities, goals, ingenuity, and even fantasies (Weiner, 1988).

In his analysis of repairing, Christopher Henke neglects the ways that tools are connectors within what he argues is the definition of repairing: ‘[a] blend of discursive material practices, located at the juncture of the worker’s body and their workplace’ (Henke, 1999, p. 56). It is tools that are the juncture of workers’ bodies, skills, and knowledge with material objects.

Tools facilitate the repairer’s art and actions; they translate thoughts into actions. At the workshop, the deployment of tools allows cookstoves to be made, materials to be transformed, and labour to be simplified. Langdon Winner argues that:

Social determination of technology has an obvious wisdom. It serves as a needed corrective to those who focus uncritically on such things as the computer and its social impacts but who fail to look behind technical things to notice the social circumstances of their development, deployment, and use (Winner, 1980, p. 122).

In this chapter, I explore the gathering of tools and the ways they are negotiated and express their agency in craftsmanship, collecting, and dealing. I divide the tools that I observed at the workshop into three categories: First, tools that are co-opted to perform a different or

more roles than those they were intended for. For example, a remnant of a colonial railway is a central tool for the crafters. The rail was not intended to be used by crafters at the workshop but has been acquired to perform roles beyond enabling locomotives to travel on it. The second set of tools are those made by the workers to execute specific tasks. This category comprises tools made at the workshop, including the bender—an imitation of an industrial tool that has been made by crafters using scrap materials. The last set of tools are the modern, industrial electric tools, like the circular saw and the loudspeaker, that workers have bought. These tools are acquired, bought, converted, or made depending on the needs of crafters and their affordability.