Mending Knowledge: Community Transmission and Its Challenges in Formal Education

Sam Bennett; Rachel Meade Smith; Gabriele Ferri

doi:10.2478/jef-2026-0006

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Mending Knowledge: Community Transmission and Its Challenges in Formal Education

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

Volume 20 (2026): Issue 1 (June 2026)

By: Sam Bennett , Rachel Meade Smith and Gabriele Ferri

Open Access

|Jun 2026

Abstract

This paper examines how community-driven mending knowledge travels across time and into contemporary schooling, and what conditions allow it to persist. We pair a concise historical backdrop through a timeline called “How Mending Survives”, with a practice-led, design-ethnographic case study in a New York City public high school titled the ReGenerational Repair Program. Using a Value-Sensitive Design lens, we compare a spring after-school class series and autumn in-class intensive study and find that transmission flourishes where learners share time, table, tools and conversation, and falters where those conditions are scarce. Rather than adding a repair unit, we argue for designing classrooms as sociotechnical environments that provide the temporal, spatial and relational fabrics that mending requires, positioning schools as credible co-sites of transmission alongside community venues. The paper clarifies how historical dynamics are re-enacted in the present and why community remains not a supplement to education but a reciprocal site of transmission.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2026-0006 | Journal eISSN: 2228-0987 | Journal ISSN: 1736-6518

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Language: English

Page range: 85 - 107

Published on: Jun 20, 2026

Published by: University of Tartu, Estonian National Museum, Estonian Literary Museum

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

mending,

informal learning,

repair pedagogy,

community,

sociotechnical environments

Related subjects:

Social sciences,

Anthropology,

Cultural anthropology,

Linguistic anthropology,

Theology and religion,

Religious studies,

Anthropology of religion

© 2026 Sam Bennett, Rachel Meade Smith, Gabriele Ferri, published by University of Tartu, Estonian National Museum, Estonian Literary Museum
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 20 (2026): Issue 1 (June 2026)