The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings

Single-authored article. RT is responsible for research design, conceptualization, investigation, analysis, and all stages of writing and reviewing process.

To understand how and why consumers decide to use circular offers, scholars started to draw on different behavioural approaches, such as the theory of planned behaviour (Camacho-Otero et al., 2020; Vidal-Ayuso et al., 2023). Consequently, many of these behavioural studies on circular consumption explore the different attitudes, personality traits or motivations that either positively or negatively impact consumers to use and adopt forms of circular consumption (Camacho-Otero et al., 2018; Vidal-Ayuso et al., 2023). For instance, De Morais et al. (2021) show how green buying and circular behaviour are driven by pure altruism, but not necessarily by the need for social status or competitive altruism. Continuing the investigation on the behavioural aspects of circular consumption, Kutaula et al. (2022) add that extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits positively affect ethically-driven circular consumption. More recently, there has been an effort to synthesise previous research on what drives decision-making regarding circular products and services (Vidal-Ayuso et al., 2023). This study argues that some factors positively influence decision-making for circular offers, like perceived value or green self-identity, while other factors have a negative impact, such as perceived risks due to for instance functionality or contamination of products.

The other dominant approach that addresses the question of consumption in the CE focuses on the creation of typologies of circularity and assigning roles to different actors, amongst them to consumers. One of the arguments that is made within this stream of research is how consumers, often referred to here as users, need to be considered at the start when designing circular solutions. This is supported by the argument that consumers/users have a central role in whether things will be returned for further circulation after use (Selvefors et al., 2019). Thus, consumption processes need to be considered when designing circular products and business models. Additionally, this stream aims to explore, through small-scale examples, which types of business models lead to successful circularity. It also examines the role of consumption in various business models, such as those focused on product returns or extended services (Bocken et al., 2014, 2016; Bocken and Short, 2016; Tunn et al., 2019). For example, Bocken and Short (2016) showcase examples of companies that through sufficiency-driven business models, shift the focus to satisfaction of consumer needs instead of wants and offer long-lasting products. Another example, based on expert interviews, designed a circular business model framework, which leads to more sustainable consumption, by reducing overall

levels of consumption with consideration of consumer efforts (Tunn et al., 2019).

Further studies that focus on the creation of typologies of CE, and within that consumption, order the different 'R strategies', that is, reduce, reuse, recycle and recover, based on their environmental impact (Kirchherr et al., 2017). These R strategies are often expanded with refuse, rethink, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose and recover, and then ordered on the scale of linear-circular economy solutions (Ali and Choe, 2022; Kirchherr et al., 2017; Potting et al., 2017). This shows the variation within these strategies and that not all of them equally contribute to circularity. Taking further the knowledge on different forms of circularity and the role of different actors within, a recent study assigned specific roles to different actors in the CE. According to this, the role of consumers in the CE is to act as 'value co-operators', who use products to their maximum utility and also provide multiple use loops (Haase et al., 2024).

Overall, the behavioural and 'typologising' studies that focus on consumption in the CE underline the importance of addressing consumption in the CE. The behavioural stream takes further the understanding of how different individual elements, such as attitudes or personality traits, influence the acceptance of circular products and services. However, in doing this they reduce consumers to individualised and rational decision-makers, whose role is to either accept or reject different circular offers that they are presented with. The 'typologising' studies link circular solutions and the role of consumers within that, as well as identify what forms of CE and circular consumption are the most desirable in terms of environmental impact. However, they consider consumption only from a point of forecasting or scenario planning, as they do not involve close engagement with consumers. Thus, observations of consumers' everyday lives, and how the assigned CE-related tasks would fit within that, receive less attention within these studies.

In contrast to the above-presented research streams, a small, but dynamic research area critically engages with the question of how circular consumption can be performed as part of everyday life (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson, 2021; Hobson et al., 2021; Mylan et al., 2016). This literature emerged to

complement the behavioural studies focused on individual factors (e.g., De Morais et al., 2021; Kutaula et al., 2022), as well as the design and applied environmental science studies that try to envision circular consumption through models and small-scale examples (e.g., Bocken et al., 2016; van Weelden et al., 2016). Thus, this stream of research on circular consumption underlines the importance of moving away from looking at consumers as individual, rational actors driven by attitudes (Shove, 2010). Rather consumers are viewed as “doers” of resource-consuming activities in their everyday lives (Mylan et al., 2016: 11). From this stream three relevant theoretical moves that differentiate it from the behavioural approaches are highlighted below.

Firstly, sociological studies on circular consumption often draw on a practice theoretical approach to consumption (Shove et al., 2012; Warde, 2005) to study how different circular practices are enacted in everyday lives. As opposed to the behavioural approaches, they show that circular consumption does not simply rely on attitudes, motives or personality traits. Some of these practice theory-informed studies on circular consumption specifically map out what competences, materials and meanings (Shove et al., 2012) are necessary for the performance of the circular practices they investigate. For instance, Camacho-Otero et al. (2020) show how clothes-swapping practices are enabled by the interlinking of different materialities (e.g., the clothes, the venue, tokens), competences (e.g., event organising and establishing rules, selecting and preparing clothes to bring), as well as meanings (e.g., environmental benefits, community-building, but also meanings associated with used clothes). Furthermore, connected to the single-use plastic packaging challenge of the CE, Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben (2024) illustrate the difficulties involved with giving up plastic due to its centrality in mundane everyday doings. According to the authors, to give up plastic packaging, for instance, through package-free shopping, consumers need materials, such as reusable containers and unpackaged products, competencies in weighing and handling the produce, and lastly meanings such as eco-friendly values.

Secondly, this stream also highlights the centrality of materialities in the performance of circular consumption. Despite the importance of material and resource circulation to the CE framework, the focus on materiality in CE transitions has only recently started to emerge in wider academic discussions (e.g., Babri et al., 2022; Holmes, 2018; van der Velden, 2021). Within circular consumption research, the material perspective has helped identify that the material properties of different objects (Närvänen et al., 2023), the infrastructure of domestic spaces (Mylan et al., 2016), and the materiality of how spaces for CE are set up (Holmes, 2018) are not passive participants. The

materialities in circular consumption can also challenge the performance of circular consumption. Närvänen et al. (2023) show that in the assembling of circular clothing consumption, materialities can both support (with tools such as sewing machines) and impede (lacking recycling facilities, unsuitable textile properties) performing circular consumption. Similarly, Holmes (2018) explores how materialities are not only enablers but can also be “troubles” that “unsettle” circular consumption. Thus, the CE possibilities that can emerge are shaped by how the surrounding landscape³ is socio-materially set up. This view de-centres human agency by arguing that different materialities take part in shaping what forms of circularities can emerge and which ones are hindered.

Lastly, the sociological research on circular consumption re-connects circular consumption to household settings. Compared to the behavioural circular consumption research, here the focus shifts to how circular consumption is performed within homes (Greene et al., 2024; Mylan et al., 2016). Mylan et al. (2016) argue that in early circular consumption research, the domestic sphere has been ignored, as consumption was considered merely the result of how things are labelled and marketed. By focusing on how circular consumption is performed in households, the research stream argues for capturing how circular consumption is implicated by practices taking place in households, such as the ones connected to the preparation of food and its connection to food waste or one-time use of plastic (Greene et al., 2024; Mylan et al., 2016; Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben, 2024). This is a considerable move away from behavioural circular consumption research, as it highlights that circular consumption is not only a matter of choosing circular offerings but also how things are being used and disposed of in everyday household practices.

Through these sociological studies, one can see how performing circular consumption is embedded in everyday lives and the ability to carry out the work of adopting new circular practices, moreover, extending previous ones (Hobson et al., 2021) are shaped by the social, material and cultural factors that shape everyday lives (Hobson, 2020). Thus, performing circular consumption is not a straightforward undertaking.

Theories of practice started to emerge in the 1970s to address aspects of social life that have received less attention in cultural research (Ortner, 1984; Warde, 2022). Instead of focusing on symbolic expressions and meaning-making, practice approaches engage with how the social world is being performed (Nicolini, 2017). As Nicolini (2017: 24) argues, practice theoretical research “aims to provide a set of discursive resources to produce accounts, overviews and analyses of social affairs that enrich our understanding of them”. However, it is important to note that there is no unified ‘practice theory’ (Nicolini, 2012), as the notion of practice is defined slightly differently, as well as applied in different ways in empirical research.

In the sociology of consumption, the practice turn was launched by Alan Warde's paper: Consumption and Theories of Practice, in which he argues for understanding consumption as goods being used and appropriated in the performance of different practices. Within this article, he made the influential argument that "consumption is not itself a practice but is, rather, a moment in almost every practice" (Warde, 2005: 137). Thus, this perspective focuses on how consumption unfolds as part of everyday practices and draws attention away from studying consumption as a channel for identity construction and expression present in cultural approaches (Warde, 2005, 2014, 2022).

Through this, the sociological consumption research started to focus on the ordinary forms of consumption that happen when people cook meals, clean their homes, or commute. This difference from the cultural consumption research has later been expressed by Warde as:

In reaction to the cultural turn, emphasis is placed upon doing over thinking, the material over the symbolic, and embodied practical competence over expressive virtuosity in the fashioned presentation of self. (Warde, 2014: 286)

This quote outlines how a practice theory-informed perspective on consumption differs from approaches that are concerned with the individual, expressive consumer. It underlines the focus on routinised performances, embodied competences and materiality of the involved processes.

With the shifting attention to how ordinary consumption unfolds as part of carrying out everyday practices, the attention also shifted to questions of how different things are used after being purchased. Warde (2005, 2014) refers to these different moments of consumption as processes of acquiring, appropriating and appreciation. This understanding of consumption thus encompasses how goods are exchanged, but also how they are then used and how pleasure and satisfaction is derived from the consumed good (Evans 2019).

Importantly, Evans (2019) argues that consumption is not only about how things come into use but also involves how these things (or experiences and services) are eventually parted with. Thus, Evans (2019: 507) proposes that each of Warde's (2005, 2014) "As" has a counterpart "D", that is devaluation, divestment and disposal. In this framework, devaluation refers to how the derived pleasure from a consumption object diminishes, and divestment describes the process where the personal meanings and attachments are broken with the object (Evans, 2019). Lastly, disposal describes the different processes by which objects are parted with (Evans, 2019). Thus, the 3As and 3Ds framework describes consumption from the moment of goods being acquired, until how they are eventually disposed of.

To summarise, through this practice theory-informed approach, consumption can be understood as different moments in everyday practices (Warde, 2005). Warde (2005, 2014) and Evans (2019) also point out that moments of consumption within practice enactments go beyond purchase and exchange. Accordingly, how different objects are used, gain and lose value and then eventually are passed on are central to how consumption unfolds in everyday practices (Evans, 2019; Warde, 2005, 2014).

Practice theoretical consumption research has dealt with questions of sustainability to a great extent (Sahakian et al., 2022; Shove, 2010; Welch and Warde, 2015). More recently, within this stream, there is also an emerging interest in circular consumption (e.g., Greene et al., 2024; Hobson et al., 2021; Mylan et al., 2016). I discuss this literature in the following section.

An important stream of practice theory informed consumption research focuses on sustainable consumption and argues that sustainable consumption is not a question of attitudes, behaviour, and choice (Shove, 2010). Instead, the performance of everyday practices is socially and materially patterned in a way that requires high levels of resources. Accordingly, high levels of resource consumption unfold through people carrying out everyday practices, such as commuting, cooking meals, heating and cleaning homes or even just handling and laundering clothing (Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020; Jack, 2017; Mylan and Southerton, 2018; Shove et al., 2015; Spurling, 2021). Thus, this literature argues that sustainable consumption is a matter of reconfiguring practices so that they require fewer resources (Shove, 2003, 2010; Shove et al., 2012).

One approach to conceptualise practice change has been provided by Shove et al. (2012) in The dynamics of social practice. In this book, besides putting forward the earlier discussed argument of practices being constituted by the linkage of materials, competences and meanings, they also outline how these elements become linked, how links are broken and what this means for changing practices. Shove et al. (2012) argue that practices change if there are new elements involved or if elements are combined in novel ways.

Connected to the climate crisis and environmental impact of consumption, the question of how to deliberately change practices started to emerge (Sahakian and Wilhite, 2014; Shove et al., 2012, 2015; Spurling et al., 2013). Achieving change in practices requires programmatic interventions to tackle the different elements and create new linkages across multiple practices (Middlemiss, 2018). Spurling et al. (2013), drawing on Shove et al. (2012), argue that practice change for reduced environmental impact can be achieved in three ways. First, by re-crafting practices through its elements, such as introducing plant-based substitutes in cooking. Second, by substituting the practice itself, for example, changing commuting by car to commuting by public transport (Middlemiss, 2018; Spurling et al., 2013). Third, practice change can occur by changing how practices interlock. This builds on the interaction of practices, where introducing a change to one practice can impact how another practice is constituted and performed (Middlemiss, 2018; Spurling et al., 2013). However, practices are performed as part of everyday lives; thus, they are socially, materially and culturally patterned, which besides practice elements and their linkages, also shape the possibilities for how practices can be changed.

As practices are part of everyday lives, different social, cultural and material mechanisms take part in shaping how practices are performed (Jack, 2018; Mylan and Southerton, 2018; Shove, 2003; Southerton, 2020). This complicates the attempts made to reconfigure practices. For instance, reducing the energy used in everyday cleanliness practices, such as laundry, dishwashing or personal hygiene cannot be achieved through technological innovations only (Jack, 2017). Social mechanisms and conventions, i.e., what is considered the normal way of doing (Shove, 2003), also structure these cleanliness practices (Jack, 2017). Others have similarly argued that conventions act as cultural ideas, and expectations regarding the outcomes of doing the practice of laundry (Mylan and Southerton, 2018). Besides conventions, Mylan and Southerton (2018) also identify the gendered division of labour, the space for and infrastructure of laundry within the domestic space, as well as institutionalised temporal rhythms like school timetables, exercise classes, or work schedules as ordering mechanisms of everyday laundry

practices. By pointing out these mechanisms and their role in shaping laundry, Mylan and Southerton (2018) argue that making laundry practices more sustainable is not a simple question of education or technological innovations but working together with people and finding solutions that fit with how everyday lives are structured and lived.

The sociological research on circular consumption can be considered as a sub-stream of the present sociological research stream on sustainable consumption. Firstly, both research areas commonly draw on the practice approach to conceptualise consumption. As previously mentioned, sociological circular consumption research often takes a practice theory approach to explore how circular consumption is complicated in everyday practices (Mylan et al., 2016), or to map the practice elements of specific forms of circular consumption, such as clothes swapping (Camacho-Otero et al., 2020). Secondly, both the practice-based research on sustainable and circular consumption understand the unsustainability of consumption as an outcome of how everyday lives are socio-materially patterned and lived. As part of this, both areas of research have a shared focus on the sustainability of household practices, such as laundry and cooking, and its surrounding infrastructure (Hebrok and Heidenstrøm, 2019; Jack, 2017; Mylan et al., 2016; Mylan and Southerton, 2018). Households within these studies are often considered to be sites for enabling sustainability in consumption (Dubois et al., 2019; Evans, 2018) as well as sites for different circular activities (Greene et al., 2024), such as reuse and resale (Gregson et al., 2013), and repair (Gregson et al., 2009).

Hobson et al. (2021) argue for understanding the increased consumption work involved in the performance of circular consumption. Consumption work

involves “all work necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods and services” (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015a: 37). This form of work undertaken by consumers is necessary for the completion as well as complementation of economic processes (Glucksmann, 2016). For instance, self-assembling furniture or installation of different software is necessary before some goods can be appropriated and appreciated. While consumption work is also part of linear economies, in a circular system, previous consumption work activities need to be scaled, and new practices need to be adopted (Hobson et al., 2021). For instance, even if a household already practised waste sorting and recycling according to circularity principles, they also need to enact further practices such as repairing broken belongings or sharing household tools. These increased levels of consumption work in the CE can further contribute to an unequal distribution of labour in terms of gender, class and employment forms (Hobson et al., 2021). Furthermore, it can be challenging to manage the time required for this increased work due to other personal or professional commitments, as the study of Sutcliffe (2022) demonstrates.

The discussion around increased consumption work in the CE, developed and often discussed from a Systems of Provision perspective (e.g., Greene et al., 2024; Wheeler, 2022) shows the close link between circular consumption and economic processes. To further the understanding of how everyday consumption is shaped by economic processes, and study how circular consumption is practically and socio-materially patterned through (retail) markets, I combine the theories of practice approach to consumption with concepts developed in market studies literature (see also Evans, 2020; Evans and Mylan, 2019; Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020). As I outline in the following section, drawing on the market studies approach helps to take a closer look at how circular consumption is produced in retail settings.

Market studies is an interdisciplinary research field that explores how markets are made and shaped through practices. Scholars in this field draw on Callon’s argument regarding the performativity of economic theories (Callon, 1998b, 2007), as well as on the practice turn in social sciences (e.g. Schatzki et al., 2001). Although this research tradition mainly focuses on how markets are made, shaped and performed, it also addresses how different actions, like the exchange of goods and connectedly the acquisition moment of consumption,

are shaped on markets. While I outlined above what the practice turn entails in social sciences, it is important to briefly introduce the Callonian economic sociology (Callon, 1984, 1998c) and how this has influenced the emergence of market studies.

A key underlying argument, that characterises the market studies approach, has been put forward by Callon (1998b). Informed by Actor-Network Theory, Callon (1998b: 2) outlines that economics⁴ as a science does not observe economy rather it “performs, shapes and formats the economy”. This position means that economic theories are performative, that is they take part in shaping how the economy works.

The performativity of economics has been taken to conceptualise and describe the functioning of markets (Callon et al., 2002; Callon and Muniesa, 2005; Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006; MacKenzie et al., 2007). Through this perspective, the naturally occurring character of markets is probed and questioned. Markets are rather viewed as continuously emerging entities, constituted through different market practices (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). The metaphor of English landscape gardens is used by Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007) to illustrate how markets are masked and shaped to work as natural phenomena. Just like landscape gardens, they resemble something natural, but they are shaped and continuously maintained to look as such. Having looked behind the façade of markets and taken a closer look at the different parts that constitute them, one can understand their constructed, performed and constantly emerging character (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007).

Market studies have paid great attention to explaining how markets are shaped and made to work. Furthermore, and more closely related to this dissertation, this tradition has also paid attention to how consumption, mostly the acquisition moment, is shaped through markets. In the following three sections, I outline these developments.

According to Callon and Muniesa (2005) markets consist of three activities: making goods calculable, assigning calculative agencies, and arranging the

meeting of these goods and calculative agents to bring about exchange. This means that in business-to-consumer markets goods need to be made tradable (Callon et al., 2002). Then consumers need to be equipped to recognise, evaluate and purchase the good (Callon, 2005; Cochoy, 2004, 2008). Lastly, the meeting of these goods and consumers needs to be arranged in retail stores (Cochoy, 2007). These activities are organised and re-arranged simultaneously and recursively; they are ongoing processes in the enactment of markets.

Kjellberg and Helgesson (2006) argue that the above three market activities unfold through chains of translations that link together three different market practices: exchange, normative and representational practices. Exchange practices directly contribute to the realisation of exchange (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). These practices stabilise the conditions of the goods, the participating agents, and the terms of exchange (price setting, distribution, advertising, etc.) so that the exchange can take place. The representational practices illustrate markets and their modes of functioning (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). These representations then also have a performative role in how markets work (Nilsson and Helgesson, 2015). Lastly, normative practices refer to establishing guidelines for how markets should work (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). This can include the creation of market reforms or different standards that should be followed. Further, it also includes companies' own strategies, such as financial plans or sustainability goals. These three practices describe "all activities that contribute to constitute markets" (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007: 141).

According to Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007: 142), the three market practices describe "efforts to shape markets as well as efforts to market in markets (to promote, advertise, sell, etc.)". In other words, this understanding of market practices directs the focus to what is being done on markets both to shape markets, and also to realise exchange around certain products. Thus, while this research orientation offers insights into the workings of markets, it also helps to understand how marketers work towards producing different forms of consumption.

Retail markets offer a rich empirical ground to study the market practices that produce consumption of different goods (Callon and Muniesa, 2005; Cochoy, 2007). According to Callon and Muniesa (2005), to study how products are made calculable, how calculating agents are created and then how their meeting is arranged, one can turn to retail settings, as retail markets are key arenas for making the offerings suitable for consumers.

I have in the included research papers that make up this compilation dissertation used different ‘practice theories’ concepts. Following Evans (2020), I combine the practice theoretical approach to everyday consumption with concepts drawn from Callonian economic sociology and the field of market studies. Together these concepts are my theoretical toolkit, where some conceptual lenses enable the theorisation (Dolbec et al., 2021) of how circular consumption is produced, while others are employed to add to our understanding of how circular consumption is performed in households. These concepts are not combined here as an overarching framework; rather, they have been chosen due to their differences. They are used to bring out different aspects (Dolbec et al., 2021) regarding how circular consumption is produced in retail settings and how it is performed in household settings.

In the following sections, I outline what concepts are used in each of the research papers. I describe how each of these conceptual lenses add to the understanding of how circular consumption is produced in retail settings or the everyday performance of circular consumption.

In the first attached research paper, I draw mainly on market studies, employing the concepts of qualification (Callon et al., 2002) and ethicalisation (Fuentes and Sörum, 2019) as a combined theoretical approach. Through this lens, I study how care offerings—launched by clothing retailers as part of

circularity strategies—are offered for sale and how this problematises consumption in everyday life. Qualification refers to the process of different professionals, such as product developers and marketers attaching qualities, i.e., ‘constellation of characteristics’, to their products and services in the preparation of exchange (Callon et al., 2002: 199). Thus, it describes the socio-material work of transferring products and services into tradable goods (e.g., Dubuisson-Quellier, 2010; Fuentes and Fuentes, 2017; Reijonen and Tryggestad, 2012). While ethicalisation describes the process of how different things on markets problematise and reposition certain mundane household practices, such as laundry and maintaining clothes, into questions of ethical actions (Fuentes and Sörum, 2019). With the help of this combined framework, I explore how the care offerings are prepared for exchange and how the specific ways of selling them problematise the use and consumption of garments in everyday life. This helps to understand how circular consumption is produced in retail settings by drawing out how the launch of care-focused circularity offerings questions and problematises how consumers use their garments in their everyday lives.

Preparing care products and services for exchange in an environment that is characterised by linear and fast consumption requires thorough qualification work in retail settings. The qualification process happens through multiple stages, from product development to also how products and services are presented in retail settings (Reimer and Pinch, 2020). These are sometimes differentiated as in-vitro qualifications, referring to the phase of product development and in-vivo qualifications, describing the qualities attached to products and services once they are launched (Reijonen and Tryggestad, 2012). In this paper, I focus on the in-vivo qualification of the care offerings, which Callon et al. (2002) describe as the temporarily stabilised qualities, that ensure that goods are ready to be exchanged.

Retail settings are rich in qualifications to make the offerings tradable goods and enable exchange agents to choose (Cochoy, 2004, 2007; Reimer and Pinch, 2020). Importantly, the qualities are not only attached to products and services but also present in the socio-material construction of the surrounding retail settings (Cochoy, 2007), inclusive of labels, signs, prices, and physical and digital marketing material. Fuentes and Fuentes (2017) illustrate how digital marketing material, product packaging, and the arrangement of the store together participate in creating multiple markets for alternative dairy products. Thus, when studying the in-vivo qualification of care offerings, it is important to study how and what qualities are attached to the goods themselves, as well

as how the surrounding market-things (Cochoy, 2007) and digital and physical marketing materials attach various qualities to the care offerings.

Analysing the attached qualities from an ethicalisation perspective helps to understand how the selling of the care offerings aims to problematise everyday chores. Ethicalisation as defined by Fuentes and Sörum (2019: 147) refers to “the process by which the ethical is actualized as choices and actions are framed as ethical”. Thus, the concept describes how everyday practices become questioned and articulated as spheres for ethical action by different marketing professionals, NGOs or policymakers (Barnett et al., 2005; Fuentes and Sörum, 2019). The combined qualification and ethicalisation framework hence helps to understand with what qualities the care offerings are offered for sale, and how these qualities problematise and reposition everyday chores as spheres for ethical actions.

Looking at the way these offerings are offered for sale and what aspects of everyday garment-related chores they problematise takes the understanding further of how circular consumption is produced in retail settings. By closely looking at the socio-material enactment of care-based circularity offerings in retail settings, we can understand what form of circular consumption is produced in retail settings and how it needs to be performed by consumers.

The second paper draws on the concept of scripting, which has its origins in Science and Technology Studies but has been used both in the sociology of consumption (Fuentes and Fuentes, 2022; Hansen and Wethal, 2023; Sahakian and Wilhite, 2014) and market studies (e.g., Andersson et al., 2008; Fuentes and Sörum, 2019). In this paper we (with Maria Fuentes as the first author) study consumer responsabilization as a form of scripting in the marketing of circular consumption. Consumer responsabilization refers to how consumers are individualised and assigned moral responsibility for different global challenges (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Soneryd and Uggla, 2015). By approaching consumer responsabilization as scripting, another aspect of producing circular consumption in retail settings can be investigated. That is what forms of responsibilities for the environmental sustainability of the clothing sector are allocated to consumers and how the abilities to answer to these responsibilities are produced, organised and controlled in retail stores. This helps to draw out different forms of consumer responsabilization, some enabling change and the performance of circular consumption, while other forms limit such possibilities.

Previous studies show how responsabilization unfolds within marketing campaigns or policy documents mostly through text and talk (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014). Scholars have also started to engage with how responsabilization unfolds on markets (e.g., Evans et al., 2017). These studies show that products and services are used as avenues for self-management and acting according to the responsabilised subject position (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Kipp and Hawkins, 2019), but also as a way for consumers to resist the assigned responsibilities (Cherrier and Türe, 2023; Eckhardt and Dobscha, 2019). However, despite this turn to markets and different 'disciplinary technologies' (Soneryd and Uggla, 2015) or 'capabilization' tools (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014), the materialities of the responsabilization process remains under-theorised. Further knowledge is needed regarding how different market materialities take part in the formation of responsibilities, as well as what forms of actions they enable or constrain.

To develop such an understanding, we employ the notion of scripting (Akrich and Latour 1992, Jelsma 2006). With this concept, we critically engage with how responsibilities for circular consumption both are materially and discursively formed and assigned to consumers, as well as how consumers are enabled or hindered to act upon these responsibilities. Thus, we analyse responsabilization as a process of scripting in the circularity products and services and their marketing in physical and digital stores. These circularity offerings include, for instance, care products and services, as well as re-sell and recycled product lines, and take-back systems.

Scripting allows for studying how different practices in (retail) markets are 'encouraged' or 'countered' through the 'force' (Jelsma, 2003: 106) of different market materialities, such as the ones involved with circular consumption. Market materialities, as we understand them, are 'artefacts' that carry scripts with prescriptive forces. A script refers to:

"[A] material structure that, by its specific layout, exerts force on the actions of its user. That is, the script of an artifact invites certain user behavior while counteracting other behavior." (Jelsma, 2006, p.223).

According to Jelsma (2003, 2006) artefacts carry scripts from the product designers (or retailers) which allow them to act at a distance. These scripts invite certain intended user actions while hindering others (Akrich and Latour, 1992). We look at the different circularity products and services, along with their marketing, as artefacts that carry scripts of action — enabling some forms of circular consumption, while hindering others. It is important to note that in

this process, scripts are not neutral, they have a moral dimension and form paths that are more preferred, against which actions or their breakdowns unfold (Akrich and Latour, 1992).

As we analyse responsabilization as scripting in the context of circularity products and services and their marketing, we draw on the notions of inscription and prescription (Akrich and Latour, 1992). We analyse how retail stores are inscribed with the idea of circular consumption and what responsibilities are formed as part of this. We also look at what actions are prescribed to consumers, for instance how the stores and circularity offerings enable sharing garments, extending garment lifetimes, reusing, upcycling or redistributing the clothing items. We analyse what action paths are made easier and what actions are hindered for the responsabilised consumers. Against this background, we understand responsabilization as a form of inscription and prescription, where the responsibility for vulnerabilities and protection of garments is both materially and discursively formed and assigned to consumers. Moreover, we look at how the abilities to act upon said responsibilities are enabled, placing consumers in control over the formed vulnerabilities and need for protection.

This analytical approach helps to further understand how circular consumption is produced in retail settings. It does so by making visible the way circularity products and services, and their marketing, in retail stores materially and discursively form and allocate responsibilities to consumers and shape circular consumption practices. Moreover, it shows how in this process consumers are enabled or constrained to act upon assigned responsibilities, which contributes to making some responsibilities and circular consumption possible to perform while limiting others.

The third research paper explores the performance of circular consumption in everyday lives of households. Theoretically, it draws on the theories of practice approach to consumption from the sociology of consumption (Warde, 2005), combined with the feminist scholarship on care (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993). In the paper, we (together with Christian Fuentes as second author) wanted to understand how care is involved in performing circular consumption. Previous studies argue that in circular consumption, consumers are asked to care for belongings as well as for distant and future others (Ackermann, 2018; Jaeger-Erben et al., 2021; Rabin and Jaeger-Erben, 2022). However, while care has been part of discussions in consumption studies in the

wider sense (e.g., Cox, 2010; Hall, 2011; Koskinen and Jauho, 2024; Shaw et al., 2017), it seldom receives specific focus or further conceptualisation within circular consumption literature.

Thus, we devised a care-in-practice framework which we employed to further the understanding of how caring for distant or close others, including both environmental and human care-receivers, is part of performing circular consumption in households' everyday lives. In this paper, we shed further light on how circular consumption is performed in households by drawing out how the enactment of care is linked to, enables but also hinders circular clothing practices. In other words, we analyse how care is present as people manage their garments and how this links to circular consumption.

In this endeavour, we start from Tronto's work on care and the definition of:

"[A] species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our 'world' so that we can live in it as well as possible" (Fisher and Tronto, 1990, p.40, italics original).

While this definition may be critiqued for its wide scope (Shaw et al., 2017), it also directs our attention to the different forms of caring that are involved in everyday consumption (Cox, 2010; Hall, 2011). Through this approach we understand care as the attentive interests, emotions, and concerns for others, but also as the active delivery and doing of this care (Tronto, 1993). Furthermore, based on this definition we also see care unfolding not only in physically present human to human interactions, but also in how people care for their possessions and through that for the environment, as well as how people may care for more distant social others, such as future generations or the next user of garments.

Combining this care approach with practice theory (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2001) we view care as both produced by and productive of practices. In other words, we understand care as realised in and through practices (see also Mol et al., 2010). Within a practice care can have different roles; it may be the main goal of the practice (Gherardi and Rodeschini, 2016), but it can also be in the background as a moral guidance (Gram-Hanssen, 2021). Thus, multiple household practices carry some form of care. Cooking a meal for others, cleaning homes, repairing clothes or doing laundry in environmentally conscious ways are enacted to the benefit of self or others (see for instance Hall, 2011).

We also use the care awareness, responsibility, and care resource concepts from care theory (Fisher and Tronto, 1990) to understand how care becomes

enacted. These aspects of care are relevant for our care-in-practice framework, as they allow us to see the different elements⁵ that are required for the successful enactment of care. We analyse how caring for clothes as a way of caring for the environment and caring for social others can successfully be performed. On the other hand, based on our care-in-practice framework we also conceptualise that care might not always be possible to enact. We first conceptualise and then empirically explore how care struggles emerge if resources, such as time, skills and equipment are lacking. Secondly, we also study the conflicts involved in care (Tronto, 1998: 17), that is how do care dilemmas emerge when there are multiple, sometimes conflicting needs that consumers need to attend to. With the notions of care struggles and dilemmas, we both show how failures to enact care emerge, and it also allows us to illustrate how these lead to failures in performing circular consumption.

This framework allows for understanding a specific aspect of how circular consumption is performed in household settings. It helps to outline how care is part of performing circular consumption. Moreover, with the paper's focus on both successful and failed enactments of care, a further understanding can be gained of how and why circular consumption fails in household settings. Hence, the findings of the paper outline the key role that successful and failed enactments of care play in the (im)possibilities of performing circular consumption in household settings.

The fourth and final paper draws on practice theory (Warde, 2005) and the sociology of valuation (Doganova et al., 2014; Helgesson and Muniesa, 2013). Together with Christian Fuentes, Emma Samsioe and Niklas Sörum, we shed further light on the work of consumers involved with valuations in circular clothing practices. In other words, we explore a less understood form of consumption work in the CE (e.g., Hobson et al., 2021), performed to counter the devaluation and deterioration of products, to keep them valuable for extended periods, and to ensure their circulation. In this section, I provide an overview of the notion of valuation, which provides the base, in combination with theories of practice, for our analysis of valuation work in circular practices.

Valuation includes the social processes through which the values of things are “established, assessed, negotiated, provoked, maintained, constructed and/or contested” (Doganova et al., 2014: 87). Taking this perspective means a shift away from seeing value as something that is ‘naturally’ part of the object or the person who is doing the valuation. Rather value, both in the monetary and non-monetary sense, is understood in this paper, aligned with theories of practice, as an outcome of social practices but also being productive of these practices. How a product is used, for how long, and whether it needs special maintenance or repair, are questions that are subjected to valuations. Similarly, when to dispose of a garment and through what channels, are issues that are dealt with through valuation processes.

Valuation involves both evaluations, the question of an object being deemed valuable or not, as well as valorising, the process of making things valuable (Vatin, 2013). These two acts of valuations, as Vatin (2013) argues, are two different processes, yet are performed simultaneously and are interconnected. For instance, when choosing what clothing items to wear one might evaluate a worn-out t-shirt unsuitable for the daytime, yet it can be re-valorised as suitable for pyjamas as the textile has become softer. When studying valuation work as part of circular clothing practices, we consider both the revalorising and evaluating aspects of the concept.

Valuations are also connected to the materialities of both markets and households. As Lehtokunnas and Pyyhtinen (2022) argue, valuation devices take part in shaping the valuation processes. In the context of clothing consumption, multiple tools, platforms, packages, signs and labels assist consumers in deeming what is valuable or to help make garments valuable.

Importantly, multiple ways of performing valuations and modes of valuation often co-exist (Helgesson and Muniesa, 2013). In other words, valuation can be performed according to different frameworks of what is considered good or bad. This is demonstrated by Heuts and Mol (2013) in their study of the valuation of tomatoes and the registers of valuing involved. The monetary aspect of the valuation is just one of the registers in the valuation, the quality or background of the tomatoes is also important in deeming what is a good tomato. In the case of clothing, one can also expect multiple registers of valuing at play that deem the garments ‘good’ to wear, to repair or to pass on; hence, we explore what forms of register take part in valuing clothing for circular paths.

While valuation has mostly been understood in relation to markets, in this paper we study the work of consumers involved with valuations as part of

circular clothing practices. Bringing valuation to the sphere of consumption involves some necessary conceptual clarifications that carry analytical relevance. Firstly, an aspect of the valuation concept that is specifically relevant to how circular consumption is performed is how goods go through different cycles of valuation. Goods continuously gain, lose and re-gain value (Greeson, 2020; Lehtokunnas and Pyyhtinen, 2022). One garment can move back and forth between being kept in storage, and then later on being re-valourised for use in another domain of life (Assima et al., 2023). Secondly, we understand valuations as running through different moments of consumption. Thus, compared with Evans (2019) we see valuation as not only an important aspect of how goods are appreciated or devaluated, but also how they are acquired, appropriated, divested from and disposed of. Lastly, and somewhat connectedly we view evaluation and valorisation as part of both linear and circular acquisition, use and disposal of products. However, in this paper, we focus on the efforts and work involved with performing valuations as part of circular clothing practices. We look at the valuation work performed for carrying out evaluations and valorisations that lead to circular practices, as well as the actions that are involved in ensuring the performance of these valuations, that is, developing competences, gaining and securing access to valuation devices, as well as the efforts of shifting registers of valuing.

With this investigation focused on valuation work, a further understanding can be gained regarding a specific form of work involved with performing circular consumption in household settings. Focusing on valuation work helps to outline how consumers tackle the material deterioration and devaluing of garments dictated by the linear consumption landscape, try to extend their valuable use time, and evaluate how garments can be best passed on if devalued to ensure their circulation. Moreover, this analytical approach helps to shed light on the (im)possibilities of performing circular consumption, from the perspective of how consumers can perform valuation work for circular practice enactments in a landscape that is set up for linear consumption.

Firstly, a relational approach to reality holds that realities are brought into being based on the different associations that are formed between elements (Law and Lien, 2013; Law and Singleton, 2014; Law and Urry, 2004). In this relational reality construction, interactions that make reality are not limited to humans. Associations that are formed and construct reality are between both humans and non-humans (Latour, 1984). Or as Law and Urry (2004: 395) argue: "(r)eality is a relational effect. It is produced and stabilized in interaction that is simultaneously material and social." Thus, how and what realities are enacted in specific situations depends on what social and material elements are forged together.

Secondly, Law and Urry (2004) argue that it is not only theories that have performative effects, as argued by Callon (1998b, 2007), but also the choice of research methods. Social scientific methods participate in enacting the worlds that they wish to describe (Law and Urry, 2004). Thus, the choice of methods, observation sites, and the asked questions partake in producing different enactments of reality. This poses difficulties for a researcher interested in studying how different forms of consumption are enacted. How can I study the producing and performing of circular consumption, while also producing what I wish to illustrate and conceptualise? These are method-related questions, which I kept reflecting on while designing my studies. To address the issue briefly, first and foremost, I explored how circular consumption is brought into being across multiple sites. This helped to collect different enactments of circular consumption with the help of different methods. Furthermore, I drew on Evans' (2020) argument that by taking a 'practice theories' approach one can take a close look at analysing what different practice enactments require i.e., what does it take for a reality to be enacted; but one also can 'look up' and see how and why these specific practice enactments are made possible.

In the following section, I describe how taking an ethnographic approach helped to capture how circular consumption is practically and socio-materially brought into being.

How does one study practices when they are constantly emerging, and relational and the choice of methods has performative consequences (Law,

2004)? While there is no agreed-upon methodological package for the study of practices, different versions of ethnography have been widely used (see, for example, Aslan, 2021; Cochoy, 2007; Fuentes, 2014, 2015; Law, 2004; Law and Lien, 2013; Spitzkat, 2022; Stigzelius, 2017). Ethnography, as Law (2004: 18) argues “lets us see the relative messiness of practice”. Thus, ethnography allows the researcher to observe and capture, through different data collection methods, how different practices are enacted. This has been demonstrated through ethnographies of laboratory work and medical practices (e.g., Law, 2004; Mol, 1999).

Ethnographic methods have also been used to study the socio-material making of market practices and consumption in everyday life (e.g., Cochoy, 2007; Fuentes, 2014, 2015). These studies allowed for an in-depth understanding of consumption in everyday life and on markets. In this dissertation, I followed this tradition and took an ethnographic approach to understand how circular consumption is practically and socio-materially brought into being. In this section, along with providing a brief overview of ethnography, I discuss three aspects of my ethnographic approach that somewhat diverge from traditional or mainstream ethnography: duration of engagement, role of materiality and lastly the presence of multiple sites.

Ethnography as a research method has been developed and used differently across disciplines. This has led to the absence of a single, universally accepted definition of ethnography, and different debates on what ethnography is (Hammersley, 2006). While there is no universally agreed-upon definition, there are well-developed descriptions and guides on how to do ethnography (e.g., Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Collecting material through ethnography, according to Hammersley and Atkinson (2007: 3), involves:

[T]he researcher participating, overtly or covertly, in people's daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, and/or asking questions through informal and formal interviews, collecting documents and artefacts – in fact, gathering whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the emerging focus of inquiry.

This explanation suggests that ethnography entails the researcher engaging in the settings where the phenomenon under study is being enacted. This entails observing and recording the actions and accounts of those who are being studied in their everyday contexts (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). This immersion involves collecting and documenting different forms of available material, e.g., documents, interactions and artefacts, through observing, listening and interviewing about what is really going on. These are a relatively

loose set of guidelines on what doing ethnography entails, and how one carries out ethnographic fieldwork can be adjusted to best capture the phenomenon under study (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). In my fieldwork, I have made three adjustments.

The first aspect of the ethnographic approach I took concerns the length of the fieldwork. The length of ethnographic immersion in the above description is explained as “for an extended period of time” (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 3). In traditional ethnographies this could mean years of engagement (Latour et al., 1986; Mol, 2002). However, ethnographies today are often conducted “part time” and through more focused engagements over the course of months, instead of years (Hammersley, 2006: 4). This is not a “quick and dirty” approach; rather, intense and focused ways of engagements leading to in-depth ways of knowing (Pink and Morgan, 2013: 351). To achieve rich material in a shorter period, field researchers can rely on various audio-visual tools and sources, as data collection today is not restricted to pen and paper (Hammersley, 2006; Pink and Morgan, 2013). Furthermore, when the fieldwork is theoretically informed, one can also conduct it more intensively (Pink and Morgan, 2013). While shorter term ethnographies, just like longer ethnographies, are not structured by theory, data collection, analysis and theoretical engagement become a more connected process (Pink and Morgan, 2013). Thus, through designing and conducting my ethnographic fieldwork, I engaged with the chosen theoretical concepts to direct my attention and gather material relevant to my inquiry.

Secondly, the ethnographic approach I took also differs from traditional ethnographies, when it comes to the role of materiality. From the earlier drawn-out ontological position, where connections between both humans and non-humans are considered in enactments of reality, it follows that I pay attention to the role of materiality in the formations of realities (Law and Urry, 2004). With ethnographic methods relations between humans, but also relations, interactions and connections between humans and non-humans, can be studied (Woodward, 2020). Woodward (2020) argues that ethnographic methods are well-suited for foregrounding the role of materiality. Ethnographic methods allow openness to what may emerge in specific settings; they can direct attention to human and non-human relations and do not mask away the messiness of this process (Law, 2004; Woodward, 2020). In consumption studies, this has been called heterogeneous ethnography, paying attention to how consumption is shaped through both human and non-human actors (Fuentes, 2015; Stigzelius, 2017).

Thirdly, while my dissertation is focused on a single phenomenon, I did ethnographic research on different sites. The central focus of this dissertation is how the circular consumption of clothing in Sweden is practically and socio-materially brought into being. However, in this endeavour, I set out to study both the ‘producing’ and ‘performing’ of circular consumption. Thus, I conducted fieldwork across different retail and household settings, which in ethnographic terms can be understood as the inclusion of different research sites. This is in line with the argument of Marcus (1995) that many research questions cannot be answered by looking at one specific research site.

Based on this, I decided to include two studies in this dissertation project, where the commonality that ties together the research sites (Woodward, 2020) is the focus on bringing circular consumption into being in the contexts of clothing and Sweden. In the following sections, I present the two studies that are part of this dissertation. I discuss the ethnographic methods that were used and describe the data collection and analysis process.

Study 1 focuses on how circular consumption is produced in Swedish clothing retail settings. The study centres on how different forms of circularity offerings are presented in stores, webstores and social media of retailers.

This study was conducted as part of a wider FORMAS-funded research project called Sustainable Clothing Futures in collaboration with IVL, Profu, Lund University and Borås University. I joined this research project when it started, in January 2022, as it was closely connected to my ongoing dissertation work. In our work package, with Christian Fuentes, Niklas Sörum and Emma Samsioe we designed an ethnographic field trial, where participants were asked to try one out of three platforms connected to clothing resale (Sellpy), rental (Rent Routine) and repair (Repamera). In the project, I participated in designing the study, planning the different interview guides and the recruitments, as well as the discussions on relevant literature and how to frame our papers. We conducted the field trials between March 2022 and February 2023, and all households were involved for a three to six months period. In summary, participation involved an entry interview, monitoring while using the chosen platform, and finally an exit interview. During the field trial, I was responsible for 13⁹ households, meaning that I conducted their entry interviews, on-boarded them, monitored their field trial, as well as conducted their exit interviews.

One of the limitations of the present dissertation concerns the sampling. The choice of three retailers in Study 1, and the sample of knowledgeable and

informed participating households, with the main respondents being mostly women in Study 2, pose some limitations to this dissertation. In Study 1, all the retailers mostly focus on the selling of new garments. Studying the producing of circular consumption in, for instance, a second-hand store could have provided further insights into how circular consumption is produced in retail settings. On the other hand, such sampling would not have allowed for closely studying the meeting of linear and circular modes of consumption. Study 2, as discussed earlier, is limited to the knowledge and experience of informed, interested and engaged households. While this is not uncommon in similar study designs, studying how less experienced households try to manoeuvre the challenges of circular consumption could provide further understanding of how circular consumption is performed, if at all.

Another limitation of this dissertation stems from choosing to focus on the context of clothing to study how circular consumption is practically and socio-materially brought into being. By exploring the circular consumption of other product categories, such as electronics, furniture, tools or equipment for free-time activities, the studies could have been extended to include a wider range of practices, as well as other retail formats. However, the clothing context is an empirically rich area for exploring how circular consumption is brought into being. It is one of the focus areas of the European circularity strategy (European Commission, 2022), and the need for the circularity of clothing is called for with the involvement of both retailers and households (Niinimäki et al., 2020). Thus, this provided a rich context to explore how circular consumption is brought into being in retail and household settings. Yet, how can these insights be transferred to other empirical contexts?

Transferability in qualitative research “refers to the degree to which readers can transfer the results of the study to other contexts and situations with which they are familiar” (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006: 29). Although the goal is not to establish general rules or theories, understanding how the findings relate to other empirical contexts is an important question (Fischer and Guzel, 2023; Spiggle, 1994). To address this question, it is important to reflect upon how the circularity of clothing relates to the circularity of other product categories. I approach clothing, as an example of consumer goods that have functions for performing everyday life and need to find circular pathways. Similar circularity challenges, with certain contextual specificities, are also present in the context of other everyday product categories, such as food, plastic or furniture (see, for example, Åberg and Greene, 2024; Lehner et al., 2020; Lehtokunnas et al., 2022; Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben, 2024). Just like clothing, these are also goods that carry specific functions for everyday life. Therefore,

the question of their circularity also needs to be understood as embedded in everyday life, shaped by both retail and household settings. The findings from the present dissertation can nuance our understanding of how the circular consumption of different everyday goods is produced in retail settings and performed in everyday life.

As the first contribution to sociological circular consumption research, this dissertation provides insights into how some of the challenges of performing circular consumption are produced in retail settings by the creation of additional consumption work that is not fully supported.

As I argued at the beginning of this dissertation, previous research has highlighted that challenges emerge when circular practices meet linear systems (Åberg and Greene, 2024; Wethal and Hoff, 2024). It has also been suggested that more support from the wider infrastructure, for instance, retail stores, is needed to enable circular consumption in everyday life (Åberg and Greene, 2024; Greene et al., 2024; Rabiou and Jaeger-Erben, 2024). However, the findings of this dissertation indicate how various problems for the performance

of circular consumption are produced by the offered circularity products and services. Drawing on the concepts of qualification (Callon et al., 2002), and scripting (Akrich and Latour, 1992; Jelsma, 2006), this dissertation illustrates the role of retail market materialities in shaping and complicating the work of consumers in the CE. Through this theoretical approach, the findings indicate that most studied circularity offerings in retail settings do not reduce the complexity of performing circular consumption by reducing or handling some of the consumption work.

Instead of reducing or simplifying the work of consumers in the CE (Hobson et al., 2021), circularity offerings often produce not only additional consumer work to be performed in households but also work that is difficult to carry out due to a lack of focus on enabling the created work. Firstly, the different circularity offerings suggest various chores to be performed with a demonstration of care and attending to assigned garment vulnerabilities and responsibilities. Instead of assisting consumers to perform circular consumption in stores, the circular chores are generally created as additional consumption work (Hobson et al., 2021) in households, such as repairing, upcycling or carrying out better forms of maintenance and cleaning. This extends the discussion of circular consumption work beyond the questions of how consumers manage the additional work (Hobson et al., 2021; Mesiranta et al., 2024; Sutcliffe, 2022) by pointing to how retailers take part in patterning circular consumption by creating some of the additional work for consumers in the CE. Secondly, this dissertation also shows that retail market materialities complicate the performance of this created consumption work. In other words, instead of providing the much-needed support (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson et al., 2021) the issue is not only that retail market materialities assign more work to consumers, but also that they limit the possibilities to carry out this work. As the findings of this dissertation illustrate, the studied retail settings only offer limited support for completing the assigned tasks. For instance, the findings on the divergence in responsabilization show that while consumers are assigned moral responsibilities, the 'response-abilities' are hidden in most stores, if made available at all. These findings demonstrate how retail settings and their materialities, complicate the work of consumers in the CE and the performance of circular consumption.

As a second contribution area, this dissertation extends the knowledge on the performance of circular consumption by firstly pointing at care and valuation

work as integral parts of performing circular consumption, and secondly by showing how both care and valuation work are challenged in the linear landscape.

Recent studies have illustrated through different living labs and other forms of circularity trials how consumers perform circular consumption in everyday life (Åberg and Greene, 2024; Lehtokunnas et al., 2022; Mesiranta et al., 2024; Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben, 2024; Sutcliffe, 2022; Wethal and Hoff, 2024). The household study of this dissertation further develops the understanding of the complexity of performing circular consumption in everyday life. It does so by combining a practice theoretical approach (Warde, 2005), with the theoretical lenses of care theory (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993) and valuation (Doganova et al., 2014; Heinich, 2020; Helgesson and Muniesa, 2013), to draw out further complexities of performing circular consumption in everyday life. Through such a theoretical approach, this dissertation outlines that circular practices are more complex than ensuring material circulations through 'hard skills', for instance, the know-how of repairing objects. The enactment of care in circular practices and the valuation work of shifting to alternative¹⁵ registers hinges on not only such skills but also on successfully juggling various care needs, responsibilities and values. Through such an approach, the present dissertation adds knowledge regarding the performance of circular consumption, by illustrating how care and valuation work are integral for successfully enacting circular practices.

Additionally, concerning the coordination of various circular practices in households (Greene et al., 2024; Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben, 2022), this dissertation highlights that with various circularity practices, multiple care needs, responsibilities and registers of valuing intersect and are often contested in households. This further complicates the coordination of different circular practices. For instance, valuation work may require different household members to agree on the next step of a garment, for example, if it should be repaired or if recycling suffice. If repair is chosen due to environmental values, new questions arise: Can another household member be asked for such help to save the garment, or would care for the other person's time lead to a decision to recycle instead? From this follows the need to support households in manoeuvring the different needs of care and registers of valuing in the coordination of different circular practices. Such support is essential to enable the adoption of more desirable 'higher R forms of circularity', such as

reducing, reusing or repairing instead of defaulting to recycling (Greene et al., 2024).

Furthermore, this dissertation adds that care and valuation work is not only complex within the households but is also complicated by the access to supporting materialities, for instance, in retail settings. The findings on the importance of care, responsibility-taking and values of circular consumption somewhat align with the arguments of Lehtokunnas et al. (2022), who explored the ethical work in waste handling practices of households. Furthermore, similar processes have also been explored by Mesiranta et al. (2024), who studied care as tinkering, affective practice and ethico-political action as part of clothing and food waste-related circular practices. The present dissertation adds to these studies by drawing out how such moral orientations are not only challenged but can also be failed by the linear landscape. While both Lehtokunnas et al. (2022) and Mesiranta et al. (2024) outline some issues with caring and ethical acts, care and ethics as the goals of practices are understood as the help through which circularity can be performed. This dissertation shows that under certain conditions, caring about others, taking moral responsibility and alternative registers of valuing are not 'strong' enough driving forces of circularity projects. Problems in care and valuations, for instance, due to a lack of care resources or valuation devices in linear landscapes, can hinder the performance of circular consumption.

Thus, the present dissertation contributes by showing that moral orientations of circular consumption need support, also from market materialities. Looking at how circular pathways break due to (im)possibilities of care and valuation work helped to outline under what conditions the performance of circular consumption fails. As consumers try to enact care or the valuation work needed for circular practices, it becomes visible how resources are missing for this extended and integral work. Consumers, despite going at times to great lengths to deliver various forms of care, and combat the devaluing of products, often defect to linear modes of consumption. Thus, the present dissertation adds a caution that different moral orientations of circular consumption do not necessarily involve a successful performance of circular consumption. Retail settings, as part of the wider landscape, need to provide support in delivering care and carrying out the valuation work needed for circular practices.

The above arguments illustrate the complexities and challenges of bringing circular consumption into being in a linear landscape. They also give some insights regarding what needs to be done to enable circular consumption.

As the final contribution of the present dissertation, I bring the above arguments more directly to the broader field of the sociology of consumption. In doing so, I attempt to provide some contribution on how the embeddedness of consumption in the broader linear system and economic arrangements shapes the possibilities to bring more socially and environmentally sustainable modes of consumption into being (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2022; Evans, 2022; Hansen, 2023; Wethal et al., 2024). Hence, in this section, I offer the argument that the possibilities of circular consumption remain limited in a linear landscape as retail market materialities only enable circular consumption as additions to continuous linear modes of consumption.

This dissertation points out how retail market materialities, while enabling some forms of circular consumption, are also arranged to support the co-existence of circular and linear modes of consumption. As this dissertation shows, circular consumption as loops of circularity added to linear modes of consumption (see also Sutcliffe, 2022; Wethal and Hoff, 2024), becomes produced in retail settings. Even if consumers are enabled to do circular practices, such as repair or gentle laundry in their households through additional consumption work, the purchase of new items is not excluded in retail settings. Consumers are rather enabled to buy new garments and then perform additional repairs or upcycling as circular loops. Through mostly placing the circular consumption work in households, instead of handling it in stores, retail settings are arranged to enable the co-existence of linear and circular modes of consumption. This limiting of circular consumption to additional loops is contested, in some ways, by the case of the alternative denim retailer. In their stores, consumers are materially and discursively enabled through various market materialities to sidestep the linear modes of consumption and instead repair what they already own or opt for buying a repaired item. However, the more mainstream (retail) market arrangements mostly enable consumers to develop and enact circular competences as add-ons, instead of questioning and devaluing the linear fast-paced consumer culture.

These insights further the understanding of the challenges of circular consumption by pointing at the role of retail markets in patterning circular consumption as added loops to linear modes of consumption. Such insights can

provide some additional answers to why consumers only integrate the easier, or more convenient forms of circular consumption as circular additions to linear consumption (Åberg and Greene, 2024; Sutcliffe, 2022; Wethal and Hoff, 2024). Furthermore, this dissertation shows that even if some circularity offerings are introduced in retail settings, consumers are not fully supported to leave behind the environmentally, and socially damaging modes of consumption. In its current form, these built-in (im)possibilities of circular consumption pose a problem for a wider-scale shift to circular economies. These insights add to the discussion on how the possibilities for more sustainable modes of consumption are shaped (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2022; Evans, 2022; Hansen, 2023; Wethal et al., 2024) by pointing out how, at least in the case of circular consumption, such changes are socio-materially and practically limited in retail settings and how these limits also impede the performance of circular consumption in everyday life.

The present dissertation departed from a case where clothing retailers attempt to manage the negative environmental impact of the clothing industry by asking consumers to perform circular consumption. However, as pointed out earlier, these efforts often lack the necessary material support and rather create more work for consumers. Consumers are being affected and troubled (see also Geiger et al., 2014) and asked to do the work by caring, taking responsibility and valuing objects. Whether this work is made easy– as in a few cases – or difficult – as in most explored cases – is made secondary.

Without the support from retail market materialities, the presence of care, responsibility and value protection on their own do not overcome the complexity of circular consumption and lead to the reduced dominance of linear modes of consumption. The possibilities of circular consumption in linear landscapes remain complex and limited. Instead of reducing the said complexity, mainstream retail settings are patterned with various (im)possibilities. Such (im)possibilities of circular consumption not only lead to failed or restricted consumer action but also maintain the dominance of linear modes of consumption.

To conclude and return to the issue of the underplayed complexity of circular consumption in everyday life (Welch et al., 2017) and connectedly the feasibility of shifting to circular economies (Corvellec et al., 2021; Hobson, 2021), the present dissertation adds further caution regarding the limits of the CE based on the explored circular consumption (im)possibilities. More specifically, it is argued that limits of the CE are maintained, unless more support is provided for circular consumption, even in mainstream retail

settings, to make the landscape more circular and help reduce the dominance of linear modes of consumption.

A central finding of this dissertation is that circular consumption is brought into being through retail market materialities as a co-existing mode of consumption so that linear consumption can continue. From this follows that we need further understanding of how the linear modes of consumption can be replaced by circularity. To achieve this, further understanding is required on how mainstream retailers can bring circular and linear modes of consumption on equal levels. Such knowledge is essential for moving towards the goal of creating circular economies.

It also follows from the findings of this dissertation that the work of consumers in the CE is shaped by retail markets. Studying further the making of consumption work through retail markets can be of interest to sociology of consumption scholars who are engaged with understanding consumption in relation to wider economic arrangements. Future research could continue with taking a 'practice theories' approach (Evans, 2020), and explore how the work of consumers is formed in other empirical contexts. Although consumption work is central to the CE (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson et al., 2021), and the concept has been developed through studies focused on household recycling (e.g., Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015a, 2015b), the concept is not limited to circular economies (Glucksmann, 2009, 2016). The role of retailers in this reorganisation of consumer labour can be explored in contexts other than the CE. For instance, how does the work of consumers become re-arranged as part of various social or environmental challenges, leading to, for instance, food scarcity or challenged access to other commodities and essential goods? Through such studies, further light can be shed on the possibilities to re-allocate work in the case of different challenging situations impacting societies.

Furthermore, while the present dissertation illustrates that there are similar moralities present in retail and household settings, the making of consumption moralities in the CE needs to be explored further. In this dissertation, I focused on retail settings and households and the different moralities of circular consumption that were present. However, taking inspiration from Wheeler's argument regarding the role of policy and collective customs in shaping

morality of consumption (Wheeler, 2019), future research could approach the question of what forms of morality are materially and practically made as part of EU-level or national CE policy, or in the work of not-for-profit organisations. This could provide further understanding of how the morality of the CE differ or align between how different organisations advocate for circularity, and whether the expectations from consumers are motivated on moral grounds.

Lastly, to explore how morality 'travel' and become negotiated between policy, community or household levels, comparisons can be made not only between countries (c.f., Wheeler, 2014) but also between different circularity initiatives. In my dissertation, I focused on (retail) market-based circularity and its associated morality. Future research could explore how morality are created and allocated in the case of alternative forms of circular solutions, such as repair cafés or sharing circles. Questions such as where is the responsibility placed, and who is asked to care, with what means, as well as who is proposed to receive this care in different circularity initiatives can be explored. Through such investigations, further understanding could be gained on who is framed as a key actors, as well as who are the beneficiaries of transitioning towards the CE.

For actors working to enable and promote the CE, this dissertation mainly highlights that the moralisation of consumption will not lead to widespread change. A supporting market infrastructure, involving mainstream retailers, is crucial in such a shift. The different circularity offerings need to be extended so that they not only offer circularity as the alternative but also as the seamlessly available default option in retail settings. Furthermore, these offerings should not simply generate further consumption work to be performed in households but also need to replace some of the consumers' work, for instance by handling re-sale and repair of used products in the store. The present dissertation shows that households are often aware of and interested in working towards the CE, even if it is challenging and the linear alternatives must be bypassed. However, consumers need further support to leave linear modes of consumption behind.

The EU circular textile strategy works closely with helping consumers to 'reset the trend' and 'make fast fashion out of fashion' (European Commission, 2022). Based on the present dissertation, such initiatives are a great starting point to help consumers shift registers of valuing, and appreciate alternative aspects of clothing such as durability, longevity or history. However, EU policy also needs to work towards helping to build an infrastructure for circular consumption, one that is at least equal to, if not replaces, linearity. For instance, the EU directive banning the handling of household textile waste as part of regular waste is a move in such direction, which should help to generate the infrastructure for clothing that is made of recycled material. However, as has been reported, producers who could use and re-make the collected textiles are currently missing from markets (Fjellman, 2025). Therefore, even if households go to great lengths to find the appropriate bins for their textile waste, there is currently no assurance that they will find re-made or recycled garments widely available on markets.

This is where the role of clothing retailers, especially the ones with expansive resources, comes into the picture. While the negotiations on the EU level are ongoing regarding extended producer responsibility (Palm Ekspong, 2024), traditional clothing retailers could start looking at the smaller-scale examples of how both circular and linear modes of consumption can be handled in stores and enabled with similar force. Taking inspiration from alternative retailers, larger stores could also start to communicate and provide support for consumers to value the items they already own more, so that they can start 'investing' into already owned garments, through upcycling, tailoring or repairing services. While it is challenging to provide recycled garments due to limitations in the circular supply chain (Fjellman, 2025), in-store circularity could focus on repairing and reselling consumers' garments, before they even reach the stage where recycling is needed. These forms of in-store circularity services have been shown to be attainable, at least in the case of the alternative denim retailer. Such in-store solutions could also reduce the additional work required of consumers and could serve as future income opportunities to replace gains from linear modes of consumption.

Do they address sustainability in store?

Do they address the role of consumption phase?

Do they mention not only disposal but one of the following? Mending, upcycling, repair, maintenance, laundry?

What form of information is given about these? Video, pictures, tutorials, on products, on services?

Where it the information placed?

Do they sell related products?

Do they offer related services?

Is the staff ready to engage on the topic of garment care?

Do they mention not only disposal but one of the following? Mending, upcycling, repair, maintenance laundry?