“The deep interdependence between practices and material arrangements is a central theme in Schatzki’s site ontology. According to Schatzki (2002), a social site is not merely a spatial backdrop for action, but a constitutive milieu where social life unfolds across three interrelated dimensions. First, the site refers to the basic location where something happens, whether spatial, temporal, or relational. Second, it represents the broader thematic or systemic context in which specific practices are embedded. Third, the site encompasses a deeper, constitutive context that gives practices their social meaning. In social sites, actions are seldom shaped by a single practice alone but emerge from the complex interaction of multiple overlapping practices.”

Reading Brīvbode through Schatzki’s site ontology and Hobson’s complementary notion of generative spaces (2016) brings these framings into productive alignment. Where Schatzki names the constitutive interplay of practices and material arrangements through which a site exists, Hobson identifies the political stakes of attending to such sites in the context of circular economy debates: mainstream CE discourse has, she argues, foregrounded industrial closed-loop systems and consumer “acceptance” of practices designed by others, while obscuring “spaces where disparate forms of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered” (Hobson 2016). Brīvbode is one such space. Its generative capacity rests precisely on the multiplicity I have been describing: it does not perform a single bounded practice of freecycling but holds in working relation a configuration of divestment, acquisition, repair, sewing, sufficiency, sociality and care. Its participants are, in Hobson’s terms, designer-consumer-user-repairer citizens, and the swapshop is the kind of site that makes such hybrid roles practicable.

“The deep interdependence between practices and material arrangements is a central theme in Schatzki’s site ontology. According to Schatzki (2002), a social site is not merely a spatial backdrop for action, but a constitutive milieu where social life unfolds across three interrelated dimensions. First, the site refers to the basic location where something happens, whether spatial, temporal, or relational. Second, it represents the broader thematic or systemic context in which specific practices are embedded. Third, the site encompasses a deeper, constitutive context that gives practices their social meaning. In social sites, actions are seldom shaped by a single practice alone but emerge from the complex interaction of multiple overlapping practices.”

“The deep interdependence between practices and material arrangements is a central theme in Schatzki’s site ontology. According to Schatzki (2002), a social site is not merely a spatial backdrop for action, but a constitutive milieu where social life unfolds across three interrelated dimensions. First, the site refers to the basic location where something happens, whether spatial, temporal, or relational. Second, it represents the broader thematic or systemic context in which specific practices are embedded. Third, the site encompasses a deeper, constitutive context that gives practices their social meaning. In social sites, actions are seldom shaped by a single practice alone but emerge from the complex interaction of multiple overlapping practices.”

Reading Brīvbode through Schatzki’s site ontology and Hobson’s complementary notion of generative spaces (2016) brings these framings into productive alignment. Where Schatzki names the constitutive interplay of practices and material arrangements through which a site exists, Hobson identifies the political stakes of attending to such sites in the context of circular economy debates: mainstream CE discourse has, she argues, foregrounded industrial closed-loop systems and consumer “acceptance” of practices designed by others, while obscuring “spaces where disparate forms of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered” (Hobson 2016). Brīvbode is one such space. Its generative capacity rests precisely on the multiplicity I have been describing: it does not perform a single bounded practice of freecycling but holds in working relation a configuration of divestment, acquisition, repair, sewing, sufficiency, sociality and care. Its participants are, in Hobson’s terms, designer-consumer-user-repairer citizens, and the swapshop is the kind of site that makes such hybrid roles practicable.

Schatzki’s site ontology

“The deep interdependence between practices and material arrangements is a central theme in Schatzki’s site ontology. According to Schatzki (2002), a social site is not merely a spatial backdrop for action, but a constitutive milieu where social life unfolds across three interrelated dimensions. First, the site refers to the basic location where something happens, whether spatial, temporal, or relational. Second, it represents the broader thematic or systemic context in which specific practices are embedded. Third, the site encompasses a deeper, constitutive context that gives practices their social meaning. In social sites, actions are seldom shaped by a single practice alone but emerge from the complex interaction of multiple overlapping practices.”

Ethnographic methods, with their emphasis on participants and “being there”, suit studies informed by practice theory particularly well. To study practices best one needs to be where they manifest, to focus on the observable material doings, noticing routines, tensions and everyday dynamics that surveys and interviews alone cannot capture. Theories of practice also strongly acknowledge the significance of the material objects and infrastructures in mediating, constituting and reproducing practices – which makes a site organized around the movement of material objects a fitting location for practice theoretical fieldwork.

Reading Brīvbode through Schatzki’s site ontology and Hobson’s complementary notion of generative spaces (2016) brings these framings into productive alignment. Where Schatzki names the constitutive interplay of practices and material arrangements through which a site exists, Hobson identifies the political stakes of attending to such sites in the context of circular economy debates: mainstream CE discourse has, she argues, foregrounded industrial closed-loop systems and consumer “acceptance” of practices designed by others, while obscuring “spaces where disparate forms of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered” (Hobson 2016). Brīvbode is one such space. Its generative capacity rests precisely on the multiplicity I have been describing: it does not perform a single bounded practice of freecycling but holds in working relation a configuration of divestment, acquisition, repair, sewing, sufficiency, sociality and care. Its participants are, in Hobson’s terms, designer-consumer-user-repairer citizens, and the swapshop is the kind of site that makes such hybrid roles practicable.

Advocates of the CE appear to consider the role of citizens as being the acceptance (or not) of practices that have been formulated on their behalf by designers, engineers, economists and policy-makers. One key aim of this paper has been to highlight how this presents an impoverished view of the properties and capacities that new assemblages of the CE are bringing forth, or could potentially create. That is, a seemingly narrow set of practices and spaces for citizen action (e.g. the High Street) are supplemented and/or challenged by the multifarious practices of the designer-consumer-user-repairer citizen. Indeed, as mentioned above, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggests that a new contract is emerging between business and the consumer. In their understanding, this relates to a direct and legally binding agreement between two or more parties. Yet this paper is essentially arguing that broader notions of a contract can be evoked here, where roles, competencies and responsibilities are redistributed and reconfigured throughout the lifetime of products and services, recalibrating the social relations and arrangements that currently favour the purchasing-ownership-disposal model of citizen-consumer practices. Such socially transformative enactments of the CE are thus implicit but under-explored within current debates, and this paper has aimed to highlight the potential for rich engagement, through both further conceptual and empirical exploration.

On the one hand, it would be relatively straightforward to argue that, in essence, CE is a framework that rebrands and repackages decades-long 'weak sustainability' agendas. Here a focus on continued economic growth has created and entrenched various forms of 'green accumulation' (see Goodman and Salleh 2013), which has done little to transform prevailing economic systems, norms, and practices. However, in the next section, I make the case that the CE is potentially something more than (green) 'business as usual'. Instead, myriad policies and interventions brought together under a CE framework contain incongruous and problematic assumptions and mechanisms that potentially signal new sites and spaces of green accumulation, which together potentially accelerate the very problems the CE looks to address. In particular – and in line with my long-standing research interests in consumption, everyday practices, and sustainability (e.g. see Hobson 2013) – I focus in the subsequent section on one particular suite of problems with current conceptualisations of the CE: the circular 'user-consumer'. I argue that the role CE proponents ascribe for us all in the project – of choosing better business models and engaging in 'win win' everyday practices (e.g. forms of the 'sharing economy') – underplays what is actually at stake for us all, if the CE is to be as transformative as it promises and indeed needs to be, given ensuing climate emergencies and escalating global resource use.

With a growing emphasis on the 'Circular Economy' in debates on consumption, sustainability and everyday life, systems of reuse are increasingly attracting attention (for example (EMF, 2019), (Greenpeace, 2020)) in transforming 'production-consumption systems towards enhanced material circularity' (Greene et al., 2024, p. 1). For example, the UK Plastics Pact emphasizes the need for a series of technical and design-based solutions in 'eliminating problematic plastics' and 'creating a circular economy for plastics' (WRAP, n.d.). At the same time, there is a strong emphasis on 'hard hitting campaigns' that encourage citizens to 'recycle more of the right things' (WRAP, n.d.) and a widespread sense that consumers must 'do their bit' by, for example, switching from single-use plastics to reusable packaging. 1 Within social science work, the role of 'consumer-users' and the labour involved in achieving a more sustainable circular economy has been identified as a critical, but often overlooked, component of citizen participation (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson, 2020; Hobson et al., 2021). Hobson's work suggests that any successful transition towards a circular economy requires a shift beyond prevailing individualistic perspectives on consumer behaviour that have dominated policy approaches against the backdrop of technocratic changes (cf. Shove, 2010). This paper contributes to these debates, focusing on the dynamics of existing household consumption practices to better understand how these might enable or inhibit the development of systems of reuse.

In a previous study with others (Mylan et al., 2016), I argue for recognition of the domestic as a site of CE; where practices that constitute domestic life, including food sharing, repurposing and recycling, already involve the circularity of materials. Similarly, Hobson (2016: 96) alludes to the importance of the household, and the materials which flow in and out, in expanding CE's realm. In addition, and as already noted, connections are being made between CE and SE. Lacy and Rutqvist (2015) describe the sharing platform, and the likes of Uber and Lyft Inc, as CE business models. Whilst not expressively stating the varying forms of economy at work, research by Niinimäki and Hassi (2011) likewise draws upon the links between PSS schemes involving fashion items, and more sustainable, circular modes of consumption. Thus, it is evident that the division between SE/CE is blurred and the two are often interwoven. Hobson (2016) also makes these connections to PSS and the interweaving of CE/SE, referencing models such as Zipcar. However, Hobson (2016) pushes at this further, referring to social enterprises and 'generative spaces' (p.98) of everyday activism, such as repair cafes, as spaces of the CE. Hobson's work bridges the lacunae between the sharing and circular economies, opening up the possibilities that diverse economic spaces offer to issues of circularity, sustainability and activism. As Hobson states (2016: 99), there is potential for 'rich engagement, through both further conceptual and empirical exploration'. This article empirically fleshes out what such spaces look like and how they engage in practices of circulating and sharing.

Hobson (2016) calls for research attention to ‘generative spaces’ where alternative configurations of the circular economy emerge — Repair Cafés, community-based reuse initiatives, and similar sites that mainstream CE policy tends to overlook. Hobson et al. (2021) extend the argument by calling for research that moves ‘beyond the domestic sphere and space of the household’ to examine the consumption work performed in such sites. Brīvbode is such a space: a semi-public site where the ordinarily private labour of divestment and acquisition becomes visible and socially acknowledged, and where volunteer labour — sorting, curating, maintaining quality standards, and managing social dynamics — sustains the infrastructure through which things continue to circulate.

circular economy, materialities, product service system, prosumer

Keywords Circular economy · Sociology of repair · Political economy; Scenario workshop

circular economy, material culture, object relations, repair, sharing, re-use, material flow

With a growing emphasis on the 'Circular Economy' in debates on consumption, sustainability and everyday life, systems of reuse are increasingly attracting attention (for example (EMF, 2019), (Greenpeace, 2020)) in transforming 'production-consumption systems towards enhanced material circularity' (Greene et al., 2024, p. 1). For example, the UK Plastics Pact emphasizes the need for a series of technical and design-based solutions in 'eliminating problematic plastics' and 'creating a circular economy for plastics' (WRAP, n.d.). At the same time, there is a strong emphasis on 'hard hitting campaigns' that encourage citizens to 'recycle more of the right things' (WRAP, n.d.) and a widespread sense that consumers must 'do their bit' by, for example, switching from single-use plastics to reusable packaging. 1 Within social science work, the role of 'consumer-users' and the labour involved in achieving a more sustainable circular economy has been identified as a critical, but often overlooked, component of citizen participation (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson, 2020; Hobson et al., 2021). Hobson's work suggests that any successful transition towards a circular economy requires a shift beyond prevailing individualistic perspectives on consumer behaviour that have dominated policy approaches against the backdrop of technocratic changes (cf. Shove, 2010). This paper contributes to these debates, focusing on the dynamics of existing household consumption practices to better understand how these might enable or inhibit the development of systems of reuse.