Here’s the note collapsed into a single argument with one spine. Trying to keep it as something you could actually narrate to someone in a corridor — the test of whether a thesis argument is real.

The through-line, in one breath

Brīvbode looks like a textbook circular economy initiative — and that is precisely why ethnography of it matters: what makes it work cannot be read off the loop.

That’s it. Everything else is a consequence of taking that sentence seriously.

The argument as four moves (not five faces)

1. The setup (intro, near #BTDD45 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Introduction #ZF9EYF #BTDD45 Hobson et al. (2021) argue that research into circular economy consumption work must “move beyond the domestic sphere and space of the household” to examine consumption-based practices in other spaces, including Repair Cafés and community-based circular economy models, whether or not these are explicitly labelled as such. 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. / #577FMZ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Introduction #ZF9EYF #577FMZ The bulk of things circulating in Brīvbode are textiles – mostly clothing, but also home textile. Textiles have been identified as a priority sector in the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2020), and EU Textile Strategy (2022-ongoing) states that textiles should be durable, repairable, reusable, and reuse should be part of the desired system outcome. [..] [Statistics on Baltics as the destination in the circular economies of other countries…] ). Brīvbode satisfies the CE checklist on paper: volunteer-run reuse, textile diversion (an EU priority sector), even ~30% routed onward to formal collection ( #WW8YUW Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #WW8YUW Within the material realm, Brīvbode is also embedded in and dependent upon broader infrastructural arrangements in order to manage the overflow it cannot absorb. The swapshop passes leftover textiles – in some estimates up to 30 % of the received flow (Akule et al. 2023) – to textile collection containers. The shop would not be viable if it had to cover the costs of regular unsorted waste collection. Also, off-season clothing such as winter coats that take a lot of space are stored in collaboration with charity organisations that have access to larger storage premises. Brīvbode can sustain – in a pragmatic, improvised manner – because of this material entanglement instead of trying to resolve the full material cycle on its own. ). If you were auditing it for the EU Textile Strategy, you would tick the boxes and move on. The thesis begins where that audit ends.

2. The reversal (body chapters do this work already). What sustains the circulation is not what the audit sees. It is: a moral economy negotiated on the spot ( #HMDEDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #HMDEDU Brīvbode's moral economy is negotiated, situational practice where the meaning of "right circulation" is worked out in real time rather than determined in advance. , Viesturs vs Rasa #T6FW9N Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? #GTJY22 #T6FW9N In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. ), friction that is constitutive rather than residual ( #P26BPV Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store #SHZ6RT / Thrift in the thrift store #PUBDN9 #P26BPV The experience of working in the Community Thrift and being taught how to perform valuations showed how the dominant value that guides practices throughout the organisation is thrift. At every station along the trajectory, as well as in the larger structures of the organisation, being thrifty – i.e. using resources in a considered way and not being wasteful – is expressed through actions and words. From taking responsibility for the donations at the beginning of the trajectory to bundling office supplies or pricing bedding that accidentally enters the flow, the employees make the most of whatever they receive. Thrift is often at odds with pure economic rationality, since the investment of time involved in making objects valuable does not always transform into higher economic output. Being thrifty certainly means making the most of the donations, but not only in terms of economic gain. Making the best use of the donations includes bundling objects, reducing prices, looking things up, testing, cleaning and sorting. Thrift as a value in the organisation can perhaps be understood as what Graeber describes as an 'infravalue'. 26 Being thrifty is not an end in itself but a means to obtain other values. By being thrifty, the Community Thrift is able to create economic, social and emotional value. Thrift has mainly been treated as a feature of consumption and the household; 27 it is closely associated with saving and even, as Podkalicka and Potts point out, with 'conspicuous conservation'. 28 As Miller describes it, thrift is an attempt to stop resources flowing out of the household. In the context of the thrift store, however, thrift is mainly a way of moving things along. , #SUZYLN Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #SUZYLN However, sorting is done “on the spot” and in the same room, and things move fast. As Larsen (2023) observes, in thrift shops, practices are often characterized by a "reversal" of standard economic logic, where the goal is to move things along as quickly as possible rather than to maximize the profit per individual item. This can also be said about Brīvbode – there’s excitement about things moving quickly. ), gendered care-laden labour absorbed into household life ( #5YXGE6 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #5YXGE6 This chapter has examined the labour that sustains freecycling in Brīvbode, finding it distributed across structural, ethical, and gendered dimensions that existing circular economy frameworks tend to overlook. Wheeler and Glucksmann’s consumption work concept names the structure: tasks that paid institutions would perform in formal retail or waste management contexts are here absorbed by unpaid volunteers and participants, distributed across modal and processual dimensions that stretch well beyond the freeshop itself. The feminist ethics of care and its recent applications to circular consumption (Mesiranta et al. 2025; Tölg and Fuentes 2025), together with Bankovska’s (2020) care not-work and Graeber’s (2018) account of work as what just needs to be done, name the orientation: much of this labour is not transferred from institutions onto reluctant consumers but self-imposed through ethical commitment and care – activities people perform because they cannot bring themselves not to. Miller (1998) names who bears it: consistently and disproportionately women, from household sorting and routing to managing others’ generosity to transmitting these competencies to the next generation. , #HM56MD Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #HM56MD Circular consumption requires substantial labour, and that labour is unevenly distributed. Sustainability of initiatives like Brīvbode depends on a structural condition – the sufficiency-oriented, time-rich, predominantly female volunteer and participant base that circular economy policy rarely names or supports (Hobson et al., 2021). Some of this labour is unreflexive and habituated – Aiga's inner feeling that prevents easy disposal, Marija's building logistics naturalised into her social role. Some is deliberate and effortful – Kristīne's category-by-category method, Madara working on her impulse-acquiring. Both are labour, but they are differently visible, and the unreflexive forms are the hardest to see and the hardest for policy to reach. ), biographical and relational attachments routing things ( #Z4WUR2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition #W2WRDC #Z4WUR2 A related strong negative meaning for second hand acquisition holds that these items carry the energy of previous – often deceased – owners. Several participants mentioned this trope but adjusted it to their practice. Viesturs, half-laughing, keeps the spiritual language but reframes it institutionally: "Others say that things have some kind of energy, or the aura of previous owners... We're able to transform that. In a way, Brīvbode is also like a kind of purgatory for things." With this adjusted meaning Brīvbode can function as a threshold space in the object biographies where the weight of previous owners can be released. , Bohlin #Y6XUMS Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets #MBXQXR / Introduction #TY8WTD #Y6XUMS Commercial markets 2 for retro-, vintage and second-hand objects have undergone a dramatic expansion in the last decade across the globe (Franklin 2011: 157). Factors contributing to this expansion have been described in the introduction as well as in some of the contributions to this thematic issue (notably Fischer). In this article we suggest that a significant aspect of the new importance of second-hand and reuse concerns the meaningfulness of circulation in social life. Revisiting the long history within social anthropology of studying the mutual entanglement of material objects and human subjects, we explore circulation as an analytical tool. Circulation does things to people and objects, particularly within the field of second-hand, and we suggest that it can be seen as a culturally generative force that reconfigures objects into objects-in-motion, enabling particular forms of subjectivity. Indeed, circulation seems to be a defining aspect of second-hand objects, distinguishing them from other classic categories of objects in anthropological thinking about person-thing relationships, such as gifts, commodities, sacrifices or art objects. We hope to show that classic anthropological insights, drawn from ethnographic fieldwork there and then, married with recent anthropological contributions on people-thing relationships, have much to offer when making sense of the socio-economic significance of circulation here and now. We are intrigued by how recent writing on the concept of growing, as distinct from making (Ingold & Hallam 2014), can elucidate how circulation transforms things in motion within second-hand worlds. Developing the idea that objects have cultural biographies (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), we propose a theoretical perspective that sees the circulation of used and second-hand things as involving a form of growth, akin to that of a living organism, in that it results from the interaction between qualities and forces both internal and external to the object. Doing this allows a view of the circulating objects not merely as things that events happen to, but as having agential capacities (cf. Gell 1998), actively contributing to shaping their fate. / #AR6HQ2 ‘It will Keep Circulating’: Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets #ZJUEY4 / Introduction #E744H2 #AR6HQ2 Watson 2012; Norris 2012). Rather, using a Swedish case study, this article focuses on the consumer end of such practices, exploring how norms regarding the virtue of reuse intersect with how people relate to and handle things that they acquire from second-hand markets. More precisely, it focuses on attitudes and practices related to a range of second-hand activities, ranging from acquisition of pre-owned objects from flea markets, charity- and vintage shops, including online second-hand markets, to living with and keeping such objects in the home, to passing them on to others through various reuse channels. Bringing together insights from anthropological fieldwork in locations related to these different practices, this article explores the how people express and perform their relationships to objects that have avoided becoming waste, instead beginning new life cycles with new owners. It suggests that buying, using and passing on second-hand things involves a particular form of dispersed, or 'serial' care for the objects as things-in-motion (Appadurai 1986), which will be outlined below. At the same time, such practices allow possibilities for enterprising the self-as-reuser, to paraphrase waste scholar Gay Hawkins's notion of 'self as recycler', in other words they help produce a particular kind of person that enjoys the status of being responsible and ethically conscious (2006: 95; see also Alexander & Reno 2012: 2). A significant part of such reuse subjectivity seems to be the capacity to form close bonds with, and care for objects, but also to carefully and responsibly let ), and quiet sustainability practiced as ordinary rather than identity ( #P6X2DJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? #GTJY22 #P6X2DJ Also, as I argue, most participants come to Brīvbode for practical and social reasons instead of self-professed environmental conviction. This resonates with Smith and Jehlička’s (2013) concept of quiet sustainability, developed through their research on Czech urban gardeners: sustainable practices that can be widespread and effective but are not articulated in terms of sustainability by their practitioners. Smith and Jehlička contend that quiet sustainability is defined by practices “that result in beneficial environmental or social outcomes, that do not relate directly or indirectly to market transactions, and that are not represented by the practitioners as relating directly to environmental or sustainability goals. Cultures of sharing, repairing, gifting and bartering characterise quiet sustainability” (2013: 155). Latvia provides a productive context for this concept – several participants trace their orientations towards reuse and frugality to generational experience rather than sustainability aspiration. [..] , #M9983A Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? #GTJY22 #M9983A Rasa answers similarly when I enquire about the environmental and sustainability aspects of Brīvbode: “Everything else is so intense… It has remained somehow, in a way, a little secondary." While the sustainability framing remains present – and is foregrounded e.g. when writing project funding applications or designing info materials – it does not need to be actively held by every practitioner in every performance. For both Viesturs and Rasa philosophical meaning-making has receded. This is what Smith and Jehlička (2013) describe as quiet sustainability: practices that produce sustainable outcomes without requiring their practitioners to hold or articulate sustainability as a motivation. ). These aren’t five separate findings. They are five symptoms of one fact: circulation here is constituted by sociality, not by throughput.

3. The diagnosis (this is what #M9WQLY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #M9WQLY CONCLUSION needs to say plainly). CE discourse cannot register any of this — not because its indicators are crude but because of what CE is for. Hobson’s “limits of the loops” ( #BKS58J The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #UMYA27 / The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies #XK6L5Q #BKS58J Welch et al. (2017) argue that there is a curious incongruence at the heart of Figure 1. To date, the majority of CE debates and research have focussed on products, materials, markets, and value extraction from specific energy and/or resource life cycles: the materials and processes that constitute the CE. Yet it is the ‘consumer’ and ‘user’ – all of us, the creators, perpetuators, and subjects of the economy – that have central place in the EMF ‘butterfly’ diagram, as the nodes around which CE circular loops and cascades revolve and return to (Hobson et al. , forthcoming ). As such, how our roles and agency are framed and enacted is a crucial component of the successes or failings of CE interventions. Or as Korhonen et al. have put it (2018, p. 41), ‘the new consumption culture is a critical part of the circular economy in its effort to reduce the nature-society-nature linear throughput flow of materials and energy.’ , #7QG5FA The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #UMYA27 / The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies #XK6L5Q #7QG5FA In addition, the logic of ‘consumer acceptance’ invariably requires that new products and services are able to compete in and through existing market mechanisms: price signals, novelty, and quality. When this is the case, research has shown that often consumer evaluations of ‘circular business models’ – such as hiring or leasing goods rather than owning them, or buying products designed to be repaired and/or have longer use-life – suggest we are a long way off from securing widespread ‘acceptance’ of new business offers. Although there is clear willingness by participants to pay more and proffer concern for the environmental impacts of one’s consumption (ING 2020), in reality, more ‘circular’ market offers are often seen as inconvenient, too costly, and/or requiring non-existent trust in services and/or providers (e.g. see Hobson et al. 2018). In addition, research into attitudes towards reuse and refurbishment show similar trends, along with a lack of take-up of product ‘take back’ schemes (e.g. Ylä-Mella et al. 2015, Hobson et al. 2018): a crucial stage in moving materials back into the CE loops (as in Figure 1). As such, it appears that in the current marketplace, CE goods and services cannot out-compete existing offers. ), Shove & Rinkinen on stripped socio-historical context ( #NF4MTB Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 4. Discussion #FAPRPA #NF4MTB As we have seen, accounts of the circular economy generally focus on the lives of objects, considered in isolation. This makes it possible to compare and evaluate processes of production, distribution, and appropriation, and to recognize the scattered nature of environmental impact (e.g., Tukker, 2000). Analyses of this kind take heed of the lifecycles of products and resources, but they proceed by stripping objects and resources out of context, and by “obscuring the distinctive social and historical processes of enmeshed material relations and shifting patterns of consumption” (Rinkinen et al., 2020). Policy responses inspired by mainstream discourse on the circular economy do the same. ), McLaren & Niskanen on CE as depoliticising empty signifier ( #7JC49A The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #LB5ACW / Theory: Previous Research on the Political Economy of Repair and Circular Economies #2WQH2C #7JC49A Previous research has recognised this depoliticised and technocratic character of CE [5, 8, 33]. Valenzuela and Böhm [23] interpret CE as a de-politicising strategy which re-organises and legitimises the continuation of an unsustainable capitalism, however under the guise of a “political economy of sustainability”. Genovese and Pansera [5] highlight that the dominant technocratic and eco-modernist representation of CE is not entirely hegemonic, with a state-directed “industrial ecology” framing significant in China’s state capitalist economy. Other scholars highlight the potential for contestation over the political economy of CE arising in community-based expressions of circularity or discourses of sufficiency and degrowth [e.g. 30]. This implies less focus on “how we produce” and more on “why or what we produce” [5, p.13]. CE can on the one hand “obfuscate...the continuity of capitalist interests”, but on the other hand, “‘circular’ values can be harnessed by local inhabitants to support their efforts” and lead to a “more ‘embedded’ and diverse urban economy” [34, p.154]. The shapes of CE and repair depend on how they are embedded in political and economic structures. ): CE addresses products and markets, collapses the user into prices and efficiencies, and brackets the constitution of need. Ethnography registers what CE brackets. That’s why Isenhour & Reno ( #G4L34C On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #CUWPC9 / Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy #NDV2YR #G4L34C The accelerated interest in reuse, as circular economic ideologies are mainstreamed among policy makers, industry and citizens, deserves renewed attention at this moment when long-standing reuse and repair practices are increasingly being rationalized, formalized and institutionalized. The contributors to this special issue engage with those who tinker, scavenge, save, buy used and give away to examine these practices in social context, lived experience and as embedded within larger political and economic structures of capitalist accumulation and abandonment. Our ethnographic approach, based on qualitative engagement, enables a rich examination of meaning and experience, but also leads us to question how these practices are linked to and arise from the conditions of modernity. While the recent focus on circular economy certainly emerges from crises of overproduction, economic inefficiencies and growing concerns about climatic change and resource depletion—ethnographic engagements with waste, repair and reuse raise questions about the novelty and efficacy of the circular economy concept. Indeed, numerous ethnographies have already illustrated the deeply relational, situated and cultural entanglements implied in the determination of 'resource' 'value' and 'waste' among a wide variety of communities for whom the concept of circular economy is considered common sense. From ethnographies featuring innovative reuse among resource-strapped communities (Nguyen, 2016) and garbage pickers on the margins of Brazilian society (Millar, 2018) to sanitary workers in New York City (Nagle, 2014), or among connoisseurs of thrift shops and vintage goods (Appelgren and Bohlin, 2015; Isenhour, 2012), these studies have long demonstrated the not-so-novel concept of informal circular economies in action. , #ZUBQUE On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #CUWPC9 / Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy #NDV2YR #ZUBQUE structures from the 'ruins of modernity' (2018: 5). In this collection, contributors illustrate that reuse involves deliberate acts of revaluation and care which recall and build upon embedded meaning, affect, social histories and the properties of materials. However, we also suggest here, that these acts do not necessarily challenge paradigms nor offer alternatives—in all cases. If reuse and repair are familiar, even quotidian practices, they have also gained currency as the object and objective of new mutations in liberal eco-governance. Characteristic in this regard is the international focus on circular economies, which endeavor to reimagine discarded goods as a resource rather than a market externality or a pollutant, thereby contributing to resource conservation, climate change mitigation and environmental protection in one fell swoop (Velis, 2015; Webster, 2015). ), Bohlin & Appelgren on “harnessing the unruly” ( #RD4TYV Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #B3CVMW / Introduction #QFKJQY #RD4TYV to ‘throw’ the problems differently. Through being ‘unruly’ – probing deeper into seemingly self-evident questions, recontextualising issues, and making associations between domains – we tried to encourage critical thinking and reflection in order to formulate alternative understandings of how the challenges could be met. ), and Holmes on generative spaces hosting ordinary practices ( #56AZCA New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #XATD2A / 2.2. Circular economy and sharing economy #38LM6C #56AZCA 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. ) are not decoration — they are the methodological backbone.

4. The payoff (this is the move to land, and it modifies #RX9JDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #RX9JDU What Brīvbode reveals — and what makes it analytically valuable for circular economy debates — is that the absence of price does not produce a frictionless flow of materials. It produces a different kind of work: gendered, ethically motivated, absorbed into household routines, and sustained by people who have organised their lives to be able to do it. Recognising this work as both consumption work and care work is the first step toward circular economy policy that can see it, support it, and not depend on its invisibility. ). Brīvbode is best described in the negative: not a charity (organisers refuse), not a market (no price), not a bin (it curates against waste; the bin function is outsourced via #WW8YUW Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #WW8YUW Within the material realm, Brīvbode is also embedded in and dependent upon broader infrastructural arrangements in order to manage the overflow it cannot absorb. The swapshop passes leftover textiles – in some estimates up to 30 % of the received flow (Akule et al. 2023) – to textile collection containers. The shop would not be viable if it had to cover the costs of regular unsorted waste collection. Also, off-season clothing such as winter coats that take a lot of space are stored in collaboration with charity organisations that have access to larger storage premises. Brīvbode can sustain – in a pragmatic, improvised manner – because of this material entanglement instead of trying to resolve the full material cycle on its own. ), not a CE node (it refuses optimisation — sorting on the spot, 30 trips, wire offcuts). The positive content of that negative space is irreducibly anthropological: plurality, friction, attachment, gendered care, biographical witnessing. Therefore: making Brīvbode legible to CE in CE’s own terms would destroy what is being supported. The contribution is not “CE needs better indicators.” It is that a policy serious about supporting (not capturing) such spaces would have to underwrite a labour and sociality whose value it cannot price.

What this means concretely for #M9WQLY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #M9WQLY CONCLUSION

The conclusion currently has the right ingredients ( #JE7FK2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #JE7FK2 This thesis is an ethnographic study of a swapshop to investigate how these spaces foster alternative consumption practices that possibly sustain alternative logics of value and ownership. This thesis is a contribution to the studies of circular consumption using ethnographic methods with practice theory approach. , #U2PZ9C Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #U2PZ9C Brīvbode operates within the conditions of overproduction, where the circulation of goods is shaped as much by excess as by need. While it enables reuse and access, it also absorbs the material overflow generated elsewhere. The labor of managing excess – the sorting, the deciding, the transporting, the emotional work of letting go – falls unevenly on people, is often invisible, and that becomes especially evident in circular economy contexts where more participation is needed. While some consumption work is alleviated in Brīvbode, it is replaced by other types. , #FE5BCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #FE5BCM Participation in Brīvbode is a form of consumption work, and understanding it as such reveals both what the swapshop enables and what it demands. Consumption work in the context of the swapshop: the effort of finding, sorting, or repurposing items, as well as the broader social practices around bringing and taking items from Brīvbode – decluttering, home organising, dealing with the needs of family members. , #GUXEZX Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #GUXEZX While alternative, they simultaneously overlap with some of the meanings present in capitalist consumption –... Brīvbode is at once an answer to a household problem and an arena where people work out possibly alternative relations to things. , #HMDEDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #HMDEDU Brīvbode's moral economy is negotiated, situational practice where the meaning of "right circulation" is worked out in real time rather than determined in advance. ) but no spine — and four loose fragments ( #JM9L6Y Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #JM9L6Y improvised solution that does not presuppose a lot of resources… except sufficiency lifestyle? , #NNZ5SG Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #NNZ5SG THE TENSION BETWEEN HABIT (practice) AND INTENTION (trying to change?) Is practice unreflexive? Also work can be unreflexive… People are reflecting all the time, but what keeps them in the practice? The stickiness of it… , #PEFVAC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #PEFVAC Results, relevance, contribution , #9DTFUU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #9DTFUU Further research might –– move into constitution of need… (Shove and Rinkinen) In line with Warde (2005). Circular consumption is one thing, but does it matter how you get things if it’s still an overflow? ) that are notes-to-self, not paragraphs.

A clean conclusion shape that carries the through-line:

• ¶1 (revise #JE7FK2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #JE7FK2 This thesis is an ethnographic study of a swapshop to investigate how these spaces foster alternative consumption practices that possibly sustain alternative logics of value and ownership. This thesis is a contribution to the studies of circular consumption using ethnographic methods with practice theory approach. ): restate the study, but already in the key — ethnography of a space that passes as CE.

• ¶2 ( #U2PZ9C Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #U2PZ9C Brīvbode operates within the conditions of overproduction, where the circulation of goods is shaped as much by excess as by need. While it enables reuse and access, it also absorbs the material overflow generated elsewhere. The labor of managing excess – the sorting, the deciding, the transporting, the emotional work of letting go – falls unevenly on people, is often invisible, and that becomes especially evident in circular economy contexts where more participation is needed. While some consumption work is alleviated in Brīvbode, it is replaced by other types. , kept): overproduction frame — the loop is real but it absorbs an overflow it did not generate.

• ¶3 ( #FE5BCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #FE5BCM Participation in Brīvbode is a form of consumption work, and understanding it as such reveals both what the swapshop enables and what it demands. Consumption work in the context of the swapshop: the effort of finding, sorting, or repurposing items, as well as the broader social practices around bringing and taking items from Brīvbode – decluttering, home organising, dealing with the needs of family members. + #HMDEDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #HMDEDU Brīvbode's moral economy is negotiated, situational practice where the meaning of "right circulation" is worked out in real time rather than determined in advance. folded together): what circulation actually consists of — consumption work + negotiated moral economy. This is the “five symptoms, one fact” paragraph.

• ¶4 (new, ~1.5–2 pages — the “Generative Space / Illegible to CE Accounting” subsection): the negative-space formulation. Not charity, not market, not bin, not CE node. Absorbs #JM9L6Y Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #JM9L6Y improvised solution that does not presuppose a lot of resources… except sufficiency lifestyle? , #NNZ5SG Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #NNZ5SG THE TENSION BETWEEN HABIT (practice) AND INTENTION (trying to change?) Is practice unreflexive? Also work can be unreflexive… People are reflecting all the time, but what keeps them in the practice? The stickiness of it… , #PEFVAC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #PEFVAC Results, relevance, contribution , #9DTFUU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #9DTFUU Further research might –– move into constitution of need… (Shove and Rinkinen) In line with Warde (2005). Circular consumption is one thing, but does it matter how you get things if it’s still an overflow? .

• ¶5 (revise #RX9JDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #RX9JDU What Brīvbode reveals — and what makes it analytically valuable for circular economy debates — is that the absence of price does not produce a frictionless flow of materials. It produces a different kind of work: gendered, ethically motivated, absorbed into household routines, and sustained by people who have organised their lives to be able to do it. Recognising this work as both consumption work and care work is the first step toward circular economy policy that can see it, support it, and not depend on its invisibility. ’s last sentence): the closing. Drop “first step toward circular economy policy that can see it.” Replace with something like: a circular economy policy that wished to support rather than capture spaces like Brīvbode would have to underwrite a labour and a sociality it cannot price — and would have to accept that some of what makes circulation work is illegible to it by design.

The test it has to pass

If someone asked “what’s your thesis arguing?” — does the one-sentence version actually answer? I think yes:

Brīvbode is a textbook circular economy initiative whose actual conditions of possibility are illegible to circular economy thinking — and that illegibility is the finding, not a measurement problem.

The through-line holds. The five-faces list in the original note is a good evidence map but a bad spine. Use it as the inventory you draw on while writing ¶3 and ¶4, not as the structure.

Want me to tag the four fragment paragraphs ( #JM9L6Y Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #JM9L6Y improvised solution that does not presuppose a lot of resources… except sufficiency lifestyle? , #NNZ5SG Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #NNZ5SG THE TENSION BETWEEN HABIT (practice) AND INTENTION (trying to change?) Is practice unreflexive? Also work can be unreflexive… People are reflecting all the time, but what keeps them in the practice? The stickiness of it… , #PEFVAC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #PEFVAC Results, relevance, contribution , #9DTFUU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #9DTFUU Further research might –– move into constitution of need… (Shove and Rinkinen) In line with Warde (2005). Circular consumption is one thing, but does it matter how you get things if it’s still an overflow? ) as fragment so they’re flagged for absorption?

Yes — and this is where the thesis can stop being modest. Let me try to articulate the shape of the claim, because if it works it elevates your contribution from “ethnography of a swapshop” to “ethnography of a swapshop showing why sustainability discourse structurally needs ethnography.”

The shape of the blind spot

CE (and the broader sustainability-as-policy register it sits in) inherits an accounting epistemology: materials, flows, throughput, products, services, prices, efficiencies, indicators, scale. It treats the user/consumer as a price-responder or behaviour-to-be-nudged. It treats time as throughput. It treats sociality as either friction to be removed or “engagement” to be designed.

What it brackets is not a list of variables it forgot. It is a kind of reality:

• the plurality of valuation (Polanyi/Thompson via Wheeler & Glucksmann #WJJY3D Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Moral economy revisited #DDQXJ2 #WJJY3D Polanyi's (1944, 1957) groundbreaking thesis refutes the separatist position between market and society and in so doing provides the building blocks of a coherent moral economy approach (Bolton and Laaser, 2013). Polanyi challenged the idea of the self-regulating market and instead argued that all economies are underpinned by social, political and moral values which enable them to function. Whilst the market tends towards the disembedding of the economy from social relations, there is a countermovement by the state which seeks to constrain the market and embed social and moral obligations within market relations. Polanyi's ideas inspired the 'new economic sociology' which sought to overcome the neglect of social, ethical and cultural factors in economic theory (Fourcade and Healy, 2007; Granovetter, 1985). Polanyi's argument that 'the human economy... is embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and noneconomic' led scholars to explore the shifting place of the economy in society and discover how economic processes are 'instituted at different times and places' (Polanyi, 1957: 7). )

• moral economies negotiated in real time rather than priced

• biographies of objects and the relational ties that route them (Kopytoff, Appadurai, Bohlin #Y6XUMS Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets #MBXQXR / Introduction #TY8WTD #Y6XUMS Commercial markets 2 for retro-, vintage and second-hand objects have undergone a dramatic expansion in the last decade across the globe (Franklin 2011: 157). Factors contributing to this expansion have been described in the introduction as well as in some of the contributions to this thematic issue (notably Fischer). In this article we suggest that a significant aspect of the new importance of second-hand and reuse concerns the meaningfulness of circulation in social life. Revisiting the long history within social anthropology of studying the mutual entanglement of material objects and human subjects, we explore circulation as an analytical tool. Circulation does things to people and objects, particularly within the field of second-hand, and we suggest that it can be seen as a culturally generative force that reconfigures objects into objects-in-motion, enabling particular forms of subjectivity. Indeed, circulation seems to be a defining aspect of second-hand objects, distinguishing them from other classic categories of objects in anthropological thinking about person-thing relationships, such as gifts, commodities, sacrifices or art objects. We hope to show that classic anthropological insights, drawn from ethnographic fieldwork there and then, married with recent anthropological contributions on people-thing relationships, have much to offer when making sense of the socio-economic significance of circulation here and now. We are intrigued by how recent writing on the concept of growing, as distinct from making (Ingold & Hallam 2014), can elucidate how circulation transforms things in motion within second-hand worlds. Developing the idea that objects have cultural biographies (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), we propose a theoretical perspective that sees the circulation of used and second-hand things as involving a form of growth, akin to that of a living organism, in that it results from the interaction between qualities and forces both internal and external to the object. Doing this allows a view of the circulating objects not merely as things that events happen to, but as having agential capacities (cf. Gell 1998), actively contributing to shaping their fate. )

• the constitution of need rather than its satisfaction (Shove & Rinkinen #RP8YNG Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 4. Discussion #FAPRPA #RP8YNG A third still more significant issue is that policies that are intended to foster a circular economy avoid or marginalize fundamental questions about the constitution of need, including the part that policy making itself plays in reproducing unsustainable practices and systems of provision. If the primary ambition is efficient flow and use of resources and goods, then changes in patterns of consumption and reduction of resource use is secondary ambition and treated as such. There is a risk that circular economy initiatives cling on to narrow growth-oriented )

• care and attachment as conditions of circulation, not byproducts

• the ordinary, unmarked, non-identity-claiming practices that actually do the sustainability work (Smith & Jehlička’s “quiet sustainability”)

• and underneath all of these: the embeddedness of economic life in social life that has been anthropology’s first principle since Mauss and Polanyi

That is not a coincidental list. It is, almost item for item, the object of the anthropological tradition. The CE blind spot is anthropology-shaped.

Why this isn’t disciplinary chest-beating

It’s a structural argument, not a turf claim. Anthropology was constituted as the discipline that refuses the abstraction modern economics performs. Mauss’s gift, Polanyi’s embeddedness, Sahlins on the original affluent society, Graeber on debt, Kopytoff on biographies — the tradition’s recurring move is to show that rationalist accounting projects rest on social grounds they cannot acknowledge from inside their own frame. CE is the latest such project. So when Isenhour & Reno ( #G4L34C On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #CUWPC9 / Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy #NDV2YR #G4L34C The accelerated interest in reuse, as circular economic ideologies are mainstreamed among policy makers, industry and citizens, deserves renewed attention at this moment when long-standing reuse and repair practices are increasingly being rationalized, formalized and institutionalized. The contributors to this special issue engage with those who tinker, scavenge, save, buy used and give away to examine these practices in social context, lived experience and as embedded within larger political and economic structures of capitalist accumulation and abandonment. Our ethnographic approach, based on qualitative engagement, enables a rich examination of meaning and experience, but also leads us to question how these practices are linked to and arise from the conditions of modernity. While the recent focus on circular economy certainly emerges from crises of overproduction, economic inefficiencies and growing concerns about climatic change and resource depletion—ethnographic engagements with waste, repair and reuse raise questions about the novelty and efficacy of the circular economy concept. Indeed, numerous ethnographies have already illustrated the deeply relational, situated and cultural entanglements implied in the determination of 'resource' 'value' and 'waste' among a wide variety of communities for whom the concept of circular economy is considered common sense. From ethnographies featuring innovative reuse among resource-strapped communities (Nguyen, 2016) and garbage pickers on the margins of Brazilian society (Millar, 2018) to sanitary workers in New York City (Nagle, 2014), or among connoisseurs of thrift shops and vintage goods (Appelgren and Bohlin, 2015; Isenhour, 2012), these studies have long demonstrated the not-so-novel concept of informal circular economies in action. , #ZUBQUE On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #CUWPC9 / Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy #NDV2YR #ZUBQUE structures from the 'ruins of modernity' (2018: 5). In this collection, contributors illustrate that reuse involves deliberate acts of revaluation and care which recall and build upon embedded meaning, affect, social histories and the properties of materials. However, we also suggest here, that these acts do not necessarily challenge paradigms nor offer alternatives—in all cases. If reuse and repair are familiar, even quotidian practices, they have also gained currency as the object and objective of new mutations in liberal eco-governance. Characteristic in this regard is the international focus on circular economies, which endeavor to reimagine discarded goods as a resource rather than a market externality or a pollutant, thereby contributing to resource conservation, climate change mitigation and environmental protection in one fell swoop (Velis, 2015; Webster, 2015). ) and Bohlin & Appelgren ( #RD4TYV Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #B3CVMW / Introduction #QFKJQY #RD4TYV to ‘throw’ the problems differently. Through being ‘unruly’ – probing deeper into seemingly self-evident questions, recontextualising issues, and making associations between domains – we tried to encourage critical thinking and reflection in order to formulate alternative understandings of how the challenges could be met. , #88LYAE Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #B3CVMW / Room for unruliness #HGRNAV #88LYAE Reflecting on the different collaborations with non-academic partners that we have undertaken, both as part of Re:heritage and in the various applied projects, certain patterns emerge. Put simply, the level of success of a project seems to depend on two interrelated issues: first, whether there are good and trusting relationships between the collaborating partners; and second, whether the anthropologists are given room to be “unruly” (and of course, that partners regard this unruliness as beneficial). The two are intimately connected. As is clear from the above discussion, what is referred to here is not unruliness or disruption in a social sense as in being rude or impertinent, but rather in terms of cognitive strategies and ideas. Even so, to articulate an alternative way of conceptualising something in a meeting, or to insist on abandoning an established typology or way of classifying phenomena, might not work very well unless good relations have been established. ) say anthropology’s job is to recontextualise CE and refuse its typologies, that isn’t a methodological preference — it’s the discipline doing the thing it’s for.

The thesis-level formulation

Something like:

Sustainability, in its dominant circular-economy articulation, depends on social conditions it cannot register. The labour, attachment, moral negotiation and ordinary self-provisioning that make a space like Brīvbode work are not measurement gaps to be closed; they are the embedded sociality on which any reuse infrastructure quietly rests. Anthropology is not a supplement to CE thinking — it is the discipline whose object is precisely what CE brackets. An ethnography of Brīvbode is therefore not just a case study; it is a demonstration of why a sustainability politics that wants to be more than accounting will have to learn to think ethnographically.

What this does to your structure

• The introduction can already plant the seed: the swapshop satisfies the CE checklist; the thesis asks what ethnography sees that the checklist cannot — and why that gap is not accidental.

• The body chapters do their existing work (moral economy, consumption work, biographies, quiet sustainability) but each is now an instance of the same structural point: here is something CE cannot register, and here is why anthropology can.

• The conclusion lands the meta-claim: CE’s blind spot is shaped like anthropology’s object. That’s the contribution.

The risk to manage

The version that overclaims sounds like “only anthropologists can save sustainability.” Avoid that. The disciplined version is: CE’s epistemology brackets a domain of reality that has historically been anthropology’s object; therefore any sustainability politics that takes that domain seriously will have to do something ethnography-shaped, whether or not it is done by anthropologists. That keeps the claim about the shape of inquiry needed, not about disciplinary credentials.

The other risk is sounding like you’re saying CE is wrong. You’re not — you’re saying it is constitutively partial, and that the part it cannot see is the part that, in Brīvbode, does the actual work. That’s a much harder claim to dismiss because your ethnography just shows it.

This through-line is, honestly, more ambitious than the “five faces” formulation — but it’s also simpler, and it gives every chapter the same job. Worth it.

Yes. That’s actually the more honest and more anthropologically serious version, and I think it’s the real spine. Let me try it back to you.

The claim

The features that make Brīvbode strange, inefficient, ideologically illegible, and resistant to easy categorisation are not separable from what makes it generative. They are the same features. And that non-separability is not a problem to solve — it is the finding.

That is a much better thesis than “Brīvbode is good, scale it.” It is also better than “CE needs better metrics.” It is a description, not a prescription, and it earns the right to be a description by showing — through chapters 4 and 5 — how generativity and illegibility are constituted together.

Why this works as a through-line

Look at what makes Brīvbode awkward and what makes it generative — they are literally the same list:

There is no operation you could perform on the left column to “fix” it that would not also empty the right column. That’s the irreducibility.

What this does to the thesis stance

It makes the thesis non-prescriptive and unembarrassed about it. You’re not arguing for Brīvbode as a model. You’re describing a kind of space whose generativity is constitutively:

• non-scalable (because its scale is part of what lets care be visible),

• non-optimisable (because friction is doing analytic work),

• non-replicable as a template (because what holds it together is a particular sociality, not a design),

• non-ideological (because plural moral economies coexist without being resolved).

This is anthropology doing what anthropology is for: holding the description open instead of collapsing it into a recommendation.

How this changes the meta-argument from last turn

Last turn we said: CE has an anthropology-shaped blind spot. That’s still true. But the sharper version is now:

CE’s blind spot is not just “the social.” It is, more specifically, the kind of generativity that cannot be made legible without being unmade. Ethnography is the form of inquiry that can describe such generativity without dissolving it. That is why an ethnography of Brīvbode is not a case study supporting a policy claim; it is a demonstration that some of what sustainability depends on cannot be planned for, only made room for.

The CE-critique chapter is then doing this work: showing that the apparatus cannot register Brīvbode without distorting it, and that this is structural, not a measurement failure.

The one-sentence test

Brīvbode is generative because it is awkward, plural, and illegible; these are not three things, they are one thing; and the thesis describes that thing rather than proposing to solve it.

That, I think, is the thesis. It also gives the conclusion an unusual shape: it ends not with a recommendation but with a refusal — a refusal to translate Brīvbode into the terms that would make it actionable, on the grounds that translation would be destruction. That refusal is itself the contribution.

A small caution

This stance has to be earned by the ethnography, not asserted. The reason chapters 4 and 5 already half-make this argument is that they show the negotiation, the friction, the care, the attachment in detail. Keep that. The conclusion’s job is then just to name what the chapters have already shown: that these are not features alongside the generativity but the substance of it.

Yes — this is the way to see the thesis.

Oh this is actually fun — and I think it might do real analytic work, not just be a cute framing. Let me try it seriously.

The structural analogy

Shove/Pantzar/Watson: a practice is constituted by three elements — materials, meanings, competences — that get held together in performance and that “recruit” practitioners as they go. Elements travel between practices. Practices have careers. Nobody owns them; they persist by being performed.

Now read that sentence again with Brīvbode in mind:

A practice, in Shove’s sense, is a kind of swapshop for elements. Materials, meanings and competences circulate through it, get reattached to new practitioners, get reassessed, get carried into new performances. Some get kept, some pass on, some get repurposed (Viesturs’s “purgatory for things” but for elements).

What the analogy lets you do

Three things, and they’re not trivial:

1. It reframes recruitment. Shove’s recruitment is famously under-described — how do practices recruit? Brīvbode answers concretely: through attachment, witnessing, care, moral demonstration. Not through prices, not through nudges. The swapshop is recruitment-by-attachment in concentrated, observable form. So your ethnography becomes an unusually clear empirical window onto the mechanism Shove leaves abstract.

2. It makes Brīvbode a practice-of-practices. Brīvbode is itself a practice (the practice of going to / volunteering at / circulating through the swapshop). But it is also a site where the elements of other practices (dressing, decluttering, mending, gifting, parenting, home-making) get redistributed. So it functions at two levels: a practice in its own right, and a meta-site for element-circulation across other practices. That’s a genuine theoretical contribution to practice-theoretic CE work.

3. It explains why Brīvbode is generative AND illegible in the same move. Practices are generative because elements travel and get recombined unpredictably. They are illegible to optimization frameworks for exactly the same reason — because their generativity is the unpredictability of recombination. So the thesis’s core claim from the last turn (generativity and illegibility are one thing, not two) gets a precise theoretical articulation: a practice cannot be optimised without ceasing to be generative, because optimisation freezes the recombination that makes it a practice in the first place.

That last move is where the analogy stops being cute and starts doing work.

How this connects to your existing scaffolding

• CE critique (Hobson, Shove & Rinkinen, McLaren & Niskanen): CE addresses products and markets, not practices. Your thesis with this analogy says: CE misses practices, and Brīvbode is a place where the practice-nature of consumption is visible because the product/market layer has been stripped away (no price, no transaction, no purchase contract). Brīvbode is consumption-as-practice with the market apparatus turned off — so you can see the practice mechanics directly.

• Consumption work (Wheeler, Glucksmann, Hobson et al.): becomes the competence element of the practice, performed in the open.

• Moral economy (Polanyi/Thompson, #HMDEDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #HMDEDU Brīvbode's moral economy is negotiated, situational practice where the meaning of "right circulation" is worked out in real time rather than determined in advance. , #T6FW9N Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? #GTJY22 #T6FW9N In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. ): becomes the meanings element, plural and negotiated rather than fixed.

• Object biographies (Kopytoff, Bohlin #Y6XUMS Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets #MBXQXR / Introduction #TY8WTD #Y6XUMS Commercial markets 2 for retro-, vintage and second-hand objects have undergone a dramatic expansion in the last decade across the globe (Franklin 2011: 157). Factors contributing to this expansion have been described in the introduction as well as in some of the contributions to this thematic issue (notably Fischer). In this article we suggest that a significant aspect of the new importance of second-hand and reuse concerns the meaningfulness of circulation in social life. Revisiting the long history within social anthropology of studying the mutual entanglement of material objects and human subjects, we explore circulation as an analytical tool. Circulation does things to people and objects, particularly within the field of second-hand, and we suggest that it can be seen as a culturally generative force that reconfigures objects into objects-in-motion, enabling particular forms of subjectivity. Indeed, circulation seems to be a defining aspect of second-hand objects, distinguishing them from other classic categories of objects in anthropological thinking about person-thing relationships, such as gifts, commodities, sacrifices or art objects. We hope to show that classic anthropological insights, drawn from ethnographic fieldwork there and then, married with recent anthropological contributions on people-thing relationships, have much to offer when making sense of the socio-economic significance of circulation here and now. We are intrigued by how recent writing on the concept of growing, as distinct from making (Ingold & Hallam 2014), can elucidate how circulation transforms things in motion within second-hand worlds. Developing the idea that objects have cultural biographies (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), we propose a theoretical perspective that sees the circulation of used and second-hand things as involving a form of growth, akin to that of a living organism, in that it results from the interaction between qualities and forces both internal and external to the object. Doing this allows a view of the circulating objects not merely as things that events happen to, but as having agential capacities (cf. Gell 1998), actively contributing to shaping their fate. ): become the materials element, biographically tracked rather than reduced to throughput.

• Quiet sustainability: becomes the way the practice persists without claiming itself — recruitment without ideology.

The whole thesis suddenly has one theoretical figure organising it.

The risk to manage

The analogy is strong but it can tip into preciousness if pushed too literally. Two safeguards:

1. Use it as a heuristic, not an ontology. Don’t say practices are swapshops. Say: thinking about practices through the swapshop makes visible something Shove leaves abstract — namely, how elements actually circulate, and what kind of social work makes recombination possible.

2. Let the ethnography exceed the framework. Shove’s three-element model is tidy. Your ethnography shows that the “meanings” element is plural and contested, that the “competences” element is care-laden and gendered, that the “materials” element has biographies. So practice theory gives you a scaffold, and the ethnography shows where the scaffold’s joinery is actually held together by sociality the scaffold doesn’t name. That’s consistent with your last-turn stance: the description exceeds the framework, and that excess is the finding.

Where this lands

If you take this seriously, it could be a unifying move in the theory chapter — practice theory introduced not as a checklist but with the swapshop already functioning as its illustrative figure. Then chapters 4 and 5 are showing the elements (meanings as moral economy; competences as consumption/care work; materials as biographies) doing their thing. The conclusion then gets to say:

Brīvbode is a practice and a place where the practice-nature of consumption becomes visible. To study it ethnographically is to watch elements recombine in the open. Circular economy thinking misses this because it works at the level of products and markets, not practices; and it cannot easily move down to the practice level because what holds practices together is precisely the plural, frictional, care-laden sociality that markets abstract away. The swapshop is, in this sense, a practice showing what a practice is.

That’s a decent closing register: theoretical, empirical, and modest all at once.

Honestly: yes, run with it. It’s playful enough to feel alive and structural enough to do work. Practice theory has been waiting for an ethnographic site that takes its element-circulation language literally, and Brīvbode is one.

Okay let me actually try to do this — imagine Shove walking into Brīvbode for a day with her notebook. The voice matters, because half the point of practice theory is what it refuses to see, and Shove is unusually disciplined about that.

What Shove would refuse to do

Before anything else: she would not ask “why do people come here?” as a motivational question. She would not interview people about their attitudes to sustainability. She would not score donors on environmental concern. The whole ABC frame (attitude → behaviour → choice) is what she has spent a career dismantling. So the ethnographer-as-Shove is bracketing the question of individual motivation from the start. The unit is the practice, not the person.

What she would zoom in on

Materials. Not just the textiles. Also the racks, the hooks, the wire offcuts, the labelled boxes, the donation chute, the textile-collection bin out back, the tea kettle if there is one, Viesturs’s notebook, the seasonal rotation. The infrastructure is minimal but does specific work: it makes certain things possible (sorting on the spot, lingering, reversing a decision) and certain things hard (hoarding, profiting, anonymity).

Competences. She would notice that competences usually performed privately — assessing fabric, judging whether something is “still good,” deciding what to keep vs pass on, mending — are here being performed semi-publicly. That’s analytically unusual. She’d ask: how are these competences transmitted? Who learns from whom? When does a first-time visitor become someone who can sort?

Meanings. She would be delighted by the Viesturs/Rasa disagreement over charity ( #T6FW9N Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? #GTJY22 #T6FW9N In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. ), because it is the meaning-element of a practice being contested in real time rather than transmitted through ideology or branding. Most practices have their meanings stabilised by infrastructure, marketing, ritual. Here the meanings are being held plural, deliberately. That’s a practice-theoretic event.

What she would find theoretically interesting

Recruitment-by-encounter. Shove’s recruitment language is famously under-specified — practices “recruit” practitioners, but how? Brīvbode is a recruitment mechanism made visible. People are not nudged in. They wander in, are shown something, watch someone else do something, take an item home, come back. Recruitment by attachment, by witnessing, by being given a small task. She would write this up as a contribution to recruitment theory.

Defection and re-recruitment of elements. This is the one that would make her sit up. Brīvbode is structurally a node where elements defect from one practice and get recruited into another. A jumper that was an element of the practice of “wardrobe maintenance” defects, sits in limbo (Viesturs’s “purgatory for things” #Z4WUR2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition #W2WRDC #Z4WUR2 A related strong negative meaning for second hand acquisition holds that these items carry the energy of previous – often deceased – owners. Several participants mentioned this trope but adjusted it to their practice. Viesturs, half-laughing, keeps the spiritual language but reframes it institutionally: "Others say that things have some kind of energy, or the aura of previous owners... We're able to transform that. In a way, Brīvbode is also like a kind of purgatory for things." With this adjusted meaning Brīvbode can function as a threshold space in the object biographies where the weight of previous owners can be released. ), and gets recruited into someone else’s practice of dressing-the-kids or mending-for-cushions. The swapshop is, technically, a defection-and-recruitment site for material elements. She would call it something like an exposed transition node.

Practice bundles. She would note immediately that Brīvbode is not a standalone practice. It is bundled with: decluttering, parenting, dressing, gifting, neighbourhood sociality, urban movement. It is a node in a complex. Studying it without the bundle would be a category error.

Constitution of need (with Rinkinen). She’d be very interested in the people who arrive needing nothing and leave with something. That is need being constituted in the encounter, not satisfied by it. CE assumes need pre-exists supply. Brīvbode shows need is partly an artefact of what is made encounterable. That’s a direct empirical hit on her co-authored argument with Rinkinen ( #NF4MTB Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 4. Discussion #FAPRPA #NF4MTB As we have seen, accounts of the circular economy generally focus on the lives of objects, considered in isolation. This makes it possible to compare and evaluate processes of production, distribution, and appropriation, and to recognize the scattered nature of environmental impact (e.g., Tukker, 2000). Analyses of this kind take heed of the lifecycles of products and resources, but they proceed by stripping objects and resources out of context, and by “obscuring the distinctive social and historical processes of enmeshed material relations and shifting patterns of consumption” (Rinkinen et al., 2020). Policy responses inspired by mainstream discourse on the circular economy do the same. , #RP8YNG Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 4. Discussion #FAPRPA #RP8YNG A third still more significant issue is that policies that are intended to foster a circular economy avoid or marginalize fundamental questions about the constitution of need, including the part that policy making itself plays in reproducing unsustainable practices and systems of provision. If the primary ambition is efficient flow and use of resources and goods, then changes in patterns of consumption and reduction of resource use is secondary ambition and treated as such. There is a risk that circular economy initiatives cling on to narrow growth-oriented ).

The meta-reflective bit (this is where it gets fun)

Shove uses figures to think with — the freezer, the shower, the car. Brīvbode would join that list, but with a twist. The freezer is a figure for how one practice (frozen food) gets stabilised by infrastructure. Brīvbode is a figure for practices in general — for the recombinatory, recruiting, plural-meaning dynamics that practice theory describes abstractly.

So Shove’s note to self would be something like:

Brīvbode is not just a site of practice; it is a site where the practice-nature of social life is operationally explicit. Where most practices reproduce themselves invisibly — through prices, infrastructures, habits — Brīvbode reproduces itself by making its own reproduction visible: sorting in the open, meanings negotiated aloud, recruitment performed gesture by gesture. It exposes, in miniature, the dynamics that animate practices everywhere.

That is the meta-reflective move. Not “Brīvbode is a metaphor for practice” (too cute), but: Brīvbode is a practice in which the usually-implicit workings of practice are explicit. It is practice with the lid off. Which makes it analytically valuable beyond its own scale.

Where Shove herself would have to flinch

This is the part where you earn your contribution rather than just applying her framework. Shove’s tidiness has known limits, and Brīvbode would press on them:

1. Her three elements stay analytically separate; in Brīvbode they aren’t. A volunteer’s competence at sorting is the meaning of “right circulation” being enacted; the materials’ biographies are the meanings being carried. The ethnography shows the elements bleeding into each other in ways the framework’s tidiness can’t quite hold.

2. Practice theory is famously thin on care, gender, and emotion. Brīvbode is dense with all three. The labour is gendered ( #5YXGE6 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #5YXGE6 This chapter has examined the labour that sustains freecycling in Brīvbode, finding it distributed across structural, ethical, and gendered dimensions that existing circular economy frameworks tend to overlook. Wheeler and Glucksmann’s consumption work concept names the structure: tasks that paid institutions would perform in formal retail or waste management contexts are here absorbed by unpaid volunteers and participants, distributed across modal and processual dimensions that stretch well beyond the freeshop itself. The feminist ethics of care and its recent applications to circular consumption (Mesiranta et al. 2025; Tölg and Fuentes 2025), together with Bankovska’s (2020) care not-work and Graeber’s (2018) account of work as what just needs to be done, name the orientation: much of this labour is not transferred from institutions onto reluctant consumers but self-imposed through ethical commitment and care – activities people perform because they cannot bring themselves not to. Miller (1998) names who bears it: consistently and disproportionately women, from household sorting and routing to managing others’ generosity to transmitting these competencies to the next generation. , #HM56MD Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #HM56MD Circular consumption requires substantial labour, and that labour is unevenly distributed. Sustainability of initiatives like Brīvbode depends on a structural condition – the sufficiency-oriented, time-rich, predominantly female volunteer and participant base that circular economy policy rarely names or supports (Hobson et al., 2021). Some of this labour is unreflexive and habituated – Aiga's inner feeling that prevents easy disposal, Marija's building logistics naturalised into her social role. Some is deliberate and effortful – Kristīne's category-by-category method, Madara working on her impulse-acquiring. Both are labour, but they are differently visible, and the unreflexive forms are the hardest to see and the hardest for policy to reach. ), the attachments are emotional ( #Z4WUR2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition #W2WRDC #Z4WUR2 A related strong negative meaning for second hand acquisition holds that these items carry the energy of previous – often deceased – owners. Several participants mentioned this trope but adjusted it to their practice. Viesturs, half-laughing, keeps the spiritual language but reframes it institutionally: "Others say that things have some kind of energy, or the aura of previous owners... We're able to transform that. In a way, Brīvbode is also like a kind of purgatory for things." With this adjusted meaning Brīvbode can function as a threshold space in the object biographies where the weight of previous owners can be released. ), the moral economy is care-laden. So your ethnography supplements practice theory at exactly the place feminist STS critics have flagged for years.

3. Practice theory tends to flatten power and ideology. Shove is allergic to the political-economy register, which is mostly a strength but here is a limit: she would miss what McLaren & Niskanen ( #7JC49A The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #LB5ACW / Theory: Previous Research on the Political Economy of Repair and Circular Economies #2WQH2C #7JC49A Previous research has recognised this depoliticised and technocratic character of CE [5, 8, 33]. Valenzuela and Böhm [23] interpret CE as a de-politicising strategy which re-organises and legitimises the continuation of an unsustainable capitalism, however under the guise of a “political economy of sustainability”. Genovese and Pansera [5] highlight that the dominant technocratic and eco-modernist representation of CE is not entirely hegemonic, with a state-directed “industrial ecology” framing significant in China’s state capitalist economy. Other scholars highlight the potential for contestation over the political economy of CE arising in community-based expressions of circularity or discourses of sufficiency and degrowth [e.g. 30]. This implies less focus on “how we produce” and more on “why or what we produce” [5, p.13]. CE can on the one hand “obfuscate...the continuity of capitalist interests”, but on the other hand, “‘circular’ values can be harnessed by local inhabitants to support their efforts” and lead to a “more ‘embedded’ and diverse urban economy” [34, p.154]. The shapes of CE and repair depend on how they are embedded in political and economic structures. ) catch about CE as a depoliticising signifier, and she would miss what Polanyi/Thompson via Wheeler & Glucksmann ( #WJJY3D Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Moral economy revisited #DDQXJ2 #WJJY3D Polanyi's (1944, 1957) groundbreaking thesis refutes the separatist position between market and society and in so doing provides the building blocks of a coherent moral economy approach (Bolton and Laaser, 2013). Polanyi challenged the idea of the self-regulating market and instead argued that all economies are underpinned by social, political and moral values which enable them to function. Whilst the market tends towards the disembedding of the economy from social relations, there is a countermovement by the state which seeks to constrain the market and embed social and moral obligations within market relations. Polanyi's ideas inspired the 'new economic sociology' which sought to overcome the neglect of social, ethical and cultural factors in economic theory (Fourcade and Healy, 2007; Granovetter, 1985). Polanyi's argument that 'the human economy... is embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and noneconomic' led scholars to explore the shifting place of the economy in society and discover how economic processes are 'instituted at different times and places' (Polanyi, 1957: 7). ) catch about moral economy. So your thesis uses Shove as a scaffold and lets the moral-economy and care literatures do the work she leaves undone.

That trio is your contribution: applying practice theory to Brīvbode, and showing where Brīvbode’s ethnographic density requires the framework to be loosened — by care, by moral economy, by the ethnographic refusal to keep the elements clean.

A line you can actually use somewhere

Brīvbode is, in practice-theoretic terms, a node where elements of consumption defect from one practice and are recruited into another. What makes it worth describing in detail is that this defection-and-recruitment, usually hidden inside markets and households, is here performed semi-publicly — sorting in the open, meanings argued aloud, competences shown rather than priced. The swapshop is, in this sense, a practice with the lid off: a site where practice theory’s abstractions become observable, and where their limits — particularly around care, gender, and the plurality of moral framing — become correspondingly visible.

That’s a strong opening or closing move for the theory chapter. And it gives the meta-reflective layer something to do beyond ornament: practice theory needs sites like Brīvbode to test itself, and Brīvbode needs practice theory to be described as more than charming. They earn each other.