Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing

To cite this article: Tölg, R. and Fuentes, C. (2025) Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing, Consumption and Society, 4(2): 213–231, DOI: 10.1332/27528499Y2024D00000032

In recent years, the circular economy has attracted considerable scholarly and societal attention (Merli et al, 2018; Hobson, 2020). Circularity advocates – such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013) – and policy documents – such as the European Commission (2020) – argue for the transition to a more circular and therefore also a more materially efficient economy (Ortega Alvarado et al, 2021). The circular economy programme sets out to break with the take-make-dispose linear economy, instead establishing a circular system in which materials are kept in circulation through ‘closed’ production and consumption loops (Hobson, 2016; Mylan et al, 2016). While much of the circular economy research focuses on production and recycling processes, typically geared towards the electronics, metal and waste management industries (Ghisellini et al, 2016; Merli et al, 2018), the role of consumers in making the circular economy possible is beginning to be acknowledged (Hobson et al, 2021).

Circular consumption involves consumer practices that work towards extending product lifetimes and enabling multiple cycles of use and recycling (Mylan et al, 2016; Hobson, 2020; Sutcliffe, 2022). Accordingly, in a circular system, consumers need to acquire, use, look after and part with products in ways that recirculate or reuse materials and minimise waste. Therefore, consumers are asked to care for their belongings (Ackermann, 2018; Jaeger-Erben et al, 2021; Rabiú and Jaeger-Erben, 2022) while at the same time care for the environment and future generations. Although seldom made explicit, consumer care is thus built into the circular economy project. For example, consumers are asked to care for packaging – recycle, wash and fold it – and sort it into the appropriate bins. Consumers are also asked to care for food, plan their food shopping, ‘rescue’ food close to its expiration date and make meals from leftovers to reduce food waste. Furthermore, as this article will explore in more detail, they are urged to repair their clothes, wash them sparingly, and protect them from wear and tear. All these prompts are aimed at not only caring for consumption objects but also at caring for the environment, the welfare of distant others and future generations.

The role of care in circular consumption has received limited attention. So, while care seems central to the performance of circularity, its role in this mode of consumption has been largely overlooked in previous research. To address this shortcoming, we propose a focus on care-in-practice.

In pursuing a practice approach to care and circular consumption, we align ourselves with the small but dynamic body of work exploring the social, cultural and economic practices and processes involved in the performance of circular consumption (Hobson et al, 2021; Rabiú and Jaeger-Erben, 2022; Greene et al, 2024). Among other things, this research has shown that circular consumption is deeply embedded in contemporary consumer culture and that the recirculation of goods is not necessarily driven by environmental values and can conversely lead to the normalisation of surplus (Gregson et al, 2013). Research in this vein has also emphasised the need to draw attention to the materialities involved in circular consumption and take into account how diverse circular consumption practices are both ‘socially and materially embedded in the choreographies of everyday life’ (Holmes, 2018: 146). Finally, sociological research has also drawn attention to the consumption work required of households to develop and maintain everyday circular consumption practices (Hobson et al, 2021;

Sutcliffe, 2022). These studies have shown the often highly gendered completing and complementing work (Glucksmann, 2016) that consumers undertake, for instance, in composting and repair activities (Sutcliffe, 2022) or in household recycling (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). In line with this, we also approach circular consumption as a social, cultural and material phenomenon whose performance is demanding for consumers and tightly connected to everyday life. However, with a focus on care, we add that most forms of circular consumption involve and are enabled and shaped by enactments of care. We will take a particular interest in the problems involved in the enactment of care and how these issues stand in the way of the performance of circular consumption.

More specifically, our aim in this article is to empirically explore and conceptualise how care enables and shapes the performance of circular consumption. We are particularly interested in how the care for things and care for (distant) others (for example, family, future generations and the environment) is interconnected in the performance of circular consumption practices.

Theoretically, we draw on and combine Tronto's (1993) influential work on care with theories of practice (Schatzki, 2001; Reckwitz, 2002) to develop a care-in-practice approach. Directing our attention to how care is enacted through practices, rather than to the political or affective dimensions of care (cf. Meah and Jackson, 2017), we set out to explore how care shapes the performance of circular consumption.

The analysis builds on a study conducted with 24 households focused on the circular consumption of clothing and the role of digital platforms in enabling these practices. As part of the study, the households tried out and documented their use of clothing reselling, repairing and renting platforms over three to six months.

In the next section, we explain our practice approach to care and describe the ethnographic field trial on which the analysis builds. This is followed by an analysis of how care for the environment and for social others is intertwined with circular consumption and the care struggles and dilemmas that consumers face when trying to perform this specific mode of consumption. The article ends by discussing the contributions of considering care in the performance of circular consumption.

As stated previously, we combine the concept of care, as devised by Tronto (1993), with theories of practice (Schatzki, 2001; Reckwitz, 2002) to outline an approach focused on care and its role in enabling and shaping circular consumption.

The concept of 'care' has been used across social sciences in fields such as geography (Cox, 2010) or Science and Technology Studies (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). As a concept, care has also made inroads into consumption research (for example, Thompson, 1996; Popke, 2006). Studies argue that care and consumption are intertwined in multiple ways; for instance, through gift-giving (Fischer and Arnold, 1990) or mothering (Miller, 2001). Furthermore, related to the focus of our study on care and circularity, ethical consumption research shows consumers' attentive interests towards socio-ecological issues and how they act upon these as part of buying and using products and services (Shaw et al., 2017) as well as through everyday family consumption practices (Hall, 2011). However, while the term and concept of 'care' has long been used in consumption, the explicit and systematic theorisation of care

in consumption is a more recent endeavour (for example, Shaw et al, 2017; Godin, 2022; Koskinen and Jauho, 2024). Drawing mainly on Tronto's (1993) feminist ethics of care, scholars have begun to explore what care can offer the field of consumption (Shaw et al, 2017; Chatzidakis and Shaw, 2018).

We build on this approach and start from Joan Tronto's and Berenice Fisher's definition of care: '[A] species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our "world" so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web' (Fisher and Tronto, 1990: 40; italics original). This definition has been criticised for being overly broad, resulting in almost any activity capable of being conceptualised as care, thus making the concept meaningless (Shaw et al, 2017). However, this broad definition is beneficial in that it moves care beyond the typical areas such as healthcare or caring for children, making the care concept relevant in multiple arenas of everyday life (Cox, 2010). This definition also broadens the understanding of care by not only acknowledging the attentive interests and emotional investment but also the activities involved in doing care (Tronto, 1993).

In what follows, we will be guided by this definition of care as we explore how the enactment of care is linked to, enables, shapes and, at times, hinders the performance of circular consumption. We take a care-in-practice approach, arguing that care is both produced by and productive of practices – sets of interconnected doings and sayings and their associated competencies, materialities and meanings. Care – which can refer to both an orientation and an affective state (Meah and Jackson, 2017) – is thus realised in and through practices.

Within a practice, care can be present to a varying level of importance. While delivering care may be the central goal of the practice (Gherardi and Rodeschini, 2016), it can also be in the background as a sort of moral guidance (Gram-Hanssen, 2021). As previous research has illustrated, there is a vast array of practices in which care is included, such as cooking, cleaning, laundering and, relevant to this article, repairing clothes and other domestic items. These activities, we argue, can be considered examples of caring in practices as they are carried out, to different levels of importance, for the benefit and good of others or the self (see also Mol et al, 2010).

Care can be directed towards multiple care receivers who often have to be balanced. In addition, care receivers do not necessarily have to be human but also involve the environment, animals and things (Cox, 2010; Mol et al, 2010). The enactment of care can be directed towards multiple (human and non-human) care receivers simultaneously and is not necessarily confined to a dyadic relationship between human care givers and receivers (Mol et al, 2010; Shaw et al, 2017). Furthermore, and important for our subsequent analysis, care is not only possible when a care giver and care receiver are in proximity. Consequently, while it is not uncommon for people to care more about 'others' that are physically, emotionally and culturally closer to them, it is also possible to care at a distance, as studies of ethical consumption have demonstrated (Barnett et al, 2005; Cox, 2010; Chatzidakis and Shaw, 2018).

2002). First, and most important, there must be care awareness (Tronto, 1993). Indeed, there must be an indication of a care deficit; someone or something must be seen as needing care and this 'other' must also be seen as worthy of care. Without such an identification of a care deficit, the enactment of care would be misdirected. Care awareness or 'caring about', as argued by Tronto (1993), is therefore a prerequisite for the enactment of care. It is, however, not enough for care to be acted out. As explained by, for example, Shaw et al (2017), merely being aware of care needs does not necessarily lead to the enactment of care; the actors must also perceive themselves to be responsible for addressing that care need. Therefore, responsibility taking is key to the mobilisation of care.

Additionally, to be able to enact care, a care giver also has to have the appropriate resources to act. Fisher and Tronto (1990) point out that the enactment of care depends on resources that give caring capacities (Fisher and Tronto, 1990). According to the authors, the key resources that enable the enactment of care are 'time, material resources, knowledge, and skill' (Fisher and Tronto, 1990: 41). To care for one's children by cooking homemade meals, for example, requires (convenient) access to food, the financial means to purchase it, cooking skills and time (Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020). Similarly, to be able to care for products by repairing them, consumers often need to have access to tools and technologies as well as specific knowledge and skills (Meißner, 2021). Therefore, to care for an 'other' requires access to tools, infrastructures and financial resources, as well as cognitive and emotional capacities.

Finally, and important to our analysis, it is crucial to point out that these resources are finite, making 'care fraught with conflict' (Tronto, 1998: 17). The limited resources to care and the multiple possible care issues and care receivers create different types of care problems (Fisher and Tronto, 1990). Care problems, we propose, exist in at least two forms; care struggles and care dilemmas. The first form, care struggles, refer to difficulties that arise when resources are lacking to enact care. For example, one may find it important and feel responsible for the maintenance of one's care as a way to prolong its product life but lack the competence or tools to enact the necessary care. For instance, Meißner (2021) shows how people, when attending different repair cafes, first had to gather the skills and knowledge required to transform their broken belongings into objects of care that they can repair.

The second form of care problems, care dilemmas, arise instead when multiple care needs must be prioritised. Here, it is not necessarily the resources that are lacking but rather there are various colliding care needs. For example, buying new occasion wear for fast-growing children is a way to care for them, to make sure that they are properly dressed. However, buying new clothes that are only used once or twice is detrimental to the environment. Consequently, while the care needs of various care receivers can often align, there are also situations in which they do not, and care givers therefore must choose between them. For instance, Heath et al (2016) show how mothers, while engaging in both family care and care regarding environmental issues, experience moral dilemmas. Thus, when multiple and/or conflicting care needs are simultaneously present, some care needs will have to be prioritised over others, leading to care dilemmas.

In what follows, we draw on the framework outlined earlier to analyse and bring to the fore how the enactment of care is intertwined with, enables and also shapes circular consumption practices.

The analysis draws on material from an 'ethnographic field trial', where 24 households in Sweden tried a circular clothing platform focused on renting, repairing or reselling. The field trial was conducted between March 2022 and February 2023, with each household participating for a three- to six-month period. The households who committed to the study were asked to engage in an entry interview including a home visit, monitoring the platform use and an exit interview. While the project aimed to study how households use new forms of circular platforms, the present article focuses on how care was enacted as part of the households' efforts to perform circular consumption.

The recruitment of participants focused on households living in or around cities in the south of Sweden. While the participants had some variations in terms of field of occupation, location in Sweden and age, they mostly were from households whose socioeconomic and educational background made it possible for them to be interested in and somewhat experienced with circularity-related issues. Hence, our material provides insights into the everyday efforts of engaged households trying to perform circular consumption while also experimenting with circular clothing platforms. Lastly, it is also important to note that while the household members often represented different genders, the corresponding members were most often women. Table 1 details the participating households.

The entry interview was designed to understand how the households prior to trying out the platforms acquired, used, cleaned, stored, maintained and then parted with their clothing items. Thus, the ethnographic interview guide started with 'grand tour questions' (Spradley, 1979), asking the participants open-ended questions about clothing consumption in the home. This was also combined with either video-based or physical home observation (for example, Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020) so that the participants could show their different clothing-related doings. This allowed us to gain an initial in-depth understanding of the infrastructure around clothing consumption in the households studied. To further the understanding of participants' approaches to clothing, and shift the focus to how clothing items are used, inspired by wardrobe methods (Klepp and Bjerck, 2014; Fletcher and Klepp, 2017), participants were also asked to show their five most and five least worn clothing items, describing how they acquired them, how often they were used, and how they would go about parting with the clothing item. Upon these home and wardrobe observations, the interviewer returned to ethnographic 'grand tour questions' (Spradley, 1979) to learn more about how clothing circulates into, within and out of the homes. Thus, open-ended questions were asked about situations and common ways of acquiring, wearing, maintaining and lastly disposing of clothing (Evans, 2019). The entry interview concluded by onboarding participating households to the field trial. These interviews lasted between 60 and 120 minutes.

As the households started to use their chosen platform, they were asked to document this process. Inspired by digital diary methods, a messaging application¹ was used where participants could document through text and images their interactions with the clothing platforms and also converse with the researcher (Kaufmann and Peil, 2020). In a few cases, where participants were reluctant to use a messaging app, emails were used during the monitoring phase.

Exit interviews were scheduled for when the households had used the platform for a three- to six-month period, depending on the platform and frequency of use. The exit interviews departed from the messaging log, and participants were also asked to show how they used the platform, similar to assisted walkthrough methods (for example, Fuentes and Sörum, 2019; Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020). The researchers shared an ethnographic interview guide, with open-ended questions, asking about how the platforms were used, and discussing clothing consumption within the home after the trial. Most of these interviews were conducted digitally, due to the availability of participants and to use the screen-share function in the assisted walkthrough-related questions, and lasted around 60 minutes.

Although we acknowledge that interviews cannot generate the rich material typically produced by extensive participant observation and that it is often difficult to remember and account for everyday practices, we would argue that participants are indeed able to speak about their practices and do so in detail. This argument has also been made by others in relation to theories of practice (for more developed arguments regarding how interviews can be used to understand practices, see, for example, Hitchings, 2012; Martens, 2012).

Ethical considerations also involved gaining informed and written consent and treating the material under pseudonyms as well as ensuring that participant efforts and time commitments were not exploited. During the trial, the home visits and interactions required more time from participants than traditional interview-based

studies. Thus, participants were offered compensation, that is, half the costs associated with the use of the platform. Furthermore, when taking photographs or videos, both the participants and the researchers attempted to avoid the inclusion of humans or only record from the shoulders downwards.

The collected 48 interviews were uploaded to Nvivo and coded by the first author based on the care-in-practice analytical framework developed collaboratively. Once the material was coded, analysis meetings were organised to discuss the key themes that emerged. These meetings were guided by questions such as 'what forms of care awareness are present in relation to different forms of circular consumption', 'how did the participants take responsibility', 'what resources did participants draw from', and so on. Second, questions regarding care problems were also taken up to identify how participants managed a lack of resources while caring and how they dealt with multiple responsibilities. These questions led to three main findings that structure the following sections: 'caring for clothes as a way of caring for the environment', 'caring for clothes as a way of caring for social others' and, lastly, 'problems when caring for clothes and distant others', including the care struggles and dilemmas.

The participants in our study were engaged in various forms of circular clothing consumption, alongside the trial of the circular platforms. For instance, they swapped clothes, bought clothes second-hand, maintained garments in a gentle way to protect their quality, and tried to do both smaller and larger repair jobs. Furthermore, participants also tried to ensure that their clothes continued to be used once they were passed on by selling them online or at local flea markets as well as by donating them to second-hand stores or to recycling stations.

In what follows, we analyse and show how caring for clothes and distant others was interconnected in the performance of circular clothing practices. We also discuss the struggles and dilemmas that impeded the successful enactment of this specific type of care and thus also came to hinder the performance of circular consumption.

Our aim in this article has been to empirically explore and conceptualise how the enactment of care is intertwined with circular consumption. Taking a care-in-practice approach and making use of an ethnographically inspired study of circular clothing consumption, we explored how care both enables and shapes circular consumption.

We demonstrated that in circular consumption caring for clothes is interlinked with caring for distant others. Moreover, we showed how caring for the environment and for social others was intimately linked to the circular consumption of clothes through practices such as repairing, shopping second-hand and donating. This analysis shows that care to some extent makes the work and difficulties involved with circular consumption worthwhile. Hence, maintaining clothing in environmental ways and extending its lifetimes, as well as passing them on, was made more meaningful through the care awareness and responsibility-taking that the participants engaged in.

However, in our analysis, we also found that caring for the environment or social others is not enough to perform different forms of circular consumption. Care resources were crucial when enacting care in the context of circular consumption. Without access to care resources, participants encountered what we termed 'care struggles'. Furthermore, participants were often aware of and took responsibility for multiple care needs, where meeting all of them simultaneously or with the same enactment of care was not possible. We highlighted how this led to care dilemmas, further complicating the performance of circular clothing consumption.

In summary, we have tried to add to our understanding of circular consumption, what enables and shapes this mode of consumption, by bringing care to the forefront. We have shown that the performance of circular consumption, at least in the area of clothing, is intrinsically linked to, enabled and shaped by the enactment of care.

These findings contribute to sociologically oriented, circular consumption research in several ways. First, we show that the notion of care needs to be taken into account when trying to understand and enable circular consumption. While conceptual work on circular consumption has highlighted the potential relevance of care for circularity (Hobson et al, 2021; Greene et al, 2024), this topic has received little focused empirical attention. We address this paucity, showing that the performance of circular consumption not only involves specific socio-material arrangements, know-how, time and consumer labour but is also enabled and shaped by the enactment of care. Care awareness, responsibility-taking, and access and mobilisation of care resources were all crucial to the performance of circular clothing consumption.

Second, our findings also add to our understanding of the social and relational aspects of circular consumption, an issue that has received relatively little attention. There are indications that we should take the social aspects of circular consumption

seriously. Previous studies on alternative forms of circular consumption – for instance, repair cafes (Meißner, 2021) or community composting (Morrow and Davies, 2022) – have begun to explore the collaborative and social elements involved in this mode of consumption. In our study, we extend these arguments by showing how caring for neighbours or future owners of garments was also a motivation for households to perform circular consumption. Furthermore, we highlight that caring for others was not only a motivation for performing circular consumption but also an outcome of its performance. Thus, caring for social others in circular consumption both shaped and reproduced social relations. These findings suggest that participating in circular consumption can cultivate ways of caring both for close and distant others.

Third, our analysis of caring in circular clothing practices highlights that the performance of circular consumption requires more than care awareness and responsibility-taking. Consumers also rely on care resources of different sorts. These resources, in turn, are often connected to and made available by wider market structures. This contributes to sociological circular consumption research, as it foregrounds how circular consumption is embedded and often shaped by wider market arrangements. As circular consumption research turns its attention to the home (for example, Greene et al, 2024), it is important to understand that performing different forms of circular consumption in the home is also embedded in a wider consumption landscape (Fuentes and Sörum, 2019).

To conclude, as well as showing how enactments of care both enable and shape the performance of circular consumption, this analysis has discussed the struggles and dilemmas that arise in this process. However, while our analysis suggests that care is crucial in making the time-demanding performance of circular consumption meaningful, we do not wish to downplay the difficulties involved in performing this mode of consumption. Instead, our analysis of the care enactments involved in the performance of circular consumption shows that not only do consumers looking to be circular have to develop appropriate skills and be able to access the necessary infrastructures but they also have to enact a specific way of caring. This added burden has been shown to fall disproportionately on women (see also Godin and Langlois, 2021). By understanding the role of care in circular consumption, we can thus better understand how to make circular consumption possible and critically assess the negative outcomes of this economic reconfiguration programme.

¹ Telegram messaging application was chosen, as it was deemed secure and freely accessible.

This work was funded by the FORMAS financed project Sustainable Clothing Futures (Grant nr 2021-02516).

We would like to thank our project colleagues, Emma Samsioe and Niklas Sörum, for their work as part of the project fieldwork and data collection.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.