Quick verdict: Mesiranta et al. 2025 and Tölg & Fuentes 2025 fit perfectly. Hobson et al. 2021 is the odd one out and I’d drop it from this particular citation cluster.

Why the first two work:

• Mesiranta et al. 2025 ( #BQ2W57 ) explicitly draws on “posthuman feminist theorising of care” and Tronto-style ethics of care, conceptualising circular consumption practices as matters of care ( #BWGPV6 Circular Consumption Practices as Matters of Care #BQ2W57 / Abstract #QC3DNJ #BWGPV6 While a circular economy (CE) paradigm shift has gained significant momentum among academics, practitioners, and policymakers, theory regarding its social aspects remains scant , especially theory based on an ethical, micro-level perspective . Circular consumption, referring to those consumption practices that aim to extend the lifetimes of objects and materials, involves ethical considerations. However, everyday circular consumption and its ethics have not gained a foothold in the CE literature . This article builds on the existing circular consumption literature by drawing insights from the posthuman feminist theorising of care, shifting the focus of care from humans to the complex relations between humans and nonhumans and conceptualising circular consumption practices as matters of care . This conceptualisation, which follows a thinking-with-theory approach, is based on empirical material constructed in two research projects focusing on frontrunner consumers in terms of circular consumption in Finland: food waste reduction and circular clothing consumption. We identify circular consumption as care by introducing three distinct perspectives: care as tinkering, care as affective practices, and care as ethico-political action . We show that approaching circular consumption practices as matters of care, while not always easy or straightforward, is an attempt to make consumption better : more attentive, inclusive, durable, and enjoyable . Our findings emphasise the interconnected nature of circular practices, the constant performativity of circular consumption, and nonhumans as crucial stakeholders in care relations. Consequently, we offer an alternative to technocentric CE perspectives and a way to promote a sustainable world through care. , #UDVY6T Circular Consumption Practices as Matters of Care #BQ2W57 / Introduction #88E4W4 #UDVY6T An ethics of care perspective (Fisher & Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993, 2013) has been adopted by ethical consumption scholars, such as members of the Care Collective. In their Care Manifesto, it has been noted that the world we live in is structurally careless and that to create a sustainable, inclusive future, more care is needed at multiple levels on the part of various actors (Chatzidakis et al., 2020). We join this discussion and continue the Hobson et al.’s (2021) call to explore circular consumption through the lens of the ethics of care. We argue that care does exist within the circular consumption practices of frontrunner consumers who interact with various consumption objects on a daily basis to extend their lifetimes. These frontrunners have actively sought to change their own everyday consumption practices and move towards circularity and have shared and discussed these practices with others either on social media or in their local community. Frontrunners’ circular consumption practices have developed over the course of their lives because of complex processes, including “socialisation experiences, and continually evolving personal relationships, social roles, material contexts and forms of capital” (Greene & Royston, 2022, p. 272; see also Ortega Alvarado et al., 2023). ). Direct hit on “feminist tradition + recent applications to circular consumption.”

• Tölg & Fuentes 2025 ( #AVNZLE ) explicitly “draws on… feminist scholarship on care (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993)” applied to circular clothing consumption ( #W2LSKS The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings #8EVNK8 / Research paper 3 – Care-in-practice #T6A5TK #W2LSKS The third research paper explores the performance of circular consumption in everyday lives of households. Theoretically, it draws on the theories of practice approach to consumption from the sociology of consumption (Warde, 2005), combined with the feminist scholarship on care (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993). In the paper, we (together with Christian Fuentes as second author) wanted to understand how care is involved in performing circular consumption. Previous studies argue that in circular consumption, consumers are asked to care for belongings as well as for distant and future others (Ackermann, 2018; Jaeger-Erben et al., 2021; Rabin and Jaeger-Erben, 2022). However, while care has been part of discussions in consumption studies in the ), and even makes the point about gendered, often-unrecognised care labour falling on women ( #8G8RM8 Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing #AVNZLE / Discussion and conclusion #NBA5ZR #8G8RM8 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. ) — which is precisely your “without recognising it as work at all” beat.

Why Hobson et al. 2021 is a stretch here: Hobson et al. 2021 is the consumption work research agenda paper — you already lean on it elsewhere for exactly that ( #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. ). It is not itself a feminist-care-tradition piece; it merely flags ethics of care as a worthwhile future direction (which is why Mesiranta et al. and Tölg & Fuentes both cite it as a “call” — see #UDVY6T Circular Consumption Practices as Matters of Care #BQ2W57 / Introduction #88E4W4 #UDVY6T An ethics of care perspective (Fisher & Tronto, 1990; Tronto, 1993, 2013) has been adopted by ethical consumption scholars, such as members of the Care Collective. In their Care Manifesto, it has been noted that the world we live in is structurally careless and that to create a sustainable, inclusive future, more care is needed at multiple levels on the part of various actors (Chatzidakis et al., 2020). We join this discussion and continue the Hobson et al.’s (2021) call to explore circular consumption through the lens of the ethics of care. We argue that care does exist within the circular consumption practices of frontrunner consumers who interact with various consumption objects on a daily basis to extend their lifetimes. These frontrunners have actively sought to change their own everyday consumption practices and move towards circularity and have shared and discussed these practices with others either on social media or in their local community. Frontrunners’ circular consumption practices have developed over the course of their lives because of complex processes, including “socialisation experiences, and continually evolving personal relationships, social roles, material contexts and forms of capital” (Greene & Royston, 2022, p. 272; see also Ortega Alvarado et al., 2023). , #RQVYTZ Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing #AVNZLE / Discussion and conclusion #NBA5ZR #RQVYTZ 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. ). Slotting it into the “feminist tradition” sentence overclaims what the paper does, and risks double-counting it across both registers of your two-register framing in #EF5DET Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #82G2QE #EF5DET The chapter is organized by two complementary registers. Consumption work (Wheeler and Glucksmann 2015) names the tasks the practice demands – acquiring, sorting, maintaining, divesting, transporting – and tracks how they are distributed across technical, modal, and processual dimensions of the division of labour. Care work, in the feminist tradition and its recent applications to circular consumption (Mesiranta et al. 2025; Tölg and Fuentes 2025), names the relational and ethical orientation through which participants take this labour on, often without recognising it as work at all. .

Notably, your conclusion paragraph #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. already drops Hobson et al. from the parallel formulation and keeps only Mesiranta et al. and Tölg & Fuentes — that version is the more defensible one. I’d align #EF5DET Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #82G2QE #EF5DET The chapter is organized by two complementary registers. Consumption work (Wheeler and Glucksmann 2015) names the tasks the practice demands – acquiring, sorting, maintaining, divesting, transporting – and tracks how they are distributed across technical, modal, and processual dimensions of the division of labour. Care work, in the feminist tradition and its recent applications to circular consumption (Mesiranta et al. 2025; Tölg and Fuentes 2025), names the relational and ethical orientation through which participants take this labour on, often without recognising it as work at all. with #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. and remove Hobson et al. from this citation. Hobson et al. is doing its real work on the consumption-work side of the sentence pair anyway.