Yes — this is a very strong framing, and it actually helps unify Chapters 4 and 5 better than “Brīvbode as circulation” alone. I’d keep the core idea, but slightly adjust the practice-theory wording so it is more Shove-compatible.

1. The strongest version of the idea

I would phrase it like this:

Brīvbode can be understood as a site where elements of domestic consumption practices are detached, reclassified, and re-linked into new practices of circulation. Materials physically move from one household practice into another; competences of sorting, evaluating, restraining, and letting go are performed and learned; meanings of waste, generosity, need, thrift, dignity, care, and sustainability are negotiated in the open. What makes Brīvbode ethnographically valuable is that these processes, usually dispersed across homes, markets, wardrobes, bins, and online platforms, are concentrated in one semi-public site.

This keeps your “defection and recruitment” energy but avoids a small conceptual trap: in Shove et al., it is usually practitioners/carriers who are recruited or defect, while elements circulate, migrate, detach, relink, or are integrated. Shove et al. explicitly talk about practices existing when materials, competences, and meanings are linked, and disintegrating when links are no longer sustained (Shove, Pantzar & Watson 2012, #UG44UW The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #UG44UW In what follows we work with the idea that practices are defined by interdependent relations between materials, competences and meanings. This deliberately streamlined approach has many advantages, but like all other such accounts it supposes that elements, however they might be defined, are somehow ‘out there’ in the world, waiting to be linked together. If we go along with the idea that practices exist when elements are integrated, we need to recognize two related possibilities: one is that relevant elements exist but without being linked (proto-practice); the second is that practices disintegrate when links are no longer sustained. Figure 2.1 illustrates these three scenarios. ). They also stress that stability is not a finished state but an ongoing accomplishment of repeatedly linking elements together ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ). Brīvbode is basically a theatre of linking. Academic drama, but with moth-eaten pillows.

2. “Practice with the lid off” works because it answers Shove 2003

Your phrase works especially well against Shove’s older focus on inconspicuous, ordinary, routinized practice. In Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience, she argues for turning the spotlight back onto “generally invisible forms of practice” and investigating the constitution of normality and routine ( #4X242T Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality #8J3FXD / Consumption, Everyday Life and Sustainability #XZN3NQ #4X242T To outsiders, sociology has a reputation for dealing with the everyday and the ordinary. This is often cast as a thinly veiled criticism: who needs a whole discipline to understand what people do as a matter of course? In the context of this book, such a reputation represents a challenge and an ideal to live up to. Turning the spotlight back on generally invisible forms of practice, its purpose is to investigate the constitution of normality and the dynamics of habit and routine. ). She is interested in the backstage: the “barely detectable gridlines of everyday life” through which ordinary arrangements are actively reproduced ( #EW8WKC Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality #8J3FXD / Consumption, Everyday Life and Sustainability #XZN3NQ #EW8WKC Of course arrangements that are normal for some strike others as being extremely strange. Though I have no intention of defining the ordinary in any absolute sense, the book engages with sets of practices and expectations that constitute the barely detectable gridlines of everyday life. They form what would commonly be seen as a neutral backdrop against which the dramas of contemporary social interaction are played out. In Goffman's terms (1969), this book is more about the production of the scenery, the lighting and the setting than the action itself. These features are, none the less, actively constituted and reproduced in ways that demand the skilful deployment of rules, resources, technologies and other persons. ).

Brīvbode is interesting because it is not exactly ordinary domestic practice, but it renders ordinary domestic practice observable. The thesis already says this almost directly: Brīvbode is where “ordinarily private and dispersed practices of domestic material life become visible” ( #7RYKMT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #ULSUAX #7RYKMT This thesis brings together practice-theoretical perspectives on sustainable consumption and consumption work for a study of non-domestic site of goods circulation within a context of non-monetary exchange. Brīvbode is a site where the ordinarily private and dispersed practices of domestic material life become visible. The continued existence of the swapshop – sustained through regular volunteer labour, participant labour, and a relatively stable social and material infrastructure – can be read as evidence of the demand that household goods circulation generates: a demand for routes of divestment that, while taking some degree of effort, are socially acknowledged. ), and the introduction says it is a semi-public site where private labour of divestment/acquisition becomes visible and socially acknowledged ( #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. ).

So the move could be:

Shove’s work asks us to study what is usually inconspicuous. Brīvbode matters because it makes inconspicuous consumption work conspicuous.

That is elegant and defensible.

3. What exactly becomes visible?

I’d break the “lid off” claim into three observable processes:

a) Materials: things literally move, pile up, overflow

Shove et al. note that materials are the only elements that literally move physically, while meanings and competences circulate differently ( #Z7DKTH The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / Packing and unpacking #YLZQUZ #Z7DKTH First, materials are the only elements that literally move in the sense of being physically transported. While competences and images appear to circulate, critical processes have to do with localized forms of de- and re-linking, a feature about which we have more to say below. Second, materials have characteristics (weight, fragility etc.) that affect, but which are only sometimes transformed by, processes of transportation. By contrast, meanings and competences are routinely modified as their reach and range extends or contracts. Third, with materials as with competences and meanings, the rate and extent of actual and potential circulation depends on the existence or otherwise of appropriate infrastructures, for instance, of transportation or mediation. Fourth, processes of codification ). Brīvbode gives you an almost too perfect empirical case of material movement: bags arrive, things are sorted in the same room, objects are swallowed by new piles, overflow is constant ( #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. , #2TPNCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #2TPNCM The physical experience of overflow is a constant of volunteering, and bags often arrive faster than they can be processed. Often my task during shifts was to sort and put out children’s items. The boxes were already full, with piles forming, when I asked Rasa: 'Don't you feel like the things are just pouring down on you?' 'Yes, that's why I no longer have any tolerance for things. I realise I feel relief that these clothes are dirty, because there simply isn't any more space." , #3USBHB Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #3USBHB During another shift, Rasa offered me a handmade black ceramic plate someone had brought that day. I was glad to take it, but before my departure confusion arose about where it had gone. It turned out, more stuff had piled up on top of it on the sorting table as visitors kept coming with their divestment. Rasa laughed: “This is how it is here.” As a material site, Brīvbode is an active flow that requires tending and occasionally swallows its own offerings. ). The moment where the ceramic plate disappears under incoming stuff is almost comically good evidence: the site is not a container but an active flow ( #3USBHB Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #3USBHB During another shift, Rasa offered me a handmade black ceramic plate someone had brought that day. I was glad to take it, but before my departure confusion arose about where it had gone. It turned out, more stuff had piled up on top of it on the sorting table as visitors kept coming with their divestment. Rasa laughed: “This is how it is here.” As a material site, Brīvbode is an active flow that requires tending and occasionally swallows its own offerings. ).

This also connects to Shove and Rinkinen’s circular economy critique: circular economy thinking often isolates objects, but objects only make sense inside systems of provision, use, need, and practice ( #8CYMM2 Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 2. Practices and object relations #9XPEAM #8CYMM2 More pragmatically, objects are rarely mobilized in isolation. In daily life and in use they depend on each other and on an array of background infrastructures and resources that make related practices possible (Shove, 2016). The result is a mesh of what Rinkinen et al. (2015) describe as “object relations”, a term that underlines the point that the histories of objects are entangled with the societies in which they develop. Understanding how objects connect calls for further understanding of extensive networks and material arrangements and of how these evolve. If these ideas are taken to heart, objects, infrastructures and systems of provision and consumption must be treated as part of, and not outside, the wider plenitude of practice (Shove et al., 2012; Schatzki, 2019). , #GYAYXG Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 2. Practices and object relations #9XPEAM #GYAYXG It is only by focusing on relations between objects and practices that we can describe and understand the extent as well as the form of material flows (linear, circular, etc.), and to show how these vary and change (Ingold, 2012). This not only implies a more fluid and unsettled understanding of objects, but also a more relational account of the material world (Haberl et al., 2021). Building on these ideas, it is important to ask: “how do materials of all types (resources, appliances, infrastructures) figure in the emergence and transformation of different, but often linked complexes of social practice” (Rinkinen et al., 2020; p. 36)? ). Brīvbode does not show “a shirt being reused” in isolation; it shows the entire social-material arrangement that must exist for reuse to happen.

b) Competences: sorting, valuing, restraining, navigating

The draft already has excellent material here. The competence of sorting women’s clothing is not self-evident; Viesturs has to learn it as a “tree with many branches” ( #BCDC5C Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #BCDC5C The gendered asymmetry extends to the competencies required to manage the space. Viesturs described his initial challenge of developing a workable system for sorting women’s clothing after he started volunteering: "Well, f*ck, look, where do I put it. Trying to systematize women’s clothing, it’s like a tree with many branches." The competence of sorting – especially women’s clothing as in this case – is not self-evident as the proliferation of categories resists simple organisation and has to be worked out through practice. ). Visitors also learn the negative competence of not taking, holding a mental model of what they already own and what they need ( #EXTCGS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #EXTCGS On the acquisition side, competence also means knowing when to come and how to navigate the space. Agate has mapped the visitor typology and times her arrivals strategically; Marta describes starting in the first room and returning when something new has arrived. Equally important is the negative competency of not taking — knowing what one needs and what one already has. Zane keeps a list on her phone of items she is actively looking for, and her stylist consultations work as an investment in self-knowledge that guards against impulsive acquisition. Agate explicitly asks herself while browsing whether a given item could be combined with what she already owns. This is cognitive work — holding a mental model of one's wardrobe and household — and without it, acquisition becomes impulsive and the divestment work follows. The competencies of acquisition and divestment are therefore inseparable: each unconsidered acquisition becomes future divestment labour. ). Volunteers develop trained eyes for quality ( #76T3WR Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #76T3WR The competencies that sustain freecycling in Brīvbode are largely social and evaluative rather than technical, and none of them require formal training — but each is acquired through repeated participation and is unevenly distributed across practitioners. Material literacy — recognising wool from synthetic fibres, identifying well-made construction, spotting a hidden stain — is foundational, and volunteers develop it most acutely through handling what arrives. Rasa, in the recollection of one student researcher who spent time in the shop, has "the most trained eye for the quality of things" [visuztrenētākā acs uz mantu kvalitāti]; her own acquisition criteria turn on fibre type and durability, preferring what is "more nature-friendly, ecological, and long-lasting." Visitors develop a more limited version of the same competency. Laura describes herself as a careful second-hand user who checks everything thoroughly, though she admits she has still occasionally taken home items that turned out to be broken on closer inspection. ), and Anna learns to anticipate donor over-optimism before opening a bag ( #KWPAYN Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #KWPAYN The shift is most acute for volunteers, who absorb the valuation labour donors and visitors do not. Anna describes how she has developed her intuition for the gap between donor self-assessment and actual quality: “I really know it won’t be good even before I’ve opened the bag. I ask them: ‘Is everything really okay in there?’ ‘Yes, yes, only the best!’ And you open it, and there are moth-eaten pillows, piss-soaked blankets.” This competency has been developed over years of handling what arrives. The work of maintaining quality — assessing, sorting, deciding what goes out and what does not — is a form of consumption work that in commercial retail would fall to paid warehouse or quality-control staff; here it is absorbed by volunteers as a constant and largely invisible competency that visitors, who see only the finished presentation, mostly miss. ).

This is exactly where Shove’s “competence” becomes ethnographically visible. Shove et al. define competence broadly as know-how, background knowledge, and the ability to judge appropriate performance ( #92MUR9 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #92MUR9 In most accounts, know-how, background knowledge and understanding are taken to be crucial whether in the form of what Giddens (1984) describes as practical consciousness, deliberately cultivated skill, or more abstractly, as shared understandings of good or appropriate performance in terms of which specific enactments are judged. Knowing in the sense of being able to evaluate a performance is not the same as knowing in the sense of having the skills required to perform, and in some situations this is an important distinction (Warde, 2005). For the purposes of this chapter, which is in essence about how links are made between the elements of which practices are composed, we lump multiple forms of understanding and practical knowledgeability together and simply refer to them as ‘competence’, our second element. ). Brīvbode shows that competence is not just technical skill; it is moral, sensory, social, and gendered.

c) Meanings: free/not free, charity/exchange, waste/gift, care/burden

The “meanings argued aloud” part is very strong. Shove et al. treat meaning as the social and symbolic significance of participation ( #NG66CJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #NG66CJ Our next simplifying move is to collapse what Reckwitz describes as mental activities, emotion and motivational knowledge into the one broad element of ‘meaning’, a term we use to represent the social and symbolic significance of participation at any one moment. This is tricky territory in that those who write about social practices are in much less agreement about how to characterize meaning, emotion and motivation. In Schatzki’s analysis, ‘teleoaffective’ structures – embracing ends, ), and they note that meanings travel through association, classification, de-classification and re-classification ( #DUUPD6 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / Association and classification: meaning #SY5EDK #DUUPD6 Although we are primarily interested in following the lives of elements, not of practices as such, a brief account of how Nordic Walking (a form of walking involving the use of two specially designed poles to increase the intensity of the exercise) emerged in Finland provides some insight into the ways in which meanings like those of infirmity and well-being 'travel' and evolve. For Nordic Walking to take hold on any scale, walking with 'sticks' had to be disassociated from meanings of frailty and somehow connected to concepts of vitality and wellbeing. This required a process of de- and re-classification: old connotations had to be shaken off and new connections made. In an effort to make this happen, manufacturers and others with an interest in establishing the practice sought to position it with reference to two established narratives, , #3RX274 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / Association and classification: meaning #SY5EDK #3RX274 there is no guarantee that these will stick. As with the abstraction and reversal of competence, the decoding and appropriation of meaning is an inherently local, inherently uncertain process. In addition, opportunities for association and re-classification are, to a degree, constrained and enabled by existing patterns and distributions of meaning. ). Brīvbode is full of reclassification: rubbish becomes gift, surplus becomes care, free becomes exchange, charity is refused but sometimes pragmatically tolerated.

Madara is the cleanest example: she explicitly has to reframe “free” as “exchange” so that taking does not feel like stealing ( #CUBS5Q Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #CUBS5Q "Man kaut kā mazāka vēlme ņemt visu, ko es redzu, par spīti tam, ka tas it kā ir tas 'brīv'... es kaut kā vairāk cienu to visu, kas tur ir izlikts." [I somehow feel less desire to take everything I see, despite the fact that it's all "free" – I somehow have more respect for everything that's laid out there.] Madara explicitly contrasts her response to freeness with others' – she imagines the hoarder who grabs because it's free, and positions herself as someone for whom freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition. This is the moral economy of freeshopping from the perspective of someone still in the early stages of learning the practice's norms. "Kādam varbūt tas 'brīv' rada vēlmi, ka viss ir bez maksas, tagad ņemam, ņemam, ņemam. Man tas nospēlē kaut kā tieši otrādāk." [For some, maybe "free" creates the urge that everything is free, so now we take, take, take. For me it works the opposite way.] "Es to uztveru kā apmaiņu. To vārdu 'brīvu' kaut kā izslēdzu... Sākumā tas tā bišķiņ mulsināja, ka esmu kā apzagusies." [I see it as exchange. I somehow switch off the word "free"… At first it was a bit confusing, as if I had stolen something.] This is competency acquisition: Madara is learning how to understand and inhabit the value regime of Brīvbode, and she narrates the process explicitly. , #4HW9DD Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #4HW9DD For visitors, the absence of price requires a new framework for what counts as legitimate taking. Madara recalled how disorienting the freeness was on her first visit: “At first it felt a bit like I was stealing.” She resolved this by reframing the transaction: “I see it as exchange. I somehow switch off the word ‘free’.” For her, freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition: “Someone maybe sees ‘free’ and thinks – everything is free, let’s take, take, take. For me it works the opposite way.” Her self-imposed restraint is itself valuation work — a moral framework constructed in the absence of the device that would otherwise supply one. ). The space’s aesthetic disagreements also show meanings being actively negotiated: retail-like emptiness versus abundant plushie chaos are not just display preferences but competing versions of what freecycling should mean ( #KMD7AJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #KMD7AJ The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic – with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance. ).

4. The limits of Shove become visible too

This is maybe the most interesting part of your thought. Brīvbode does not only illustrate practice theory; it exposes where a compact element model becomes insufficient.

Shove et al. themselves admit that the materials/competences/meanings scheme says little about “who is involved,” how access is distributed, or how integration transforms elements ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ). That is exactly where your care/gender chapter enters.

The thesis shows that the work of keeping things circulating is not evenly distributed. It is gendered through household management, routing, care networks, and moral obligation: Anna supplies everyone with clothes and shoes; Silvija manages household divestment; men mainly transport sorted bags ( #PNGSGT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #PNGSGT Miller's (1998) research on shopping demonstrates that consumption is often organised around care for others rather than individual satisfaction, and that women frequently function as moral agents in household consumption as they are the ones acquiring, managing, and disposing of goods in relation to the needs of children, partners, and wider social networks. Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) find the same gendered pattern in recycling: women typically take responsibility for sorting while men handle transport. The fieldwork conducted for this thesis reflects this consistently. Anna states it directly: "It's on me. I'm the one who supplies everyone with clothes and shoes." Silvija organises all divestment decisions in her household and says her husband "would just throw it in the bin." Men's role, where it appears, is typically transport and carrying the bags that women have sorted, selected, and prepared. ). Some participants become logistics nodes for neighbours, colleagues and family ( #3BY9GH Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #3BY9GH The reach of Brīvbode extends considerably beyond those who physically visit it. Several of the most embedded participants perform substantial divestment work not only for themselves but for neighbours, colleagues, and family members, functioning as logistics nodes through which others' surplus flows to the freeshop. Marija's neighbours give her things to take to Brīvbode as she is a frequent visitor and the role has naturalised into her social identity in the building. Māra coordinates pickups from at least five neighbours, takes requests for specific items, and is the only one of her immediate network who actually visits – the rest route their divestment through her. Anna's work colleagues prepare parcels for her to deliver: "They use me. They prepare the bags I need to bring to Brīvbode. And then they say: 'Can you look for something for my teenage daughter?'" What looks like consumption work performed on behalf of others is, in Tölg and Fuentes’s (2025) terms, also care for neighbours and for the imagined future users of the things — the logistical labour and the relational orientation are inseparable. ). Aiga’s thirty trips show circulation as care that cannot be put down ( #Y344XY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #Y344XY Madara does divestment work for her aunt whose belief that worn objects carry the energy of previous owners prevents her from donating. In order to get to Brīvbode, the objects must pass through Madara first. "I know that most likely they would simply be thrown away or burned." The most laborious divestment case came from Aiga, who spent months coordinating the recirculation of her relatives' possessions after a relocation, making thirty trips to Brīvbode. A single call to a clearance firm would have resolved everything in one visit, Aiga says, but she chose the harder route because she could not allow things to be discarded: “Sometimes you really do want to just throw it out, but that inner feeling simply won’t let me.” This is consumption work in Bankovska’s (2020) sense of care not-work — labour that is unremunerated, hard to see as work from the outside, and yet performed because the alternative is unbearable. It is care as obligation that cannot be put down. ).

So the theoretical payoff could be:

Practice theory helps identify how materials, meanings and competences are re-linked in Brīvbode, but the ethnography shows that linking is not neutral. It is labour. It is distributed unevenly. It is sustained through care, gendered responsibility, and moral obligation.

This builds directly on your Chapter 5 conclusion: the absence of price does not produce frictionless circulation, but a different kind of work — gendered, ethically motivated, and absorbed into household routines ( #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. ).

5. The “semi-public” angle is key

I’d not say Brīvbode is simply public. “Semi-public” is more accurate and analytically richer. It is open enough that sorting, valuation, embarrassment, generosity, and conflict can be observed, but intimate enough that trust, familiarity, and relational judgement matter.

Examples:

• takers are discouraged from taking from the sorting table before things are processed ( #X8RDCG Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #X8RDCG After an item is divested to Brīvbode, it does not belong to the donor anymore, it belongs to the swapshop. This transfer of ownership is actively managed: takers are discouraged from taking things from the sorting table before they are processed, as their enthusiasm has caused discomfort to other visitors in the past. );

• food acceptability depends partly on familiarity and trust ( #Y7K4KZ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #Y7K4KZ This is observable even in the circulation of food items, which, although not central, are also present in Brīvbode. As opposed to many community-based exchange initiatives where the circulation of food is governed strictly, e.g. accepting only unopened items and carefully monitoring expiration dates, in Brīvbode the circulation is shaped less by formal regulation and more by trust and familiarity among participants. Open packages may be accepted when brought by known visitors, suggesting that assessments of safety and acceptability are negotiated socially. );

• medicine is removed quietly rather than through direct confrontation ( #7CR75E Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #7CR75E A stronger boundary emerges in relation to certain categories of items, such as medicine. In one instance, a regular visitor brought various medications, explaining their uses to the day manager. While the items were initially placed on the table for taking, a while later another worker quietly removed them, remarking to me, “I don’t think I support this.” The removal was not communicated directly to the donor, suggesting a reluctance to enforce the norm explicitly. Instead of a formal refusal, workers might suggest that perhaps the giver has not noticed the defects, but items could be washed and brought back or simply delay decisions until the giver is no longer present. );

• quality and relationship maintenance pull against each other ( #BZ6FJC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #BZ6FJC Being in Brīvbode is characterized by constant sorting decisions, trying to maintain an acceptable level of presentation and quality of items. The work of maintaining quality and the work of maintaining relationships sometimes pull in different directions, and the balance between lenience and care is negotiated in every shift. At times I heard people felt uneasy about Viesturs openly commenting on things they had brought. ).

So Brīvbode is not “the market without prices” or “the household outside the home.” It is a hybrid moral-material site where domestic, retail, charitable, activist, and waste-management logics overlap.

6. Possible thesis-level formulation

Here is a polished version of your idea that could go into the intro, theory conclusion, or final conclusion:

In practice-theoretical terms, Brīvbode is a site where elements of domestic consumption are detached, reclassified, and re-linked into practices of circulation. Materials leave households and enter a semi-public infrastructure; competences of sorting, assessing, restraining, curating, and letting go are performed and learned; meanings of waste, generosity, need, dignity, care, thrift, and sustainability are negotiated in action. What makes the swapshop analytically valuable is that these processes are usually dispersed and hidden across households, markets, wardrobes, bins, and online platforms. In Brīvbode, they happen in one room. Sorting takes place in the open, value is argued without price, and competences are shown rather than silently embedded in domestic routine. The swapshop is therefore a practice with the lid off: a site where practice theory’s abstractions become ethnographically observable, but also where their limits become visible. The linking of materials, meanings and competences is not an automatic process; it is labour, and that labour is gendered, relational, morally charged, and sustained through care.

That paragraph could do a lot of work. It links Shove 2012, Shove 2003, circular economy critique, and your empirical chapters.

7. One caution

I would avoid saying “elements of consumption defect from one practice” too literally. Better:

• “materials are divested from one practice and recruited into another”

• “elements are detached and re-linked”

• “practitioners are recruited into Brīvbode through the availability of materials, meanings, and competences”

• “Brīvbode captures flows generated elsewhere”

Because in Shove’s vocabulary, defection/recruitment usually concerns carriers/practitioners, while elements circulate ( #EBZCFW The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #EBZCFW ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES , #6H9VRT The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MODES OF CIRCULATION #6H9VRT #6H9VRT MODES OF CIRCULATION , #8JX39Z The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / COLLAPSE AND TRANSFORMATION: THE DYNAMICS OF DEFECTION #8JX39Z #8JX39Z COLLAPSE AND TRANSFORMATION: THE DYNAMICS OF DEFECTION ). But the metaphor is productive if slightly disciplined.

Best compact version:

Brīvbode is not only a place where things circulate; it is a place where the elements that make circulation possible are exposed. Materials move, meanings are reclassified, competences are learned, and the labour of holding these together becomes visible. This is why the swapshop can be read as a practice with the lid off.

Yes — “the labour of practice” is a really useful bridge phrase, but with one important nuance:

Shove et al. are deeply interested in the work practices require, but they usually theorise it as “integration,” “accomplishment,” “linking,” “coordination,” “reproduction,” “recruitment,” and “competence,” rather than as labour in the feminist/political-economic sense. Consumption work gives you the vocabulary for who does that work, how it is distributed, and why it matters.

So the move is not “Shove already says this, done.” It is more:

Shove gives the ontology of practice maintenance; consumption work lets you politicise and ethnographically specify that maintenance as labour.

1. Shove does have a “work of practice” idea

In Dynamics of Social Practice, Shove et al. say practices exist when materials, meanings, and competences are integrated ( #UG44UW The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #UG44UW In what follows we work with the idea that practices are defined by interdependent relations between materials, competences and meanings. This deliberately streamlined approach has many advantages, but like all other such accounts it supposes that elements, however they might be defined, are somehow ‘out there’ in the world, waiting to be linked together. If we go along with the idea that practices exist when elements are integrated, we need to recognize two related possibilities: one is that relevant elements exist but without being linked (proto-practice); the second is that practices disintegrate when links are no longer sustained. Figure 2.1 illustrates these three scenarios. ). But they immediately admit that this basic model “reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together” and says little about “who is involved” or “how access to relevant elements is distributed” ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ). Still, they insist that stability is an ongoing accomplishment: links have to be “renewed time and again” ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ).

That is basically a theory of practice-maintenance work — but they do not usually dwell on it as labour.

They also use the phrase “integrative work” directly: practices change partly through “the integrative work involved” in linking materials, meanings, and competences ( #AUUFW7 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #AUUFW7 To reiterate, our opening propositions are that practices like driving a car depend on specific combinations of materials, meanings and competence; that driving evolves as these ingredients change; and that such changes are in part a consequence of the integrative work involved. In the paragraphs that follow we comment on different aspects of this process, showing how elements have been linked and how ties have been made and broken along the way. We do so not with the aim of providing a detailed or coherent history of driving but in order to show what an element-based approach has to offer. ). So yes: the idea is there.

But it remains somewhat abstract. “Integrative work” is not yet “Anna sorting piss-soaked blankets while managing donor feelings.” Your ethnography turns the abstraction into a scene.

2. Shove also sometimes talks about literal domestic labour

In Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience, Shove is very attentive to laundry as work. She writes that laundering is divisible, delegable, historically identified with women, and bound up with domestic performance ( #9EDYTE Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality #8J3FXD / Laundering as Work #EY58QW #9EDYTE The job of washing clothing and household linen can be divided and delegated. Although the task of bathing those too young or infirm to wash themselves can be similarly allocated, the business of personal hygiene is typically indivisible. But it is not just that laundry can be given to other people to do. The management of linen has long been identified with women, whether as housewives, washerwomen or dressmakers. Taking this to be a powerful relationship, Kaufmann suggests that as guardians of its linen, women are the 'guardians of the family destiny', that 'women's history is deeply inscribed in every fold of their linen' and that senses of self are very much at stake in the handling of laundry (Kaufmann 1998: 13). It is certainly the case that in contrast to personal bathing, the definition and distribution of laundry-related responsibilities is inextricably bound up with the reproduction of gendered identities and with the division and management of domestic labour. Understood as housework the details of laundering also reflect and reveal the role of the domestic sphere as a site of production and/or consumption. ). She summarises laundering as “a form of work” that can be divided and delegated, is typically viewed as women’s work, depends on sequential activities, and is shaped by how provision is organised inside or outside the home ( #3K7Z77 Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality #8J3FXD / Laundering as Work #EY58QW #3K7Z77 To summarize, laundering has certain characteristics relevant for an understanding of how expectations and conventions change. First, it represents a form of work that can be divided and delegated in different ways. Second, it is typically viewed as women's work and is, as such, associated with notions of domestic performance. Third, the production of clean clothes depends upon the sequential accomplishment of a number of inter-dependent activities. Finally, the manner in which the laundry is organized (within or outside the home) is of immediate consequence for the definition and reproduction of cleanliness and for the sorts of skills and judgements involved. It is important to acknowledge the social status and positioning of laundering as a form of work, but what does this mean for the escalation of standards and how does it help explain patterns like those of washing every day? ).

That is close to your terrain. But Shove is using laundering to understand changing normality, standards, technologies, and conventions. You can use Brīvbode to show something slightly different: the work required to keep alternative circulation going once price, retail infrastructure, and waste systems are partly suspended.

3. So what does consumption work add?

Consumption work makes explicit what Shove’s element model tends to leave underdeveloped:

• who performs the work;

• who benefits from it;

• how it is gendered;

• how it is hidden or made visible;

• how it is morally framed;

• how institutions depend on unpaid work while not recognising it.

Your Chapter 5 already says this very clearly: Brīvbode’s circulation depends on unpaid volunteers and participants absorbing tasks that formal retail or waste systems would otherwise perform ( #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. ). You also show that this work is unevenly distributed, ethically motivated, and largely gendered ( #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. , #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. ).

So I’d say: Shove helps you see that practices require linking work; consumption work helps you name that linking work as labour.

4. “Labour of practice” could be your conceptual hinge

You could define it like this:

By the labour of practice, I refer to the work required to keep the elements of a practice linked: sorting materials, maintaining meanings, transmitting competences, repairing breakdowns, managing boundaries, and recruiting or retaining participants. In Brīvbode, this labour becomes visible because circulation is not stabilised through price, formal employment, or institutionalised retail systems. Instead, the practice is held together through volunteer judgement, participant restraint, gendered household work, and care.

That gives you a bridge between:

• Shove: practices require repeated integration of elements ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. );

• Consumption work: consumption depends on socially necessary, often unpaid labour;

• Care/gender: this labour is not neutrally distributed;

• Your ethnography: Brīvbode makes the labour visible.

5. The key sentence for the thesis

Maybe something like:

Shove et al.’s account of practices as ongoing accomplishments foregrounds the repeated linking of materials, meanings and competences, but it leaves relatively open the question of who performs this linking and under what conditions. Bringing this together with consumption work allows Brīvbode to be analysed not only as a practice of circulation, but as a site where the labour of practice becomes visible: the sorting, evaluating, restraining, curating, routing and relational repair through which circulation is made possible.

This is a very good angle. It lets you say: practice theory does not ignore work, but it often abstracts it into reproduction. Your thesis re-materialises it as labour.

Shove writes about “linking” as the basic mechanism by which practices exist, persist, change, and disappear. It is one of the most useful pieces for your argument, because Brīvbode lets you show linking as actual work rather than only as an abstract process.

1. Practices are made of linked elements

In The Dynamics of Social Practice, Shove, Pantzar and Watson simplify practice into three elements: materials, competences, and meanings. A practice exists when these are connected in performance. They write that practices are defined by “interdependent relations between materials, competences and meanings” and that practices exist when elements are “integrated” ( #UG44UW The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #UG44UW In what follows we work with the idea that practices are defined by interdependent relations between materials, competences and meanings. This deliberately streamlined approach has many advantages, but like all other such accounts it supposes that elements, however they might be defined, are somehow ‘out there’ in the world, waiting to be linked together. If we go along with the idea that practices exist when elements are integrated, we need to recognize two related possibilities: one is that relevant elements exist but without being linked (proto-practice); the second is that practices disintegrate when links are no longer sustained. Figure 2.1 illustrates these three scenarios. ).

So the basic idea is:

no linking = no practice
linked elements = practice
links no longer sustained = ex-practice

They even present the sequence as proto-practices, practices, and ex-practices: elements may exist but not yet be linked; elements may be actively linked; or previous links may no longer be made ( #R7BSXU The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #R7BSXU The figure consists of three separate diagrams, each enclosed in a vertical rectangular frame, illustrating different stages of practice formation. Each diagram features three circular nodes: a dark grey circle labeled 'Meaning' at the bottom left, a light grey circle labeled 'Material' at the bottom right, and a medium grey circle labeled 'Competence' positioned above them. In the first diagram, titled 'Proto-practices Links not yet made', the nodes are not connected by lines. In the second diagram, titled 'Practices Links being made', the nodes are connected by solid black lines forming a triangle. In the third diagram, titled 'Ex-practices Links no longer being made', the nodes are connected by dashed grey lines forming a triangle. Figure 2.1: Three diagrams illustrating the stages of practice formation: Proto-practices, Practices, and Ex-practices. , #RQSUNG The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #RQSUNG Figure 2.1 Proto-practices, practices and ex-practices ).

For Brīvbode, this is useful because the elements are all present in a compressed way:

• materials: bags, clothes, shelves, sorting tables, storage, textile containers;

• competences: sorting, judging, restraining, curating, knowing what to bring/take;

• meanings: free, exchange, care, dignity, waste, usefulness, sustainability.

The point is not simply that Brīvbode “has” these elements. It is that the practice only works when they are repeatedly linked.

2. Linking is repeated, not once-and-for-all

This is the crucial passage. Shove et al. say their model does not fully explain “the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together,” nor “who is involved” or “how access to relevant elements is distributed.” But it does underline that connections have to be renewed “time and again.” Stability is therefore not an endpoint but an “ongoing accomplishment” ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ).

That is exactly where your “labour of practice” enters.

In Brīvbode, circulation does not happen because things magically become reusable. The links have to be continuously remade:

• donor says “only the best,” volunteer opens bag and decides otherwise;

• item is transferred from donor to swapshop ownership;

• volunteer sorts it into a category;

• someone decides whether it is clean enough / usable enough / appropriate enough;

• shelves are arranged so things appear worth taking;

• taker learns that “free” does not mean grab everything;

• leftover textiles are routed elsewhere.

So the practice is not just “circulation”; it is the repeated accomplishment of circulation.

3. Linking is also how change happens

Shove et al. describe practice change through the “making and breaking of links” between elements. They say that in the moment of doing, practitioners reproduce both the practice and its elements; the elements are linked “in and through integrative moments of practice-as-performance” ( #MGEWWY The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MAKING AND BREAKING LINKS #W6VMCW #MGEWWY This 'elemental' approach is unusual in provisionally de-centring the human actor (as integrator) but it is, at the same time, consistent with the argument that in the moment of doing, practitioners (those who do) simultaneously reproduce the practices in which they are engaged and the elements of which these practices are made. In Reckwitz's terms, the elements of a practice – those of which the 'block' is made – are linked in and through integrative moments of practice-as-performance (Reckwitz, 2002). By paying attention to the trajectories of elements, and to the making and breaking of links between them, it is, we suggest, possible to describe and analyse change and stability without prioritizing either agency or structure. In this chapter we explore the possibility and value of such an approach with reference to the history of car-driving. As might be expected, this generates as many questions as it resolves: for instance, do elements exist in several practices at once? Do the elements of which a practice is composed circulate and travel in ways that practices-as-entities do not? How do moments of localized integration relate to spatially distributed processes of diffusion and disappearance? Since these are themes developed in the rest of the book, this chapter has the dual function of setting the scene for further discussion and of introducing the first planks of what will become a more elaborate conceptual framework. Before taking another step in any such direction, we need to say more about what the elements of practice might be and about how we define them. ). Later, they state that practices evolve as ingredients change and that such change is partly a consequence of the “integrative work involved” ( #AUUFW7 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #AUUFW7 To reiterate, our opening propositions are that practices like driving a car depend on specific combinations of materials, meanings and competence; that driving evolves as these ingredients change; and that such changes are in part a consequence of the integrative work involved. In the paragraphs that follow we comment on different aspects of this process, showing how elements have been linked and how ties have been made and broken along the way. We do so not with the aim of providing a detailed or coherent history of driving but in order to show what an element-based approach has to offer. ).

This gives you a nice phrase:

Brīvbode makes visible the “integrative work” of circular practice.

In your material, that integrative work is very concrete: sorting tables, moral hesitation, trained eyes, awkward refusals, storage improvisation, relational care. Shove gives the conceptual skeleton; your ethnography puts socks on it. Probably mismatched second-hand socks, but still.

4. Links can cross between practices

Shove et al. are not only interested in links inside one practice. They also ask whether elements “bridge between different practices” ( #6F446F The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #6F446F Do shared elements bridge between different practices, and if so with what consequences for the different pursuits of which they are a part? In relation to driving, Volti claims that the novelty, speed and unreliability of the first cars were important in framing driving as a dashing and exciting thing to do. As such driving acquired characteristics already 'intertwined with masculine culture' (Volti, 1996: 667). Kline and Pinch make a similar argument, suggesting that ). They argue that meanings, competences, and materials can circulate between practices, forming a kind of “connective tissue” that holds social arrangements together or pulls them apart ( #AY4T33 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #AY4T33 This hints at a much more elaborate picture in which diverse elements circulate within and between many different practices, constituting a form of connective tissue that holds complex social arrangements in place, and potentially pulls them apart. To the extent that this is so, the attaching and detaching of meaning and signification sends ripples ). They explicitly note that competence can circulate as skills transfer, and material elements can figure in more than one practice at a time ( #ERE3YQ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #ERE3YQ across the cultural landscape as a whole. Something similar happens when forms of competence circulate (as when skills transfer) and when material elements figure in more than one practice at a time. ).

This is very relevant for Brīvbode because it is not a sealed practice. It recruits elements from adjacent practices:

• from household cleaning/decluttering: sorting, deciding what must leave;

• from shopping: browsing, trying on, display aesthetics;

• from charity: giving, deservingness, need;

• from retail: curation, quality control, shelf arrangement;

• from waste management: overflow, textile containers, “not the bin”;

• from care: knowing who needs what, routing things to others.

So Brīvbode is not only one practice. It is a linking site between practices.

5. Materials, competences, and meanings circulate differently

Shove et al. also distinguish how elements travel. Materials literally move; competences and meanings circulate through more complicated processes of learning, decoding, association, and reclassification ( #Z7DKTH The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / Packing and unpacking #YLZQUZ #Z7DKTH First, materials are the only elements that literally move in the sense of being physically transported. While competences and images appear to circulate, critical processes have to do with localized forms of de- and re-linking, a feature about which we have more to say below. Second, materials have characteristics (weight, fragility etc.) that affect, but which are only sometimes transformed by, processes of transportation. By contrast, meanings and competences are routinely modified as their reach and range extends or contracts. Third, with materials as with competences and meanings, the rate and extent of actual and potential circulation depends on the existence or otherwise of appropriate infrastructures, for instance, of transportation or mediation. Fourth, processes of codification ). This matters because Brīvbode makes all three types of circulation visible at once.

• Materials literally arrive in bags and leave with takers.

• Competences travel through participation: volunteers learn to sort; visitors learn restraint; children learn what is good enough to donate.

• Meanings are reclassified: “free” becomes exchange, “waste” becomes potential, “taking” becomes restraint, “giving” becomes care.

Shove et al. say elements need to be “packed and unpacked”; on arrival, they must be decoded and appropriated locally ( #RXBW6A The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / Packing and unpacking #YLZQUZ #RXBW6A Looking back at the processes involved we can identify similarities as well as differences in how elements travel. One striking feature is that movements of all forms routinely involve what we might think of as moments of packing and unpacking. This is quite literally the case for materials, and is metaphorically so for elements of meaning and competence. Codification and abstraction, both forms of preparation, are often required. On arrival, the capacity to unpack – that is, to appropriate and decode – is correspondingly crucial and equally transformative. This is important in that processes of packing and unpacking are both defined and configured by local relations, histories and conditions. When in transit, and in so far as such a concept makes sense, elements might be momentarily free of such bonds, but there is no such independent life for elements that are embedded in practice. ). Brīvbode is almost literally a packing/unpacking machine. Bags come in packed with household meanings; volunteers unpack them materially and morally.

6. Shove’s own limit: linking is undertheorised as labour

This is where you can make a contribution without overstating it. Shove et al. do talk about linking, integration, accomplishment, and reproduction. But they also admit that the model says little about:

• who does the linking;

• how access to elements is distributed;

• how integration transforms meanings/materials/competences ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ).

That gives you permission to say:

Practice theory tells us that links must be repeatedly made; consumption work and care theory help explain who makes them, under what conditions, and with what unequal burdens.

So your angle is not “Shove forgot labour completely.” More precise:

Shove theorises practice maintenance as repeated linking; this thesis treats that linking as labour.

7. Possible paragraph for thesis

You could write:

Shove, Pantzar and Watson conceptualise practices as configurations of linked materials, meanings and competences. Practices emerge when these elements are integrated, persist when links are repeatedly renewed, and disappear when they are no longer sustained. This makes linking central to practice theory: stability is not a settled state but an ongoing accomplishment ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ). Yet the authors also note that this elemental model says relatively little about who performs the linking, how access to elements is distributed, or how integration itself transforms the elements involved ( #8PTVJJ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / MATERIAL, COMPETENCE AND MEANING #Z73JHW #8PTVJJ This basic scheme reveals little about the nature of the linking entailed in keeping a practice together, it tells us nothing about who is involved, how access to relevant elements is distributed or how instances of integration themselves transform and generate new competences, meanings and materialities. However, it does underline the centrality of linkage: if specific configurations are to remain effective, connections between defining elements have to be renewed time and again. This suggests that stability and routinization are not end points of a linear process of normalization. Rather, they should be understood as ongoing accomplishments in which similar elements are repeatedly linked together in similar ways. ). Brīvbode makes these questions empirically visible. The swapshop is not only a site where things circulate, but a site where the linking work of circulation is performed: volunteers sort and evaluate materials, participants learn and display competences of restraint and divestment, and meanings of waste, exchange, care and need are negotiated in practice. Reading this through consumption work allows the repeated linking described by practice theory to be understood as labour — gendered, relational, morally charged, and unevenly distributed.

That is a strong conceptual bridge. It lets you use Shove faithfully while also showing why your care/consumption work chapter is not an add-on, but a necessary extension.

Yes — exactly. That is probably the sharper version of the whole idea:

Brīvbode is not simply a container for second-hand objects, and not even only “a practice” of freecycling. It is a site where multiple practices meet, interfere, borrow from one another, and redistribute their elements.

That lets you avoid flattening it into “the practice of freecycling,” while still staying inside practice theory.

What Brīvbode is, practice-theoretically

It is a site of inter-practice traffic.

Things arrive from household ordering, decluttering, care, moving house, parenting, mourning, shopping mistakes, wardrobe management, craft projects, frugality, ethical consumption. Once inside Brīvbode, they are not merely “exchanged.” They are reclassified and made available for other practices: dressing, gifting, reselling, crafting, furnishing, caring for relatives, experimenting with style, helping neighbours, managing poverty, performing sufficiency.

So it is less:

Brīvbode = a practice

and more:

Brīvbode = a situated infrastructure where practices intersect and where materials, meanings and competences are re-linked.

Shove et al. give you language for this. They ask whether elements can bridge between practices and argue that meanings, competences and materials can circulate between practices as “connective tissue” ( #AY4T33 The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #AY4T33 This hints at a much more elaborate picture in which diverse elements circulate within and between many different practices, constituting a form of connective tissue that holds complex social arrangements in place, and potentially pulls them apart. To the extent that this is so, the attaching and detaching of meaning and signification sends ripples ). They also say material elements can figure in more than one practice at a time and competences can circulate as skills transfer ( #ERE3YQ The Dynamics of Social Practice #5AXAEJ / ELEMENTS BETWEEN PRACTICES #EBZCFW #ERE3YQ across the cultural landscape as a whole. Something similar happens when forms of competence circulate (as when skills transfer) and when material elements figure in more than one practice at a time. ). That is basically Brīvbode in ethnographic form.

“Clearinghouse” is useful — but only as a contrast

You can say: superficially, Brīvbode looks like a clearinghouse for surplus goods. But that would treat the objects as if they simply pass through a neutral channel.

Your evidence shows the opposite. The “channel” changes the things:

• ownership changes when an item is divested to Brīvbode ( #X8RDCG Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #X8RDCG After an item is divested to Brīvbode, it does not belong to the donor anymore, it belongs to the swapshop. This transfer of ownership is actively managed: takers are discouraged from taking things from the sorting table before they are processed, as their enthusiasm has caused discomfort to other visitors in the past. );

• sorting is done on the spot and in the open ( #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. );

• presentation and display actively shape meanings of value ( #KMD7AJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #KMD7AJ The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic – with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance. );

• items are judged through shifting norms of acceptability ( #F9CK8T Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #F9CK8T While there are explicit written rules governing exchange in Brīvbode, those are framed in general relational terms – “bring things that would bring joy to someone; bring things you would give to a friend” – and there are no formal categories of exclusion. Norms regarding acceptability are defined and enacted situationally and relationally, which can be both a strength and a source of friction about where the boundaries lie. , #BZ6FJC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #BZ6FJC Being in Brīvbode is characterized by constant sorting decisions, trying to maintain an acceptable level of presentation and quality of items. The work of maintaining quality and the work of maintaining relationships sometimes pull in different directions, and the balance between lenience and care is negotiated in every shift. At times I heard people felt uneasy about Viesturs openly commenting on things they had brought. );

• “free” has to be morally learned as exchange or restraint ( #CUBS5Q Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #CUBS5Q "Man kaut kā mazāka vēlme ņemt visu, ko es redzu, par spīti tam, ka tas it kā ir tas 'brīv'... es kaut kā vairāk cienu to visu, kas tur ir izlikts." [I somehow feel less desire to take everything I see, despite the fact that it's all "free" – I somehow have more respect for everything that's laid out there.] Madara explicitly contrasts her response to freeness with others' – she imagines the hoarder who grabs because it's free, and positions herself as someone for whom freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition. This is the moral economy of freeshopping from the perspective of someone still in the early stages of learning the practice's norms. "Kādam varbūt tas 'brīv' rada vēlmi, ka viss ir bez maksas, tagad ņemam, ņemam, ņemam. Man tas nospēlē kaut kā tieši otrādāk." [For some, maybe "free" creates the urge that everything is free, so now we take, take, take. For me it works the opposite way.] "Es to uztveru kā apmaiņu. To vārdu 'brīvu' kaut kā izslēdzu... Sākumā tas tā bišķiņ mulsināja, ka esmu kā apzagusies." [I see it as exchange. I somehow switch off the word "free"… At first it was a bit confusing, as if I had stolen something.] This is competency acquisition: Madara is learning how to understand and inhabit the value regime of Brīvbode, and she narrates the process explicitly. );

• volunteers absorb valuation work that price would otherwise partly do ( #U7QJHT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #U7QJHT Valuation work is the ongoing effort of assessing what is worth taking and bringing, and what should be left or discarded. Tölg (2025) describes valuation as comprising both evaluation — judging whether something is valuable — and valorising — the process of making it so — and shows that consumers rely on a range of valuation devices such as garment tags, retail staff knowledge, and resale platforms to perform this work. In retail, the price signal is the most legible such device, quietly slowing acquisition and supplying a shorthand for worth. When it is removed, that work does not disappear; it shifts onto participants and volunteers, drawing on moral and relational registers instead. As Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025) note, those committed to reuse develop the ability to perceive value where others do not, and this evaluative skill is a key competence of circulation work. , #A2APRY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #A2APRY Across donating, curating, taking, and divesting, valuation in Brīvbode is at once consumption work — the labour of sorting, assessing, and redistributing — and care work, in the form of attention to what specific things will mean for specific people. Without the shorthand of price, both come into the open. ).

So Brīvbode does not merely move commodities along. It decommodifies, revalues, filters, delays, redirects, moralises, and sometimes refuses them.

A nice sentence:

Brīvbode is not a clearinghouse for commodities but a re-linking site for practice elements: objects pass through it, but so do standards, skills, obligations, affects and moral classifications.

It is messy because practices do not arrive neatly separated

This is where your ethnography is strongest. Practice theory sometimes diagrams things very neatly: materials here, meanings there, competences there. But Brīvbode shows the diagram getting covered in donated plushies.

For example:

• Retail practice enters through shelves, hangers, colour arrangement, display, and the idea that emptier shelves make objects appear more valuable ( #KMD7AJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #KMD7AJ The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic – with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance. ).

• Charity practice enters through need, deservingness and discomfort around “free,” even as Brīvbode tries not to be charity ( #M3VCHH Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion: Holding Together Incompatible Orientations #A3X9XX #M3VCHH Freecycling in Brīvbode is sustained by a plurality of meanings that are compatible enough to coexist within the same space. Givers come to resolve the moral weight of unwanted things, the site’s permanence and visibility offer a trusted route for it. Takers come for dignity, experimentation, craft materials, social contact or simple convenience. The moral economy of exchange holds these heterogenous orientations together, as it is actively maintained against the pressure of resellers, heavy takers and people looking for charity, yet flexible enough to accommodate them when the alternative is overflow. ).

• Waste management enters through overflow, textile containers and the problem that there is no “away” ( #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. , #SFAYYS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #SFAYYS The things are made visible by being put in the shop. It makes the material overflow more visible – there is no “away” to throw your things. ).

• Household care enters through women sorting for relatives, neighbours and children ( #PNGSGT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #PNGSGT Miller's (1998) research on shopping demonstrates that consumption is often organised around care for others rather than individual satisfaction, and that women frequently function as moral agents in household consumption as they are the ones acquiring, managing, and disposing of goods in relation to the needs of children, partners, and wider social networks. Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) find the same gendered pattern in recycling: women typically take responsibility for sorting while men handle transport. The fieldwork conducted for this thesis reflects this consistently. Anna states it directly: "It's on me. I'm the one who supplies everyone with clothes and shoes." Silvija organises all divestment decisions in her household and says her husband "would just throw it in the bin." Men's role, where it appears, is typically transport and carrying the bags that women have sorted, selected, and prepared. , #3BY9GH Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #3BY9GH The reach of Brīvbode extends considerably beyond those who physically visit it. Several of the most embedded participants perform substantial divestment work not only for themselves but for neighbours, colleagues, and family members, functioning as logistics nodes through which others' surplus flows to the freeshop. Marija's neighbours give her things to take to Brīvbode as she is a frequent visitor and the role has naturalised into her social identity in the building. Māra coordinates pickups from at least five neighbours, takes requests for specific items, and is the only one of her immediate network who actually visits – the rest route their divestment through her. Anna's work colleagues prepare parcels for her to deliver: "They use me. They prepare the bags I need to bring to Brīvbode. And then they say: 'Can you look for something for my teenage daughter?'" What looks like consumption work performed on behalf of others is, in Tölg and Fuentes’s (2025) terms, also care for neighbours and for the imagined future users of the things — the logistical labour and the relational orientation are inseparable. , #VCEUP7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care #L38KUE #VCEUP7 Consumption work is both currently gendered and being transmitted along gendered lines. Kristīne takes her daughters to Brīvbode and uses the visits as occasions for explicit moral education: discussing why they are giving things away, what makes a good divestment decision, what is too worn to donate. She sometimes goes without them to avoid the tears when they want things back; other times the difficulty is the point. "It's also an opportunity to talk about things." The children are learning material quality, the ethics of giving, and the difference between good enough to donate and good enough only to discard — competencies that are simultaneously consumption-work skills and the dispositions of care that Bankovska (2020) shows being transmitted across generations in the everyday work of provisioning. ).

• Market valuation enters negatively through the absence of price, which makes other valuation devices necessary ( #U7QJHT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #U7QJHT Valuation work is the ongoing effort of assessing what is worth taking and bringing, and what should be left or discarded. Tölg (2025) describes valuation as comprising both evaluation — judging whether something is valuable — and valorising — the process of making it so — and shows that consumers rely on a range of valuation devices such as garment tags, retail staff knowledge, and resale platforms to perform this work. In retail, the price signal is the most legible such device, quietly slowing acquisition and supplying a shorthand for worth. When it is removed, that work does not disappear; it shifts onto participants and volunteers, drawing on moral and relational registers instead. As Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025) note, those committed to reuse develop the ability to perceive value where others do not, and this evaluative skill is a key competence of circulation work. ).

• Sufficiency/minimalism/ethical consumption enters through restraint, not-taking, and knowing what one already has ( #EXTCGS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #EXTCGS On the acquisition side, competence also means knowing when to come and how to navigate the space. Agate has mapped the visitor typology and times her arrivals strategically; Marta describes starting in the first room and returning when something new has arrived. Equally important is the negative competency of not taking — knowing what one needs and what one already has. Zane keeps a list on her phone of items she is actively looking for, and her stylist consultations work as an investment in self-knowledge that guards against impulsive acquisition. Agate explicitly asks herself while browsing whether a given item could be combined with what she already owns. This is cognitive work — holding a mental model of one's wardrobe and household — and without it, acquisition becomes impulsive and the divestment work follows. The competencies of acquisition and divestment are therefore inseparable: each unconsidered acquisition becomes future divestment labour. ).

So the site is not coherent because everyone shares one meaning. It is coherent enough because incompatible meanings are made to coexist. Your Chapter 4 conclusion already says this: Brīvbode is sustained by a plurality of meanings “compatible enough to coexist” ( #M3VCHH Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion: Holding Together Incompatible Orientations #A3X9XX #M3VCHH Freecycling in Brīvbode is sustained by a plurality of meanings that are compatible enough to coexist within the same space. Givers come to resolve the moral weight of unwanted things, the site’s permanence and visibility offer a trusted route for it. Takers come for dignity, experimentation, craft materials, social contact or simple convenience. The moral economy of exchange holds these heterogenous orientations together, as it is actively maintained against the pressure of resellers, heavy takers and people looking for charity, yet flexible enough to accommodate them when the alternative is overflow. ).

That phrase is gold.

Maybe “node” is better than “practice”

I would use “practice” carefully. You can still say “freecycling at Brīvbode is analysed as a practice,” but the richer claim is that Brīvbode is a node in a nexus/bundle/complex of practices.

Possible terms:

• inter-practice node

• site of relinking

• circulation infrastructure

• moral-material junction

• contact zone of practices

• practice interface

• redistribution site for practice elements

“Contact zone of practices” is nice but slightly dramatic. “Practice interface” is clean. “Moral-material junction” sounds thesis-y in a good way. “Site of relinking” is probably the most directly Shove-compatible.

The argument could become

Brīvbode matters not because it is a pure alternative to market exchange, but because it is impure. It gathers elements from market, household, charity, waste-management and care practices, and recombines them under conditions of non-monetary exchange. This makes it a privileged site for observing how practices interact: materials move from one practice into another, competences are transferred and transformed, and meanings are negotiated rather than stabilised by price.

This also helps with the circular economy critique. Circular economy often wants clean loops. Brīvbode gives you messy loops with people in them.

Better version of your earlier “practice with lid off”

Maybe:

Brīvbode is a practice with the lid off only if “practice” is understood not as a bounded unit but as a messy site of inter-practice traffic. What becomes visible there is not one stable practice of freecycling, but the work through which elements from household management, retail, charity, waste disposal, care and ethical consumption are detached, tested, recombined and sent elsewhere.

That is strong. It solves your concern that calling it “a practice” might be too neat.

A polished paragraph

Brīvbode is therefore not best understood as a clearinghouse for second-hand commodities. Nor is it simply a single bounded practice. It is a semi-public site where several practices intersect and exchange elements. Household divestment brings in materials shaped by domestic routines, attachment and storage pressures; retail contributes display techniques and expectations of quality; charity introduces questions of need and deservingness; waste management appears in the problem of overflow; care travels through the gendered work of sorting, routing and remembering others’ needs. In this sense, Brīvbode functions as a re-linking site: materials, meanings and competences are detached from one practice configuration and made available for others. Its messiness is therefore analytically important. It shows not a clean circular flow, but the practical and moral work through which circulation is made possible.

This is likely a thesis-level insight, not just a nice aside.

Yes — comparing Brīvbode to other “junction” sites could make this argument really pop. The move is to say: Brīvbode belongs to a family of sites where objects are reclassified and re-routed, but it has a distinctive configuration of openness, non-price, permanence, and care labour.

Here are some useful comparators.

1. Thrift store / charity shop: the closest cousin

A thrift store is very similar to Brīvbode in that it receives divested household things and turns them into available goods again. Larsen describes thrift stores as receivers of divested household objects and sites for thrifty consumption, but his key move is to study the thrift store as a place of work, where thrift shapes marketing, pricing, sorting and organisational practice (Larsen, #XQQB38 Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store #HJXUZN / Abstract #W76MBZ #XQQB38 Thrift, in its simplest definition, is the practice of using resources in a considered way. The concept has long been employed as a moral trope to condemn or promote a variety of human practices. In the literature, thrift is addressed as it is played out in consumption in and around the household as a way of preserving and saving resources. Thrift stores form part of a thrift economy and, as the receiver of divested objects from the household and a site for thrifty consumption practices, they present aspects of thrift in a variety of ways. In this article, I look at thrift as it relates to work and organizational practices in an American thrift store. Although often linked to work ethics, thrift has mainly been proposed as a moral concept guiding individual and not organizational practices. In order to explore the value of thrift in the thrift store, I present parts of my ethnographic research on second-hand markets. Examining work practices as “thrifty” shows how economic prudence is paired with material frugality and community concern. This, I argue, has significant effect on the flow of consumer goods, as resources flow through the thrift store and appear to be spent, not saved. , #YWFYNY Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store #HJXUZN / Introduction #R7W957 #YWFYNY In this article, I explore the concept of thrift in relation to the thrift store, not as a space for consumption, but as a place of work. As the name indicates, a thrift store is a place where thrifty consumption takes place, and thrift and thrift stores have earlier been addressed in literature on shopping and consumption (Miller 1998; Bardhi and Arnould 2005; Horne and Maddrell 2002). Here, however, I will examine thrift as a principle and value in relation to running the thrift store. In other words, my discussion focuses on how thrift affects the business, the marketing of second-hand objects, the flow of goods, and the everyday work practices. In order to explore the value of thrift in the thrift store, I turn to my ethnographic research on second-hand markets. Examining work practices as thrifty demonstrates how economic prudence is paired with material frugality and concern for the community. ).

This is very close to your “labour of practice” point. The thrift store is not a passive channel: workers sort, value, price, display and decide what can circulate. Larsen says the ambition is often to move things out quickly rather than maximise value per item, and that staff invest time in sorting and using donations even when it may not be economically rational ( #WG92ZK Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store #HJXUZN / The Practice of Thrifty Selling #WGJ6B7 #WG92ZK In the store, thrift constitutes a business practice that informs marketing, pricing, and selling second-hand objects, and, as such, it unfolds differently than in consumption and the household. This becomes even clearer when re-examining the activities that have been attributed to thrift in the literature: being frugal, preserving, saving, investing, and keeping control over resources. In the thrift store, prices are set to attract patrons as well as wholesale buyers. This means that the prices are deliberately lower than the estimated economic value of the product in the market. When selling, the overarching ambition in the thrift store is to get rid of as many things as possible, as quickly as possible. It is an expression of thrift as the considered use of resources, but frugality, preserving, and saving do not seem to be the aim of thrift in this context. Investing as the purpose of being thrifty, however, seems similar. The way in which thrift is carried out in the thrift store is a form of investing in the future for the community, but it is done by letting resources flow out of the organization instead of keeping them. Thus, investing also has an immediate expression: the investment of time or the investment, even, of thrift. Investing time in sorting and using every donation is in direct opposition to a pure economic rationality. The investment of time allows the organization to fulfil their purpose of transforming donations into marketable goods, but arguably by compromising their purpose of raising money for charity. The employees could be spending their time selling more products instead of investing time in thrift practices. It seems, however, that the investment of thrift is valuable to the organization. ). That resonates strongly with Brīvbode’s fast-flow logic and open sorting ( #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. ).

Difference: thrift stores usually stabilise value through price. Brīvbode removes price, so valuation does not disappear; it becomes moral, relational and practical labour ( #U7QJHT Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #U7QJHT Valuation work is the ongoing effort of assessing what is worth taking and bringing, and what should be left or discarded. Tölg (2025) describes valuation as comprising both evaluation — judging whether something is valuable — and valorising — the process of making it so — and shows that consumers rely on a range of valuation devices such as garment tags, retail staff knowledge, and resale platforms to perform this work. In retail, the price signal is the most legible such device, quietly slowing acquisition and supplying a shorthand for worth. When it is removed, that work does not disappear; it shifts onto participants and volunteers, drawing on moral and relational registers instead. As Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025) note, those committed to reuse develop the ability to perceive value where others do not, and this evaluative skill is a key competence of circulation work. , #A2APRY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #A2APRY Across donating, curating, taking, and divesting, valuation in Brīvbode is at once consumption work — the labour of sorting, assessing, and redistributing — and care work, in the form of attention to what specific things will mean for specific people. Without the shorthand of price, both come into the open. ). This is your key contrast.

Thrift store: re-commodifies discards.
Brīvbode: decommodifies/revalues discards without price.

2. Online Freecycle: same non-monetary circulation, different visibility

Sally Eden’s Freecycle article is a great comparator because she explicitly says Freecycling blurs binaries: consumption/production, digital/material, mainstream/alternative ( #8SBVHD Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle #59QUM6 / Abstract #F75LC8 #8SBVHD This article explores the digital exchange and moral ordering of sustainable and ethical consumption in online Freecycle groups. Through interactive exchanges in digital (online posts) and material (consumer items) modes, Freecycling blurs three common binaries in analyses of consumption: (1) consumption/production, (2) digital/material and (3) mainstream/alternative. Drawing on Ritzer's notion of 'implosions' as well as practice theory, I show that Freecycling practices reimagine and reproduce both products and consumers, practising prosumption through mixed digital and material practices in a performative economy, and how mainstream and alternative ways of consuming are entangled in pursuit of more sustainable, ethical consumption. This challenges us to think beyond these traditional binaries and to conceptualise a more blurred, less analytically clean and more circular approach to studying consumption. ). She also argues Freecycling is not simply “gift economy”; objects can circulate like quasi-commodities, in relatively impersonal and anonymous networks ( #8A6B4Q Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle #59QUM6 / Discussion #R7UR8J #8A6B4Q But in reality, Freecycling practices are far more blurred and 'the gift economy' model (perhaps surprisingly) does not fit well. First, Freecycling does not build social relationships on reciprocity – goods donated via Freecycle are alienable and transferable without reciprocity. Like peer-to-peer sharing of music online, it is more like mainstream markets than is often assumed in the alternative economies literature, because 'these communities are relatively impersonal and anonymous [and] these objects circulate more like quasi-commodities than like gifts' (Leyshon, 2003: 554). ).

This helps position Brīvbode: it shares Freecycle’s non-monetary logic, but unlike online Freecycle it puts bodies, objects, sorting, hesitation and overflow in the same room. Eden notes that Freecycle “Wanted” posts actively create hand-me-downs rather than passively receiving them ( #73BLCE Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle #59QUM6 / Implosion 3: Mainstream/alternative and the sustainability and ethics of divestment #R4FPWC #73BLCE Despite seeming unattractive, this item was reported online as 'Taken' later the same day. Thus, Freecycling facilitates not merely the donation of goods but also the demand for goods – the explicit 'wish lists' seen online in many review sites like Amazon are in Freecycle often materialised through donation. And this includes 'high-tech' items like printers as well as 'low-tech' items like wooden chairs – there is no clear distinction here. 'Hand-me-downs' are thus actively created, rather than passively received, becoming in this sense more like new goods than old stuff. Perhaps more surprising to those outside Freecycle is how often 'Wanted' posts ask for items that are broken or can be broken: ), and Brīvbode does something similar materially: it creates the conditions in which objects can become wanted.

Difference: Freecycle makes desire visible through posts; Brīvbode makes sorting, touching, judging, display and moral discomfort visible. Freecycle is a digital-material nexus; Brīvbode is a co-present moral-material nexus.

Online Freecycle: desire is textualised.
Brīvbode: value is performed in the room.

3. Garage sale: gift/commodity hybridity, but still priced

Herrmann’s garage sale article is useful because it shows that even apparently market-like exchange can contain gift elements. Garage sale goods can be both gifts and commodities, shifting between the two; pricing is flexible and social relations can affect value ( #FJBD6X Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale? #4UEQN8 / gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale? #QF9LBR #FJBD6X The U.S. garage sale incorporates elements of both gift and commodity exchange in a dynamic tension, one that complicates traditional characterizations of gift and commodity as oppositional and mutually exclusive. Despite its apparently marketlike mechanisms, much of garage sale exchange also partakes of the character of gift giving. The elasticity in pricing in this home-based exchange allows sellers to take social relations into account, so that objects that change hands become hybrid varieties of "inalienable commodities." [gift, commodity, informal exchange, garage sales, United States] , #CLGEQQ Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale? #4UEQN8 / conclusions #VH6RAE #CLGEQQ The phenomenon of garage sale goods has many levels and exhibits much complexity; it embodies rationalized exchange and expressive interpersonal ties. Giving money as a gift (Zelizer 1994) is similarly complex. Money is the medium of market exchange and yet, as a gift, it effects a tie of more intimate social relationship; thus, the boundaries of using money as a gift must be carefully constructed. In the same vein, the boundaries of each garage sale exchange must be carefully examined to determine the degree of gift giving involved. Garage sale goods may be either gifts or commodities, readily shifting between the two poles, or may embody some features of both categories at the same time. The tremendous flexibility in attaching prices to objects in the garage sale allows for great variability in the construction of commodity-like or giftlike exchange between transactors. This malleability is further complicated by the ability of shoppers to influence prices through bargaining and through the sharing of an array of personal information and sentiments with sellers, sometimes in the place of money. In each transaction, buyer and seller actively construct meanings about the exchange that are carried by the objects, rendering them at times hybrid varieties of "inalienable commodity." This form of trade consequently serves to counter the characterization of gift and commodity as mutually exclusive. In addressing exchange theory, Valeri finds it helpful to provide "some space for the mutual determination and modification of commodity and non-commodity forms in their concrete historical entanglements" (1994:20), which the garage sale example amply provides. ). She argues that buyers and sellers actively construct meanings about exchange, producing hybrid “inalienable commodities” ( #CLGEQQ Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale? #4UEQN8 / conclusions #VH6RAE #CLGEQQ The phenomenon of garage sale goods has many levels and exhibits much complexity; it embodies rationalized exchange and expressive interpersonal ties. Giving money as a gift (Zelizer 1994) is similarly complex. Money is the medium of market exchange and yet, as a gift, it effects a tie of more intimate social relationship; thus, the boundaries of using money as a gift must be carefully constructed. In the same vein, the boundaries of each garage sale exchange must be carefully examined to determine the degree of gift giving involved. Garage sale goods may be either gifts or commodities, readily shifting between the two poles, or may embody some features of both categories at the same time. The tremendous flexibility in attaching prices to objects in the garage sale allows for great variability in the construction of commodity-like or giftlike exchange between transactors. This malleability is further complicated by the ability of shoppers to influence prices through bargaining and through the sharing of an array of personal information and sentiments with sellers, sometimes in the place of money. In each transaction, buyer and seller actively construct meanings about the exchange that are carried by the objects, rendering them at times hybrid varieties of "inalienable commodity." This form of trade consequently serves to counter the characterization of gift and commodity as mutually exclusive. In addressing exchange theory, Valeri finds it helpful to provide "some space for the mutual determination and modification of commodity and non-commodity forms in their concrete historical entanglements" (1994:20), which the garage sale example amply provides. ).

This is very relevant to Brīvbode because Brīvbode also destabilises the gift/commodity binary. But it does so by removing price almost completely. The garage sale uses low and negotiable prices to mediate between gift and commodity; Brīvbode uses rules, restraint, care, and relational judgement.

Difference: garage sale happens at the threshold of the household and market; Brīvbode happens at the threshold of household, charity, waste, retail, activism and care.

Garage sale: commodity form softened by gift relations.
Brīvbode: gift/free form disciplined by exchange norms and care labour.

4. Repair café: another “practice with the lid off”

Repair cafés are a strong comparison because they also make competences visible. In repair cafés, broken objects, tools, experts, owners, repair skills, ecological meanings and community interaction gather in one place. One review describes repair cafés as providing tools, materials, expert assistance and “space,” functioning as a community service and as “autonomous loop operators” in circular economy terms ( #MTBRMD Critical Review of the role of Repair Cafes #K52UPR / Service Aspects #ALDVYT #MTBRMD repair services' [31] with 'professional assistance' [54], and workshops with experts [31]. In addition, repair cafés provide materials and tools [46], and a 'space', which together provide a valuable service to the community and the public [46,68]. In line with the service aspect, one article addressed repair cafés as a 'sharing platform' in line with, e.g., a Library of Things, Retroy and the Fixit clinic [46]. However, the article stresses that the service provided can, and should be, distinguished from other types of sharing platforms. Finally, repair cafés are addressed as 'third party service providers' and 'autonomous loop operators' in relation to CE [69] (p. 1263), particularly in relation to slowing and closing product and related material loops, as those require service operations, such as repair. However, due to the informal character of the relationship among actors in this laissez-faire architecture, a central coordinator fails to receive this feedback. This is noted as a 'lost opportunity' [69], as valuable knowledge is being lost. ).

Repair cafés are also sites where circularity depends on human skill and time, not just “closing loops.” Isenhour and Reno make the broader point beautifully: reuse and repair are not just economic efficiency but involve care, human labour and affective energy in redefining value ( #Y8TS2B On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #CUWPC9 / Conclusion #N5NAHT #Y8TS2B As we hope the contributions to this special issue make clear, reuse and repair are about much more than economic efficiency. The recent emergence of advocacy for reuse marks a significant improvement upon our shockingly wasteful linear production-consumption system and makes a lot of sense in the context of simultaneous economic and environmental crises of modernity. But, we ought not to forget that reuse is also fundamentally about care and the investment of human labor and affective energy in the redefinition of value, not just attached to objects but also to social relations. While these practices are old, contemporary circular economy logics so heavily trained on calculations of energy and materials efficiencies, risk missing this important element of value and, without more reflection, subordinate societal interests to the logic of the market, rather than the inverse. ).

Difference: repair cafés centre repair competence around brokenness. Brīvbode centres valuation/circulation competence around surplus. In repair cafés, the question is “can this be fixed?” In Brīvbode, the question is “can this still be wanted, by someone, somehow?”

Repair café: damaged object + repair competence + care.
Brīvbode: surplus object + valuation competence + care.

5. Household recycling: hidden consumption work made public

Wheeler and Glucksmann are useful because they show recycling as consumption work: cleaning, sorting, storing and transporting materials, often gendered and integrated into domestic routines. They find women typically take responsibility for sorting and men for distribution ( #KCKDVU Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Conclusion #BRWHQV #KCKDVU This chapter has offered useful insights into the difficulties that some consumers face when sorting their waste for recycling, with uncertainties about what can be recycled and how it ought to be distributed relating back to the wider system in which these decisions are shaped. Different household members can have quite different understandings and levels of competence when it comes to sorting their waste. Thus, we have identified some key practical barriers to recycling at home which may be of interest to those with responsibility for promoting recycling within society. Our research further shows that recycling consumption work tasks are differentiated by gender within the household, with women typically taking responsibility for sorting materials and men usually taking responsibility for their distribution to the kerbside/recycling centre. This finding challenges existing research which has claimed that women tend to carry the burden of sustainability policies within the household – although women are likely to spend more total time sorting and storing waste, with men's contribution related to the less regular task of distribution. , #GR39TD Untitled thesis #VWPB2S / Recycling consumption work and societal divisions of labour #3PUVKE #GR39TD Returning to each dimension of the SEFL framework; we have illustrated how consumers perform three distinct recycling tasks (dimension 1) – of supply, warehouse and distribution – which can have a knock-on effect for the processes of labour that precede/follow it. This technical division of recycling consumption work reveals a historically distinctive and specific division of labour which contrasts with arrangements in many countries, especially in the global south, where consumers do not sort their waste but rather this is done by waste pickers on vast waste dumps (Beecheno, 2013). Our research further shows that within the household, recycling consumption work tasks are differentiated by gender, with women typically taking responsibility for sorting materials and men usually taking responsibility for their distribution to the kerbside/recycling centre. This finding challenges existing research which has claimed that women carry the burden of sustainability policies within the household – although, women are likely to spend more total time sorting and storing waste, with men's contribution related to the less regular task of distribution. ). Recycling is often treated as a “conscious green act” rather than recognised as work ( #94G2W7 Untitled thesis #VWPB2S / Economies of consumer recycling #HTNRHE #94G2W7 To say that cleaning, sorting and transporting recyclable packaging involves work for consumers may seem obvious. However, as Oates and McDonald (2006: 421) point out, recycling has seldom been recognized as 'work' and instead tends to be portrayed as ' a conscious green act '. Studies of gendered divisions of household recycling have recognized recycling as an additional chore to be integrated into existing domestic routines and found that women tend to carry the day-to-day burden of this work. But recycling is rarely conceptualized as a distinctive form of consumer work, its performance interdependent with wider processes of labour within waste management. ).

This is a very direct bridge to Brīvbode. Household recycling is usually hidden in kitchens, balconies, cupboards and bins. Brīvbode externalises a related kind of work: sorting, storing, evaluating, routing. But instead of sorting materials into municipal categories, volunteers sort things into possible futures.

Difference: recycling simplifies objects into material categories; Brīvbode keeps objects socially thick. A shirt is not only textile; it is gendered, sized, stained/not stained, stylish/outdated, useful for work/costume/child/relative, possible gift, possible shame.

Recycling centre: separates material streams.
Brīvbode: negotiates object futures.

6. Clothing swap: structured exchange, event temporality

Clothing swaps are another obvious comparator. Tölg notes that circular clothing practices require interlinking materials, competences and meanings — clothes, venue, tokens, rules, selecting and preparing clothes, environmental meanings, community meanings and meanings attached to used clothes ( #BJDPW8 The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings #8EVNK8 / Sociological circular consumption research2 #PZ5SEK #BJDPW8 Firstly, sociological studies on circular consumption often draw on a practice theoretical approach to consumption (Shove et al., 2012; Warde, 2005) to study how different circular practices are enacted in everyday lives. As opposed to the behavioural approaches, they show that circular consumption does not simply rely on attitudes, motives or personality traits. Some of these practice theory-informed studies on circular consumption specifically map out what competences, materials and meanings (Shove et al., 2012) are necessary for the performance of the circular practices they investigate. For instance, Camacho-Otero et al. (2020) show how clothes-swapping practices are enabled by the interlinking of different materialities (e.g., the clothes, the venue, tokens), competences (e.g., event organising and establishing rules, selecting and preparing clothes to bring), as well as meanings (e.g., environmental benefits, community-building, but also meanings associated with used clothes). Furthermore, connected to the single-use plastic packaging challenge of the CE, Rabiu and Jaeger-Erben (2024) illustrate the difficulties involved with giving up plastic due to its centrality in mundane everyday doings. According to the authors, to give up plastic packaging, for instance, through package-free shopping, consumers need materials, such as reusable containers and unpackaged products, competencies in weighing and handling the produce, and lastly meanings such as eco-friendly values. ). This maps neatly onto Brīvbode.

But many clothing swaps are event-based and often more curated, sometimes using tokens or rules to maintain equivalence. Brīvbode is permanent, porous and uneven. Its exchange is not symmetrical; your note on terms already says “swapshop” overstates one-to-one exchange ( #8S9QR2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / A note on terms #MUKRGA #8S9QR2 However, the organizers have a complicated relationship with the term “freeshop”. As Brīvbode manager Rasa shared in an interview, the name already existed when she joined the initiative and they were trying to come up with alternative names in the beginning but did not manage to replace it. Their preferred term is “swapshop” which I also use in this thesis. “Swapshop”, as I discuss in Chapter 4, positions Brīvbode as a site of exchange rather than charity. However, as a descriptive term for “what actually happens there” I consider swapping not suitable enough, as it overstates the symmetry and implies an exchange with one to one logic, which is not the case in Brīvbode. In this thesis, I use the term “freecycling” to refer to the what is done in Brīvbode, as it emphasises the circularity aspect of the practice. While freecycling has its own specific origin, associated with the Freecycle Network, an online platform for giving things away locally, I use the term nonetheless because it captures the non-monetary circulation of goods without implying directness of swapping or the one-directionality of donation. ). That is very important.

Difference: clothing swap often tries to organise fairness; Brīvbode tolerates asymmetry.

Clothing swap: event of regulated exchange.
Brīvbode: ongoing infrastructure of asymmetrical circulation.

7. Textile container / waste infrastructure: the anti-site

Textile containers are also a comparator, but as a negative case. They move things out of homes, but they hide almost all the practice elements. There is no public negotiation of value, no visible sorting, no face-to-face care, no visible recipient. Brīvbode depends on these infrastructures for overflow ( #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. ), but it also differs from them by refusing the fantasy of “away”: the things become visible in the shop ( #SFAYYS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #SFAYYS The things are made visible by being put in the shop. It makes the material overflow more visible – there is no “away” to throw your things. ).

Difference: textile containers black-box circulation; Brīvbode opens it.

Textile container: moral relief through invisibility.
Brīvbode: moral relief through visible re-placement.

A useful comparative frame

You could make a small analytical typology:

The thesis-level claim

This comparison helps you say:

Brīvbode belongs to a wider ecology of reuse sites, including thrift stores, Freecycle groups, garage sales, clothing swaps, repair cafés and recycling systems. What distinguishes it is the particular way it gathers and recombines elements from several of these sites without fully becoming any one of them. Like thrift stores, it sorts and revalues household surplus; like Freecycle, it enables non-monetary circulation; like garage sales, it troubles the gift/commodity divide; like repair cafés, it makes competence and care visible; like recycling, it depends on household sorting and routing labour. Yet Brīvbode’s permanence, co-presence and absence of price make the interaction of these elements unusually observable. It is therefore best understood not as a clearinghouse for things, but as a messy inter-practice node where materials, meanings and competences are detached, tested, re-linked and sent onward.

That is strong enough to anchor a conclusion subsection.

Yes — and I think this is very important. The leaders are not interesting because they perfectly embody “the ideology” of Brīvbode. They are interesting because they keep the thing working while constantly compromising with reality.

I would not call it non-moral exactly. It is more like anti-purist morality, or pragmatic ethics, or situated moral maintenance. They clearly have values, but they do not apply them as rigid doctrine. They are not saying: “Brīvbode is morally pure, therefore X must happen.” They are saying: “Given this pile of stuff, this room, these people, these limits, what keeps things moving without betraying the point too much?”

That is gold.

The leaders as “pragmatic operators” rather than ideologues

Rasa and Viesturs seem to function as people who translate ideals into workable practice. They hold the moral frame, but they also constantly bend it because material flow is unforgiving.

For example, reselling is formally against Brīvbode’s rules. A more ideological analysis would stop there: resellers violate the moral economy. But Rasa’s response is much more interesting. She says that if the reseller finds the next user, then “the function is fulfilled”; better that someone makes a little money and the item finds its person than that a hoarder takes it and it ends up in a container. Then she jokes: “We support small businesses” ( #7FPBUS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #7FPBUS The imperative to keep things flowing to avoid overflow creates a certain tolerance in case of suspicion for such practices that formally fall outside Brīvbode’s rules. Reselling is not allowed, yet resellers are a suspected presence in Brīvbode. Volunteers mentioned situations when other visitors in Brīvbode have told them they have recognized their divested items at the Āgenskalns flea market the following weekend, which Rasa acknowledges as straightforwardly unpleasant. Yet because it is not always possible to prove, there is also a working accommodation, and Rasa’s position is one of pragmatic acceptance: “At the same time it seems – if he'll find the next user for the thing anyway, the function is fulfilled. Better they make a little money and the thing finds its person, than some hoarder takes it and the things end up in a container." She laughs: "Well, what choice do I have but to believe… We support small businesses." ). This is not moral approval, but practical accommodation.

Viesturs does something similar when he calls resellers/hoarders/heavy-takers “forest sanitarians” — not because they are morally good, but because they clear accumulation that would otherwise clog the space ( #ERMRTL Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #ERMRTL Viesturs frames this ecologically: "Well, I could see them now as forest sanitarians." Without moral approval, the resellers, the hoarders and heavy-takers are reframed as functional elements as they clear out the accumulation of materials that would otherwise clog the space. Viesturs response to this is tactical curatorial competency: if a person he suspects is present at the shop, he often doesn’t put new items out on the shelves until they leave. This is his practical judgement and competency to “read the room” enacted situationally. ). That is such a good phrase because it reframes “problem participants” as part of the ecology of the site.

So: they are not suspending morality; they are subordinating moral judgement to the practical problem of circulation.

This is different from participant moralism

Some participants seem to narrate Brīvbode through moral self-positioning: restraint, respect, not being greedy, not taking everything because it is free ( #CUBS5Q Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation #QP7HMF #CUBS5Q "Man kaut kā mazāka vēlme ņemt visu, ko es redzu, par spīti tam, ka tas it kā ir tas 'brīv'... es kaut kā vairāk cienu to visu, kas tur ir izlikts." [I somehow feel less desire to take everything I see, despite the fact that it's all "free" – I somehow have more respect for everything that's laid out there.] Madara explicitly contrasts her response to freeness with others' – she imagines the hoarder who grabs because it's free, and positions herself as someone for whom freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition. This is the moral economy of freeshopping from the perspective of someone still in the early stages of learning the practice's norms. "Kādam varbūt tas 'brīv' rada vēlmi, ka viss ir bez maksas, tagad ņemam, ņemam, ņemam. Man tas nospēlē kaut kā tieši otrādāk." [For some, maybe "free" creates the urge that everything is free, so now we take, take, take. For me it works the opposite way.] "Es to uztveru kā apmaiņu. To vārdu 'brīvu' kaut kā izslēdzu... Sākumā tas tā bišķiņ mulsināja, ka esmu kā apzagusies." [I see it as exchange. I somehow switch off the word "free"… At first it was a bit confusing, as if I had stolen something.] This is competency acquisition: Madara is learning how to understand and inhabit the value regime of Brīvbode, and she narrates the process explicitly. ). That is important — it shows how people learn the moral economy.

But the leaders have a different register. They are not only asking, “Is this right?” They are asking:

• Will this keep things moving?

• Will it prevent overflow?

• Will it maintain the atmosphere?

• Will it avoid humiliating donors?

• Will it preserve enough trust?

• Will it stop one person from draining the best things?

• Will it make people want to come back?

• Will it make the space workable next Thursday?

That is not less moral; it is operational morality.

The material flow forces pragmatism

The thing that makes this pragmatism necessary is overflow. Rasa’s line about feeling relief when clothes are dirty because then she can throw them out is incredibly revealing ( #2TPNCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #2TPNCM The physical experience of overflow is a constant of volunteering, and bags often arrive faster than they can be processed. Often my task during shifts was to sort and put out children’s items. The boxes were already full, with piles forming, when I asked Rasa: 'Don't you feel like the things are just pouring down on you?' 'Yes, that's why I no longer have any tolerance for things. I realise I feel relief that these clothes are dirty, because there simply isn't any more space." ). It shows the limit of moral attachment to reuse. In theory, everything should be saved. In practice, dirt becomes mercy. Academic sentence of the day: dirt is an infrastructural permission to discard.

This matters because it prevents the thesis from romanticising Brīvbode. The leaders know Brīvbode can become a dumping place. Rasa explicitly says: “Often we’re simply a place to dump it all and go buy new things” ( #9CFEH4 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home #2JEZWG #9CFEH4 Divestment is normalised and sought after. As Brīvbode manager Rasa observed: "Often we're simply a place to dump it all and go buy new things." In this view, Brīvbode appears as evidence of the structural conditions it aspires to address rather than a solution to them. There is tension present in Brīvbode between the swapshop as an alternative caring system and as a low-threshold overflow channel, and this tension does not resolve easily. ). That is a very clear, non-idealised diagnosis. Brīvbode is both alternative infrastructure and overflow valve.

So one possible argument:

The most experienced practitioners are the least ideologically innocent. Their commitment to Brīvbode is expressed not through purity, but through practical judgement about how much impurity the site can absorb while still functioning.

That is very strong.

Viesturs as tactical curator

Viesturs also seems to embody “reading the room” as a leadership practice. If someone suspected of taking too much is present, he may simply not put new things out until they leave ( #ERMRTL Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #ERMRTL Viesturs frames this ecologically: "Well, I could see them now as forest sanitarians." Without moral approval, the resellers, the hoarders and heavy-takers are reframed as functional elements as they clear out the accumulation of materials that would otherwise clog the space. Viesturs response to this is tactical curatorial competency: if a person he suspects is present at the shop, he often doesn’t put new items out on the shelves until they leave. This is his practical judgement and competency to “read the room” enacted situationally. ). That is not a rule, not a moral lecture, not formal exclusion. It is tactical timing. It is curatorial power exercised situationally.

This is exactly your “competences shown rather than priced” thing. His competence is not just knowing materials. It is knowing when to release value into the room.

You could call this:

• situational curation

• tactical withholding

• pragmatic boundary work

• flow management

• moral triage

“Moral triage” might be especially useful: deciding what matters most under conditions of overload.

Rasa as realist of value and attachment

Rasa also seems to have a very grounded, almost de-romanticised understanding of attachment. Her point that Brīvbode removes the heaviness of price — “I bought it for €40, how can I now throw it out” — is not just anti-capitalist rhetoric. It is practical psychology: if you invested less, you regret less; if it does not work, bring it back ( #Q9UXGA Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Letting Go: Attachment Without Price #7Z8WUY #Q9UXGA The anchor of monetary investment is absent from acquisition in Brīvbode, and some participants articulate the shift in their own relationship to objects directly. Rasa describes how price normally operates as a binding force which Brīvbode alleviates: “You no longer have that heaviness around a thing – I bought it for €40, how can I now throw it out or give it away, not wear it. Now it's simply: if it doesn't suit, bring it back. Try it – it works, or it doesn't. It's much more free." She is pragmatic about this beyond Brīvbode too: “No matter where the garment comes from, there is that percentage of things I take or buy or acquire for myself that I always know won't get worn regardless of whether I've paid money for them or not. So the safest thing to do is to invest as little as possible, so that afterwards there are fewer regrets." This is a recalibration of what kinds of commitment acquisition is. ).

That is not moral purity. It is a pragmatic reconfiguration of commitment. Brīvbode helps people acquire with lower stakes and let go with lower shame.

And her display logic — “the emptier the shelves, the more people find” — is also very practical ( #KMD7AJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #KMD7AJ The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic – with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance. ). It shows she understands that value is not inherent in the object; it is produced through spatial arrangement, perception, and attention. Again: not ideology, but experienced infrastructural intelligence.

This could become a beautiful section: “Pragmatic moral economy”

You already have “moral economy of exchange,” but the leaders make it more subtle. The moral economy is not a fixed code. It is a pragmatic moral economy held together through adjustments, jokes, tactical delays, and tolerated contradictions.

Something like:

Among the most experienced organisers, Brīvbode’s moral economy is not articulated as a strict ideology. Rasa and Viesturs repeatedly frame problematic practices — reselling, heavy taking, dumping — through pragmatic rather than condemnatory terms. This does not mean that moral distinctions disappear. Rather, they are recalibrated against the material necessity of keeping things moving. What matters is not only whether a participant acts according to the ideal of exchange, but whether their actions help or hinder circulation, overflow management, and the livability of the space.

“Non-moral” maybe becomes “post-purist”

I’d avoid “non-moral” because their work is saturated with values. But it is definitely not moralistic. Possible terms:

• non-moralising

• pragmatic ethics

• post-purist moral economy

• situated ethics of circulation

• maintenance ethics

• moral pragmatism

• ethics of keeping-going

• care as practical accommodation

• improvised moral ecology

My favourite for your case: an ethics of keeping things moving.

It captures the practical and ethical at once.

The leaders show the limits of “alternative” as a category

This also helps with your larger argument. Brīvbode is not interesting because it perfectly rejects markets, charity, waste, or consumerism. It is interesting because the leaders know it cannot fully reject them.

• It borrows retail aesthetics ( #KMD7AJ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #KMD7AJ The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic – with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance. ).

• It depends on waste infrastructure ( #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. ).

• It tolerates quasi-market actors when they keep things moving ( #7FPBUS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #7FPBUS The imperative to keep things flowing to avoid overflow creates a certain tolerance in case of suspicion for such practices that formally fall outside Brīvbode’s rules. Reselling is not allowed, yet resellers are a suspected presence in Brīvbode. Volunteers mentioned situations when other visitors in Brīvbode have told them they have recognized their divested items at the Āgenskalns flea market the following weekend, which Rasa acknowledges as straightforwardly unpleasant. Yet because it is not always possible to prove, there is also a working accommodation, and Rasa’s position is one of pragmatic acceptance: “At the same time it seems – if he'll find the next user for the thing anyway, the function is fulfilled. Better they make a little money and the thing finds its person, than some hoarder takes it and the things end up in a container." She laughs: "Well, what choice do I have but to believe… We support small businesses." ).

• It resists charity framing but sometimes accommodates need ( #M3VCHH Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion: Holding Together Incompatible Orientations #A3X9XX #M3VCHH Freecycling in Brīvbode is sustained by a plurality of meanings that are compatible enough to coexist within the same space. Givers come to resolve the moral weight of unwanted things, the site’s permanence and visibility offer a trusted route for it. Takers come for dignity, experimentation, craft materials, social contact or simple convenience. The moral economy of exchange holds these heterogenous orientations together, as it is actively maintained against the pressure of resellers, heavy takers and people looking for charity, yet flexible enough to accommodate them when the alternative is overflow. ).

• It produces sustainability outcomes while sustainability becomes “secondary” in daily operation ( #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. ).

So the leaders are the people who know the alternative is made from compromised materials. Literally and theoretically.

Polished paragraph

The most experienced organisers do not present Brīvbode as a morally pure alternative to markets, charity or waste systems. Their accounts are strikingly pragmatic. Rasa recognises that Brīvbode can function as a place where people “dump it all and go buy new things” ( #9CFEH4 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home #2JEZWG #9CFEH4 Divestment is normalised and sought after. As Brīvbode manager Rasa observed: "Often we're simply a place to dump it all and go buy new things." In this view, Brīvbode appears as evidence of the structural conditions it aspires to address rather than a solution to them. There is tension present in Brīvbode between the swapshop as an alternative caring system and as a low-threshold overflow channel, and this tension does not resolve easily. ), and even reselling, formally against the rules, is sometimes accommodated if it keeps objects moving toward another user ( #7FPBUS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #7FPBUS The imperative to keep things flowing to avoid overflow creates a certain tolerance in case of suspicion for such practices that formally fall outside Brīvbode’s rules. Reselling is not allowed, yet resellers are a suspected presence in Brīvbode. Volunteers mentioned situations when other visitors in Brīvbode have told them they have recognized their divested items at the Āgenskalns flea market the following weekend, which Rasa acknowledges as straightforwardly unpleasant. Yet because it is not always possible to prove, there is also a working accommodation, and Rasa’s position is one of pragmatic acceptance: “At the same time it seems – if he'll find the next user for the thing anyway, the function is fulfilled. Better they make a little money and the thing finds its person, than some hoarder takes it and the things end up in a container." She laughs: "Well, what choice do I have but to believe… We support small businesses." ). Viesturs similarly reframes resellers, hoarders and heavy takers as “forest sanitarians” who clear material accumulation, while responding tactically by withholding new items when necessary ( #ERMRTL Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #ERMRTL Viesturs frames this ecologically: "Well, I could see them now as forest sanitarians." Without moral approval, the resellers, the hoarders and heavy-takers are reframed as functional elements as they clear out the accumulation of materials that would otherwise clog the space. Viesturs response to this is tactical curatorial competency: if a person he suspects is present at the shop, he often doesn’t put new items out on the shelves until they leave. This is his practical judgement and competency to “read the room” enacted situationally. ). These are not non-moral positions, but non-moralising ones. They show an ethics of keeping things moving: moral judgement is continually recalibrated in relation to overflow, space, volunteer capacity, and the practical need to maintain circulation. In this sense, Brīvbode’s leaders reveal the swapshop not as a pure moral project, but as a pragmatic moral-material infrastructure held together through compromise.

That paragraph is alive. It has your interesting stuff in it.

Yes — “keeping things moving” is doing a lot of good work for you. It is concrete, emic-feeling, theoretically expandable, and not too morally shiny. It lets Brīvbode be neither utopia nor dumping ground, but a practice of ongoing practical mediation.

I think it can become one of the thesis’s core analytic phrases.

Why it works

“Keeping things moving” names several layers at once:

1. Material flow
   Bags arrive, shelves fill, objects disappear, overflow threatens. Brīvbode has to keep materials from clogging the site ( #2TPNCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #2TPNCM The physical experience of overflow is a constant of volunteering, and bags often arrive faster than they can be processed. Often my task during shifts was to sort and put out children’s items. The boxes were already full, with piles forming, when I asked Rasa: 'Don't you feel like the things are just pouring down on you?' 'Yes, that's why I no longer have any tolerance for things. I realise I feel relief that these clothes are dirty, because there simply isn't any more space." , #3USBHB Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #3USBHB During another shift, Rasa offered me a handmade black ceramic plate someone had brought that day. I was glad to take it, but before my departure confusion arose about where it had gone. It turned out, more stuff had piled up on top of it on the sorting table as visitors kept coming with their divestment. Rasa laughed: “This is how it is here.” As a material site, Brīvbode is an active flow that requires tending and occasionally swallows its own offerings. ).

2. Practice-theoretical linking
   Materials, meanings and competences have to be repeatedly re-linked. Circulation only happens if someone sorts, displays, evaluates, withholds, accepts, refuses, redirects.

3. Moral pragmatism
   The leaders tolerate imperfect actors if they help movement: resellers may be unpleasant, but if they find the next user, “the function is fulfilled” ( #7FPBUS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #7FPBUS The imperative to keep things flowing to avoid overflow creates a certain tolerance in case of suspicion for such practices that formally fall outside Brīvbode’s rules. Reselling is not allowed, yet resellers are a suspected presence in Brīvbode. Volunteers mentioned situations when other visitors in Brīvbode have told them they have recognized their divested items at the Āgenskalns flea market the following weekend, which Rasa acknowledges as straightforwardly unpleasant. Yet because it is not always possible to prove, there is also a working accommodation, and Rasa’s position is one of pragmatic acceptance: “At the same time it seems – if he'll find the next user for the thing anyway, the function is fulfilled. Better they make a little money and the thing finds its person, than some hoarder takes it and the things end up in a container." She laughs: "Well, what choice do I have but to believe… We support small businesses." ). Viesturs’s “forest sanitarians” phrase captures this beautifully ( #ERMRTL Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange #PZH45P #ERMRTL Viesturs frames this ecologically: "Well, I could see them now as forest sanitarians." Without moral approval, the resellers, the hoarders and heavy-takers are reframed as functional elements as they clear out the accumulation of materials that would otherwise clog the space. Viesturs response to this is tactical curatorial competency: if a person he suspects is present at the shop, he often doesn’t put new items out on the shelves until they leave. This is his practical judgement and competency to “read the room” enacted situationally. ).

4. Anti-purity
   It avoids overclaiming that Brīvbode transforms capitalism or solves waste. It says: this place keeps things from settling too quickly into waste, hoard, shame, or commodity.

5. Care without sentimentality
   Care is not only tenderness toward objects. Sometimes care is sorting fast, refusing things, moving them on, letting dirty things become discardable. Rasa’s relief at dirty clothes is a tiny masterpiece of anti-romantic care ( #2TPNCM Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow #PBFQ5E #2TPNCM The physical experience of overflow is a constant of volunteering, and bags often arrive faster than they can be processed. Often my task during shifts was to sort and put out children’s items. The boxes were already full, with piles forming, when I asked Rasa: 'Don't you feel like the things are just pouring down on you?' 'Yes, that's why I no longer have any tolerance for things. I realise I feel relief that these clothes are dirty, because there simply isn't any more space." ).

It can be your chapter / conclusion hinge

You already have the chapter title “Keeping Things Moving,” and I’d lean into it harder. It can mean:

Brīvbode’s central achievement is not that it purifies exchange from market logic, nor that it guarantees sustainable outcomes, but that it keeps objects, meanings and obligations from getting stuck.

Things can get stuck in:

• homes as clutter;

• wardrobes as guilt;

• monetary value as regret;

• sentimental attachment;

• waste categories;

• charity stigma;

• reseller suspicion;

• overflowing shelves;

• moral judgement.

Brīvbode creates routes around stuckness.

Theoretically, it links Shove + Bohlin/Appelgren + consumption work

Shove: practices persist through repeated linking.
Bohlin/Appelgren: circulation deserves attention beyond the moment of transaction ( #SP2DW4 Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets #MBXQXR / Unpacking Circulation #DSNHBJ #SP2DW4 Since Malinowski, ethnography and theory dealing with the exchange of material objects and the organization of relationships between people and things have developed into one of anthropology’s prime fields of research. Scholars have expanded the understanding of gender dynamics of the Kula (Weiner 1976; 1992; Strathern 1988), the extent and nature of the interactions (Weiner 1976; Munn 1986; Strathern 1988) and the nature of the gift (Marcel Mauss 1950/1990). The assumption that circulation integrates society has encouraged the analytical breaking down of circulatory phenomena into finer and more distinct forms, such as commodity exchange, gift-giving, reciprocity and barter, in order to study their social significance and cultural diversity. Along with such specialisation, debates about the theoretical importance of these modes of transaction have been intensive (see Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992 for an overview, and Graeber 2001), but the idea of circulation has continued to receive relatively limited analytic attention. The concern with the typology of transactions has prompted defining the performative locus of circulation in terms of specific stages along such circuits, at the moment when objects changed hands, during which status and relationships between things and people were negotiated within the specific cultural logics of various forms of exchange (cf. Appadurai 1986 and Myers 2001). ).
Consumption work: movement requires labour, often hidden and gendered.
Your ethnography: movement requires pragmatic, situated judgement.

Possible sentence:

“Keeping things moving” names the practical labour through which Brīvbode prevents household surplus from settling into waste, clutter, hoard, shame or commodity, and instead keeps open the possibility of further use.

That’s very thesis-y, in a good way.

“Moving” is not innocent

Important: movement is not automatically good. Your leaders know this. Brīvbode can also keep consumerism moving. Rasa’s line that people “dump it all and go buy new things” is the crucial counterpoint ( #9CFEH4 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home #2JEZWG #9CFEH4 Divestment is normalised and sought after. As Brīvbode manager Rasa observed: "Often we're simply a place to dump it all and go buy new things." In this view, Brīvbode appears as evidence of the structural conditions it aspires to address rather than a solution to them. There is tension present in Brīvbode between the swapshop as an alternative caring system and as a low-threshold overflow channel, and this tension does not resolve easily. ). So the phrase should carry ambivalence:

Keeping things moving is both Brīvbode’s ethical promise and its compromise.

Because movement can mean:

• recirculation and extended use;

• relief from attachment;

• avoidance of waste;

• but also enabling more acquisition;

• absorbing surplus from overconsumption;

• outsourcing household disorder to volunteers.

That ambivalence makes the thesis stronger.

Nice formulation

Brīvbode’s practical ethic is not purity but movement. Its organisers do not always resolve whether an object is gift, waste, commodity, charity or care; instead, they work to keep it from becoming stuck. This involves sorting, displaying, redirecting, tolerating, refusing and occasionally discarding. “Keeping things moving” is therefore both a material task and a moral-practical orientation: it sustains circulation while exposing the compromises on which circulation depends.

Another sharper one

The swapshop works less by enforcing a single moral order than by preventing any one order from fully closing around things. Price does not fix value; charity does not fully define the recipient; waste does not immediately claim the object; attachment does not have to be final. Brīvbode keeps things moving between these possible statuses.

That is very good for your “not clearinghouse / not simply practice / messy inter-practice node” argument.

Possible final-conclusion paragraph

What Brīvbode ultimately shows is that circularity is not a loop that closes by itself. It has to be kept moving. This movement depends on a semi-public infrastructure where objects can be detached from household routines, reclassified through sorting and display, and made available for new uses. It also depends on pragmatic judgement: knowing when to insist on norms, when to tolerate imperfect circulation, when to withhold desirable things, when to discard, and when to let contradictory meanings coexist. Keeping things moving is therefore not merely a logistical task but the central moral-material practice of Brīvbode. It is also where the limits of circularity become visible: the work is unevenly distributed, often gendered, dependent on care, and continually exposed to the surplus generated by the very consumption patterns it seeks to soften.

This phrase has legs. Small sturdy ethnographic legs. Like a donated coffee table that somehow survives three households.