Synthesis for conclusion/introduction: Brīvbode is analytically valuable because it is plainly legible as circular economy infrastructure at the level of policy and material flow — textiles are a CE priority ( #577FMZ Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Introduction #ZF9EYF #577FMZ The bulk of things circulating in Brīvbode are textiles – mostly clothing, but also home textile. Textiles have been identified as a priority sector in the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2020), and EU Textile Strategy (2022-ongoing) states that textiles should be durable, repairable, reusable, and reuse should be part of the desired system outcome. [..] [Statistics on Baltics as the destination in the circular economies of other countries…] ), Latvia introduced mandatory textile collection in 2023 ( #TT4B8P Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Latvian context and research #LAR465 #TT4B8P Data indicates that second-hand acquisition remains a significant part of the textile market in the Baltic States, particularly in Latvia, where it accounts for a substantial share of total consumption. In 2018 around 40% of textile consumption in Latvia was second-hand (Watson et. al., 2020). The collection system in Latvia has undergone rapid expansion and formalization through new legislation. Latvia introduced mandatory separate textile collection in 2023, reflecting the broader EU regulatory direction established by the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. ), and Brīvbode sustains reuse through a regular physical site ( #4FP5K7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Latvian context and research #LAR465 #4FP5K7 Various exchange, divestment and second hand alternatives are currently available and are routinely used by people in Riga – online groups, charity shops and textile collection containers – but what sets Brīvbode apart is the operation on a physical site, the exchange without regulated monetary transaction, and a sustained volunteer infrastructure that makes repeated visits possible and socially meaningful. It is open every week, year-round, and this regularity is central to what it offers – a route for acquisition and divestment, but also a predictable rhythm that participants can build into their everyday routines. ). But the ethnography shows that what sustains the circulation is not throughput optimisation: it is plural moral economy ( #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. ), situational judgement about right circulation ( #HMDEDU Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / CONCLUSION #M9WQLY #HMDEDU Brīvbode's moral economy is negotiated, situational practice where the meaning of "right circulation" is worked out in real time rather than determined in advance. ), valuation without price ( #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. , #7X9BV4 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care #SLFJ9K #7X9BV4 Curation extends valuation work beyond sorting into knowing and managing people’s needs. Rasa describes it as having “a filter.” She sometimes holds specific items for specific regular visitors based on accumulated knowledge about their life circumstances: a particular colour of top for a visually impaired visitor, a wedding gift set aside for a regular who recently moved from homelessness into social housing. This is care work and consumption work simultaneously — the kind of matching labour that in retail is performed automatically through pricing, display, and inventory systems, but here depends on Rasa’s relational knowledge of specific people, which cannot be systematised or delegated, and which makes Brīvbode function as something more than a drop-off point. , #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. ), gendered care/consumption work ( #5YXGE6 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #5YXGE6 This chapter has examined the labour that sustains freecycling in Brīvbode, finding it distributed across structural, ethical, and gendered dimensions that existing circular economy frameworks tend to overlook. Wheeler and Glucksmann’s consumption work concept names the structure: tasks that paid institutions would perform in formal retail or waste management contexts are here absorbed by unpaid volunteers and participants, distributed across modal and processual dimensions that stretch well beyond the freeshop itself. The feminist ethics of care and its recent applications to circular consumption (Mesiranta et al. 2025; Tölg and Fuentes 2025), together with Bankovska’s (2020) care not-work and Graeber’s (2018) account of work as what just needs to be done, name the orientation: much of this labour is not transferred from institutions onto reluctant consumers but self-imposed through ethical commitment and care – activities people perform because they cannot bring themselves not to. Miller (1998) names who bears it: consistently and disproportionately women, from household sorting and routing to managing others’ generosity to transmitting these competencies to the next generation. , #HM56MD Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Conclusion #75D5UH #HM56MD Circular consumption requires substantial labour, and that labour is unevenly distributed. Sustainability of initiatives like Brīvbode depends on a structural condition – the sufficiency-oriented, time-rich, predominantly female volunteer and participant base that circular economy policy rarely names or supports (Hobson et al., 2021). Some of this labour is unreflexive and habituated – Aiga's inner feeling that prevents easy disposal, Marija's building logistics naturalised into her social role. Some is deliberate and effortful – Kristīne's category-by-category method, Madara working on her impulse-acquiring. Both are labour, but they are differently visible, and the unreflexive forms are the hardest to see and the hardest for policy to reach. , #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. ), relational witnessing ( #PQV5PN Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home #2JEZWG #PQV5PN Participants who divest in Brīvbode mentioned the non-transparency of the textile container system in comparison to the freeshop. Both routes offer removal and a presumed social good, but participants expressed particular satisfaction for witnessing circulation in Brīvbode – moments when they saw someone taking the items they brought. Although giving and taking are decoupled and mediated by the swapshop, participants can sometimes observe the circulation during their visits, a characteristic noted by many with a kind of quiet pleasure. The divestment is completed by seeing or knowing an item was taken, and this visibility closes the divestment cycle affectively. The opportunity for other visitors to access the materials is valued, while the textile collection management system is deemed too distanced to imagine who benefits. ), biographies/attachments such as Brīvbode as a ‘purgatory for things’ ( #Z4WUR2 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #4V8VH7 / What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition #W2WRDC #Z4WUR2 A related strong negative meaning for second hand acquisition holds that these items carry the energy of previous – often deceased – owners. Several participants mentioned this trope but adjusted it to their practice. Viesturs, half-laughing, keeps the spiritual language but reframes it institutionally: "Others say that things have some kind of energy, or the aura of previous owners... We're able to transform that. In a way, Brīvbode is also like a kind of purgatory for things." With this adjusted meaning Brīvbode can function as a threshold space in the object biographies where the weight of previous owners can be released. ), and extended networks like Aiga’s thirty trips and Madara routing her aunt’s objects ( #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. ). Literature position: Hobson calls for attention to generative CE spaces beyond industrial systems ( #AKL7LC Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #8ZKAT7 / Abstract #BWE4XA #AKL7LC Heightened concerns about long-term sustainability have of late enlivened debates around the circular economy (CE). Defined as a series of restorative and regenerative industrial systems, parallel socio-cultural transformations have arguably received less consideration to date. In response, this paper examines the contributions human geographical scholarship can make to CE debates, focusing on ‘generative spaces’ of diverse CE practices. Concepts infrequently discussed within human geography such as product service systems and ‘prosumption’ are explored, to argue that productive potential exists in bringing these ideas into conversation with ongoing human geographical research into practices, materialities, emergent political spaces and ‘everyday activism’. , #NB8CR8 Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #8ZKAT7 / VI Concluding comments #ACNZ3L #NB8CR8 This paper has aimed to bring recent and growing debates around ideas of the CE into conversation with some facets of human geographical research. The aim is to outline how research into a CE requires much broader analytical lenses than are currently deployed, given the profound 'transformative change' advocates speak of. The purpose here was to provisionally locate generative spaces and practices that embody a CE which goes beyond re-jigged industrial systems and business models. Rather, the case is made that any consideration of the CE must encompass forms of 'everyday activism' that foreground the 'vital materialism' (Gregson et al., 2010: 853) necessary to rethink, re-envision, recreate, reuse and 'move on' the goods and services that currently meet everyday needs. In other disciplines, researchers and practitioners talk of addressing unsustainable production and consumption through frameworks such as product service systems. This (perhaps rather dry) phrase is not found a great deal in human geographical work, but it does intersect with – and arguably has much to contribute to – research that explores practices embedded within, and enacted through, multi-scale socio-technical systems (Davies et al., 2014; Watson, 2012). ); Hobson 2021 critiques CE’s passive/user-consumer and market-efficiency assumptions ( #APZSUS The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #UMYA27 / The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies #XK6L5Q #APZSUS Indeed, the tools being brought to bear on greater consumer acceptance emphasise ‘designing in’ sustainability and circularity to goods and services. The European Commission, for one, has foregrounded ‘Ecodesign’ as key in its CE agenda, creating ‘more efficient products to reduce energy and resource consumption’ ( https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/sustainability/ecodesign_en ). This is a logical and much-needed move: but also one that assumes that, for example, most of the work of circularity is done in the design and end-of-life stage of a product, not in its use (e.g. Suckling and Lee 2015, Bridgens et al. 2019). Excavation of the much-repeated claim that 80% of a product’s environmental damage is established during design activity shows there is little veracity in such assumptions across all products (see Hobson 2019). Therefore, in what ways, for how long, and to what ends certain goods and services are taken up, used, and disposed of become key questions, placing the user-consumer as a central and active agent in the CE, rather than just someone accepting or rejecting what is on offer. In short, the ‘user-consumer’ is more than a semi-passive node through which materials flow, as in Figure 1: but how much more, and in what ways, remain open questions. , #G9LP9W The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #UMYA27 / The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies #XK6L5Q #G9LP9W In this sense, a call for critical research into CE user-consumer roles goes beyond restating arguments about the ‘responsibilization’ of the consumer (e.g. Soneryd and Uggla 2015), where the (environmental) buck is passed down from businesses and governments to us all, as the (alleged) sovereign consumers to whom markets are merely responding. Rather, the arguments here bring us more towards Tukker’s comment (2015, p. 88) that a key goal for ‘consumers’ is ‘to have control over things, artifacts, and life itself’. Whereas one might interpret that comment a number of ways, I argue it points towards how life histories and chances are inter-woven with material cultures and practices. Proponents of the CE focus on the best ways to exchange one set of consumption practices with others, framed as cheaper and more efficient deals. But social research points towards the CE as being nothing short of a recalibration of our socio-material lives, if the ambitions of the agenda are in any way to be matched by the systemic transformations it will indeed require. And as such, further insight into how all of our roles are being framed and played out; what is illuminated and what is hidden by such framings; and who gains what, how, and to what ends is a central but, to date, undervalued part of the CE – and indeed environmental politics – research. ); Welch et al. argue CE depends on uneven consumption work and must move beyond the household ( #629UVN Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. #NUEUVY / ABSTRACT #VCKC56 #629UVN Circular Economy frameworks have become central to debates and interventions that aim to reduce global resource use and environmental despoliation. As pathways to both systemic and micro-scale transformations, there remain many challenges to making Circular Economy actionable. One such challenge is facilitating the emergence of the 'circular consumer'. Here, we are all encouraged to shift everyday practices to consume new products and services and/or participate in the 'Sharing Economy': all of which are claimed, in some prominent debates, to automatically offer more 'convenience' for the consumer. In response, this paper argues that viewing such debates through the lens of Consumption Work offers a different picture of what it takes to be, and what we need to know about, the circular consumer. Consumption Work refers to the labour integral to the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of goods and services. This paper argues that the nature and scope of such work has been underplayed in Circular Economy debates to date, and that becoming a circular consumer requires varied and unevenly distributed forms of Consumption Work, which in turn, has significant implications for the success of Circular Economy. This paper thus proposes a research agenda into this topic, outlining five, inter-related, critical issues that a Circular Economy research agenda must address, including questions of who undertakes Consumption Work; to what ends; and how its multiple forms are coordinated within and beyond the household. , #6SZJVB Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. #NUEUVY / 4. The circular economy and Consumption Work: a research agenda #9LCL7B #6SZJVB Finally, research into CE CW needs to move beyond the domestic sphere and space of the household, to consider engagement with consumption-based practices in other spaces. This could be individuals coming together once a month to participate in a local Repair Café, or household engagements with community-based CE business models, whether they are explicitly labelled as such. This is because some consumer-based CE practices are not bound to the home, but are rather implicated in establishing new patterns of, for example, mobility practices: practices, which in turn, influence CE CW household dynamics. ); Shove & Rinkinen argue CE strips objects out of social/material context and needs material culture/practice analysis ( #KXVZVK Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 1. Introduction #CNF67G #KXVZVK This narrow treatment of materiality, we argue, has resulted in debates that overlook longer-term trends in demand and the interconnections between production and consumption. Initiatives have recently been made to address both production and consumption aspects of the circular economy (IPCC, 2023) but in this Perspective article we go further, arguing for an expanded analysis of “object relations”, and for an approach that allows us to engage with fundamental questions about the constitution of needs and systems of provision. , #VCT37S Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 2. Practices and object relations #9XPEAM #VCT37S There is a long tradition of understanding systems of consumption and production from the perspective of material culture. In his book, The social lives of things , Appadurai (1988) writes about the meaning of objects within and as part of complex systems and histories of social and cultural valuation. He argues that judgements of value, and the lives of things are densely interwoven, so much so that it makes no sense to strip an object out of the broader material culture in which it exists. , #NF4MTB Material culture and the circular economy #R69WZQ / 4. Discussion #FAPRPA #NF4MTB As we have seen, accounts of the circular economy generally focus on the lives of objects, considered in isolation. This makes it possible to compare and evaluate processes of production, distribution, and appropriation, and to recognize the scattered nature of environmental impact (e.g., Tukker, 2000). Analyses of this kind take heed of the lifecycles of products and resources, but they proceed by stripping objects and resources out of context, and by “obscuring the distinctive social and historical processes of enmeshed material relations and shifting patterns of consumption” (Rinkinen et al., 2020). Policy responses inspired by mainstream discourse on the circular economy do the same. ); Holmes shows circular/shared economies are embedded in ordinary practices, intimacies and troublesome materialities ( #VRN7A9 New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #XATD2A / ABSTRACT #94A9P5 #VRN7A9 This article draws upon two distinct UK case studies to explore how alternative modes of provisioning employ ordinary practices of sharing and circularity. Speaking to debates about alterity, diverse economies (Gibson-Graham, 2008) and emerging literature on the circular and shared economy, these two small and informal based models, one food based, the other clothing, are put forward as examples of the vast array of contemporary 'alternative' forms of consumption and provisioning taking place across the UK. The article illuminates how diverse economies are 'made material' through their materials and practices. In doing so I make three key arguments: firstly, and overall, that studying materiality is one way to illuminate these new and emerging spaces of provisioning, highlighting their practices, intimacies and ambiguities. Secondly, this material focus illustrates how the practices of provisioning – in particular, sharing and circulating – are not new, but are instead organised in original and novel ways; and this has wider implications for contemporary debates on circular and shared economy. Thirdly, that the materials of provisioning can be both beneficial and troublesome to provisioning organisations' practices of circulating and sharing and the extent to which they tackle issues of social exclusion, financial hardship and sustainable resource use. , #MJNYLK New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #XATD2A / 6. Conclusion #PTGSRA #MJNYLK This relates to the third key argument: that focusing on the materialities of provisioning reveals how they can be both beneficial and troublesome. The case studies have illustrated how the materials of provisioning are the means through which organisations tackle issues such as social exclusion, financial hardship and sustainable resource use. Their sharing and circulating ensures that users of both groups have access to food and clothing, and that waste is reduced. Moreover, I have demonstrated how such materials can become the conduits for the circulation of much more – emotions, advice, support, sociality; intangible aspects which are so often overlooked by standard definitions of CE/SE. In contrast, the article has highlighted how such materials can also be troublesome, unsettling the practices of circulating and sharing, and inadvertently reproducing inequalities such diverse economies wish to tackle. At a micro level this can be through their accessibility and suitability of provisioning materials. Yet, at a more macro level it can be through their reproduction of neoliberal, pro-capitalist frameworks of 'Big Society' and waste disposal, as well as long standing issues of gender inequality and the division of labour. These are barriers to how CE/SE operates in these diverse and generate economic spheres. This article can only offer a partial and provisional contribution to wider debates on diverse economies, alternative provisioning and the circular and shared economy. Yet, it has demonstrated the need for, and will hopefully initiate, further academic research on diverse economies and their intersections with the heterogeneous landscape of economic formations. ). Claim: Brīvbode’s illegibility to CE metrics is not a failure of measurement but the ethnographic object itself: a generative space where circulation is made possible through precisely those relations, frictions and ambiguities that throughput accounting abstracts away.