# Assistant conversation NSGU2B - Canonical URL: - Resource IRI: - Type: assistant conversation - Mode: research ## Transcript ### 1. User > so maybe then brivbode is a particularly interesting case study because it is clearly a circular kind of thing, probably also eu funded, etc, ostensibly a sustainability initiative, ... but some things about it prevent it from becoming a kind of funnel or endpoint or legible part of economic systems? and umm this is tied up with its being a generative space... it's not charity, not a market, not a bin..... it does something that's contrary to the CE paradigm, and that something is in a way itself somehow ethnographic or anthropological.... ??? Brīvbode is the kind of initiative that the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan would happily count among its successes: a volunteer-run reuse site that diverts textiles from landfill at the edge of a city. But this thesis argues that the features which make Brīvbode work — its plural moral economy, the friction of valuation without price, the gendered care-laden labour of keeping it open, the biographical and relational attachments that route things through it — are precisely the features the CE paradigm cannot register. This illegibility is not a gap to be closed by better metrics; it is what generative spaces of circulation look like when ethnography rather than throughput accounting is doing the describing. ... Brīvbode is a textbook circular-economy initiative on paper: volunteer-run reuse infrastructure, diverts textiles from landfill, plausibly aligns with EU CE Action Plan and the Latvian textile collection mandate, the kind of place that would happily appear in a policy report as a “community-based circular initiative.” Its outputs are legible to CE accounting (tonnes diverted, items rerouted to textile collection, etc.). But ethnographically — and this is the move — the things that make it actually work, that recruit and retain its participants, that sustain it across years, are precisely the things that make it illegible to CE accounting. Plurality of meaning. Moral economy that bends. Friction as constitutive. A “purgatory for things.” Aiga’s thirty trips. Madara learning to switch off “free.” The wire offcuts no one will tell her aren’t being used. Witnessing circulation. Knowing whose things are whose. The shop as social rhythm, as biographical infrastructure, as a route for ethical labour you can’t help doing. Brīvbode is not a charity (organisers actively resist that), not a market (no price), not a bin (it actively curates against waste), and not a CE node (it refuses optimization in practice). It sits in a negative space defined by what it isn’t, and the positive content of that space is — as you say — irreducibly anthropological. It’s held together by the kind of social fabric ethnography is uniquely equipped to describe and policy is uniquely poorly equipped to register. ... try to flesh this out significantly and reason through it and situate it in the literature (use the "MIKAEL" tagged thesis as the current thesis draft) ### 2. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `list_documents` ```json {} ``` ### 3. Tool result: list_documents - #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] - 2026 | Ieva Lange - #FYG32U Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] - 2026 | Ieva Lange Journal articles (91) - #QUD55H 'Saving' the city: Collective low-budget organising and urban practice - 2015 | Birke Otto, Hans Vollmer, Heike Derwanz, Paula Bialski | ephemera: theory & politics in organization | 20 pp. - #K52UPR A Critical Review of the Role of Repair Cafés in a Sustainable Circular Transition - 2021 | Mette Alberg Mosgaard, Rikke Marie Moalem | Sustainability | 26 pp. | doi:10.3390/su132212351 - #4EFC4F After Practice? Material Semiotic Approaches to Consumption and Economy [cited] - 2020 | David M. Evans | Cultural Sociology | 17 pp. | doi:10.1177/1749975520923521 - #9D34UM After taste: Culture, consumption and theories of practice - 2014 | Alan Warde | Journal of Consumer Culture | 25 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540514547828 - #5Y2AD9 An order of distinction (or, how to tell a collection from a hoard) - 2018 | Katie Kilroy-Marac | Journal of Material Culture | 19 pp. | doi:10.1177/1359183517729428 - #FQRNAE Austerity and everyday life: Perspectives on practices of consumption and thrift - 2019 | Alison Hulme | Journal of Consumer Culture | 7 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540519872079 - #9MNC8T Austerity Ireland, the New Thrift Culture and Sustainable Consumption - 2017 | Fiona Murphy | Journal of Business Anthropology | 17 pp. | doi:10.22439/jba.v6i2.5410 - #59QUM6 Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle [cited] - 2017 | Sally Eden | Journal of Consumer Culture | 21 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540515586871 - #X8QHRR Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps - 2025 | Agnė Jučienė, Inga Gurauskienė, Jolita Kruopienė | Sustainability | 22 pp. | doi:10.3390/su17104411 - #AVNZLE Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing [cited] - 2025 | Christian Fuentes, Réka Tölg | Consumption and Society | 19 pp. | doi:10.1332/27528499y2024d00000032 - #XUHRZA Changing understandings of waste reduction and avoidance in moralities of thrift: A comparison of Mass Observers' narratives three decades apart [cited] - 2022 | Helen Holmes, Ulrike Ehgartner | Geoforum | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.10.014 - #BQ2W57 Circular Consumption Practices as Matters of Care [cited] - 2025 | Elina Närvänen, Malla Mattila, Nina Mesiranta, Outi Koskinen | Journal of Business Ethics | 19 pp. | doi:10.1007/s10551-024-05888-5 - #57LWKZ Cities of care: A platform for urban geographical care research - 2020 | Emma R. Power, Miriam J. Williams | Geography Compass | 12 pp. | doi:10.1111/gec3.12474 - #JXXRQJ Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The Case of Sustainable Consumption - 2010 | Gert Spaargaren, Peter Oosterveer | Sustainability | 22 pp. | doi:10.3390/su2071887 - #8ZKAT7 Closing the loop or squaring the circle? 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Storing and storying the serendipity of objects - 2013 | Patrick Laviolette | Things in Culture, Culture in Things | Approaches to Culture Theory | pp. 13-33 | 11 pp. - #PB2Z6X Introduction: commodities and the politics of value [cited] - 1986 | Arjun Appadurai | The Social Life of Things | Cambridge University Press | pp. 3-63 | 31 pp. | doi:10.1017/CBO9780511819582.003 - #WMSENQ Sustainable consumption as a systemic challenge: inter- and transdisciplinary research and research questions - 2015 | Philip J. Vergragt, Sylvia Lorek | Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption | Edward Elgar Publishing | pp. 19-31 | 14 pp. | doi:10.4337/9781783471270.00008 - #V4V7XC Sustainable Consumption, Behaviour Change Policies and Theories of Practice [cited] - 2012 | Andrew McMeekin, Dale Southerton, David Evans | The Habits of Consumption | Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies | pp. 113-129 | 17 pp. - #BZ63DX Sustainable practices: social theory and climate change - 2013 | Elizabeth Shove, Nicola Spurling | Sustainable Practices | Routledge | pp. 17-30 | 22 pp. | doi:10.4324/9780203071052-6 - #Y3CFPX The Assembling of Circular Consumption: A sociomaterial practice approach - 2023 | Christian Fuentes, Elina Närvänen, Nina Mesiranta | The Routledge Handbook of Catalysts for a Sustainable Circular Economy | Routledge | pp. 535-549 | 15 pp. | doi:10.4324/9781003267492-30 - #9DHD6K The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process - 1986 | Igor Kopytoff | The Social Life of Things | Cambridge University Press | pp. 64-92 | 15 pp. | doi:10.1017/CBO9780511819582.004 - #3SKV2A The cultural dimension of sustainable consumption practices: an exploration in theory and policy - 2013 | Gert Spaargaren | Innovations in Sustainable Consumption | Edward Elgar Publishing | 13 pp. | doi:10.4337/9781781001349.00022 - #72GVQ9 The Habits of Consumption [cited] - 2012 | Alan Warde, Dale Southerton | The Habits of Consumption | Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies | pp. 1-25 | 25 pp. - #KWZ2A4 Theories of Practice and Sustainable Consumption [cited] - 2015 | Alan Warde, Daniel Welch | Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption | Edward Elgar Publishing | pp. 84-100 | 17 pp. | doi:10.4337/9781783471270.00013 - #Q8AKGZ Towards a Better Accounting of the Roles of Body, Things and Habits in Consumption - 2012 | Harold Wilhite | The Habits of Consumption | Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies | pp. 87-99 | 13 pp. Doctoral theses (3) - #QRRZP2 Consumption and Practice: Unfolding Consumptive Moments and the Entanglement with Productive Aspects - 2013 | Benjamin Julien Hartmann | 157 pp. - #ZC3PHV Patchworks of Care: Ethics and Practice of Care in the Organic Food Movement in Latvia - 2020 | Agnese Bankovska | 234 pp. - #8EVNK8 The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings - 2025 | Réka Tölg | 138 pp. Reports (1) - #XBPXDL Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption and the environment - 1998 | Alan Warde, Elizabeth Shove | 17 pp. Spreadsheet (1) - #XGCWS4 Ieva coded excerpt spreadsheet ### 4. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "4V8VH7" } ``` ### 5. Tool result: get_document THESIS #4V8VH7 Title: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia Outline: - 1 #ZF9EYF Introduction - 1.1 #LAR465 Latvian context and research - 1.2 #MUKRGA A note on terms - 1.3 #FVXBEK The structure of the thesis - 2 #L759F3 Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework - 2.1 #Q2WXHP Theories of Practice - 2.2 #WULWDF Theories of Practice to Study Alternative Practices? - 2.3 #HQ4PZX Consumption practices - 2.4 #23NMLX Consumption Work - 2.5 #ULSUAX Conclusion - 3 #LYTS7L Research methodology: A Practice Freecycle - 3.1 #ZXRYYU The site - 3.2 #3CQF69 Setting the scene: A day in Brīvbode - 3.3 #U3GSXB Ethnography of Practice - 3.4 #VMQSHJ Participant observation - 3.5 #GU86TB Interviews - 3.6 #BRBBF9 Data analysis - 3.7 #TGAMBJ Research ethics - 4 #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation - 4.1 #2JEZWG Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home - 4.2 #PBFQ5E Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow - 4.3 #QP7HMF Reading the Room: Norms and Competencies of Circulation - 4.4 #PZH45P Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange - 4.5 #7Z8WUY Letting Go: Attachment Without Price - 4.6 #W2WRDC What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition - 4.7 #GTJY22 Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? - 4.8 #A3X9XX Conclusion: Holding Together Incompatible Orientations - 5 #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode - 5.1 #N8D3HT Time to Give: Volunteers and the Sufficiency Lifestyle - 5.2 #SLFJ9K Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care - 5.3 #EBTHSE Not the Bin: Modal Labour and the Informal Route - 5.4 #L38KUE It’s On Me: Networks, Gender, and the Transmission of Care - 5.5 #75D5UH Conclusion - 6 #M9WQLY CONCLUSION - 7 #FTE3UX SUMMARY - 8 #9GJAHS LIST OF SOURCES - 9 #TY2EB4 KOKKUVÕTE ### 6. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "M9WQLY", "GTJY22", "A3X9XX", "75D5UH" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "WULWDF", "23NMLX" ], "expand": true } ``` ### 7. Tool result: read THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #M9WQLY CONCLUSION PARAGRAPH #JE7FK2 This thesis is an ethnographic study of a swapshop to investigate how these spaces foster alternative consumption practices that possibly sustain alternative logics of value and ownership. This thesis is a contribution to the studies of circular consumption using ethnographic methods with practice theory approach. PARAGRAPH #U2PZ9C Brīvbode operates within the conditions of overproduction, where the circulation of goods is shaped as much by excess as by need. While it enables reuse and access, it also absorbs the material overflow generated elsewhere. The labor of managing excess – the sorting, the deciding, the transporting, the emotional work of letting go – falls unevenly on people, is often invisible, and that becomes especially evident in circular economy contexts where more participation is needed. While some consumption work is alleviated in Brīvbode, it is replaced by other types. PARAGRAPH #FE5BCM Participation in Brīvbode is a form of consumption work, and understanding it as such reveals both what the swapshop enables and what it demands. Consumption work in the context of the swapshop: the effort of finding, sorting, or repurposing items, as well as the broader social practices around bringing and taking items from Brīvbode – decluttering, home organising, dealing with the needs of family members. PARAGRAPH #GUXEZX While alternative, they simultaneously overlap with some of the meanings present in capitalist consumption –... Brīvbode is at once an answer to a household problem and an arena where people work out possibly alternative relations to things. PARAGRAPH #JM9L6Y improvised solution that does not presuppose a lot of resources… except sufficiency lifestyle? PARAGRAPH #NNZ5SG THE TENSION BETWEEN HABIT (practice) AND INTENTION (trying to change?) Is practice unreflexive? Also work can be unreflexive… People are reflecting all the time, but what keeps them in the practice? The stickiness of it… PARAGRAPH #PEFVAC Results, relevance, contribution PARAGRAPH #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. PARAGRAPH #9DTFUU Further research might –– move into constitution of need… (Shove and Rinkinen) In line with Warde (2005). Circular consumption is one thing, but does it matter how you get things if it’s still an overflow? THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #GTJY22 Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? PARAGRAPH #T6FW9N In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. PARAGRAPH #LUDRGT When I ask Viesturs if he sees working in Brīvbode as helping visitors or helping a cause, the question turns out to be beside the point: "To me it's so natural now, I don't evaluate it anymore. Others should evaluate it. It's simply a thing I do, without going into philosophical meanings." Sorting, switching clothing, chatting with visitors and attending to the shop so that it continues operating well – have become sufficiently routinised for him that they no longer require justification or meaning-work. The practice has stabilized to the point where the question of what it means has receded behind the doing. PARAGRAPH #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. PARAGRAPH #CX2SM8 Sustainability as a meaning is present for practitioners, and e.g. Luīze is at the other end of the spectrum for whom it is expressed as primary rather than peripheral. She explicitly framed her participation in terms of ecological responsibility and the wider politics of avoiding fast fashion and microtrends. PARAGRAPH #78HBEQ Līva discussed how the environmental meaning is present for her, but in tension with her actual acquisition practices. She identifies textile consumption as probably one of her most environmentally problematic behaviors, yet was open that knowing it does not resolve it. She estimates she buys an item of clothing every month and frames this as more than she used to in adolescence. The meanings she uses to evaluate her consumption patterns are in tension with the meanings that sustain the acquisition, and neither cancels the other one out. Researching household textile disposal, Sigaard (2026) concludes that even while sustainable consumption is ideally endorsed, disposal is very normalized because it is strongly embedded in identity work, relational considerations and in facilitating other practices. PARAGRAPH #P6X2DJ Also, as I argue, most participants come to Brīvbode for practical and social reasons instead of self-professed environmental conviction. This resonates with Smith and Jehlička’s (2013) concept of quiet sustainability, developed through their research on Czech urban gardeners: sustainable practices that can be widespread and effective but are not articulated in terms of sustainability by their practitioners. Smith and Jehlička contend that quiet sustainability is defined by practices “that result in beneficial environmental or social outcomes, that do not relate directly or indirectly to market transactions, and that are not represented by the practitioners as relating directly to environmental or sustainability goals. Cultures of sharing, repairing, gifting and bartering characterise quiet sustainability” (2013: 155). Latvia provides a productive context for this concept – several participants trace their orientations towards reuse and frugality to generational experience rather than sustainability aspiration. [..] PARAGRAPH #FLSHWG Some participants do find meanings for their participation in explicit sustainability terms, though, and this difference should not be overlooked. The thesis holds both the quiet and the articulated dimensions without collapsing them into a single category, treating the variation between them as empirically interesting. In practice-theoretical terms, however, what practitioners say about why they do what they do is only one element of practice and “doings” hold the centre. PARAGRAPH #SY28Z3 (Lifestyles of Enough) “Finally, the meanings attached to sufficiency-oriented consumption practices go way beyond altruistic motives like environmental concern. As a study by Kropfeld et al. (2018) showed, environmentally concerned consumers (with more altruistic motives) have a higher environmental impact than voluntary simplifiers (with more self-related motives). Personal or egocentric motives, therefore, can lead to sufficiency-oriented behavior, as the example for sharing services from this review showed. This is in line with Sandberg’s (2021) findings on sufficiency practices related to miscellaneous consumption, as she connects a reduction of consumption of various products (incl. clothing) to anti-consumption lifestyles such as voluntary simplicity or frugality. PARAGRAPH #JDEYZH Quiet sustainability – sustainable practices without added sustainability meaning. PARAGRAPH #Q9T2SN what matters in sustainability? e.g. people gather egg cartons because it is easy, but issues that are more impactful and require more resources are more difficult to enact. PARAGRAPH #8B2Y8N Several participants in this study trace their orientations toward thrift and reuse to generational experience of the scarcity of the early post-Soviet period, or to upbringings in which resources were used carefully as a matter of practical necessity rather than environmental commitment. PARAGRAPH #VFPYU2 The “activists” are part of the visitors, yet a large part do not frame their participation in Brīvbode primarily in environmental terms: they come because they have things to give away, because they sometimes find things they need. Their practices have sustainable dimensions that they do not necessarily name or claim. PARAGRAPH #V445EY This framing does not require flattening the diversity of participant orientations. Some visitors do articulate explicit sustainability motivations – concerns about fast fashion, about waste, about the environmental costs of overconsumption. The thesis holds both the quiet and the articulated dimensions without forcing them into a single category, and treats the tension between them as empirically interesting rather than theoretically problematic. One question that remains open is whether explicit articulation makes sustainable practices more effective at retaining practitioners – more resistant to disruption when material or social conditions change. This is beyond the scope of the present study but worth noting as a direction for future research. PARAGRAPH #FV3V4W Māra: "Mammai to lietu nebija daudz, un tās lietas tika visas, nu, ļoti labi uzturētas. Bet tad, kad jau parādījās tie humāno preču veikali, tad savukārt bija otrā drusku galējība." [My mother didn't have many things, and those things were all, well, very well looked after. But then, once the second-hand goods shops (humāno preču veikali, lit. "humanitarian goods shops") appeared, the other extreme came.] THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #A3X9XX Conclusion: Holding Together Incompatible Orientations PARAGRAPH #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. PARAGRAPH #4V448P Sustainability can be an outcome without it being a requirement and a conscious orientation for practitioners. The practice recruits and retains carriers through meanings that also have little to do with environmental concern and yet the circulation it enables has sustainable dimensions that persist regardless of how participants frame their involvement. PARAGRAPH #MHM9Q5 This does not resolve the tension running through the chapter of Brīvbode functioning simultaneously as a moral circularity infrastructure embodying an alternative value regime of exchange and responsible material life – and as a low threshold overflow channel that absorbs the surplus generated by the consumption patterns it aspires to counter. This tension just reflects the observed dynamic of how sustainable practices are embedded in contemporary life. THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #75D5UH Conclusion PARAGRAPH #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. PARAGRAPH #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. PARAGRAPH #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. ### 8. Tool result: read THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #WULWDF Theories of Practice to Study Alternative Practices? PARAGRAPH #N4RD83 Practice theory, as developed by Elisabeth Shove, has been applied a lot to analyze stable, dominant, and largely unreflected practices that are taken for granted in everyday domestic routines (Shove 2003), particularly the inconspicuous consumption of energy and resources in affluent Western societies that drives resource use beyond planetary boundaries. Shove has even argued that “investigations into the beliefs and actions of self-confessed environmentalists represent something of a distraction. What counts is the big, and in some cases, global swing of ordinary, routinized and taken-for-granted practice…” (Shove, 2003: 9). PARAGRAPH #3RASYG Yet as Welch and Warde (2015) note, this strategic move away from environmentalists’ motivations has come at a cost, leading to a neglect of the cultural dimensions of sustainable consumption (Spaargaren 2013). Other authors have argued for a greater attention to non-hegemonic practices that serve as alternatives to mass consumption (e.g. Speck and Hasselkuss 2015). Practice theories are useful here too, as a tool for understanding how more sustainable alternatives might become normalised or integrated into existing consumption routines. PARAGRAPH #QTER48 Freecycling at Brīvbode sits at an interesting angle in this argument – it has both conventional and unconventional elements. It is not a widely shared, fully stabilised routine practice in Shove’s sense. Yet the practices it draws on – household divestment, secondhand acquisition, sequential use of goods – are not unusual in Riga or Latvia; what is less common is their organisation within a permanent, non-monetary exchange site. It is also a practice that is becoming more prevalent, as similar spaces and infrastructures appear more in Latvia. PARAGRAPH #6SSXMN Recent work in second-generation practice theory has begun to reintroduce questions of ethics, culture, and reflexivity into analyses of consumption (Askholm, 2024; Welch et al., 2020). Earlier approaches tended to focus on routine and inconspicuous practices, often sidelining the role of evaluative judgement and cultural meaning. This study engages with this emerging direction by examining how practices of freecycling involve not only routine forms of circulation, but also moments of reflection, valuation, and ethical consideration. THESIS #4V8VH7 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia SECTION #23NMLX Consumption Work PARAGRAPH #WCS3TZ If practice theory explains how the circulation of goods is socially organised, consumption work names what that circulation costs. Practice theory’s focus on competencies – the skills and know-how through which practices are enacted – tends to emphasize how things are done rather than the effort and resources required to do them. Labor-centric views (e.g. through the concepts of consumption work or care work) instead highlight the laborious aspects of these practices, including the work of acquiring, managing, and disposing of goods and can address this gap directly. This is important in order to examine how circular consumption creates responsibilities and in what ways new forms of consumption work are distributed through populations. PARAGRAPH #ZBGB9J Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) contend that secondhand markets involve consumption work – sorting, cleaning, repairing. “Consumption work”, for them, refers to the range of tasks required of consumers, before or after they consume, on which consumption itself is predicated – the work that must be done before or after the moment of exchange for consumption to be possible at all. Their framework encompasses technical dimensions – the allocation of tasks and skills to different people; modal dimensions – interdependencies of work across different social and economic arrangements; and processual dimensions – the connections of labour across the full span of a consumption process (Wheeler & Gluckmann, 2015: 35-36). In circular economy contexts, Hobson et al. (2021) argue, this work intensifies: responsible divestment requires more effort than simply throwing things away, and the additional demands fall disproportionately on those who are already doing most of the household management work. PARAGRAPH #Q26XE6 In a recent study of household reuse practices, Beswick-Parsons, Evans and Jackson (2025) identify specific forms of consumption work involved in everyday circular consumption – decanting, stock management, recirculating – and argue that reuse practices are more prevalent and more varied than existing policy commentary assumes. Their analysis provides empirical precedent for examining consumption work and for attending to the range of tasks that participation in reuse practices requires. They conclude that future transitions to reuse might depend less on establishing new practices, driven by narratives of green consumerism, but rather greater attention should be paid to wider changes, including the transformation of supply chains to align with and facilitate the range of ‘reuse work’ currently observed within everyday domestic spaces. PARAGRAPH #92SD6X [“Recent research at the intersection of practice theory and circular consumption has begun to foreground the labour involved in sustaining material circulation. Drawing on a practice-theoretical approach, Réka Tölg shows that circular consumption – particularly in the context of clothing – relies on the ongoing enactment of care in everyday practices. This involves not only acquiring and using garments, but also maintaining, repairing, and eventually parting with them in ways that enable their continued circulation. Such practices require the development of skills, awareness, and a sense of responsibility, and are often shaped by socio-material arrangements in both household and retail contexts. At the same time, Tölg highlights that these practices are not straightforward to accomplish, but are characterised by tensions, dilemmas, and constraints within systems still largely organised around linear consumption. In this sense, circular consumption can be understood not as a simple behavioural shift, but as an ongoing accomplishment that entails effort, coordination, and engagement – what has been conceptualised elsewhere as “consumption work” (Hobson et al., 2021).”] PARAGRAPH #2RA8WL The thesis also attends to the gendered distribution of this work. Ethnographic research has demonstrated that consumption is often organised around care for others, and that women often function as moral agents in household consumption, regulating what goes in and out of households (Miller, 1998, Reno, 2016). Shopping and consumption practices can be seen as acts of care, where people choose items with loved ones in mind, reflecting their role in family and social networks. PARAGRAPH #HWS5KX [Second hand source that I should check] (Lindsay et al. 2024) Lindsay et al. (2024) and Organo et al. (2013) find that women consistently spend more time on sustainable household practices than men, and that “sustainability labour” tends to be more absorbed into existing patterns of gendered domestic work rather than redistributed.] PARAGRAPH #AXVP4C Consumption work and practice theory in this thesis are complementary frameworks. Following the argument developed above in section 2.2., consumption work describes what practices demand from their carriers rather than what individuals choose to do. The labour is in the practice; the questions of what kind of labour and who bears it are questions about the social organisation of practice and whose bodies and time it recruits. ### 9. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 8, "query": "circular economy illegible accounting metrics throughput" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 8, "query": "generative spaces circular economy Hobson" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 6, "query": "EU Circular Economy Action Plan textile waste policy" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 6, "query": "moral economy plural value not charity not market" } ``` ### 10. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: From circular consumers to carriers of (unsustainable) practices: socio-spatial transformations in the Circular City (#4AE86F), Kersty Hobson, p. 2 Context: #7TWE3G From circular consumers to carriers of (unsustainable) practices: socio-spatial transformations in the Circular City #XUQXYU KEYWORDS Matching excerpt #KTYZJQ: practices; metrics on what constitutes circularity; as well as the increasing “circular-washing” of goods and services (as in “greenwashing”: see Correa et al., 2017). 2. Source: Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing (#AVNZLE), Christian Fuentes, Réka Tölg, p. 1 Context: #S6NTVJ Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing #QR437R Introduction Matching excerpt #ZDP99W: In recent years, the circular economy has attracted considerable scholarly and societal attention (Merli et al, 2018; Hobson, 2020). Circularity advocates – such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013) – and policy documents – such as the European Commission (2020) – argue for the transition to a more circular and therefore also a more materially efficient economy (Ortega Alvarado et al, 2021). The circular economy programme sets out to break with the take-make-dispose linear economy, instead establishing a circular system in which materials are kept in circulation through ‘closed’ production and consumption loops (Hobson, 2016; Mylan et al, 2016). While much of the circular economy research focuses on production and recycling processes, typically geared towards the electronics, metal and waste management industries (Ghisellini et al, 2016; Merli et al, 2018), the role of consumers in making the circular economy possible is beginning to be acknowledged (Hobson et al, 2021). 3. Source: Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. (#NUEUVY), Dan Welch, Harald Wieser, Helen Holmes, Katy Wheeler, Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #N9U32S Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. #VCKC56 ABSTRACT Matching excerpt #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. 4. Source: Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review (#PSBVW7), Casper Boks, Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Juana Camacho-Otero, p. 0 Context: #HHKK3Q Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review Matching excerpt #N94NFW: Abstract: A circular economy (CE) aims at decoupling value creation from waste generation and resource use by radically transforming production and consumption systems. Recent reviews on the topic of the circular economy have indicated that cultural barriers are a significant factor hindering the diffusion of so-called ‘circular’ business models, particularly the lack of consumer—or user—acceptance. However, none of them has provided an overview of the existing literature addressing such issues that can help academics and practitioners better understand consumption considerations when addressing the circular economy. Motivated by these observations, this paper presents the results of a literature review that summarises and discusses insights from 111 articles in terms of the problem area, theoretical approaches, methods, and tools that have been used to collect and analyse data, the main issues, and identified research gaps. The results show that most of the existing scientific work on the circular economy and circular solutions addressing consumption has focussed on identifying factors that drive or hinder the consumption of circular solutions. A smaller but expanding set of articles has focussed on offering insights into the nature, meaning, and dynamics of consumption in the context of the circular economy. According to this set of articles, consumption in the circular economy is anonymous, connected, political, uncertain, and based on multiple values, not only utility. A smaller set of papers has explored the integration of user and consumer perspectives into design processes. Although these contributions are relevant, opportunities for further research are still open, particularly regarding socio-material and cultural aspects of consumption in the context of the circular economy, and the role of digitalisation. In addition, more work could be done regarding strategies to foster not only acceptance but also the adoption and diffusion of the circular economy. Based on the findings of this literature review, some ideas for a research agenda on the issue of consumption in the circular economy are outlined. 5. Source: Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review (#PSBVW7), Casper Boks, Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Juana Camacho-Otero, p. 1 Context: #HHKK3Q Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review #RRR7Y9 1. Introduction Matching excerpt #JGRGPR: Despite the realisation that the circular economy translates into significant changes in consumption, recent reviews on the circular economy do not provide comprehensive accounts of such issues. For example, Kirchherr et al. [2] found that only 19% of the papers defining the circular economy considered consumption, and highlighted that not enough is known about why consumers would participate in the circular economy or not. Van Eijk’s [10] review focussed on drivers and barriers to the circular economy, and although it included consumption and business/consumer acceptance as one of its thematic areas, the insights offered were rather general. Geissdoerfer et al. [11] investigated the relationship between the circular economy and sustainability, but did not make any significant reference regarding the consumer or consumption aspects. Finally, Ghisellini et al. [12] found that the existing literature on circular economy considers consumers to be passive and rational recipients that will follow labels and other production-side signals when making decisions. 6. Source: Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review (#PSBVW7), Casper Boks, Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Juana Camacho-Otero, p. 0 Context: #HHKK3Q Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review #RRR7Y9 1. Introduction Matching excerpt #5QVW6D: A circular economy (CE) aims at decoupling value creation from waste generation and resource use [1] by radically transforming production and consumption systems [2]. Most of the literature on the circular economy seems to focus on the production side, exploring circular business models [3], strategies to develop circular value propositions [4], and the benefits of such models [5]. Less attention seems to have been paid to how consumption and consumers would affect or be affected by the circular economy [2]. As suggested by Hobson et al. [6] the circular economy might translate into significant changes in people’s everyday lives, but there seems to be little understanding of such alterations in the scientific literature, and the policies promoting the circular economy [7]. Among such changes are the 7. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 9 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Matching excerpt #BKS58J: Welch et al. (2017) argue that there is a curious incongruence at the heart of Figure 1. To date, the majority of CE debates and research have focussed on products, materials, markets, and value extraction from specific energy and/or resource life cycles: the materials and processes that constitute the CE. Yet it is the ‘consumer’ and ‘user’ – all of us, the creators, perpetuators, and subjects of the economy – that have central place in the EMF ‘butterfly’ diagram, as the nodes around which CE circular loops and cascades revolve and return to (Hobson et al. , forthcoming ). As such, how our roles and agency are framed and enacted is a crucial component of the successes or failings of CE interventions. Or as Korhonen et al. have put it (2018, p. 41), ‘the new consumption culture is a critical part of the circular economy in its effort to reduce the nature-society-nature linear throughput flow of materials and energy.’ 8. Source: Household consumption at the crossroads: A bibliometric decoding of global sustainability trends, research gaps, and collaborative networks (2015-2025) (#ZB3YSD), B.K. Prahani, Hendry Cahyono, Iszan Hana Kaharudin, Kukuh Arisetyawan, Ladi Wajuba Perdini Fisabilillah, M. Satriawan, M.A. Ghofur, N. Suprapto, Ruth Eviana Hutabarat, S. Andari, Wenny Restikasari, Zain Fuadi Muhammad RoziqiFath, p. 8 Context: #B56H95 Household consumption at the crossroads: A bibliometric decoding of global sustainability trends, research gaps, and collaborative networks (2015-2025) #VPJKSQ 4 Conclusion Matching excerpt #M8SACH: from the US, China, and the UK, while regions like Africa and Southeast Asia remain underrepresented. Core themes such as carbon footprint and energy efficiency prevail, yet emerging areas like the circular economy and AI-driven consumption optimization require deeper exploration. Methodological limitations persist due to reliance on limited databases, necessitating integration of platforms like Web of Science and Google Scholar for broader generalizability. Future research must prioritize reducing geographic and thematic imbalances by focusing on underrepresented regions, adopting participatory methods to capture localized insights, and addressing rapid urbanization and energy transitions. Additionally, incorporating equity metrics such as gender parity and funding accessibility into bibliometric analyses and evaluating long-term impacts of behavioral interventions will align studies with the SDGs, fostering environmental resilience and global equity. Approximate matches 1. Source: From circular consumers to carriers of (unsustainable) practices: socio-spatial transformations in the Circular City (#4AE86F), Kersty Hobson, p. 2 Context: #7TWE3G From circular consumers to carriers of (unsustainable) practices: socio-spatial transformations in the Circular City #XUQXYU KEYWORDS Score: 0.624 Related excerpt #KTYZJQ: practices; metrics on what constitutes circularity; as well as the increasing “circular-washing” of goods and services (as in “greenwashing”: see Correa et al., 2017). 2. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #7JJN4G Keywords Score: 0.594 Related excerpt #FJJWUG: circular economy, materialities, product service system, prosumer 3. Source: Freecycling Markets as Sustainable Materialist Movements? Closing Reuse Circularity Loops in Singapore (#FHZZ6U), Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Qian Hui Tan, p. 3 Context: #DNLVCU 2. STATE POLICIES AND DISCOURSES IN SINGAPORE'S CIRCULAR TRANSITION Score: 0.612 Related excerpt #273AZV: to measuring a reduction in consumption/waste and reuse rates). Although recycling rates are often mobilised as a proxy for quantifying how 'circular' an economy is, high recycling rates should not be conflated with high circularity rates (Price and Joseph 2000; Reike et al. 2018). Third, whereas the imperative to reduce and reuse threatens a consumerist-capitalist system, recycling is less damaging to the status quo and the retail landscape, since the recycling of post-consumer waste requires consumption in the first place. Economic sustainability continues to be the state's foremost concern, as reflected in the state's constant refrain about how a circular transition can present Singapore with new employment opportunities (Singapore Government News 2020a; 2020b). 4. Source: Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. (#NUEUVY), Dan Welch, Harald Wieser, Helen Holmes, Katy Wheeler, Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #N9U32S Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda. #A5NUHL 1. Introduction: circular economy and Consumption Work Score: 0.598 Related excerpt #2NQ5LR: 'Circular Economy' (CE) is now central to debates and interventions that aim to transition systems towards greater environmental sustainability. While definitions abound, CE is commonly understood as transforming inter-linked production-consumption systems to ones 'where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste minimised' (European Commission, 2015: 2). Such transformations involve step-changes to industrial processes and product design, as well as reconfigured business models—for example from 'sale-and-ownership' to 'product service systems' (Mylan, 2015)—that in turn impact consumption patterns, practices and norms. Although sometimes presented as a new framework, CE has its roots in fields such as industrial ecology (e.g. Clift and Druckman, 2016); sustainable and 'cradle-to-cradle' design (McDonough and Braungart, 2002); and 'natural capitalism' (Hawken et al., 1999): fields with their own histories of debate, experimentation and implementation (Reike et al., 2018). 5. Source: Material culture and the circular economy (#R69WZQ), Elizabeth Shove, Jenny Rinkinen, p. 0 Context: #J8TDC3 Material culture and the circular economy #CNF67G 1. Introduction Score: 0.611 Related excerpt #RHNFFH: A “circular economy” would turn goods that are at the end of their service life into resources for others, closing loops in industrial ecosystems and minimizing waste... It would change economic logic because it replaces production with sufficiency: reuse what you can, recycle what cannot be used, repair what is broken, remanufacture what cannot be repaired. (Stahel, 2016: 435) 6. Source: Material culture and the circular economy (#R69WZQ), Elizabeth Shove, Jenny Rinkinen, p. 2 Context: #J8TDC3 Material culture and the circular economy #FAPRPA 4. Discussion Score: 0.601 Related excerpt #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. 7. Source: Material culture and the circular economy (#R69WZQ), Elizabeth Shove, Jenny Rinkinen, p. 2 Context: #J8TDC3 Material culture and the circular economy #FAPRPA 4. Discussion Score: 0.596 Related excerpt #RP8YNG: A third still more significant issue is that policies that are intended to foster a circular economy avoid or marginalize fundamental questions about the constitution of need, including the part that policy making itself plays in reproducing unsustainable practices and systems of provision. If the primary ambition is efficient flow and use of resources and goods, then changes in patterns of consumption and reduction of resource use is secondary ambition and treated as such. There is a risk that circular economy initiatives cling on to narrow growth-oriented 8. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 7 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #VACME2 The Circular Economy: from disparate sub-disciplines to holistic framework? Score: 0.61 Related excerpt #PE59R9: That, of course, is a very stark statement but one that has been made before in relation to the fundamentals of economy-environment systems (Jackson 2009). In terms of CE, there is some support for such claims if we consider the inherent dynamics of the 'economy' part of the CE, which to date has received a lot less attention than the 'circular' parts. As Zink and Geyer (2017) argue, there is 'no a priori reason to assume a closed loop is superior' (Zink and Geyer 2017, p. 594). Despite the fact that such loops dominate mainstream representations of the CE (see Figure 1), these authors argue that the central issue is whether 'secondary production actually prevents primary production' (Zink and Geyer 2017, p. 594). That is, does the recycling of goods so that they can be used again (secondary production) replace and prevent raw materials (primary production) from entering resources streams? To date – and as mentioned above – such moves are failing to happen, and instead, down- or up-cycling is adding to, or creating new, market opportunities. ### 11. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Matching paragraph #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. 2. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #BWE4XA Abstract Matching excerpt #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’. 3. Source: Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing (#AVNZLE), Christian Fuentes, Réka Tölg, p. 1 Context: #S6NTVJ Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing #QR437R Introduction Matching excerpt #ZDP99W: In recent years, the circular economy has attracted considerable scholarly and societal attention (Merli et al, 2018; Hobson, 2020). Circularity advocates – such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013) – and policy documents – such as the European Commission (2020) – argue for the transition to a more circular and therefore also a more materially efficient economy (Ortega Alvarado et al, 2021). The circular economy programme sets out to break with the take-make-dispose linear economy, instead establishing a circular system in which materials are kept in circulation through ‘closed’ production and consumption loops (Hobson, 2016; Mylan et al, 2016). While much of the circular economy research focuses on production and recycling processes, typically geared towards the electronics, metal and waste management industries (Ghisellini et al, 2016; Merli et al, 2018), the role of consumers in making the circular economy possible is beginning to be acknowledged (Hobson et al, 2021). 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction Matching paragraph #FYJU8R: As Hobson et al. (2021) argue, research should examine non-domestic spaces where individuals come together around circular practices – regardless of whether these activities are explicitly labeled as “circular economy”. Other authors have reinforced this call for studies of community based dimensions of circular consumption (Luukkonen et al., 2024, Mesiranta et al., 2025). Brīvbode is such a space: a site where the ordinarily private labour of divestment and acquisition can become visible and socially acknowledged, and where volunteer labour sustains infrastructure continuous with the domestic labour it serves. 5. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 2 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #4F5EEN 2. Situating provisioning #38LM6C 2.2. Circular economy and sharing economy Matching excerpt #56AZCA: In a previous study with others (Mylan et al., 2016), I argue for recognition of the domestic as a site of CE; where practices that constitute domestic life, including food sharing, repurposing and recycling, already involve the circularity of materials. Similarly, Hobson (2016: 96) alludes to the importance of the household, and the materials which flow in and out, in expanding CE's realm. In addition, and as already noted, connections are being made between CE and SE. Lacy and Rutqvist (2015) describe the sharing platform, and the likes of Uber and Lyft Inc, as CE business models. Whilst not expressively stating the varying forms of economy at work, research by Niinimäki and Hassi (2011) likewise draws upon the links between PSS schemes involving fashion items, and more sustainable, circular modes of consumption. Thus, it is evident that the division between SE/CE is blurred and the two are often interwoven. Hobson (2016) also makes these connections to PSS and the interweaving of CE/SE, referencing models such as Zipcar. However, Hobson (2016) pushes at this further, referring to social enterprises and 'generative spaces' (p.98) of everyday activism, such as repair cafes, as spaces of the CE. Hobson's work bridges the lacunae between the sharing and circular economies, opening up the possibilities that diverse economic spaces offer to issues of circularity, sustainability and activism. As Hobson states (2016: 99), there is potential for 'rich engagement, through both further conceptual and empirical exploration'. This article empirically fleshes out what such spaces look like and how they engage in practices of circulating and sharing. 6. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 2 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #4F5EEN 2. Situating provisioning #38LM6C 2.2. Circular economy and sharing economy Matching excerpt #3CMBV5: To date, the majority of work on CE has focused on large-scale manufacturing and industrial processes, and their adoption of closed loop, cradle-to-cradle processes to maximise efficiency (Abu-Ghunmi et al., 2016; Lieder and Rashid, 2016). Circular economy is defined by WRAP (2017) as a model which keeps resources in use for as long as possible, avoiding make-use-dispose linear models. However, recent political interest in the concept has propelled a shift, not only in its popularity, but also its reach. The European's Commission now has a 'Circular Economy Package' designed to help 'European businesses and consumers to make the transition to a stronger and more circular economy where resources are used in a more sustainable way' (European Commission, 2015). Likewise, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is solely focused on promoting economic circularity that is 'restorative and regenerative by design' including business, government and academia (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2012). This wide-ranging endorsement of CE, alongside its political broadening to include consumers, has led a few academics to begin to question the scope and potential spatiality of the concept. As Hobson (2016: 99) argues, close attention needs to be paid 'to spaces where disparate forms of CE may emerge and/or be fostered in forms and ways that current analyses of the CE omits'. 7. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 4 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #B786P5 4. The case studies #ZGCPZT 4.1. Case study 1: Coffee Club Matching excerpt #K3YPUP: In the space of coffee club the material value of the provisioning objects, the food/tea and coffee, comes to be worth much more than its actual monetary value. As Kate notes 'because there's a sociable eating and drinking element, it makes people relaxed, and they want to chat'. Thus, the food acts as a conduit to provisioning much more than just itself, but also enables the circulating and sharing of less tangible and more emotional types of support. Thus Coffee Club's 'circular economy' is more than just materials. Yet, returning to the work of Pahl (1984: 137), none of these practices are new, 'the norms of reciprocity and complexity of social relationships surround the transaction'. These ordinary practices are embedded in the social relationships created by Coffee Club. What is extraordinary is the 'generative' (Hobson, 8. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 0 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #NMW2HP 1. Introduction Matching excerpt #EYKQ9N: This paper considers the emergence of contemporary provisioning models and their materialities and practices. It argues that focusing on the materialities of diverse provisioning economies is one way to make sense of them, and that doing so reveals the ordinary practices of circularity and sharing which take place in these new and novel spaces. Through this focus it joins debates around the geographies of alterity and austerity with those of circular (CE) and shared economy (SE). Inspiration is drawn from Gibson-Graham's (2008) notion of 'diverse economies', alongside more recent work which illuminates the potential of alternative economic spaces and their intersections with CE/SE (Hobson, 2016; Ince and Hall, 2017). However, a key element of this paper is its consideration of ordinary, everyday economic practices; and for this it returns to the work of Pahl (1984) and Clarke (2001), both of whom have highlighted the informal, often taken-for-granted elements of informal economies and their focus upon sharing, circulating and reciprocating. Approximate matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Score: 0.636 Related paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9GJAHS LIST OF SOURCES Score: 0.621 Related paragraph #C8L8YQ: Hobson, K. (2020) ‘“Small stories of closing loops”: social circularity and the everyday circular economy’, Climatic Change, 163(1), pp. 99–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02480-z 3. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #BWE4XA Abstract Score: 0.617 Related excerpt #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’. 4. Source: Freecycling Markets as Sustainable Materialist Movements? Closing Reuse Circularity Loops in Singapore (#FHZZ6U), Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Qian Hui Tan, p. 9 Context: #6H5X72 6. SUSTAINABLE MATERIALISMS? MATERIALITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS #DAQJ2S 6.3 MORE-THAN-MATERIAL CONCERNS AND THE POLITICS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND SCALABILITY Score: 0.613 Related excerpt #XW2R88: Along with Milios and Dalhammar's (2020) call to identify strategic partnerships that can enable the reuse of material resources, we suggest that state/institutional assistance in the provision of market and storage spaces will be immensely helpful. On top of allocating space for infrastructure associated with long recycling/recovery loops (e.g. blue recycling bins, waste-to-energy plants), space is also needed for activities related to closing short reuse loops (see Hobson 2020 on circular spaces). In the last year (after our initial study of SRRFM and TnT) the first author has noticed another recurring freecycling market surfacing in the public housing estate where she lives (see Figure 4a, Figure 4b and Figure 4c). The Residents Committee 13 – which has state support and a dedicated space – near her has 5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction Score: 0.65 Related paragraph #FYJU8R: As Hobson et al. (2021) argue, research should examine non-domestic spaces where individuals come together around circular practices – regardless of whether these activities are explicitly labeled as “circular economy”. Other authors have reinforced this call for studies of community based dimensions of circular consumption (Luukkonen et al., 2024, Mesiranta et al., 2025). Brīvbode is such a space: a site where the ordinarily private labour of divestment and acquisition can become visible and socially acknowledged, and where volunteer labour sustains infrastructure continuous with the domestic labour it serves. 6. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #BA7Z5L LIST OF SOURCES Score: 0.621 Related paragraph #EK4EWA: Hobson, K. (2020) ‘“Small stories of closing loops”: social circularity and the everyday circular economy’, Climatic Change, 163(1), pp. 99–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02480-z 7. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 1 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #NMW2HP 1. Introduction Score: 0.668 Related excerpt #8AGLQQ: It is here where this article intersects. As Hobson concludes, further conceptual and empirical exploration of such spaces is required. Drawing upon the notion of diverse economies and an appreciation of the everyday embeddedness of sharing and circularity as economic practice, this paper uses two case studies, one a domestic clothes swap, the other a membership based food provisioning group, to empirically flesh out what such 'generative spaces' look like, illuminating their varied scales and spaces. However, it also pushes further at these arguments. Firstly, it examines how these diverse economies are materially stabilised, or 'made material', through the practices of circulating and sharing, and inversely how materiality also 'troubles' them. In doing so, I illuminate how provisioning organisations challenge and also inadvertently reproduce inequalities and exclusion. This material focus draws upon the vast body of work on consumption, everyday practice and material culture (key examples texts include: Gronow and Warde, 2001; Miller, 1987, 2010; Gregson, 2007; Shove, 2003). Secondly, it returns to the work of Pahl (1984) and Clarke (2001) to illustrate how these practices are not new, but are rather age-old methods of self-provisioning and getting-by, badged in original and organised forms. From swapping and sharing, making and mending, to exchange and barter, these ordinary practices and the materialities they encompass illuminate new economic spaces operating in between the gaps of 'alternative' and also 'emergency' provisioning. 8. Source: New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning (#XATD2A), Helen Holmes, p. 2 Context: #AHCZ2X New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning #4F5EEN 2. Situating provisioning #38LM6C 2.2. Circular economy and sharing economy Score: 0.622 Related excerpt #56AZCA: In a previous study with others (Mylan et al., 2016), I argue for recognition of the domestic as a site of CE; where practices that constitute domestic life, including food sharing, repurposing and recycling, already involve the circularity of materials. Similarly, Hobson (2016: 96) alludes to the importance of the household, and the materials which flow in and out, in expanding CE's realm. In addition, and as already noted, connections are being made between CE and SE. Lacy and Rutqvist (2015) describe the sharing platform, and the likes of Uber and Lyft Inc, as CE business models. Whilst not expressively stating the varying forms of economy at work, research by Niinimäki and Hassi (2011) likewise draws upon the links between PSS schemes involving fashion items, and more sustainable, circular modes of consumption. Thus, it is evident that the division between SE/CE is blurred and the two are often interwoven. Hobson (2016) also makes these connections to PSS and the interweaving of CE/SE, referencing models such as Zipcar. However, Hobson (2016) pushes at this further, referring to social enterprises and 'generative spaces' (p.98) of everyday activism, such as repair cafes, as spaces of the CE. Hobson's work bridges the lacunae between the sharing and circular economies, opening up the possibilities that diverse economic spaces offer to issues of circularity, sustainability and activism. As Hobson states (2016: 99), there is potential for 'rich engagement, through both further conceptual and empirical exploration'. This article empirically fleshes out what such spaces look like and how they engage in practices of circulating and sharing. ### 12. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction #LAR465 Latvian context and research Matching paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Matching paragraph #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…] 3. Source: The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings (#8EVNK8), Réka Tölg, p. 109 Context: #KBKAA9 Concluding discussion #92JYP3 Research contributions #JWDMFC Implications for circular economy policy and retailers Matching excerpt #6BUT2W: The EU circular textile strategy works closely with helping consumers to 'reset the trend' and 'make fast fashion out of fashion' (European Commission, 2022). Based on the present dissertation, such initiatives are a great starting point to help consumers shift registers of valuing, and appreciate alternative aspects of clothing such as durability, longevity or history. However, EU policy also needs to work towards helping to build an infrastructure for circular consumption, one that is at least equal to, if not replaces, linearity. For instance, the EU directive banning the handling of household textile waste as part of regular waste is a move in such direction, which should help to generate the infrastructure for clothing that is made of recycled material. However, as has been reported, producers who could use and re-make the collected textiles are currently missing from markets (Fjellman, 2025). Therefore, even if households go to great lengths to find the appropriate bins for their textile waste, there is currently no assurance that they will find re-made or recycled garments widely available on markets. 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction #QXGS6P Policies Matching paragraph #H59VTK: 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 concrete regulatory frameworks, including the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles promote mandatory separate collection of textile waste and extend producer responsibility schemes. 5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction #L2U838 Latvian context and background Matching paragraph #WAKMKA: In recent years the landscape has diversified further, with online groups, neighbourhood swapping events, book and plant exchange shelves, digital resale platforms, and informal stall-based initiatives all forming part of a dispersed network of everyday circulation practices. 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. 6. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 6 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #VACME2 The Circular Economy: from disparate sub-disciplines to holistic framework? Matching excerpt #HVLB5Q: The results of CE interventions to date appear to back-up such arguments. On the one hand, the EU CE headline indicators – that track the outcomes of the 2015 CE Action Plan – show some encouraging trends. Recycling has increased across the region while relevant legislation is being recast (e.g. design and consumer rights). There is now an 'EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy' (European Commission 2019), which aims to make all plastic packaging used in the EU recyclable by 2030 (n.d.). In addition, it is claimed there has been a 6% increase in jobs in 'sectors relevant to the Circular Economy' (n.d.), a point that invites further questions about how one defines jobs in that category, given that the overall aim of the CE is to create new economic systems and practices across a wide range of sectors (see Moreau et al. 2017). Approximate matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Score: 0.692 Related paragraph #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…] 2. Source: The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings (#8EVNK8), Réka Tölg, p. 109 Context: #KBKAA9 Concluding discussion #92JYP3 Research contributions #JWDMFC Implications for circular economy policy and retailers Score: 0.734 Related excerpt #6BUT2W: The EU circular textile strategy works closely with helping consumers to 'reset the trend' and 'make fast fashion out of fashion' (European Commission, 2022). Based on the present dissertation, such initiatives are a great starting point to help consumers shift registers of valuing, and appreciate alternative aspects of clothing such as durability, longevity or history. However, EU policy also needs to work towards helping to build an infrastructure for circular consumption, one that is at least equal to, if not replaces, linearity. For instance, the EU directive banning the handling of household textile waste as part of regular waste is a move in such direction, which should help to generate the infrastructure for clothing that is made of recycled material. However, as has been reported, producers who could use and re-make the collected textiles are currently missing from markets (Fjellman, 2025). Therefore, even if households go to great lengths to find the appropriate bins for their textile waste, there is currently no assurance that they will find re-made or recycled garments widely available on markets. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction #QXGS6P Policies Score: 0.689 Related paragraph #H59VTK: 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 concrete regulatory frameworks, including the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles promote mandatory separate collection of textile waste and extend producer responsibility schemes. 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #SVS6HK Introduction #QXGS6P Policies Score: 0.686 Related paragraph #L3T7ZT: EU Textile Strategy (2022-ongoing) states that textiles should be durable, repairable, reusable, and reuse should be part of the desired system outcome. 5. Source: Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps (#X8QHRR), Agnė Jučienė, Inga Gurauskienė, Jolita Kruopienė, p. 1 Context: #AKDV4S Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps #3MS6RE 1. Introduction Score: 0.733 Related excerpt #PK4ETC: The European Commission has adopted the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles to extend clothing life-cycle loops via reuse and repair activities [26,27]. For instance, business models that focus on selling secondhand clothes or renting clothing can effectively displace the need for new clothing, thus decreasing the environmental burden of production processes [28]. 6. Source: Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps (#X8QHRR), Agnė Jučienė, Inga Gurauskienė, Jolita Kruopienė, p. 1 Context: #AKDV4S Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps #3MS6RE 1. Introduction Score: 0.674 Related excerpt #TKAKWW: According to [29,30], the transition to a circular economy in the textile industry that involves recycling and reusing materials can mitigate environmental impacts by reducing water stress, the need for virgin resources, fossil fuel consumption, and pollution through greenhouse gas emissions and waste. Increasing the lifespan of clothing can dramatically reduce these impacts [5,31] because extending textile use requires less frequent replacement and, thus, lower overall impacts [32]. Thus, reuse models are crucial to mitigate environmental impacts and promote sustainability within the textile industry. ### 13. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 160 Context: #XBXPMG Moral Economies of Recycling #DDQXJ2 Moral economy revisited Matching excerpt #DRCXXB: However, looking at state and institutional relationships only takes us so far and does not explore how communities and collective movements can resist marketisation of waste and together oppose unfair or destructive economic practices. E. P. Thompson's (1991) conception of moral economy is instructive in this respect. His examination of food riots in the eighteenth century revealed how communities opposed unfair prices of grain in defence of their 'traditional rights', using principles of the older 'paternalist model' to justify their objections to the encroaching free-market economy. Whilst Thompson was cautious about his conception of 'moral economy' being applied to different cases, his idea that people are the 'bearers of historical customs and moral evaluations of their community' adds a different layer to the analytical scaffold of moral economy (Bolton and Laaser, 2013: 513). At this layer, we seek to uncover where ideas about recycling emerge and the role that community and interest groups may play in promoting ideas about responsible waste management (e.g. environmental justice campaigners who oppose waste disposal/treatment facilities in their communities), as well as how communal legitimacy for particular policies is established. Taken together with the institutional understandings, we are able to uncover both how the organisation of the systems of recycling and the customs of those acting within them shape distinctive moral economies. 2. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 159 Context: #XBXPMG Moral Economies of Recycling #DDQXJ2 Moral economy revisited Matching excerpt #WJJY3D: Polanyi's (1944, 1957) groundbreaking thesis refutes the separatist position between market and society and in so doing provides the building blocks of a coherent moral economy approach (Bolton and Laaser, 2013). Polanyi challenged the idea of the self-regulating market and instead argued that all economies are underpinned by social, political and moral values which enable them to function. Whilst the market tends towards the disembedding of the economy from social relations, there is a countermovement by the state which seeks to constrain the market and embed social and moral obligations within market relations. Polanyi's ideas inspired the 'new economic sociology' which sought to overcome the neglect of social, ethical and cultural factors in economic theory (Fourcade and Healy, 2007; Granovetter, 1985). Polanyi's argument that 'the human economy... is embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and noneconomic' led scholars to explore the shifting place of the economy in society and discover how economic processes are 'instituted at different times and places' (Polanyi, 1957: 7). 3. Source: Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (#8YF7LY), Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna, p. 219 Context: #Y8JW9E Thrift and Its ParadoxesFrom Domestic to Political Economy #M2EGC2 Afterword Matching excerpt #SFXQAG: In all these contemporary case-studies, the economic anthropologist must investigate the impact of capitalist political economy. A “market model” has become dominant, from Mongolia to Latin America, from Central Europe to South Africa, from the Caribbean to Indonesia. Yet this model never entirely breaks down the resilience of older forms of domestic and community organization. Scalability applies in politics as well as in economy: the house model has a political dimension in the form of patriarchal power. Polish peasants have long imagined their polity in terms of the responsibilities of the head of the household to provide for all its members (Malewska-Szalygin 2017). Beyond political economy, several chapters raise the moral or ethical dimensions of thrift explicitly. Thrift is a value as well as a management strategy. It is usually associated with frugality, sometimes asceticism, and perhaps even transcendence. Daromir Rudnyckyj rehearses the Weberian argument that an ethos of “hard frugality,” in particular strands of Protestantism, played a critical role in the transition to a new era of political economy. Some external forms of thrift might persist unchanged, but the stakes were different when the goal became profit, rather than muddling through. The state-owned Indonesian steel plant in which Rudnyckyj did his field research was formerly a “moral economy” characterized by over-staffing, patron–client relations (also discussed by Diz), and corruption. To maintain competitiveness, management has brought in a charismatic consultant who preaches a transparent “spiritual economy” grounded in the precepts of Islam. 4. Source: Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (#8YF7LY), Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna, p. 156 Context: #Y8JW9E Thrift and Its ParadoxesFrom Domestic to Political Economy #37LNUP Regimes of Asceticism #X2RU76 From a Moral Economy to a Spiritual One Matching excerpt #3VMGBR: italism. The spirit of capitalism, according to Weber, refers to the moral obligation of the subject to increase his or her capital (Weber [1920] 2001: 16). The pursuit of profit is opposed to Thompson's and Scott's notion of moral economy because it is not premised on market exchanges but relations of reciprocity. For example, in Scott's analysis, Southeast Asian peasants have no interest in maximizing profit, but rather in ensuring their security in the event of famine (Scott 1976: 4–5). Patron–client networks precipitated a specific form of economic subjectivity, characterized by avoidance of risk, deference to authority, and reliance on superiors. Furthermore, it did not produce the type of ethical dispositions characteristic of capitalism and premised on savings and reinvestment. As Scott and Reid point out, the subjects of a moral economy are typically fatalistic: accepting their lot in life, spending whatever surplus they had beyond the tribute they were obligated to pass on to their patron, and seeing little point in reinvestment to improve their positions. These dispositions conflict dramatically with the entrepreneurial impulses that emerged out of worldly asceticism. Whereas worldly asceticism hatched capitalist ambition in its embrace of frugality and thrift, those embedded in a moral economy saw little point in such self-abnegation. 5. Source: Freecycling Markets as Sustainable Materialist Movements? Closing Reuse Circularity Loops in Singapore (#FHZZ6U), Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Qian Hui Tan, p. 3 Context: #MLNREG 3. LITERATURE REVIEW: R-BEHAVIOURS, SUSTAINABLE MATERIALISM, CIRCULAR ACTIVISMS #8K73BS 3.1 CIRCULAR R-BEHAVIOURS Matching excerpt #QGPQ9V: Recirculation, which is at the core of circular practices, has not been directly mentioned in discussions on R-behaviours. Rather, it is featured obliquely in resell/reuse (R2 in Reike et al's typology), with reselling as a means of returning a product to the market economy (without much adaptation) for reuse. Besides reselling, academics highlight a slew of material divestment networks for individuals to find 'relief from the burden of possession' (Roux and Guiot 2020: 398; Ong et al. 2020). These networks can be classified into (a) a gift economy (e.g. donations to charity, free-cycling, freeganing without a monetary transaction); and (b) a second-hand 'waste-based commodity frontier' (Pyyhtinen and Lehtonen 2022) involving the resale of things (e.g. deals with junk traders, flea markets, garage/car-bootsales, thrift/second-hand stores). Such divestment circuits are not mutually exclusive, as things may be sold at throwaway prices and a pure market logic may not always undergird monetary exchanges (Herrmann 1997). 6. Source: The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (#RCRP8Z), Baron Isherwood, Mary Douglas, p. 61 Context: #LLQN73 The World of Goods #UZUC8Q Goods as an information system #BKYWY7 PRUDENCE ACCORDING TO FRIEDMAN Matching excerpt #WYCPJ9: switch funds suddenly from one year to the next. Not surprisingly, both economists place their vision of society within the general assumptions of the market economy. They acknowledge the theory of rationality, which underpins economic theory, the theory of rationality whose emergence to the surface of European moral consciousness Max Weber was engaged in tracing. Approximate matches 1. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 3 Context: #W238BY Front Matter #E5XDK4 HOUSEHOLD RECYCLING AND CONSUMPTION WORK #XWRA5U Consumption and Public Life #NSQB8U Titles include: Score: 0.608 Related excerpt #VZ688Q: Social and Moral Economies 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #7Z8WUY Letting Go: Attachment Without Price Score: 0.634 Related paragraph #PYSU33: (moral economies of access and restraint) 3. Source: Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (#8YF7LY), Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna, p. 227 Context: #NQ2SZK Index Score: 0.634 Related excerpt #9DDDRU: moral economies, 145–47, 177 4. Source: Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (#8YF7LY), Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna, p. 155 Context: #Y8JW9E Thrift and Its ParadoxesFrom Domestic to Political Economy #37LNUP Regimes of Asceticism #X2RU76 From a Moral Economy to a Spiritual One Score: 0.621 Related excerpt #JB8J5Z: The moral economy is characterized in large measure by patron–client ties, in which clients commit to loyalty toward patrons and accept a measure of apparently exploitative relationships (Bubandt 2006). In return, they understand that the authority will guarantee the subsistence of the people in the event of widespread famine or hardship (Thompson 1971). Thus, in the classic patron–client exchange, the client provides a disproportionately large share of their annual agricultural produce to the patron in return for the commitment, on the part of the patron, that he or she will guarantee the subsistence of the patron in the possible event of crop failure (Scott and Kerkvliet 1977). My ethnographic work confirmed a tension between the patron–client relations characteristic of Scott’s moral economy and the more individualistic ethics characteristic of capitalism and amplified by neoliberalism. 5. Source: Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (#8YF7LY), Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna, p. 1 Context: #ZX8PV7 Thrift and Its Paradoxes #ZXU648 Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy #MZV5X5 Volume 8 Score: 0.621 Related excerpt #ZWQSUU: Moral Economy at Work 6. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #3X7JKL The circulation of things and things that sustain it #V753D5 Non-monetary exchange and attachment: competencies of letting go Score: 0.634 Related paragraph #8ZPRYC: (moral economies of access and restraint) ### 14. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 6, "query": "unruly anthropological reuse second-hand circular policy" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 6, "query": "friction valuation without price thrift store sorting" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "limit": 6, "query": "circular society depoliticised eco-modernist apolitical" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "document_id": "4V8VH7", "limit": 5, "query": "Brīvbode purgatory not bin not charity" } ``` ### 15. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 3 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #YUBQAT Reuse and circular economy Matching excerpt #NRJXYE: At the time that we began exploring reuse and second-hand consumption, discussions on the promises of the 'circular economy' (CE) had begun to emerge in Sweden. The concept circulated in national media, and in Gothenburg where we were doing fieldwork, various meetings, workshops, and lectures on the topic illustrated the growing interest in this new way of conceptualising the economy. Indeed, the City administration pilot project we collaborated with was called Circular Gothenburg. In short, CE thinking takes a systematic approach to the economy that should benefit industry, society, and the planet by disconnecting growth from resource exploitation. Inspired by the restorative and regenerative powers of ecological cycles in nature it argues for closing the loops of material flows in order to reduce resource extraction and waste production. In symbiotic networks corporations are supposed to turn waste and by-products into resources for production. Design for disassembling and recycling is crucial in this, as is design for care and repair in order to extend the lifespan of things before being returned for another production cycle (McDonough and Braungart, 2002; Webster, 2017). CE has received criticism, not least in regard to the limited evidence of large-scale practical CE cases (see Gregson et al. 2015; Blomsma and Brennan 2017; Valenzuela and Böhm 2017; Corvellec et al. 2020), but overall has been met with enthusiasm from industry, policy makers, and social movements and is being increasingly adopted as an imagined solution to sustainability challenges in Sweden. This is reflected for example in the way that the Swedish government sees it as a cornerstone of the sustainable consumption strategy (Ministry of Finance 2016), recently formed the Swedish Circular Economy Delegation (Government Offices of Sweden 2018) and ambitiously stated that "Sweden will develop the resource-effective, circular, bio-based economy" in its latest Government Declaration (authors' translation, Government Offices of Sweden 2019: 6). 2. Source: On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care (#CUWPC9), Cindy Isenhour, Joshua Reno, p. 0 Context: #3YJ9P3 On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care Matching excerpt #655E43: Keywords: reuse; second-hand; circular economy; waste; salvage 3. Source: Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets (#MBXQXR), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 1 Context: #3U9XEW Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets1 #TY8WTD Introduction Matching excerpt #Y6XUMS: Commercial markets 2 for retro-, vintage and second-hand objects have undergone a dramatic expansion in the last decade across the globe (Franklin 2011: 157). Factors contributing to this expansion have been described in the introduction as well as in some of the contributions to this thematic issue (notably Fischer). In this article we suggest that a significant aspect of the new importance of second-hand and reuse concerns the meaningfulness of circulation in social life. Revisiting the long history within social anthropology of studying the mutual entanglement of material objects and human subjects, we explore circulation as an analytical tool. Circulation does things to people and objects, particularly within the field of second-hand, and we suggest that it can be seen as a culturally generative force that reconfigures objects into objects-in-motion, enabling particular forms of subjectivity. Indeed, circulation seems to be a defining aspect of second-hand objects, distinguishing them from other classic categories of objects in anthropological thinking about person-thing relationships, such as gifts, commodities, sacrifices or art objects. We hope to show that classic anthropological insights, drawn from ethnographic fieldwork there and then, married with recent anthropological contributions on people-thing relationships, have much to offer when making sense of the socio-economic significance of circulation here and now. We are intrigued by how recent writing on the concept of growing, as distinct from making (Ingold & Hallam 2014), can elucidate how circulation transforms things in motion within second-hand worlds. Developing the idea that objects have cultural biographies (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), we propose a theoretical perspective that sees the circulation of used and second-hand things as involving a form of growth, akin to that of a living organism, in that it results from the interaction between qualities and forces both internal and external to the object. Doing this allows a view of the circulating objects not merely as things that events happen to, but as having agential capacities (cf. Gell 1998), actively contributing to shaping their fate. 4. Source: Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets (#MBXQXR), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 0 Context: #3U9XEW Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets1 #KXPKZM Abstract Matching excerpt #26ES6P: From having been associated with poverty and low status, the commerce with second-hand goods in retro shops, flea markets, vintage boutiques and trade via Internet is expanding in Sweden as in many countries in the Global North. This article argues that a significant aspect of the recent interest in second-hand and reuse concerns the meaningfulness of circulation in social life. Using classic anthropological theory on how the circulation of material culture generates sociality, it focuses on how second-hand things are transformed by their circulation. Rather than merely having cultural biographies, second-hand things are reconfigured through their shifts between different social contexts in a process that here is understood as a form of growing. Similar to that of an organism, this growth is continuous, irreversible and dependent on forces both internal and external to it. What emerges is a category of things that combine elements of both commodities and gifts, as these have been theorized within anthropology. While first cycle commodities are purified of their sociality, the hybrid second-hand thing derives its ontological status as well as social and commercial value precisely from retaining 'gift qualities', produced by its circulation. 5. Source: ‘It will Keep Circulating’: Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets (#ZJUEY4), Anna Bohlin, p. 0 Context: #SSAEUN 'It will Keep Circulating': Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets Matching excerpt #R3D4QX: Using the case of Sweden, this article examines the growing sector of reuse and second-hand activities from the perspective of how people express and practice their relationships to objects that they acquire from second-hand markets. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in flea markets, second-hand shops, homes and recycling depots, it explores how people relate to and handle goods which, instead of becoming waste, enter new life cycles through reuse. It suggests that buying, using and passing on certain kinds of second-hand things involves particular forms of affection and 'serial' care for the objects as things-in-motion. At the same time, part of the attraction of these objects is how they enable the practising of a particular kind of subjectivity: that of an informed, moral and caring consumer. Part of such reuse subjectivity is the capacity to form close bonds with, and care for objects, but also to untie these bonds in order to carefully and responsibly let go of them. The article suggests that paying attention to the affective orientation and disposition that form part of such consumer subjectivity may provide keys to understanding what drives second-hand consumption and the accelerated circulation of goods it may entail. Offering an opportunity to examine assumptions of reuse and circulation as inherently 'sustainable', it also provides perspectives on practices of care. 6. Source: ‘It will Keep Circulating’: Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets (#ZJUEY4), Anna Bohlin, p. 0 Context: #SSAEUN 'It will Keep Circulating': Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets #E744H2 Introduction Matching excerpt #AR6HQ2: Watson 2012; Norris 2012). Rather, using a Swedish case study, this article focuses on the consumer end of such practices, exploring how norms regarding the virtue of reuse intersect with how people relate to and handle things that they acquire from second-hand markets. More precisely, it focuses on attitudes and practices related to a range of second-hand activities, ranging from acquisition of pre-owned objects from flea markets, charity- and vintage shops, including online second-hand markets, to living with and keeping such objects in the home, to passing them on to others through various reuse channels. Bringing together insights from anthropological fieldwork in locations related to these different practices, this article explores the how people express and perform their relationships to objects that have avoided becoming waste, instead beginning new life cycles with new owners. It suggests that buying, using and passing on second-hand things involves a particular form of dispersed, or 'serial' care for the objects as things-in-motion (Appadurai 1986), which will be outlined below. At the same time, such practices allow possibilities for enterprising the self-as-reuser, to paraphrase waste scholar Gay Hawkins's notion of 'self as recycler', in other words they help produce a particular kind of person that enjoys the status of being responsible and ethically conscious (2006: 95; see also Alexander & Reno 2012: 2). A significant part of such reuse subjectivity seems to be the capacity to form close bonds with, and care for objects, but also to carefully and responsibly let Approximate matches 1. Source: “Still good life”: On the value of reuse and distributive labor in “depleted” rural Maine (#3F4AVR), Brieanne Berry, Cindy Isenhour, p. 3 Context: #XM8XYE “Still good life”: On the value of reuse and distributive labor in “depleted” rural Maine #HZNXSR Background and literature review: Meaning, motive, and value in reuse Score: 0.692 Related excerpt #Z8VAMH: Anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists have long studied exchanges of previously owned goods, even if not always referred to as reuse or secondhand. Some of the most foundational writings on the topic clearly demonstrate the highly social and productive nature of previously owned goods, which are often more closely linked to the creation of social ties—advantage, alliance, or reciprocal support—than they are to financial gain or the object of exchange itself (e.g., Appadurai 1988; Malinowski 1922; Mauss 1925). Contemporary studies of secondhand exchange clearly echo these themes (e.g., Appelgren and Bohlin 2015; Halvorsen 2012; Isenhour and Reno 2019) but are shaped by a much different context, one in which decades of mass production, floods of cheap imports, and the sheer abundance of surplus items have given rise to new epistemological markers. Though reuse was once the global norm, its redefinition in opposition to new product consumption in affluent contexts and in relation to more recent concerns about sustainability has encouraged a more recent field of study focused specifically on reuse markets (Saunders 2016). 2. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 0 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #QFKJQY Introduction Score: 0.695 Related excerpt #BFUYH8: As two anthropologists, working on a research project on consumption of second-hand and reuse objects that began in 2014, we found ourselves increasingly preoccupied with this question. The focus of the project was on the circulation of aging material culture in second-hand markets as an alternative form of heritage making (see below for details). 3. Source: On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care (#CUWPC9), Cindy Isenhour, Joshua Reno, p. 1 Context: #3YJ9P3 On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #NDV2YR Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy Score: 0.658 Related excerpt #G4L34C: The accelerated interest in reuse, as circular economic ideologies are mainstreamed among policy makers, industry and citizens, deserves renewed attention at this moment when long-standing reuse and repair practices are increasingly being rationalized, formalized and institutionalized. The contributors to this special issue engage with those who tinker, scavenge, save, buy used and give away to examine these practices in social context, lived experience and as embedded within larger political and economic structures of capitalist accumulation and abandonment. Our ethnographic approach, based on qualitative engagement, enables a rich examination of meaning and experience, but also leads us to question how these practices are linked to and arise from the conditions of modernity. While the recent focus on circular economy certainly emerges from crises of overproduction, economic inefficiencies and growing concerns about climatic change and resource depletion—ethnographic engagements with waste, repair and reuse raise questions about the novelty and efficacy of the circular economy concept. Indeed, numerous ethnographies have already illustrated the deeply relational, situated and cultural entanglements implied in the determination of 'resource' 'value' and 'waste' among a wide variety of communities for whom the concept of circular economy is considered common sense. From ethnographies featuring innovative reuse among resource-strapped communities (Nguyen, 2016) and garbage pickers on the margins of Brazilian society (Millar, 2018) to sanitary workers in New York City (Nagle, 2014), or among connoisseurs of thrift shops and vintage goods (Appelgren and Bohlin, 2015; Isenhour, 2012), these studies have long demonstrated the not-so-novel concept of informal circular economies in action. 4. Source: On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care (#CUWPC9), Cindy Isenhour, Joshua Reno, p. 0 Context: #3YJ9P3 On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care #NDV2YR Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy Score: 0.647 Related excerpt #ZUBQUE: structures from the 'ruins of modernity' (2018: 5). In this collection, contributors illustrate that reuse involves deliberate acts of revaluation and care which recall and build upon embedded meaning, affect, social histories and the properties of materials. However, we also suggest here, that these acts do not necessarily challenge paradigms nor offer alternatives—in all cases. If reuse and repair are familiar, even quotidian practices, they have also gained currency as the object and objective of new mutations in liberal eco-governance. Characteristic in this regard is the international focus on circular economies, which endeavor to reimagine discarded goods as a resource rather than a market externality or a pollutant, thereby contributing to resource conservation, climate change mitigation and environmental protection in one fell swoop (Velis, 2015; Webster, 2015). 5. Source: Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets (#MBXQXR), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 5 Context: #3U9XEW Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets1 #DSNHBJ Unpacking Circulation Score: 0.65 Related excerpt #98DC3K: respect to material culture and consumption (e.g. Miller 1987; 1998; 2008) and global travel of commodities (e.g. Foster 2006, 2008a; 2008b). However, these contributions primarily operate with objects that may or may not change as they circulate, encountering and becoming embedded within new contexts. The distinctive aspect of the field of second-hand practices is that it concerns objects that are defined by their continued circulation – objects-in-motion. Applying perspectives from classic anthropology we also take up Tsing’s call for a theoretical interest in the pathways and passage-points between nodes in circuits, as much as the nodes themselves. Following Lee and LiPuma in regarding circulation as a generative process that entails negotiation at the nodes as well as the performative channel making that enables flows, our focus in the following is on how circulation reconfigures the objects in motion. 6. Source: ‘It will Keep Circulating’: Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets (#ZJUEY4), Anna Bohlin, p. 0 Context: #SSAEUN 'It will Keep Circulating': Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets Score: 0.646 Related excerpt #9GQJUW: Keywords: second-hand; reuse; care; sustainability; consumerism; divestment; circulation ### 16. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #SLFJ9K Priceless Valuation: Sorting, Curation, and Care Matching paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #EBTHSE Not the Bin: Modal Labour and the Informal Route Matching paragraph #SZG4E8: If §5.2 traced the valuation work the absence of price creates, this section turns to the kind of arrangement in which that work takes place. Wheeler and Glucksmann’s modal dimension names how labour is distributed across different socioeconomic arrangements — paid and unpaid, formal and informal, market and non-market, household and institution — and how the same task takes on a different character depending on which arrangement it is embedded in. The same act of sorting used clothes is paid retail work in a thrift chain, contracted labour at a municipal textile collection point, unpaid domestic labour at home, and something else again at Brīvbode. The question this section asks is what kind of arrangement Brīvbode is, modally speaking, and what difference its form makes for the labour that runs it and the people it recruits. 3. Source: Incidental sustainability? Notes from a thrift store in Germany (#4Y4DVC), Petra Kuppinger, p. 9 Context: #AYGQVA Incidental sustainability? Notes from a thrift store in Germany #MP3WA2 The thrift store Matching excerpt #9DGKP8: Because Vera was sick for some time, I spent many afternoons at this sorting table, often alone, as workers were in short supply. Sometimes I did the sorting, valuing, hanging, and delivery to the sales floor alone. Sometimes I worked with others, and we often engaged in discussions about what should (not) be sold, and what could be sold at higher than standard prices. While stains, holes, and other damage clearly disqualify items, debates unfolded around what was totally out of style and hence impossible to sell. Would a 1990s shoulder-padded blazer find a new home with a 'cool' 20-year-old? Would a high-quality men's sports coat from the early 2000s find a new owner when fewer men wear such items? How many flimsy fast fashion blouses can a thrift store sell? When in doubt, or after a discussion, we mostly agreed to give pieces a chance in the store. The valuation process is complex as donated textiles (considered valueless by their donors) only gain value in the differently tuned perspectives of workers and customers. We did quick google searches to estimate an item's original price. A few clothes arrive unworn with price tags still attached. In a wealthy city like Stuttgart (world headquarters of Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Bosch) donated clothes include some high-end/luxury brands but most are predictable sacks stuffed with H&M, Zara, Mango, and other fast fashion brands . 4. Source: Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store (#HJXUZN), Frederik Larsen, p. 13 Context: #V7GCNS Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store #LJ6GTG Getting Rid of Resources Matching excerpt #TAT2BL: The accounts above describe how thrift is expressed throughout the process of bringing second-hand objects to market. Although there are many similarities between the values underpinning thrift in the household and in the Community Thrift Store, the accounts suggest that the thrift store turns thrift upside down. In the literature on consumption, Podkalicka and Potts (2014) describe thrift as a form of delayed gratification and savings behavior, and Miller (1998) construes it as saving for the future. Understood as a way of saving and retaining resources, thrift is visualized within a frame of material consumption as a flow of objects, from production through use and finally to divestment. Thrift, then, becomes a way of establishing control by ensuring that some resources and money stay put. It emerges as a form of tactic in Michel de Certeau's terminology (1984); that is, a situated response to a reality of the flow of objects that seems inevitably to flow out the other end of the household. In the Community Thrift Store, however, thrift is employed as a principle to ensure that the flow continues, that things do not stay put. In the store, thrift is often at odds with pure economic rationality since the investment of time involved in making objects valuable does not always transform into higher economic output. Being thrifty certainly means to make the most of the donations, but not necessarily in terms of economic gain. Making the best use of the donations includes bundling objects, reducing prices, looking things up, testing, cleaning, and sorting. 5. Source: Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store (#HJXUZN), Frederik Larsen, p. 15 Context: #V7GCNS Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store #WGJ6B7 The Practice of Thrifty Selling Matching excerpt #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. 6. Source: Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store (#SHZ6RT), Frederik Larsen, p. 10 Context: #DLSW98 Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store #L4W8ZR Categories of value: Understanding the practices of valuation #VBU6R8 Performative disorder Matching excerpt #UD7C9S: Adjusting categories is one of the clearest expressions of the performative nature of the valuation structure. At any moment in time, the Community Thrift operates with a specific number of more or less defined categories that appear stable to the employees and the customers. Over time, however, these categories change: new categories are invented and old ones are abandoned to fit the demands of the customers or the objects. Some of them are formal categories that are written down and enforced throughout the sorting process. Karen told me how children's wear had been a category for a period of time, but had later been abandoned, to the point where the Community Thrift no longer accepts children's clothes. This category was removed due to the amount of work it took to keep that section of the store clear. According to Karen, customers shopping for children's clothes would often take all the clothes off the hangers and just leave them on the floor. An executive decision was thus made to stop offering them altogether. Other categories are removed or established more unnoticeably based on the donations that come in. Sometimes there are a lot of similar items, or a lot of things that can be grouped together. During the time I worked in the Community Thrift, crystal glassware was one particular section that appeared and disappeared regularly. At other times there were a lot of ceramic items. So the different sections grow or diminish or even disappear over time to make place for something else. The temporary categories are an efficient means of creating order even of more specialised objects. Approximate matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #PBFQ5E Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow Score: 0.571 Related paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #3X7JKL The circulation of things and things that sustain it #WY6KPH Managing the flow on site Score: 0.571 Related paragraph #TVPES3: 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. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange Context: #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption #L5PE5X Valuation work without the context of price Score: 0.569 Related paragraph #ZU8ZS9: In retail, price is a formal evaluation that functions to slows acquisition and signals value. When price is removed a moral and more relational valuation comes to the fore. Valuation work is the ongoing effort of assessing what is worth taking and bringing, and what should be left or discarded. As Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025) note, those committed to reuse develop an ability to perceive value where others do not, and this evaluative skill is a key to circulation work. 4. Source: Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store (#SHZ6RT), Frederik Larsen, p. 1 Context: #DLSW98 Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store #NJEST3 KEYWORDS Score: 0.582 Related excerpt #7EJUMJ: This article documents the workings of a contemporary second-hand thrift store in California. It offers descriptions of the actions, considerations and circumstances of performing valuations in the context of a thrift store. The ethnographic notes were collected during six months of fieldwork and subsequent returns, and present accounts of the practices, values and people involved in turning the remainders of consumption into cultural commodities. In the process stories are used to elucidate the interwoven relations between the things, the people and the community. The primary objective of this article is to give a detailed view of the everyday activities of a thrift store. As such it offers a view of contemporary practices to supplement historical accounts. Therefore the ethnographic details are only contextualised towards the end of the article to initiate an analytical understanding of valuation practices. Taking Mary Douglas' statement on dirt as a point of departure, 3 the article shows how values are temporarily fixed in the objects in order to allow them to re-enter the second-hand economies. The process of categorisation of the objects constitutes sense-making practices that allow cultural value to be attached to the objects. The process of transforming discards creates a nexus between gift and market exchange and the valuations manifest a number of values that collectively bring second-hand objects to market. These involve economic factors and knowledge of the market as well as social value for the community and emotional value attached to the process of donating. Identifying categorisation as pivotal in bringing second-hand objects to market, the article shows how valuation practices are constantly adapted to the realities of disorder and how things, no matter how rigorous the practice, continue to fall through the gaps. 5. Source: Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store (#SHZ6RT), Frederik Larsen, p. 3 Context: #DLSW98 Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store #RYMFD3 The tavern guild community thrift store #HE8MBX The beginning of the journey Score: 0.58 Related excerpt #TT2P5W: When a crate of electronic devices is brought from the back door into the electronics department, Ralph, one of the employees working in this department, cleans and tests each object. A crate can include anything from TVs to phones, memory cards, blenders, lamps, and amplifiers. CD players are plugged in and connected to speakers and PCs are connected to monitors and all content is erased. Coffee makers are only turned on: 'no coffee is actually being brewed!' Ralph tells me jokingly. He keeps odd plugs, bulbs, batteries and adaptors so that he can test any objects that come in without leads or cables. If the objects work they are priced, and if not they are either marked 'as is' and labelled as non-functioning, or are recycled. Customers who can fix them will buy the objects at a lower price, Ralph tells me. Odd cables, memory cards and other accessories are sold for approximately 50–75 c. He prices stuff based on his knowledge of what customers will buy, combined with a sense of 'What would I pay?', 'How new or old is this?' and 'What do we usually charge?'. Ralph will mostly price stuff at 'something-plus-25-cents', or 'something-plus-75-cents'. Prices like $8 are rare, he says, and so is $5.50. He is completely aware that this is a psychological matter, but still keeps to the 'principle'. In the clothing department the objects, in this case clothes, also undergo a thorough inspection before they are priced and remarketed. First the employees at the back door accept the clothes, then attach charity numbers and put the clothing in crates. These crates are then moved to the clothing area where they are sorted into usable items and recyclable items (or consigned to the $1 bin). The initial inspection ensures there are no holes in the clothes and that they are clean. The usable items are stacked and the stacks are separated with a piece of tape indicating the different charity the clothes were donated to. Tags are then attached with the charity code on them and the clothes are divided into men's and women's. They are then moved again into subsections according to clothing 6. Source: Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store (#SHZ6RT), Frederik Larsen, p. 11 Context: #DLSW98 Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store #6EZUR8 Problematic categorisations #PUBDN9 Thrift in the thrift store Score: 0.571 Related excerpt #P26BPV: The experience of working in the Community Thrift and being taught how to perform valuations showed how the dominant value that guides practices throughout the organisation is thrift. At every station along the trajectory, as well as in the larger structures of the organisation, being thrifty – i.e. using resources in a considered way and not being wasteful – is expressed through actions and words. From taking responsibility for the donations at the beginning of the trajectory to bundling office supplies or pricing bedding that accidentally enters the flow, the employees make the most of whatever they receive. Thrift is often at odds with pure economic rationality, since the investment of time involved in making objects valuable does not always transform into higher economic output. Being thrifty certainly means making the most of the donations, but not only in terms of economic gain. Making the best use of the donations includes bundling objects, reducing prices, looking things up, testing, cleaning and sorting. Thrift as a value in the organisation can perhaps be understood as what Graeber describes as an 'infravalue'. 26 Being thrifty is not an end in itself but a means to obtain other values. By being thrifty, the Community Thrift is able to create economic, social and emotional value. Thrift has mainly been treated as a feature of consumption and the household; 27 it is closely associated with saving and even, as Podkalicka and Potts point out, with 'conspicuous conservation'. 28 As Miller describes it, thrift is an attempt to stop resources flowing out of the household. In the context of the thrift store, however, thrift is mainly a way of moving things along. ### 17. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 3 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #2WQH2C Theory: Previous Research on the Political Economy of Repair and Circular Economies Matching excerpt #7JC49A: Previous research has recognised this depoliticised and technocratic character of CE [5, 8, 33]. Valenzuela and Böhm [23] interpret CE as a de-politicising strategy which re-organises and legitimises the continuation of an unsustainable capitalism, however under the guise of a “political economy of sustainability”. Genovese and Pansera [5] highlight that the dominant technocratic and eco-modernist representation of CE is not entirely hegemonic, with a state-directed “industrial ecology” framing significant in China’s state capitalist economy. Other scholars highlight the potential for contestation over the political economy of CE arising in community-based expressions of circularity or discourses of sufficiency and degrowth [e.g. 30]. This implies less focus on “how we produce” and more on “why or what we produce” [5, p.13]. CE can on the one hand “obfuscate...the continuity of capitalist interests”, but on the other hand, “‘circular’ values can be harnessed by local inhabitants to support their efforts” and lead to a “more ‘embedded’ and diverse urban economy” [34, p.154]. The shapes of CE and repair depend on how they are embedded in political and economic structures. 2. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 1 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #Z2VAH4 Introduction Matching excerpt #AQCZ9W: In the dominant interests, at least in the West [4], circular economy is an eco-modernist technocratic concept [5, 6] resting on the idea that the current linear “extract-produce-use-dump material and energy flow model of the modern economic system is unsustainable” [7, p.37]. CE concepts posit that these unsustainable flows can be curbed and redirected by keeping services and products in use for longer and by reusing materials in new products and services over time. This can make for strange bedfellows where CE brings together environmental interests and heavy industry under a common umbrella of increased material circularity [8]. 3. Source: Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview (#VGCYKU), Samira Jabin, Shah Md Atiqul Haq, p. 8 Context: #ZVHF4Q Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview #JWETGQ 4. Discussion #NZNYLU 4.3. Determinants and policy implications Matching excerpt #SRYYZ4: Besides exploring gender dynamics, this paper also identifies several factors that work as determinants of sustainable consumption, namely household composition and consumption patterns, economic and cultural capital, consumer attitudes and demographics including age and education, technological influence, the role of eco-labelling and cultural context and, the role of SDG-12 as strategy of global framework. In the later part, this study provides insights into policy implications within the context of the world's socio-technological development. Social practice theories can enhance the understanding of how strategies such as nudging, eco-labelling, and the circular economy influence sustainable consumption, by highlighting the role of culture, social norms, consumer habits, and the integration of technology in shaping environmentally responsible behaviours. Among the strategies, the concept of "nudge" leverages subtle social changes, such as taxes or rebates, to promote sustainable choices (Kennedy, Cohen, & Krogman, 2015). Eco-labelling builds consumer trust, fosters green consumption, and raises awareness by encouraging sustainable products and services (Ghouse et al., 2024). Additionally, the rise of the circular economy promotes green consumption by focusing on recycling, conservation, and product redesign to minimize environmental harm (Marrucci et al., 2019; Ghouse, Shekhar, & Chaudhary, 2024). Finally, with the integration of digital technologies, such as AI and IoT, the circular economy can optimize resource use and waste management, further advancing sustainable practices (Fraga-Lamas et al., 2021). By incorporating these elements, policymakers can design more effective strategies that encourage sustainable behaviours, promote resource efficiency, and leverage socio-technological development to address environmental challenges. 4. Source: Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview (#VGCYKU), Samira Jabin, Shah Md Atiqul Haq, p. 7 Context: #ZVHF4Q Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview #K7SKC9 3. Literature review #9VL5CC 3.7. Policy implications of sustainable consumption Matching excerpt #AJGZRV: The rise of the circular economy fosters sustainable consumption, shaping new consumer behaviours, transforming product markets, and encouraging innovation and ecological values in everyday life. Green products, which align with the principles of the circular economy, support conservation, reprocessing and recycling and are designed to minimize environmental harm (Ghouse, Shekhar, & Chaudhary, 2024). The growing demand for eco-friendly products is strongly linked to individual environmental responsibility, which evolves over time and 5. Source: Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview (#VGCYKU), Samira Jabin, Shah Md Atiqul Haq, p. 8 Context: #ZVHF4Q Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview #K7SKC9 3. Literature review #9VL5CC 3.7. Policy implications of sustainable consumption Matching excerpt #MJ93G9: influences both social production outcomes and technological advancements (Koval et al., 2023). The circular economy emphasizes a fundamental transformation at macro (national and global), meso (regional and business networks), and micro levels (products, companies, and consumers), with a focus on circular design that minimizes waste, extends product lifecycles, and prioritizes eco-friendly materials, repairability, and recyclability (Marrucci et al., 2019; Ranta & Saari, 2020). By integrating sustainability into the design phase, it encourages durability, reuse, and the development of systems that improve material efficiency, contributing to green consumption by reducing waste and promoting longer-lasting, environmentally responsible products (Ranta & Saari, 2020). Digital technologies are essential for expanding the circular economy, as they enable the generation and analysis of data needed to support new business models and complex circular supply networks (Fraga-Lamas et al., 2021). The shift to a sustainable digital smart circular economy is driven by three essential technologies: IoT, edge computing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Fraga-Lamas, 2021). 6. Source: Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps (#X8QHRR), Agnė Jučienė, Inga Gurauskienė, Jolita Kruopienė, p. 1 Context: #AKDV4S Calculating the Environmental Impact Reduction Due to Extended Lifespan of Clothing Through Clothing Swaps #3MS6RE 1. Introduction Matching excerpt #94B339: The linear model of production and consumption affects negatively the environment [19] and efforts to mitigate it include the development of sustainable practices such as eco-labeling, which encourages the production and consumption of eco-friendly textiles [3]. Innovative recycling and circular economy models are being explored to reduce resource use and waste, however, challenges remain in achieving their widespread adoption [20,21]. Approximate matches 1. Source: Repair for a Broken Economy: Lessons for Circular Economy from an International Interview Study of Repairers (#4YG3VP), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, Jonas Anshelm, p. 9 Context: #LVPP8A Repair for a Broken Economy: Lessons for Circular Economy from an International Interview Study of Repairers #SECH7R 4. Discussion Score: 0.573 Related excerpt #ZYNNNM: CE discourse thus fails to engage with social implications and depoliticizes sustainability challenges [8,25]. The failing is deep-rooted: in CE discourse it is presumed that the world can be described in technological circles on the one hand (e.g., reuse, recycling, and repair of materials) and in biological circles on the other hand (as in the butterfly diagram popularized by the Ellen McArthur Foundation [39]). In this simplified world view, materials are never part of contested social, historical, or political relations. It is a model that assumes that materials can easily be governed to reach environmental benefits. This resembles the notion that CO 2 emissions could be successfully governed with emissions markets. Like proponents of taxing away global warming, CE advocates are very reliant on abstract future developments: future circular technologies and business models are expected to be more efficient and this will solve all environmental problems related to resource use. This core idea turns every relation into a technological relation, and it hides the economic, cultural, and political aspects of CE. 2. Source: There is no sustainable circular economy without a circular society (#GKZ9HP), Charlotte Jensen, Florian Hofmann, Jakob Zwiers, Melanie Jaeger-Erben, p. 0 Context: #W8RAJN There is no sustainable circular economy without a circular society Score: 0.587 Related excerpt #8CKPWE: The term Circular Society (CS) has been introduced to provide an alternative framing that is going beyond growth, technology and market-based solutions. A common denominator of CS concepts is that CE transitions are not possible without the commitment and participation of all societal actors. CS frames transitions to circularity as a profound social-ecological transformation. 3. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 3 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #2WQH2C Theory: Previous Research on the Political Economy of Repair and Circular Economies Score: 0.608 Related excerpt #7JC49A: Previous research has recognised this depoliticised and technocratic character of CE [5, 8, 33]. Valenzuela and Böhm [23] interpret CE as a de-politicising strategy which re-organises and legitimises the continuation of an unsustainable capitalism, however under the guise of a “political economy of sustainability”. Genovese and Pansera [5] highlight that the dominant technocratic and eco-modernist representation of CE is not entirely hegemonic, with a state-directed “industrial ecology” framing significant in China’s state capitalist economy. Other scholars highlight the potential for contestation over the political economy of CE arising in community-based expressions of circularity or discourses of sufficiency and degrowth [e.g. 30]. This implies less focus on “how we produce” and more on “why or what we produce” [5, p.13]. CE can on the one hand “obfuscate...the continuity of capitalist interests”, but on the other hand, “‘circular’ values can be harnessed by local inhabitants to support their efforts” and lead to a “more ‘embedded’ and diverse urban economy” [34, p.154]. The shapes of CE and repair depend on how they are embedded in political and economic structures. 4. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 20 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #EF8QKC Concluding Discussion Score: 0.574 Related excerpt #ZRQ2XF: The side-lining of challenging, subaltern views in these workshop discussions would also seem to confirm how the mainstream CE discourse can act as a powerful empty signifier [8, 23], convening different actors with diverse expectations of future strategies under a common umbrella. Not only does this ambiguity defer possible conflicts, it also means that CE acts as a label for business strategies and policy interventions which do more to protect the functioning of a specific form of neoliberal capitalism than they do to deliver sustainability. While the stakeholder discussions involved narratives in which increased repair is understood to be beneficial for the environment, consumers, workers, and corporations, such a win-win situation is far from certain. Such claims, made by actors such as the European Commission, that “[A] shared vision of the circular economy can only boost ongoing efforts to modernise the EU industrial base to ensure its global competitive edge and preserve and restore the EU’s natural capital” [78, p.11, emphasis added] are exposed as rhetorical efforts to avoid examining the continuing conflicts between global market capitalism and sustainability. In this analysis, the tools and market-based mechanisms of circular modernism advocated by Sweden and the EU seem unlikely to deliver the systemic change anticipated, and the depoliticising effects of Panglossian CE policy claims distract from very real tensions and conflicts that will need to be managed. 5. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 18 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #5L8TZC Results #R7U3NC Institutions Score: 0.573 Related excerpt #KSYVM9: existing policies, not the underlying presumptions and ideologies. These policies reflect an emphasis on standards in neoliberal environmental governance, in which “voluntary quality assurance standards covering flows of waste and resources around the globe are increasingly central to markets and trade” [75, p.1256]. Despite some challenging voices, the institutional arrangements of markets and liberal education emphasised in our discussions would seem likely to reinforce inadequate and unsustainable corporate models of circularity and a global political economy in which extractivism, productivism, and consumerism continue largely unchecked. 6. Source: The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden (#LB5ACW), Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, p. 2 Context: #PA8RHN The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden #2WQH2C Theory: Previous Research on the Political Economy of Repair and Circular Economies Score: 0.569 Related excerpt #7UU2U8: The mainstream academic literature on circularity and repair is remarkably technocratic and largely devoid of political analysis [10]. Circularity and, within that, an instrumental form of repair are presented as opportunities for a "win-win" outcome, in which economic and sustainability gains run hand in hand [7]. The politics of such a convergence are rarely considered. An interesting exception is Ghisellini et al.'s study which argues for an incorporation of circular economy in Keynesian expansionary fiscal policies in order to achieve a "sustainable welfare state" [22, p. 154]. Ghisellini and colleagues highlight that this would entail more active roles and shared responsibilities between consumers, industry, and political institutions. Nonetheless, there is an emerging literature which critically examines aspects of the political economy of circularity [5, 23, 24]. This section reviews existing work that exposes and explores dimensions of the contested political economy ### 18. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #GTJY22 Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? Matching paragraph #T6FW9N: In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction #MUKRGA A note on terms Matching paragraph #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. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #PZH45P Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange Matching paragraph #UFJ4GC: Brīvbode operates on a similar logic: the physical space mediates between participants, making it possible to take without performing need. At the same time, Widlok notes that give boxes are not straightforwardly sharing practices – they tend to be understood within a moral register of charity or almsgiving rather than open-ended reciprocity, and tensions arise when participants extract items for resale rather than use. 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #PBFQ5E Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow Matching paragraph #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. 5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #W2WRDC What People Find Here: Plural Meanings of Acquisition Matching paragraph #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. Approximate matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #PZH45P Not a Charity: The Moral Economy of Exchange Score: 0.477 Related paragraph #UFJ4GC: Brīvbode operates on a similar logic: the physical space mediates between participants, making it possible to take without performing need. At the same time, Widlok notes that give boxes are not straightforwardly sharing practices – they tend to be understood within a moral register of charity or almsgiving rather than open-ended reciprocity, and tensions arise when participants extract items for resale rather than use. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #7Z8WUY Letting Go: Attachment Without Price Score: 0.476 Related paragraph #WABKA8: Brīvbode as material infrastructure enabling the practice of letting go. The freeshop does not just receive things; it creates conditions that make divestment possible for people who otherwise could not do it. This is the role of material arrangement in sustaining practice. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #GTJY22 Quiet or Reflected Sustainability? Score: 0.465 Related paragraph #T6FW9N: In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing. 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #LYTS7L Research methodology: A Practice Freecycle #ZXRYYU The site Score: 0.463 Related paragraph #SU483V: Brīvbode is located in the Lastādija creative quarter in Riga, Latvia, adjacent to the Central Market and the tower of the Academy of Sciences – the more central part of a neighbourhood formerly known as Moscow forstadt. The premises are situated on the ground floor of a two-storey wooden building facing Purvīša Street. 5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9XAKTW Keeping Things Moving: Brīvbode as a Practice of Circulation #PBFQ5E Where It Begins: The Site as Active Flow Score: 0.443 Related paragraph #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. ### 19. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "document_id": "8ZKAT7", "limit": 5, "query": "generative spaces everyday activism repair cafe" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "document_id": "UMYA27", "limit": 5, "query": "closing loops politics consumption behaviour change limits" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "document_id": "B3CVMW", "limit": 5, "query": "unruly anthropological contribution policy translate" } ``` #### Tool call: `search_text` ```json { "document_id": "4V8VH7", "limit": 5, "query": "generative space circular economy contribution" } ``` ### 20. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 10 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #MWMXE8 V Being a circular economy citizen: Pathways to radical product service systems? Matching excerpt #CKFDRW: This is not to hero-worship Fairphone or to assume that all that appears on their website mirrors what happens in practice. But then that is partially the point. That is, the above example raises questions about what emerges from assemblages such as Fairphone, as they seek to co-create a PSS that takes on board CE thinking whilst bringing in agendas of fairness, participation and socio-material engagement of citizens. Indeed, how do investors/users/participants – and, indeed, people who are all three at once – become enrolled into and/or create new 'possibility spaces' through engagement with the contingent functionality of the Fairphone, which requires being more than a standard phone user? And how do these emergent properties speak to other generative spaces, such as Repair Cafés (see http://repaircafe.org ), that form in-person, temporary collectives around repairing everyday goods? And finally, what forms of 'everyday activism' emerge, wherein individuals and groups 'self-manage and develop workable and replicable models for a better life' (Chatterton and Pickerill, 2010: 476; see also Chatterton, 2010; Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006)? While research into forms of everyday activism has not foregrounded the 2. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #BWE4XA Abstract Matching excerpt #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’. 3. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 11 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #ACNZ3L VI Concluding comments Matching excerpt #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). 4. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 2 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #YYPBP6 1 Introduction #DJ6AEM Corresponding author: Matching excerpt #88RBG4: 324; see also Berndt and Boeckler, 2011). In making this argument, this paper adopts a generative stance (e.g. Head and Gibson, 2012). That is, it aims to locate and foster emergent research spaces, with an eye to the 'virtual presences' (Dittmer, 2014: 388) of contingent futures that remain underexplored within prevailing CE frameworks and advocates. As the concept of the CE touches on so many processes, peoples and places, no one paper can offer a complete dissection of its contents and implications. Therefore this paper focuses predominantly on questions of socio-material practices as a key area where human geographical debate has arguably much to contribute. Specifically, it aims to bring work around materiality, emergence, and everyday activism into conversation with concepts less often discussed in human geography – such as product service systems and 'prosumption' – to map out fertile areas of debate and research. In doing so, the paper begins with an elaboration of the concept of the CE, discussing existing research that intersects human geography with industrial ecology. It then discusses some of the governmental implications of the CE, drawing on an example of electronic waste. The final section examines the possibilities for citizen engagement and reconfigured material practices around the CE, suggesting possible sites and topics for future research. 5. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 11 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #MWMXE8 V Being a circular economy citizen: Pathways to radical product service systems? Matching excerpt #EGHW9M: socio-material engagements of emergent political practices, it does focus attention on 'the social and spatial settings where matters of importance get politicized' (Hakli and Kallio, 2014: 189). Such an approach to locating and fostering spaces of activism stands in contrast to those that predetermine what can be and is labelled as political around the issues of sustainable production and consumption (cf. Hultmann and Corveleco, 2012). Instead, it requires paying close attention to spaces where disparate forms of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered in forms and ways that current analyses of the CE omits or at least obscures from view. Approximate matches 1. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 10 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #MWMXE8 V Being a circular economy citizen: Pathways to radical product service systems? Score: 0.62 Related excerpt #CKFDRW: This is not to hero-worship Fairphone or to assume that all that appears on their website mirrors what happens in practice. But then that is partially the point. That is, the above example raises questions about what emerges from assemblages such as Fairphone, as they seek to co-create a PSS that takes on board CE thinking whilst bringing in agendas of fairness, participation and socio-material engagement of citizens. Indeed, how do investors/users/participants – and, indeed, people who are all three at once – become enrolled into and/or create new 'possibility spaces' through engagement with the contingent functionality of the Fairphone, which requires being more than a standard phone user? And how do these emergent properties speak to other generative spaces, such as Repair Cafés (see http://repaircafe.org ), that form in-person, temporary collectives around repairing everyday goods? And finally, what forms of 'everyday activism' emerge, wherein individuals and groups 'self-manage and develop workable and replicable models for a better life' (Chatterton and Pickerill, 2010: 476; see also Chatterton, 2010; Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006)? While research into forms of everyday activism has not foregrounded the 2. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 7 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #75DDTN IV Distributing politics and markets in the CE Score: 0.584 Related excerpt #EPN4M8: socio-material agency throughout the ‘on-goingness’ (Lepawsky and Mather, 2011) of goods. That is, to serve as spaces of contemplation and/or creation of new ‘after lives’ (Crang et al., 2013) of objects and their constituent parts, potentially mirroring, connecting with or varying notably from the existing ‘piles of circularity’ (Lepawsky and Mather, 2011: 249) that characterize many material relations in part of the Global South, often out of economic necessity. 3. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 7 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #75DDTN IV Distributing politics and markets in the CE Score: 0.57 Related excerpt #RH995E: For example, the Great Recovery regularly runs ‘tear downs’ of electronic devices, where goods are disassembled to display the entirety of their component parts. The ‘tear down’ has of late become a notable practice, sometimes for fun and art (McLellan, 2013), and sometimes as a way to encourage the creation of ‘accessible, extensive, and repairable hardware’ ( http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown ) through exposing the (il)logics written in and through the design of current devices, such as mobiles phones. As such, the ‘new politics of consumption’ (Hultman and Corvellec, 2012) at work here is not just about exposing injustices embodied in goods but also redistributing forms of socio-material expertise, knowledge and techné . These practices thus arguably align and enrich modes of public engagement that human geographers contend work in an open-ended manner to redistribute various forms of expertise (e.g. see Landstrom et al., 2011; Lane et al., 2011). This work has explored knowledge generation around environmental controversies such as flooding, and situates itself conceptually within debates about ‘political matter’ (see Braun and Whatmore, 2010). 4. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 11 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #MWMXE8 V Being a circular economy citizen: Pathways to radical product service systems? Score: 0.55 Related excerpt #EGHW9M: socio-material engagements of emergent political practices, it does focus attention on 'the social and spatial settings where matters of importance get politicized' (Hakli and Kallio, 2014: 189). Such an approach to locating and fostering spaces of activism stands in contrast to those that predetermine what can be and is labelled as political around the issues of sustainable production and consumption (cf. Hultmann and Corveleco, 2012). Instead, it requires paying close attention to spaces where disparate forms of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered in forms and ways that current analyses of the CE omits or at least obscures from view. 5. Source: Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy (#8ZKAT7), Kersty Hobson, p. 11 Context: #ECVDXM Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy #ACNZ3L VI Concluding comments Score: 0.527 Related excerpt #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). ### 21. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #6DJ9DS The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy Matching excerpt #3FTT7T: To cite this article: Kersty Hobson (2021) The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy, Environmental Politics , 30:1-2, 161-179, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2020.1816052 2. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 9 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Matching excerpt #BKS58J: Welch et al. (2017) argue that there is a curious incongruence at the heart of Figure 1. To date, the majority of CE debates and research have focussed on products, materials, markets, and value extraction from specific energy and/or resource life cycles: the materials and processes that constitute the CE. Yet it is the ‘consumer’ and ‘user’ – all of us, the creators, perpetuators, and subjects of the economy – that have central place in the EMF ‘butterfly’ diagram, as the nodes around which CE circular loops and cascades revolve and return to (Hobson et al. , forthcoming ). As such, how our roles and agency are framed and enacted is a crucial component of the successes or failings of CE interventions. Or as Korhonen et al. have put it (2018, p. 41), ‘the new consumption culture is a critical part of the circular economy in its effort to reduce the nature-society-nature linear throughput flow of materials and energy.’ 3. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 10 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Matching excerpt #7QG5FA: In addition, the logic of ‘consumer acceptance’ invariably requires that new products and services are able to compete in and through existing market mechanisms: price signals, novelty, and quality. When this is the case, research has shown that often consumer evaluations of ‘circular business models’ – such as hiring or leasing goods rather than owning them, or buying products designed to be repaired and/or have longer use-life – suggest we are a long way off from securing widespread ‘acceptance’ of new business offers. Although there is clear willingness by participants to pay more and proffer concern for the environmental impacts of one’s consumption (ING 2020), in reality, more ‘circular’ market offers are often seen as inconvenient, too costly, and/or requiring non-existent trust in services and/or providers (e.g. see Hobson et al. 2018). In addition, research into attitudes towards reuse and refurbishment show similar trends, along with a lack of take-up of product ‘take back’ schemes (e.g. Ylä-Mella et al. 2015, Hobson et al. 2018): a crucial stage in moving materials back into the CE loops (as in Figure 1). As such, it appears that in the current marketplace, CE goods and services cannot out-compete existing offers. 4. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 13 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Matching excerpt #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. 5. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 6 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #VACME2 The Circular Economy: from disparate sub-disciplines to holistic framework? Matching excerpt #9786EH: low carbon, resource efficient and competitive economy' (European Commission 2015, p. 1). As such, the CE carries within its loops and cascades high hopes for regional growth, prosperity, and environmental sustainability over the coming decades. Approximate matches 1. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 11 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Score: 0.573 Related excerpt #55RLJA: One might conclude from this that key is to keep trying to bridge the ‘engagement gap’ between consumers’ expressed willingness to pay more for circular goods, with their lack of uptake of actual practices (ING 2020). Here, some claim the task is ‘Plugging consumer awareness gaps’ alongside ‘more innovative design’ to ‘make repair easier and cheaper, and to make products easier to share and resell’ (ING 2020, p. 9). The point here is not to argue such moves will make zero difference. But rather to place such assertions in the context of decade-long debates about public ‘attitude-action’ gaps, which erroneously assume that greater knowledge is the key to increased ‘sustainable consumption’ (see Hobson 2013). As such, CE advocates are continuing to endorse an almost mythical just-out-of-reach-but-on-the-horizon future: one where designers and business innovators crack the challenge of formulating high-uptake, dematerialised, and appealing consumer-orientated circular business models, turning us all into ‘Circular Champions’ (ING 2020). And as such, relying on the market ideologies, dynamics, and mechanisms that have facilitated hyper-consumerism and its various components (e.g. ‘fast fashion’) may set the CE up for failure while making a good job of it seeming to be otherwise. This brings us back to the point made above, that the ‘economy’ part of the CE has received little critical attention to date, particularly by its public proponents: a point that some ecological economists are well-equipped to unpack further (e.g. see Korhonen et al. 2018, Figge and Thorpe 2019, Millar et al. 2019). 2. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 0 Context: #6DJ9DS The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy Score: 0.564 Related excerpt #3FTT7T: To cite this article: Kersty Hobson (2021) The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy, Environmental Politics , 30:1-2, 161-179, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2020.1816052 3. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 7 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #VACME2 The Circular Economy: from disparate sub-disciplines to holistic framework? Score: 0.557 Related excerpt #PE59R9: That, of course, is a very stark statement but one that has been made before in relation to the fundamentals of economy-environment systems (Jackson 2009). In terms of CE, there is some support for such claims if we consider the inherent dynamics of the 'economy' part of the CE, which to date has received a lot less attention than the 'circular' parts. As Zink and Geyer (2017) argue, there is 'no a priori reason to assume a closed loop is superior' (Zink and Geyer 2017, p. 594). Despite the fact that such loops dominate mainstream representations of the CE (see Figure 1), these authors argue that the central issue is whether 'secondary production actually prevents primary production' (Zink and Geyer 2017, p. 594). That is, does the recycling of goods so that they can be used again (secondary production) replace and prevent raw materials (primary production) from entering resources streams? To date – and as mentioned above – such moves are failing to happen, and instead, down- or up-cycling is adding to, or creating new, market opportunities. 4. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 1 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #4S872F ABSTRACT Score: 0.554 Related excerpt #XLD4N6: KEYWORDS Circular Economy; consumption; consumer-user 5. Source: The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy (#UMYA27), Kersty Hobson, p. 13 Context: #WE2KWR The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy #XK6L5Q The user-consumer in Circular Economy: beyond competitive prices and increased efficiencies Score: 0.554 Related excerpt #DUTG22: Miller 1998, Shove and Warde 2002), as well as their place as habitual, normalised, and intertwined parts of our everyday material realities (Mylan 2015). Such intertwining means that adopting a particular ‘circular’ business model has potential knock-on effects throughout our lives. For example, does time spent repairing goods – that is, the ‘consumption work’ (see Wheeler and Glucksmann 2016) required of us all by the CE – mean there is less time available for other forms of ‘circularity’ in one’s life, thus excluding one from other SE opportunities? And do forms of social and cultural capital gained from, say, participating in a ‘Repair Café’ facilitate (or not) other relationships and practices, thus ‘spilling over’ into different spheres of energy and resource use? While these might seem like micro-sociological questions of minor significance to questions of macro-scale system transformations, cumulatively they underscore how little we know of the actual impacts experienced by those endeavouring to take up some of the consumer-user practices outlined in Figure 1. ### 22. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 10 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #R2CWR9 Three ways of being unruly #D2GG95 Making associative links between domains Matching excerpt #A3DMA9: The third way of being unruly is a technique familiar from anthropological literature: to make associative links from one domain to another. Well into the ROF project when we had 2. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 2 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #QFKJQY Introduction Matching excerpt #RD4TYV: to ‘throw’ the problems differently. Through being ‘unruly’ – probing deeper into seemingly self-evident questions, recontextualising issues, and making associations between domains – we tried to encourage critical thinking and reflection in order to formulate alternative understandings of how the challenges could be met. 3. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 12 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #HGRNAV Room for unruliness Matching excerpt #TPAZ42: Finally, a note on the conditions for such collaboration to be successful. In the cases discussed here, we were fortunate that two funding agencies supported our projects, meaning that our and our collaborators’ labour was paid for and we had the time to build solid relationships. Had this not been the case, and we had lacked the possibility of laying the groundwork for these relationships, it is possible that the same unruly interventions 4. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 12 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #HGRNAV Room for unruliness Matching excerpt #88LYAE: Reflecting on the different collaborations with non-academic partners that we have undertaken, both as part of Re:heritage and in the various applied projects, certain patterns emerge. Put simply, the level of success of a project seems to depend on two interrelated issues: first, whether there are good and trusting relationships between the collaborating partners; and second, whether the anthropologists are given room to be “unruly” (and of course, that partners regard this unruliness as beneficial). The two are intimately connected. As is clear from the above discussion, what is referred to here is not unruliness or disruption in a social sense as in being rude or impertinent, but rather in terms of cognitive strategies and ideas. Even so, to articulate an alternative way of conceptualising something in a meeting, or to insist on abandoning an established typology or way of classifying phenomena, might not work very well unless good relations have been established. 5. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 7 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #R2CWR9 Three ways of being unruly #CEFYYL Recontextualising and reframing Matching excerpt #SPWRKY: In the LwT project we used similar techniques of recontextualising and reframing. This project was more firmly framed, as the ultimate goal was to produce a part of a museum exhibition with a set opening date and a relatively strict working plan up to that day. Meetings with museum officials, including an exhibition designer and pedagogical staff, took place over an extended period of two years. The collaboration was thus initiated from two different starting points: the museum’s, with the task of developing and concretizing and overarching exhibition, and ours, which was to contribute with knowledge from our research. The process was one of gradually understanding each other’s positions and possibilities for contributing to the process, and slowly converging in a common conceptual idea. This turned out to be a winding journey, where two different creative approaches met – one more closely tied to the overall conceptual scheme and the concrete task at hand, the other more unbound, unwieldy, and unruly. One reason for the different approaches was the museum staff’s expertise in the field of exhibition design, something we lacked. At Approximate matches 1. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 0 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects Score: 0.566 Related excerpt #5CVTMV: ABSTRACT This article discusses the experiences of two anthropologists working on two applied collaborative projects, both with a focus on sustainable consumption, and both spin-offs from a more conventional academic research project on second-hand and reuse. Although different – one focusing on the reuse of office furniture in the public sector, the other on co-creating an exhibition at a state-run museum – both entailed interventions aiming to stimulate a transition to less damaging ways of living and consuming. Collaborating with a municipality, a state-run museum and a reuse design company, as well as various professional stakeholders in the sector, the anthropologists outline how being ‘unruly’ – probing deeper into seemingly self-evident questions, recontextualising issues, and making associations between domains – allowed them to provide new perspectives and formulate alternative understandings of how to meet the challenges. The main contributions of anthropology in applied settings are often said to be the methodological tools and techniques of the discipline, but in this case, insights from posthumanism significantly shaped the outcomes of the two projects. The authors argue that abstract theoretical insights can play an important role in providing solutions or understandings in concrete, applied situations. 2. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 12 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #HGRNAV Room for unruliness Score: 0.54 Related excerpt #88LYAE: Reflecting on the different collaborations with non-academic partners that we have undertaken, both as part of Re:heritage and in the various applied projects, certain patterns emerge. Put simply, the level of success of a project seems to depend on two interrelated issues: first, whether there are good and trusting relationships between the collaborating partners; and second, whether the anthropologists are given room to be “unruly” (and of course, that partners regard this unruliness as beneficial). The two are intimately connected. As is clear from the above discussion, what is referred to here is not unruliness or disruption in a social sense as in being rude or impertinent, but rather in terms of cognitive strategies and ideas. Even so, to articulate an alternative way of conceptualising something in a meeting, or to insist on abandoning an established typology or way of classifying phenomena, might not work very well unless good relations have been established. 3. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 5 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #R2CWR9 Three ways of being unruly #CEFYYL Recontextualising and reframing Score: 0.534 Related excerpt #XBD2PQ: What, then, did being unruly entail, and what did it result in? One illustrative example is from the ROF project. In the beginning of the project, other project members had drawn up a graphic model of how we should divide the work between us, which the project leader showed on a PowerPoint presentation. The focus of the project was what we called 'bottlenecks', various kinds of organisational obstacles that we had identified as preventing reuse of office furnishings. In the model, such obstacles were broken down into boxes, each focusing on a constituent part like traceability (of the material that furniture is made of), safety (for example, toxicity of materials, or fire hazards), juridical aspects, or logistics. For each box, aspects such as 'knowledge' or 'information' would be investigated, for example, how can information about available used furniture in an organization be made more accessible, or how can knowledge about traceability be improved? There was also a box for 'attitudes'. Unsurprisingly, this was the box that was assigned to the anthropologists – our task was to investigate what role 'attitudes' played for decisions on whether to reuse or buy newly produced office furnishings. 4. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 10 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects #R2CWR9 Three ways of being unruly #D2GG95 Making associative links between domains Score: 0.51 Related excerpt #A3DMA9: The third way of being unruly is a technique familiar from anthropological literature: to make associative links from one domain to another. Well into the ROF project when we had 5. Source: Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects (#B3CVMW), Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren, p. 0 Context: #W65XU5 Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects Score: 0.493 Related excerpt #TKU2M7: Keywords: sustainable consumption, applied anthropology, collaboration, reuse, circular economy, posthumanism ### 23. Tool result: search_text Exact matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Matching paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #M9WQLY CONCLUSION Matching paragraph #JE7FK2: This thesis is an ethnographic study of a swapshop to investigate how these spaces foster alternative consumption practices that possibly sustain alternative logics of value and ownership. This thesis is a contribution to the studies of circular consumption using ethnographic methods with practice theory approach. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #75D5UH Conclusion Matching paragraph #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. 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #9GJAHS LIST OF SOURCES Matching paragraph #C8L8YQ: Hobson, K. (2020) ‘“Small stories of closing loops”: social circularity and the everyday circular economy’, Climatic Change, 163(1), pp. 99–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02480-z 5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Matching paragraph #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…] Approximate matches 1. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Score: 0.583 Related paragraph #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. 2. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #75D5UH Conclusion Score: 0.534 Related paragraph #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. 3. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #ZF9EYF Introduction Score: 0.527 Related paragraph #J4M2WK: We live in a context of overproduction where managing the flow of things in households becomes both a practical and a moral problem. In the case of textiles in particular, large quantities of clothing circulate through markets at increasing speed while average use time continues to decline. Circular economy policies increasingly position reuse and extended product lifetimes as solutions, yet the success of it depends on everyday practices that are labour-intensive and socially uneven (Hobson et al. 2021). 4. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #82G2QE Holding It Together: Care and Consumption Work in Brīvbode #75D5UH Conclusion Score: 0.523 Related paragraph #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. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [MIKAEL] (#4V8VH7), Ieva Lange Context: #L759F3 Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework #23NMLX Consumption Work Score: 0.517 Related paragraph #92SD6X: [“Recent research at the intersection of practice theory and circular consumption has begun to foreground the labour involved in sustaining material circulation. Drawing on a practice-theoretical approach, Réka Tölg shows that circular consumption – particularly in the context of clothing – relies on the ongoing enactment of care in everyday practices. This involves not only acquiring and using garments, but also maintaining, repairing, and eventually parting with them in ways that enable their continued circulation. Such practices require the development of skills, awareness, and a sense of responsibility, and are often shaped by socio-material arrangements in both household and retail contexts. At the same time, Tölg highlights that these practices are not straightforward to accomplish, but are characterised by tensions, dilemmas, and constraints within systems still largely organised around linear consumption. In this sense, circular consumption can be understood not as a simple behavioural shift, but as an ongoing accomplishment that entails effort, coordination, and engagement – what has been conceptualised elsewhere as “consumption work” (Hobson et al., 2021).”] ### 24. Assistant I read your thesis sections (#A3X9XX, #75D5UH, #M9WQLY, #GTJY22, #23NMLX, #WULWDF) and the relevant CE/ethnography literature in the corpus. Here is a worked-through expansion of the move you're trying to make, situated in what the corpus has — designed so the argument can land in the conclusion (or a new closing section that reads back across both empirical chapters). --- ## 1. The shape of the argument The claim is structurally a *figure–ground inversion*. Read against the EU Circular Economy Action Plan (#577FMZ) and Latvia's 2023 separate-textile-collection mandate, Brīvbode is a perfect figure: volunteer-run, low-cost, diverts textiles, "community-based" (#BTDD45). It even passes ~30% of incoming flow onward to formal textile collection (#WW8YUW), so it is even legible at the level of throughput accounting. But what *makes it work as a practice* — what recruits and retains its carriers, what stabilises it across years, what makes participants describe it as something other than a bin or a charity — is the part that disappears from the figure once you draw it. So the thesis argues two things in one breath: 1. Brīvbode is a generative space of circulation in Hobson's (2016) sense — but 2. *generative* here means "not reducible to the loop diagram"; the generativity is the *negative space* defined by what it isn't, and the positive content of that space is anthropological. That second move is what gives the thesis its theoretical edge over a "community-based CE case study." ## 2. What CE accounting can see, and what it structurally can't The corpus already contains the indictment you need. Three convergent critiques to lean on: - **Hobson on the limits of the loops.** CE accounting "to date has focussed on products, materials, markets, and value extraction from specific energy and/or resource life cycles" (#BKS58J), while the user-consumer node where the loops close gets reduced to "competitive prices and increased efficiencies" (#7QG5FA). She names this explicitly: CE proponents endorse "an almost mythical just-out-of-reach-but-on-the-horizon future" of frictionless dematerialised offers (#55RLJA). - **Shove & Rinkinen** put it as a methodological critique: CE policy proceeds by "stripping objects and resources out of context," "obscuring the distinctive social and historical processes of enmeshed material relations" (#NF4MTB), and crucially avoids the question of *the constitution of need* (#RP8YNG). This is exactly the move your data resists. - **McLaren & Niskanen** sharpen this politically: CE is a "depoliticising strategy" that "re-organises and legitimises the continuation of an unsustainable capitalism" under an eco-modernist guise (#7JC49A); it functions as an "empty signifier" that defers conflict (#ZRQ2XF). Plus the closely-aligned **Welch, Wieser, Holmes, Wheeler & Hobson** on consumption work (#629UVN) — the very paper Brīvbode was made to answer empirically — which already says that becoming a "circular consumer" requires "varied and unevenly distributed forms of Consumption Work" that CE debate has underplayed. You can stack these as: CE accounting sees throughputs but not constitution of need (Shove & Rinkinen), prices and efficiencies but not the consumer-user as a socio-material life (Hobson), market mechanisms but not their political economy (McLaren & Niskanen), and material flows but not the labour that makes them flow (Welch et al.). Brīvbode sits in exactly the joint blind spot of all four. ## 3. Why ethnography is the instrument that registers it This is where you can mobilise the ethnographically-oriented reuse literature explicitly as a *methodological* claim, not just an empirical citation: - **Isenhour & Reno** in their *Worldwide Waste* introduction note that ethnographies of reuse "raise questions about the novelty and efficacy of the circular economy concept" precisely because they show "deeply relational, situated and cultural entanglements implied in the determination of 'resource' 'value' and 'waste'" (#G4L34C). They are blunt: reuse practices "do not necessarily challenge paradigms nor offer alternatives" but "have also gained currency as the object… of new mutations in liberal eco-governance" (#ZUBQUE). Brīvbode is exactly such an object — and the ethnographic excess is what keeps it from being only that. - **Bohlin & Appelgren** ("Harnessing the Unruly", #B3CVMW) describe the anthropologist's contribution to applied reuse projects as "unruliness" — recontextualising, refusing established typologies, making associative links across domains (#RD4TYV, #88LYAE). This is a near-perfect description of what your thesis does to the CE category itself: it does not slot Brīvbode into the loop diagram, it insists on the categories the diagram cannot host. - **Berry & Isenhour** frame reuse studies as part of a long lineage (Mauss, Malinowski, Appadurai) where "previously owned goods… are often more closely linked to the creation of social ties… than they are to financial gain or the object of exchange itself" (#Z8VAMH). This anthropological inheritance is the genealogy of your "irreducibly anthropological positive content." So the methodological argument writes itself: **CE policy needs ethnography not as a complement but as a corrective**, because the features it tries to optimise away (friction, plurality, attachment, gendered labour) are the features that constitute the practice. ## 4. The five faces of illegibility — each with a literature anchor This is the "positive content of the negative space," organised as a typology you can run through in the conclusion. Each one already has an anchor in the corpus and a vignette in your draft. **a. A plural moral economy that bends without breaking.** 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" (#HMDEDU; #M3VCHH). Lean on **Wheeler & Glucksmann's** Polanyi/Thompson reading (#WJJY3D, #DRCXXB): moral economies are precisely the layer of customary moral evaluation that disembedded markets erase, and that *recycling regimes re-import without acknowledgment*. CE accounting cannot register this layer because it presupposes a single value register (resource efficiency); Brīvbode's plurality (givers' relief, takers' dignity, organisers' politics, Viesturs's "fun factor", #T6FW9N) is what holds it together (#M3VCHH). **b. Friction as constitutive, not residual.** Your line "the absence of price does not produce a frictionless flow" (#RX9JDU) is the paragraph-length version of an argument **Larsen** makes: thrift stores reverse standard economic logic — "thrift… is mainly a way of moving things along," at odds with "pure economic rationality" (#P26BPV); valuation is "constantly adapted to the realities of disorder and… things, no matter how rigorous the practice, continue to fall through the gaps" (#7EJUMJ). This is exactly what CE optimization would code as inefficiency. You can use Larsen as the precedent showing that friction *is the form of the work*, not noise to be reduced. **c. Gendered, ethically self-imposed, care-laden labour.** Your Chapter 5 conclusion already lands this (#5YXGE6, #HM56MD). The literature here is dense and converges: **Hobson et al. 2021** on consumption work intensification, **Mesiranta et al.** and **Tölg & Fuentes** on care as the enabling enactment of circular consumption, **Bankovska's** care-not-work, **Miller** on women as moral agents of household consumption (#2RA8WL). The CE policy register cannot see this labour because it is not transferred from an institution (where it would be paid and counted) — it is, in your phrase, "self-imposed through ethical commitment and care" (#5YXGE6). Madara learning to switch off "free", Aiga's thirty trips, Marija's building logistics — these are not user errors against efficient flow; they *are* the flow. **d. Biographical and relational attachments routing things.** This is where the **Kopytoff/Appadurai** biographies-of-things lineage and **Bohlin & Appelgren's** "growing in motion" (#Y6XUMS) and "serial care" (#AR6HQ2) matter. Brīvbode is, in Viesturs's astonishing line, "a kind of purgatory for things" (#Z4WUR2): a threshold where biographies are released and resumed. Things in CE diagrams are nodes; things in Brīvbode have life-courses, previous owners, energies that need transformation. Witnessing whose things are whose is part of how participants stay in the practice, and that witnessing is exactly the kind of socio-historical context Shove & Rinkinen say CE accounts strip away (#NF4MTB). **e. Quiet sustainability as the rule, not the exception.** You already have this carefully developed (#P6X2DJ, #M9983A, **Smith & Jehlička**). The point to add for the CE-illegibility argument: CE policy implicitly assumes the "circular consumer" is a consumer who *adopts circularity as a project*. But most of Brīvbode's carriers don't (#VFPYU2). Their participation has sustainable outcomes "regardless of how participants frame their involvement" (#4V448P). The CE consumer-acceptance framing (Hobson's #7QG5FA) literally cannot model a practice whose efficacy is decoupled from the practitioner's stated motivation. ## 5. The negative-space formulation, sharpened Your four "nots" are good. The literature lets you give each its proper opposite, which makes the negative space crisper: - **Not a charity** — organisers actively resist the poverty register (Rasa, Viesturs at #T6FW9N). Widlok on give-boxes (#UFJ4GC) shows the constant pull toward charity registers; Brīvbode's work is partly refusing that pull. - **Not a market** — no price, no profit; valuation is care-work in the open (#A2APRY). Not a sharing-economy market either (cf. Fitzmaurice et al. on the paradoxes of openness; Schor on prosumption). - **Not a bin** — it actively curates against waste; the 30% it cannot absorb is offloaded to formal textile collection (#WW8YUW), so the bin function is *outsourced*, not internalised. This is also why it is not legible as a textile collection point. - **Not a CE node** — it refuses optimisation in practice. The wire offcuts, the off-season storage with charity partners, the sorting "on the spot" (#SUZYLN), the 30 trips: these are anti-throughput. The positive content is what **Holmes** ("New spaces, ordinary practices", #56AZCA, #3CMBV5) calls a generative space in Hobson's sense — but Holmes's own move is instructive: she finds that what is "extraordinary" about these spaces is *not* their material flows but the "ordinary practices" of circulating, sharing, and reciprocating that age-old self-provisioning literatures (Pahl, Clarke) already named. Brīvbode similarly is generative *because* it hosts ordinary practices that the policy register has no vocabulary for. ## 6. The stakes — and why it isn't a metrics problem This is the line I'd most encourage you to keep sharp. It is tempting (and, frankly, what most reviewers will expect) to end on "policy needs better indicators." Resist that. The argument is stronger: > The illegibility is not a measurement problem. It is what generative spaces of circulation look like once ethnography rather than throughput accounting is doing the describing. To "fix" the illegibility by counting friction and care would be to convert Brīvbode into the kind of legible CE node it is precisely *not*. This is congruent with **McLaren & Niskanen** (CE as empty signifier, #ZRQ2XF), with **Isenhour & Reno** (ethnographies *question the novelty and efficacy* of the CE concept, #G4L34C), and with **Shove & Rinkinen** (the deeper issue is the constitution of need, #RP8YNG). The thesis's contribution is not a more sensitive metric for community-based CE; it is a demonstration that some of what makes circulation actually work is constitutively outside what CE can register, and that this outside is where ethnography lives. You might phrase the modest version of the contribution as: a CE policy that wanted to *support* (not capture) Brīvbode-like spaces would have to learn to fund them on terms it cannot directly evaluate — to underwrite a labour and a sociality whose value it cannot price. Your last sentence in #RX9JDU already gestures here ("not depend on its invisibility"); the bolder move is to add that *making it visible in CE terms would destroy what is being supported*. ## 7. Where this should land in the thesis Two concrete suggestions: - **In #M9WQLY (Conclusion)**: this argument should probably constitute one of the three or four numbered contributions. It is currently fragmentary in #PEFVAC and the loose #JM9L6Y/#NNZ5SG/#9DTFUU paragraphs. The spine I sketched above (illegibility → five faces → not-a-metrics-problem) could become a single 1.5–2 page sub-section titled something like "Brīvbode as a Generative Space: Why It Is Illegible to Circular Economy Accounting" or, more pointedly, "The Anthropological Positive of a Negative Space." - **In the Introduction near #BTDD45 / #577FMZ**: a single early paragraph stating the figure-ground inversion ("Brīvbode would appear in any policy report as a community-based CE initiative; this thesis argues that what makes it work is what such a report cannot register") would give the rest of the thesis a tighter through-line. The empirical chapters then read as the case for that claim. I've flagged the existing conclusion fragments that should be replaced or absorbed by this section, and saved a durable note so you can come back to the literature scaffolding without re-deriving it. #### Tool call: `tag_paragraphs` ```json { "blocks": [ "JM9L6Y", "NNZ5SG", "PEFVAC", "9DTFUU", "GUXEZX" ], "tags": [ "fragment", "needs_revision" ] } ``` #### Tool call: `write_note` ```json { "block_ids": [ "M9WQLY", "A3X9XX", "75D5UH", "GTJY22", "BTDD45", "577FMZ", "WW8YUW", "HMDEDU", "M3VCHH", "T6FW9N", "RX9JDU", "SUZYLN", "5YXGE6", "HM56MD", "Z4WUR2", "P6X2DJ", "M9983A", "4V448P", "VFPYU2", "A2APRY", "UFJ4GC", "JM9L6Y", "NNZ5SG", "PEFVAC", "9DTFUU", "BKS58J", "7QG5FA", "55RLJA", "NF4MTB", "RP8YNG", "7JC49A", "ZRQ2XF", "629UVN", "G4L34C", "ZUBQUE", "RD4TYV", "88LYAE", "Z8VAMH", "56AZCA", "3CMBV5", "WJJY3D", "DRCXXB", "P26BPV", "7EJUMJ", "Y6XUMS", "AR6HQ2", "ZDP99W", "2RA8WL" ], "text": "Core thesis-level argument to land in #M9WQLY (and signposted in introduction near #BTDD45, #577FMZ): Brīvbode is a textbook CE initiative on paper (volunteer-run reuse, diverts textiles, even routes ~30% to formal collection #WW8YUW), but ethnographically what makes it work is illegible to CE accounting. The illegibility is not a metrics gap to close; it is what generative spaces of circulation look like once ethnography rather than throughput accounting is describing them.\n\nFive faces of illegibility, each with literature anchor and empirical hook in the draft:\n1. Plural moral economy that bends — #HMDEDU, #M3VCHH; Wheeler & Glucksmann on Polanyi/Thompson #WJJY3D #DRCXXB; Viesturs vs Rasa on charity #T6FW9N.\n2. Friction as constitutive, not residual — #RX9JDU; Larsen reversal of economic logic #P26BPV, #7EJUMJ; sorting on the spot #SUZYLN.\n3. Gendered, self-imposed, care-laden labour — #5YXGE6, #HM56MD; Hobson et al. 2021, Mesiranta et al., Tölg & Fuentes (#ZDP99W), Bankovska, Miller #2RA8WL.\n4. Biographical/relational attachments routing things — Viesturs's \"purgatory for things\" #Z4WUR2; Kopytoff/Appadurai biographies; Bohlin \"growing in motion\" #Y6XUMS / \"serial care\" #AR6HQ2.\n5. Quiet sustainability as rule not exception — #P6X2DJ, #M9983A, #4V448P, #VFPYU2; Smith & Jehlička.\n\nCE-critique scaffolding (why CE structurally cannot register the above):\n- Hobson \"limits of the loops\" — CE focused on products/markets, user-consumer collapsed into prices/efficiencies #BKS58J #7QG5FA #55RLJA.\n- Shove & Rinkinen — CE strips socio-historical context #NF4MTB; avoids constitution of need #RP8YNG.\n- McLaren & Niskanen — CE as depoliticising strategy / empty signifier #7JC49A #ZRQ2XF.\n- Welch/Wieser/Holmes/Wheeler/Hobson — consumption work underplayed in CE #629UVN.\n\nEthnography-as-instrument scaffolding (why ethnography registers what CE can't):\n- Isenhour & Reno — ethnographies question novelty/efficacy of CE concept #G4L34C; reuse as object of liberal eco-governance #ZUBQUE.\n- Bohlin & Appelgren \"Harnessing the Unruly\" — anthropologist's contribution as recontextualising/refusing typologies #RD4TYV #88LYAE.\n- Berry & Isenhour — Maussian inheritance, used goods linked to social ties more than financial gain #Z8VAMH.\n- Holmes \"New spaces, ordinary practices\" — generative spaces are extraordinary because they host ordinary self-provisioning practices #56AZCA #3CMBV5.\n\nNegative-space formulation:\n- Not a charity (organisers refuse, cf Widlok give-boxes #UFJ4GC).\n- Not a market (no price; valuation is care-work in the open #A2APRY).\n- Not a bin (curates against waste; bin function outsourced to textile collection #WW8YUW).\n- Not a CE node (refuses optimisation in practice; sorting \"on the spot,\" 30 trips, wire offcuts).\nPositive content of the negative space = irreducibly anthropological: plurality, friction, attachment, gendered care, biographical witnessing.\n\nKey rhetorical caution: do NOT close on \"CE needs better indicators.\" The stronger move is that making Brīvbode legible to CE in CE's terms would destroy what is being supported. Modify #RX9JDU's \"not depend on its invisibility\" to acknowledge this. Suggested final framing: a CE policy that wanted to support (not capture) such spaces would have to underwrite a labour and sociality whose value it cannot price.\n\nReplace/absorb the loose fragments #JM9L6Y, #NNZ5SG, #PEFVAC, #9DTFUU into a single 1.5–2 page subsection in #M9WQLY titled e.g. \"Brīvbode as a Generative Space: Why It Is Illegible to Circular Economy Accounting.\"", "title": "Brīvbode as illegible generative space — argument scaffold for conclusion" } ``` ### 25. Tool result: tag_paragraphs PARAGRAPH TAGS ATTACHED Blocks: #JM9L6Y, #NNZ5SG, #PEFVAC, #9DTFUU, #GUXEZX Tags: fragment, needs_revision Statements: 10 ### 26. Tool result: write_note NOTE SAVED #2QCVFF IRI: https://sheaf.less.rest/2QCVFF ### 27. Assistant Tagged the loose conclusion fragments (#JM9L6Y, #NNZ5SG, #PEFVAC, #9DTFUU, #GUXEZX) as fragment + needs_revision so they show up next time you're in the conclusion, and saved the full scaffold as note #2QCVFF. A note on writing it: the version that will read most strongly is the one where the figure-ground inversion is announced *up front* in the introduction (a single paragraph after #BTDD45/#577FMZ), so the empirical chapters can be read all the way through as accumulating evidence for it — and then the conclusion can do the typology-of-illegibility move without having to set up the stakes from scratch. The conclusion is also where you can permit yourself the line about ethnography being the right epistemic instrument; you have earned it by then.