# Assistant conversation T8W7XN

- Canonical URL: <https://sheaf.less.rest/T8W7XN>
- Resource IRI: <https://sheaf.less.rest/T8W7XN>
- Type: assistant conversation
- Mode: quick

## Transcript

### 1. User

look at how the thesis draft makes use of the "household recycling [..]" book (wheeler, glucksmann 2015) reference and the concept of consumption work, and relate to that actual book contents, and think about how the concept works or differs in the swapshop context which is not market/commercial exchange

### 2. Assistant tool calls

#### Tool call: `list_documents`

```json
{}
```

#### Tool call: `search_text`

```json
{
  "query": "Wheeler Glucksmann consumption work household recycling"
}
```

### 3. Tool result: list_documents

- #FYG32U Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia [draft] - 2026 | Ieva Lange

Journal articles (89)
- #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
- #MCJT5Q Connecting the multi-level-perspective and social practice approach for sustainable transitions - 2022 | Léon Francis Hirt, Margit Keller, Marlyne Sahakian | Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions | 15 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.eist.2022.05.004
- #UB9EAT Consumer engagement in the circular economy: Exploring clothes swapping in emerging economies from a social practice perspective [cited] - 2019 | Casper Boks, Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Juana Camacho-Otero | Sustainable Development | 16 pp. | doi:10.1002/sd.2002
- #Q3G2WY Consumption - 2011 | David Graeber | Current Anthropology | 24 pp. | doi:10.1086/660166
- #N7FUYP Consumption and Commodities - 1995 | D. Miller | Annual Review of Anthropology | 22 pp. | doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.24.1.141
- #RZ8QTE Consumption and Theories of Practice [cited] - 2005 | Alan Warde | Journal of Consumer Culture | 23 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540505053090
- #PSBVW7 Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review - 2018 | Casper Boks, Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Juana Camacho-Otero | Sustainability | 25 pp. | doi:10.3390/su10082758
- #MNFABA Disposal and simple living: exploring the circulation of goods and the development of sacred consumption - 2009 | Hélène Cherrier | Journal of Consumer Behaviour | 14 pp. | doi:10.1002/cb.297
- #YBKS64 Everyday life after downshifting: Consumption, thrift, and inequality - 2020 | Jo Lindsay, Kim Humphery, Ruth Lane | Geographical Research | 15 pp. | doi:10.1111/1745-5871.12396
- #TBPJS6 Exploring the role of community-based enterprises in consumers' voluntary clothing disposition via UK swapping events using theory of social practice [cited] - 2023 | Aurelie Le Normand, Claudia E. Henninger, Lucie Počinková, Marta Blazquez Cano | Social Enterprise Journal | 21 pp. | doi:10.1108/sej-02-2023-0017
- #N5VYH8 Food practices as part of daily routines: A conceptual framework for analysing networks of practices - 2021 | Aricia F.M. Castelo, Martina Schäfer, Minelle E. Silva | Appetite | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.appet.2020.104978
- #FHZZ6U Freecycling Markets as Sustainable Materialist Movements? Closing Reuse Circularity Loops in Singapore [cited] - 2024 | Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Qian Hui Tan | Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies | 15 pp. | doi:10.3197/whpww.63857928646673
- #SJ3K7R Friends, family and the circulation of used goods: overlooked sustainability practices - 2025 | Dharma Arunachalam, Jo Lindsay, Rob Raven, Ruth Lane | Environmental Sociology | 13 pp. | doi:10.1080/23251042.2025.2510410
- #4AE86F From circular consumers to carriers of (unsustainable) practices: socio-spatial transformations in the Circular City - 2020 | Kersty Hobson | Urban Geography | 5 pp. | doi:10.1080/02723638.2020.1786329
- #4UEQN8 Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale? - 1997 | Gretchen M. Herrmann | American Ethnologist | 21 pp. | doi:10.1525/ae.1997.24.4.910
- #B6FWAN Governing transitions in the sustainability of everyday life [cited] - 2010 | Elizabeth Shove, Gordon Walker | Research Policy | 6 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.respol.2010.01.019
- #MRANHJ Grey greening: quiet sustainability at auto salvage yards - 2022 | Pavel Mašek | Geografie | 19 pp. | doi:10.37040/geografie2022127010055
- #MBXQXR Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets [cited] - 2015 | Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren | Culture Unbound | 26 pp. | doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1571143
- #B3CVMW Harnessing the Unruly: Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects - 2020 | Anna Bohlin, Staffan Appelgren | kritisk etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology | 17 pp. | doi:10.33063/diva-432451
- #YW8AYL Home and the extended-self: Exploring associations between clutter and wellbeing - 2021 | Caroline J. Rogers, Dr Rona Hart | Journal of Environmental Psychology | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101553
- #ZB3YSD Household consumption at the crossroads: A bibliometric decoding of global sustainability trends, research gaps, and collaborative networks (2015-2025) - 2025 | 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 | E3S Web of Conferences | 10 pp. | doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202564001017
- #UGBANU How temporal orientations trigger, nurture and sustain deep engagement with consumption practices - 2025 | Benjamin Rosenthal | Marketing Theory | 21 pp. | doi:10.1177/14705931241264535
- #9GQP2Z In Defense of Consumer Critique: Revisiting the Consumption Debates of the Twentieth Century - 2007 | Juliet B. Schor | The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | 15 pp. | doi:10.1177/0002716206299145
- #4Y4DVC Incidental sustainability? Notes from a thrift store in Germany - 2023 | Petra Kuppinger | Critique of Anthropology | 20 pp. | doi:10.1177/0308275x231194259
- #XUS5YJ Learning like a Minimalist—Learning from a Minimalist. Consumers as Disseminators for Sustainable Clothes Usage - 2021 | Journal of Sustainability Research | 24 pp. | doi:10.20900/jsr20210017
- #QWH9YU Lifestyles of enough exploring sufficiency-oriented consumption behavior from a social practice theory perspective - 2023 | Maren I Kropfeld | Journal of Consumer Culture | 22 pp. | doi:10.1177/14695405221095008
- #VGCYKU Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview - 2025 | Samira Jabin, Shah Md Atiqul Haq | Social Sciences & Humanities Open | 12 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.101455
- #R69WZQ Material culture and the circular economy - 2023 | Elizabeth Shove, Jenny Rinkinen | Frontiers in Sustainability | 4 pp. | doi:10.3389/frsus.2023.1158079
- #ARE7AL Materials changing the performance of the household energy consumption practices - 2025 | Eliisa Kylkilahti, Henna Syrjälä, Liisa Kääntä, Sara-Ellen Laitinen | Journal of Consumer Culture | 19 pp. | doi:10.1177/14695405251321405
- #FYWZFY My Journey within Practice-Based Approaches Bandwagon - 2019 | Mika Pantzar | Sociologica | 8 pp. | doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/10203
- #XATD2A New spaces, ordinary practices: Circulating and sharing within diverse economies of provisioning [cited] - 2018 | Helen Holmes | Geoforum | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.11.022
- #R9KEKQ Not moving things along: hoarding, clutter and other ambiguous matter - 2009 | Neil Maycroft | Journal of Consumer Behaviour | 12 pp. | doi:10.1002/cb.298
- #VJ8G58 Object Relations in Accounts of Everyday Life - 2015 | Elizabeth Shove, Jenny Rinkinen, Mikko Jalas | Sociology | 16 pp. | doi:10.1177/0038038515577910
- #CUWPC9 On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair &amp; Care - 2019 | Cindy Isenhour, Joshua Reno | Worldwide Waste | 8 pp. | doi:10.5334/wwwj.27
- #D8EAVV Online Clothing Resale: A Practice Theory Approach to Evaluate Sustainable Consumption Gains - 2020 | Cosette M. Joyner Armstrong, Hyejune Park | Journal of Sustainability Research | 24 pp. | doi:10.20900/jsr20200017
- #AG36RW Paradoxes of openness and distinction in the sharing economy - 2016 | Connor Fitzmaurice, Emilie Dubois Poteat, Juliet B. Schor, Lindsey B. Carfagna, Will Attwood-Charles | Poetics | 18 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2015.11.001
- #86EHHS Practice theory approach to Gen Z’s sustainable clothing consumption in Finland [cited] - 2024 | Olga Gurova | Young Consumers | 19 pp. | doi:10.1108/yc-06-2023-1765
- #XAYNBH Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change - 2011 | Tom Hargreaves | Journal of Consumer Culture | 21 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540510390500
- #WVG7HV Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners [cited] - 2013 | Joe Smith, Petr Jehlicka | Journal of Rural Studies | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.05.002
- #4YG3VP Repair for a Broken Economy: Lessons for Circular Economy from an International Interview Study of Repairers - 2021 | Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen, Jonas Anshelm | Sustainability | 15 pp. | doi:10.3390/su13042316
- #AY4Z4C Repair Work as Care: On Maintaining the Planet in the Capitalocene - 2025 | Julia E. Corwin, Vinay Gidwani | Antipode | 21 pp. | doi:10.1111/anti.12791
- #V9QTJP Reuse practices and household consumption work [cited] - 2026 | David M. Evans, Peter Jackson, Rorie Beswick-Parsons | Social &amp; Cultural Geography | 21 pp. | doi:10.1080/14649365.2025.2549709
- #HJXUZN Selling Thrift: Work Practices in an American Thrift Store [cited] - 2023 | Frederik Larsen | Journal of Business Anthropology | 19 pp. | doi:10.22439/jba.v12i1.6914
- #ANC583 Social bases of material consumption: The relationship between social groups and possession of household appliances in Denmark - 2019 | Mette Hove Jacobsen | Journal of Consumer Culture | 20 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540516684190
- #NE9YL5 Sustainability as a Moral Discourse: Its Shifting Meanings, Exclusions, and Anxieties - 2022 | Al Lim, Lav Kanoi, Michael R. Dove, Shoko Yamada, Vanessa Koh | Sustainability | 17 pp. | doi:10.3390/su14053095
- #EPZXEW Sustainable Consumption and Practice Theories: Connecting Elements of Clothing Sharing - 2024 | Marcia de Freitas Duarte, Minelle E. Silva, Márcia R. Cavalcante Costa | BBR, Braz. Bus. Rev. | 25 pp. | doi:10.15728/bbr.2021.1182.en
- #5FD8BE The Advent of Practice Theories in Research on Sustainable Consumption: Past, Current and Future Directions of the Field - 2019 | Filippo Corsini, Francesco Paolo Appio, Franziska Meinherz, Luca Mora, Rafael Laurenti | Sustainability | 19 pp. | doi:10.3390/su11020341
- #GAZV32 The communities and materials of repair: collectively reflecting on repair practices of everyday artefacts - 2026 | Bilge Merve Aktaş, Hazal Gümüş Çiftçi | CoDesign | 21 pp. | doi:10.1080/15710882.2025.2452575
- #P7EWHQ The Force of Things - 2004 | Jane Bennett | Political Theory | 27 pp. | doi:10.1177/0090591703260853
- #7VNTAB The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers - 2023 | Olli Pyyhtinen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen | Anthropological Theory | 23 pp. | doi:10.1177/14634996221117318
- #Q24SW5 The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift' - 1986 | Jonathan Parry | Man | 22 pp. | doi:10.2307/2803096
- #UMYA27 The limits of the loops: critical environmental politics and the Circular Economy - 2021 | Kersty Hobson | Environmental Politics | 20 pp. | doi:10.1080/09644016.2020.1816052
- #UTEUAD The logics of frugality: Reproducing tastes of necessity among affluent climate change activists - 2017 | Jean Léon Boucher | Energy Research & Social Science | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.001
- #P88564 The Minimalist Universe of Things. Living with Less in German Speaking Households - 2023 | Heike Derwanz | Home Cultures | 18 pp. | doi:10.1080/17406315.2024.2338007
- #LB5ACW The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden - 2023 | Duncan McLaren, Johan Niskanen | Circular Economy and Sustainability | 25 pp. | doi:10.1007/s43615-021-00128-8
- #7RVN6J The Simple Bare Necessities: Scales and Paradoxes of Thrift on a London Public Housing Estate - 2022 | Catherine Alexander | Comparative Studies in Society and History | 32 pp. | doi:10.1017/s0010417522000159
- #RRPNRF The Sustainability of an Anthropology of the Anthropocene - 2022 | Thomas Hylland Eriksen | Sustainability | 11 pp. | doi:10.3390/su14063674
- #NM4W8T Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture - 2011 | Gert Spaargaren | Global Environmental Change | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.03.010
- #GKZ9HP There is no sustainable circular economy without a circular society - 2021 | Charlotte Jensen, Florian Hofmann, Jakob Zwiers, Melanie Jaeger-Erben | Resources, Conservation and Recycling | 2 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105476
- #XDUQVM Through the practice lens: Where is the bandwagon of practice-based studies heading? - 2010 | Gessica Corradi, Luca Verzelloni, Silvia Gherardi | Management Learning | 19 pp. | doi:10.1177/1350507609356938
- #MB6S7L Toward an Ecology of Materials - 2012 | Tim Ingold | Annual Review of Anthropology | 20 pp. | doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145920
- #7BM5AQ Uncontained accumulation: Hidden heterotopias of storage and spillage - 2018 | Sasha Newell | History and Anthropology | 6 pp. | doi:10.1080/02757206.2017.1397647
- #6EFDXH Unpicking contemporary thrift: Getting on and getting by in everyday life - 2019 | Helen Holmes | The Sociological Review | 17 pp. | doi:10.1177/0038026118797837
- #SHZ6RT Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store - 2019 | Frederik Larsen | Business History | 18 pp. | doi:10.1080/00076791.2017.1418330
- #N7DKM2 Vogel's Net - 1996 | Alfred Gell | Journal of Material Culture | 25 pp. | doi:10.1177/135918359600100102
- #S54TH3 Waste and the superfluous: an introduction - 2017 | Elisabeth Schober, Thomas Hylland Eriksen | Social Anthropology | 6 pp. | doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12422
- #6C82ER Waste is not the end. For an anthropology of care, maintenance and repair - 2017 | Francisco Martínez | Social Anthropology | 5 pp. | doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12436
- #UBF5U3 What does that shirt mean to you? Thrift-store consumption as cultural capital - 2020 | Shelly Steward | Journal of Consumer Culture | 21 pp. | doi:10.1177/1469540517745707
- #LB72BP What future for collaborative consumption? A practice theoretical account - 2019 | Gert Spaargaren, Walter Fraanje | Journal of Cleaner Production | 10 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.197
- #9X3WKH Whose Collection Is It Anyway? An Autoethnographic Account of `Dividing the Spoils' upon Divorce - 2007 | Jackie Goode | Cultural Sociology | 19 pp. | doi:10.1177/1749975507082055
- #ZNC4FL WITH and WITHOUT THINGS. AN INTRODUCTION - 2023 | Francisco Martínez, Tomás Errázuriz | Home Cultures | 15 pp. | doi:10.1080/17406315.2024.2347703
- #ZJUEY4 ‘It will Keep Circulating’: Loving and Letting Go of Things in Swedish Second-hand Markets - 2019 | Anna Bohlin | Worldwide Waste | 11 pp. | doi:10.5334/wwwj.17
- #VWPB2S ‘It's Kind of Saving them a Job isn't it?’ The Consumption Work of Household Recycling - 2015 | Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann | The Sociological Review | 19 pp. | doi:10.1111/1467-954x.12199
- #UTUMYN ‘Nothing Comes Without Its World’: Thinking with Care - 2012 | María Puig de la Bellacasa | The Sociological Review | 20 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-954x.2012.02070.x
- #EDFB5G “If I don’t do it, it feels wrong”: embodying environmental ethical reflexivity through cultivation and enactment of practices [cited] - 2024 | Anne Sofie Møller Askholm | Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy | 12 pp. | doi:10.1080/15487733.2024.2350204
- #3F4AVR “Still good life”: On the value of reuse and distributive labor in “depleted” rural Maine [cited] - 2020 | Brieanne Berry, Cindy Isenhour | Economic Anthropology | 16 pp. | doi:10.1002/sea2.12176

Books (20)
- #GABXSA Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies - 1995 | Daniel Miller | 350 pp.
- #UX42KU Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing [cited] - 2016 | Thomas Widlok | 240 pp. | doi:10.4324/9781315671291
- #VC6397 Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes - 2015 | Andrew Brooks | 298 pp. | doi:10.5040/9781350219243
- #8J3FXD Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality [cited] - 2003 | Elizabeth Shove | 236 pp. | doi:10.5040/9781474214605
- #2EDLQU Elusive Consumption - 2004 | Helene Brembeck, Karin M. Ekström | 254 pp. | doi:10.5040/9781474214704
- #BJ6B3C From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary - 2007 | Zsuzsa Gille | 266 pp.
- #4LST57 Household Recycling and Consumption Work [cited] - 2015 | Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann | 249 pp. | doi:10.1057/9781137440440
- #R26U48 Materiality - 2005 | Daniel Miller | 302 pp.
- #Y3KME8 My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries - 2016 | Elizabeth Chin | 248 pp. | doi:10.1515/9780822374268
- #B5KMLA Second-Hand Cultures and Economies of Reuse, Repair, Sharing, and Care - 2025 | Petra Kuppinger | Palgrave Macmillan | 28 pp. | doi:10.1007/978-3-031-99875-1
- #VKBZ23 Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social - 1996 | Theodore R. Schatzki | 256 pp. | doi:10.1017/CBO9780511527470
- #5AXAEJ The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes [cited] - 2012 | Elizabeth Shove, Matt Watson, Mika Pantzar | 206 pp. | doi:10.4135/9781446250655
- #83R4U2 The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish - 2006 | Gay Hawkins | 80 pp.
- #R49AUC The Nexus of Practices: Connections, constellations, practitioners - 2017 | Allison Hui, Elizabeth Shove, Theodore Schatzki | 237 pp. | doi:10.4324/9781315560816
- #3LSRBZ The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill - 2000 | Tim Ingold | 480 pp.
- #6J5MKL The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory - 2001 | Eike von Savigny, Karin Knorr Cetina, Theodore R. Schatzki | 253 pp. | doi:10.4324/9780203977453
- #RCRP8Z The World of Goods: Towards an anthropology of consumption - 1996 | Baron Isherwood, Mary Douglas | 198 pp.
- #BX2YWY Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically - 2007 | Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, Sari Wastell | 248 pp.
- #8YF7LY Thrift and its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy - 2022 | Catherine Alexander, Daniel Sosna | 232 pp. | doi:10.3167/9781800734623
- #3N7TTE Time, Consumption and Everyday Life: Practice, Materiality and Culture - 2009 | Elizabeth Shove, Frank Trentmann, Richard Wilk | 251 pp. | doi:10.5040/9781474215862

Book chapters (12)
- #TNE9JN Habits and Their Creatures - 2012 | Elizabeth Shove | The Habits of Consumption | Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies | pp. 100-112 | 13 pp.
- #EVCWDH Introduction. 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. Tool result: search_text

Exact matches

1. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 52
  Context:
    #SG3XKH Consumers as Workers in Economies of Waste
      #TNJ9YK Characterising consumption work
  Matching excerpt #QKCNZ2:
      The eventual disposal of goods after they have been consumed may also demand work on the part of the consumer, and this is increasingly so as societies become more environmentally aware. Of the various modes of disposal, recycling of household waste, as already suggested, imposes regular and routine demands on consumers if their rubbish is to be collected. Over the last decade, transformation of waste collection and disposal especially in the global North has impacted on routine household activity, requiring consumers to sort and assemble various categories of waste in a particular manner either for kerbside collection or for transfer to recycling centres (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). This represents a new and expanding form of consumption work and the main focus of this book.

2. Source: The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings (#8EVNK8), Réka Tölg, p. 41
  Context:
    #T6KQ92 Introduction
      #BDRQSR A practice theories approach to producing and performing circular consumption
        #SBM22B Circular consumption and the sociology of consumption
  Matching excerpt #XRXFBJ:
      involves “all work necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods and services” (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015a: 37). This form of work undertaken by consumers is necessary for the completion as well as complementation of economic processes (Glucksmann, 2016). For instance, self-assembling furniture or installation of different software is necessary before some goods can be appropriated and appreciated. While consumption work is also part of linear economies, in a circular system, previous consumption work activities need to be scaled, and new practices need to be adopted (Hobson et al., 2021). For instance, even if a household already practised waste sorting and recycling according to circularity principles, they also need to enact further practices such as repairing broken belongings or sharing household tools. These increased levels of consumption work in the CE can further contribute to an unequal distribution of labour in terms of gender, class and employment forms (Hobson et al., 2021). Furthermore, it can be challenging to manage the time required for this increased work due to other personal or professional commitments, as the study of Sutcliffe (2022) demonstrates.

3. Source: The (im)possibilities of circular consumption: Producing and performing circular clothing consumption in retail and household settings (#8EVNK8), Réka Tölg, p. 107
  Context:
    #KBKAA9 Concluding discussion
      #92JYP3 Research contributions
        #GA7H2G Implications for future research
  Matching excerpt #JHTY3R:
      It also follows from the findings of this dissertation that the work of consumers in the CE is shaped by retail markets. Studying further the making of consumption work through retail markets can be of interest to sociology of consumption scholars who are engaged with understanding consumption in relation to wider economic arrangements. Future research could continue with taking a 'practice theories' approach (Evans, 2020), and explore how the work of consumers is formed in other empirical contexts. Although consumption work is central to the CE (Greene et al., 2024; Hobson et al., 2021), and the concept has been developed through studies focused on household recycling (e.g., Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015a, 2015b), the concept is not limited to circular economies (Glucksmann, 2009, 2016). The role of retailers in this reorganisation of consumer labour can be explored in contexts other than the CE. For instance, how does the work of consumers become re-arranged as part of various social or environmental challenges, leading to, for instance, food scarcity or challenged access to other commodities and essential goods? Through such studies, further light can be shed on the possibilities to re-allocate work in the case of different challenging situations impacting societies.

4. Source: Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing (#AVNZLE), Christian Fuentes, Réka Tölg, p. 2
  Context:
    #S6NTVJ Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing
      #QR437R Introduction
  Matching excerpt #WR6R66:
      Sutcliffe, 2022). These studies have shown the often highly gendered completing and complementing work (Glucksmann, 2016) that consumers undertake, for instance, in composting and repair activities (Sutcliffe, 2022) or in household recycling (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). In line with this, we also approach circular consumption as a social, cultural and material phenomenon whose performance is demanding for consumers and tightly connected to everyday life. However, with a focus on care, we add that most forms of circular consumption involve and are enabled and shaped by enactments of care. We will take a particular interest in the problems involved in the enactment of care and how these issues stand in the way of the performance of circular consumption.

5. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #BA7Z5L LIST OF SOURCES
  Matching paragraph #9L6ZGC:
      Wheeler, K. and Glucksmann, M. (2015) Household recycling and consumption work: social and moral economies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

6. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption
      #A43655 Modal labour across socioeconomic modes
  Matching paragraph #HGVGLS:
      Wheeler and Glucksmann’s modal dimension attends to how labour is distributed across different socioeconomic arrangements – market and non-market, paid and unpaid, formal and informal. In their original context of waste recycling, household consumption work feeds into municipal waste management system: people prepare, wash, sort and transport materials, performing labour that contributes to a formal insitutional process.

7. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #W8HHQV Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework
      #LMKLTZ Consumption Work
  Matching paragraph #796DZS:
      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.

8. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption
      #38335C Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work
  Matching paragraph #73NW5B:
      Wheeler and Glucksmann's processual dimension attends to how labour is distributed across the full span of a consumption process. In Brīvbode, this dimension is most visible in the extended divestment networks through which household surplus reaches the swapshop. The work that sustains Brīvbode is continuous with domestic consumption work which is consistently organised through women's labour.

9. Source: Reuse practices and household consumption work (#V9QTJP), David M. Evans, Peter Jackson, Rorie Beswick-Parsons, p. 4
  Context:
    #YDJM7S Prácticas de reutilización y trabajo de consumo doméstico
      #ZZ3Y5X Literature review
  Matching excerpt #8EF7DD:
      Within the context of household waste management practices, economies of consumer recycling remain a predominant focus in household work. Through a variety of recycling tasks and activities including cleaning, squashing, disassembling, sorting, storing, and transporting items, Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015a) highlight the interdependencies of such work within the home, with work tasks conducted by other waste management actors/technologies (see also Chappells & Shove, 1999; Middha & Horne, 2024). Seldom recognized as 'work', but rather portrayed as 'a conscious green act' (Oates & McDonald, 2006, p. 421), recycling activities are often enacted through a moral economy of resource stewardship and environmental citizenship. They are also, however, embedded within relations of familial care, conventions of household order in keeping one's house tidy, norms of cleanliness and hygiene, and conveniences more generally (Pedersen & Manhece, 2020; Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015b). Contributions such as Lindsay and colleagues on consumption work in low waste households, not only emphasize debates about sustainability and transition to a circular economy failing to recognize the amount of additional labour often required, but also the gender disparity in enacting this (Lindsay et al., 2024). They draw to attention the inclusion of 'sustainability labour' as part of existing household dynamics and gendered practices (see also Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015a), in attempts to reduce plastic consumption involving new and additional modes of shopping and relying on other domestic activities, such as meal planning. These ideas build on earlier work by Organo, Head and Waitt, who found that women spent more time on sustainable practices than men and did so more often (Organo et al., 2013). Referring to waste management in apartment living, Horne et al. (2022) refer to the temporalities and rhythms of plastic waste being intensified due to space requirements, or lack thereof, with practices of sorting, recycling, and disposing of plastic waste important in maintaining household hygiene, convenience, and emotions of living in apartment spaces.

10. Source:  (#VWPB2S), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 1
  Context:
    #DPNN52 ‘It’s kind of saving them a job isn’t it?’ The consumption work of household recycling
      #DH3N7C Introduction
  Matching excerpt #BVCCP3:
      The division of labour concept is in need of revision because, despite its enduring status within the sociology of work, it struggles to deal with the growing complexity and connections of labour within contemporary society. Building on the multi-dimensional conception of the division of labour outlined by Glucksmann (2009), we explore the work of consumers within recycling processes to demonstrate the critical role that they play within this industry. Elsewhere, we have made our case for incorporating the work of consumers within distinctive systems of recycling provision in Sweden and England, detailing how this work varies nationally and interdepends with labour conducted within the overall system (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2013). Here we take a closer look at how recycling consumption work is practically accomplished by consumers, drawing attention to what the work comprises and the implications of its successful accomplishment for subsequent labour processes. We present data from qualitative interviews with both consumers and key informants in the waste industry to reveal how the practices of consumers are shaped by wider systems of recycling provision and vice versa. In so doing, we make our case for a renewed conception of division of labour that can make sense of transformations of work within contemporary society.

Approximate matches

1. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 117
  Context:
    #3SXB7F The Three Stages of Recycling Consumption Work
  Score: 0.71
  Related excerpt #79CSM4:
      This chapter draws extensively on the household study conducted in England in 2012 in order to demonstrate how consumers act as suppliers, warehouses and distributors for recyclable materials (see also Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). Through a presentation of four in-depth case studies, we reveal how recycling is organised and negotiated between household members on an everyday basis. We then go on to demonstrate how these three stages of work are performed by consumers in the Swedish context, drawing on secondary sources (Ewert et al., 2009; Henriksson et al., 2010; Skill, 2008), as well as our expert

2. 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: 0.698
  Related excerpt #D3C4SM:
      HOUSEHOLD RECYCLING AND CONSUMPTION WORK

3. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 52
  Context:
    #SG3XKH Consumers as Workers in Economies of Waste
      #TNJ9YK Characterising consumption work
  Score: 0.69
  Related excerpt #QKCNZ2:
      The eventual disposal of goods after they have been consumed may also demand work on the part of the consumer, and this is increasingly so as societies become more environmentally aware. Of the various modes of disposal, recycling of household waste, as already suggested, imposes regular and routine demands on consumers if their rubbish is to be collected. Over the last decade, transformation of waste collection and disposal especially in the global North has impacted on routine household activity, requiring consumers to sort and assemble various categories of waste in a particular manner either for kerbside collection or for transfer to recycling centres (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). This represents a new and expanding form of consumption work and the main focus of this book.

4. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 1
  Context:
    #W238BY Front Matter
      #E5XDK4 HOUSEHOLD RECYCLING AND CONSUMPTION WORK
  Score: 0.674
  Related excerpt #4DB2S8:
      'This rich and impressive study challenges the idea of recycling as a straightforward process of converting waste into resources. By focusing on the consumption work of householders, their labour sorting and classifying, Kathryn Wheeler and Miriam Glucksmann show how moral and economic values are thoroughly interconnected. Through detailed investigations of England, Sweden, India and Brazil, "recycling" emerges as a complex and very variable field of waste management practices. After reading this book it is impossible to consider waste as the end of value. Instead, it emerges as a site where the relations between consumption, markets and disposal emerge as potent and problematic. Putting out the garbage will never be the same again!'

5. Source: Household Recycling and Consumption Work (#4LST57), Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann, p. 14
  Context:
    #3BMVZP Picking a Way through Rubbish
  Score: 0.673
  Related excerpt #3C8ZN5:
      Recycling is increasingly high on the global economic agenda. As governments across Europe pledge to increase their recycling rates, the household or the consumer becomes an important target for policy interventions. Without the input and effort of consumers who sort their recyclable waste from their non-recyclable waste, targets like those set out in the European Union (EU) Waste Framework Directive to reach a 50 percent household recycling rate by 2020 (Directive 2008/98/EC) will be impossible to meet. In recent years, requirements have been placed on consumers to sort their recyclable waste into different fractions and, in some cases, transport this waste to communal sites. The active participation of households through the performance of routine and regular consumption work links to a new global market economy of materials reuse, which is only likely to expand in a future of scarce natural resources.

6. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #BA7Z5L LIST OF SOURCES
  Score: 0.79
  Related paragraph #9L6ZGC:
      Wheeler, K. and Glucksmann, M. (2015) Household recycling and consumption work: social and moral economies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

7. Source: Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia (#FYG32U), Ieva Lange
  Context:
    #W8HHQV Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework
      #LMKLTZ Consumption Work
  Score: 0.696
  Related paragraph #796DZS:
      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.

8. Source: Reuse practices and household consumption work (#V9QTJP), David M. Evans, Peter Jackson, Rorie Beswick-Parsons, p. 4
  Context:
    #YDJM7S Prácticas de reutilización y trabajo de consumo doméstico
      #ZZ3Y5X Literature review
  Score: 0.725
  Related excerpt #8EF7DD:
      Within the context of household waste management practices, economies of consumer recycling remain a predominant focus in household work. Through a variety of recycling tasks and activities including cleaning, squashing, disassembling, sorting, storing, and transporting items, Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015a) highlight the interdependencies of such work within the home, with work tasks conducted by other waste management actors/technologies (see also Chappells & Shove, 1999; Middha & Horne, 2024). Seldom recognized as 'work', but rather portrayed as 'a conscious green act' (Oates & McDonald, 2006, p. 421), recycling activities are often enacted through a moral economy of resource stewardship and environmental citizenship. They are also, however, embedded within relations of familial care, conventions of household order in keeping one's house tidy, norms of cleanliness and hygiene, and conveniences more generally (Pedersen & Manhece, 2020; Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015b). Contributions such as Lindsay and colleagues on consumption work in low waste households, not only emphasize debates about sustainability and transition to a circular economy failing to recognize the amount of additional labour often required, but also the gender disparity in enacting this (Lindsay et al., 2024). They draw to attention the inclusion of 'sustainability labour' as part of existing household dynamics and gendered practices (see also Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015a), in attempts to reduce plastic consumption involving new and additional modes of shopping and relying on other domestic activities, such as meal planning. These ideas build on earlier work by Organo, Head and Waitt, who found that women spent more time on sustainable practices than men and did so more often (Organo et al., 2013). Referring to waste management in apartment living, Horne et al. (2022) refer to the temporalities and rhythms of plastic waste being intensified due to space requirements, or lack thereof, with practices of sorting, recycling, and disposing of plastic waste important in maintaining household hygiene, convenience, and emotions of living in apartment spaces.

9. Source: Reuse practices and household consumption work (#V9QTJP), David M. Evans, Peter Jackson, Rorie Beswick-Parsons, p. 1
  Context:
    #ZKYDXP Reuse practices and household consumption work
      #N73JMC KEYWORDS
  Score: 0.695
  Related excerpt #NMRYAA:
      Consumption work; circular economy; package-free shopping; reuse; household practices

10. Source: Reuse practices and household consumption work (#V9QTJP), David M. Evans, Peter Jackson, Rorie Beswick-Parsons, p. 3
  Context:
    #YDJM7S Prácticas de reutilización y trabajo de consumo doméstico
      #UTZZ6F Introduction
  Score: 0.674
  Related excerpt #TGNATK:
      Our analysis draws on Wheeler and Glucksmann's analysis of 'consumption work', which refers to the range of tasks required of consumers, before or after they consume, on which consumption itself is predicated (Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015a). Few goods or services are ever delivered 'complete' to individuals ready for consumption, with most requiring some form of activity on the part of consumers. For example, tasks such as building flat-pack furniture or installing software on a home computer illustrate forms of – often non-negotiable – labour required to complete and complement a variety of everyday consumption practices (Hobson et al., 2021). Our interest here is in the labour required to successfully perform practices of reuse, with respect to grocery shopping.

### 5. Assistant tool calls

#### Tool call: `read`

```json
{
  "blocks": [
    "F2943E",
    "W8HHQV",
    "LMKLTZ"
  ],
  "expand": true
}
```

#### Tool call: `get_document`

```json
{
  "id": "4LST57"
}
```

### 6. Tool result: read

THESIS #FYG32U
Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia

SECTION #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption

PARAGRAPH #AFFP4F
  In one conversation Brīvbode manager Rasa compared the operation of the swapshop to the flight of a bumblebee as it is often said to defy conventional laws of aerodynamics, yet somehow manages to fly in practice. The comparison foregrounds the felt fragility of the initiative, even though it has operated consistently for years now. The swaphsop is sustained collectively, by volunteer labour and curation work, by the participation of visitors and their acquisition and divestment work and the informal networks through which things move between households and the swapshop. The operation of Brīvbode depends on substantial labour that is unpaid, unevenly distributed and absorbed into existing practices of household management.

PARAGRAPH #DKNKM6
  In this chapter I examine what this work consists of and how it is performed. The analytical framework for this is Wheeler and Glucksmann’s (2015) concept of consumption work – the activities, skills and labour that consumers engage in to acquire, use, manage and dispose of goods. Wheeler and Glucksmann’s framework distinguishes three dimensions: technical labour – the division of tasks and skills across different people; modal labour – the interdependencies of work across different socio-economic arrangements (paid and unpaid, formal and informal); and processual labour – the connections across the full span of production and consumption process (Wheeler & Gluckmann, 2015: 35-36). In circular economy contexts, becoming a circular consumer requires varied and unevenly distributed forms of consumption work whose nature and scope have been underplayed in circular economy debates, but which has significant implications for whether such initiatives can succeed (Hobson et al., 2021). As Mesiranta et al. (2025: 25) observe, even frontrunner consumers who have integrated circular practices into their lives perceive them as laborious and at times troublesome.

PARAGRAPH #VFVNL8
  Work and care are close and overlapping concepts in this account. As Bankovska (2020: 13) observes, drawing on Graeber (2018: 156), care is not always a joyful or pleasant act – it involves unanticipated effort, obligation, hesitation, and sometimes disgust. In this sense care resembles work: activities performed because they need to be done rather than because they are intrinsically rewarding. The chapter uses consumption work as its organising framework while recognising that the boundaries between consumption work, volunteer labour, and care work are difficult to maintain in practice, and that this difficulty is itself analytically significant.

SECTION #KWZ8DM Volunteer labour and sufficiency lifestyle

PARAGRAPH #FR59SD
  Brīvbode is sustained by volunteers for many of whom participation is only possible because their lives are organized around sufficiency – a practice cluster in its own right, characterised by flexible time, low monetary consumption, and small combined income streams. As Tan and Yeoh (2024) note, while material inputs in freecycling markets are readily available, the human labour required to organise and run them is consistently short in supply. As Viesturs puts it: “I understand that the lifestyle I live is complete luxury these days, at least for this part of the world. To have free time, to decide myself what to do with my time – that is the main resource. The most important thing that a person can donate to Brīvbode is their time.”

PARAGRAPH #QD63FV
  The sufficiency orientation is visible in how volunteers approach the management of resources in Brīvbode as well. When a new stove was needed, Rasa and her partner welded one themselves using upcycled components: gas canisters, springs from an old sofa, a drain fitting (in return for his invested time, she promised him a week of help sanding his DIY boat). Rasa framed it matter-of-factly: “But what do you do if you don’t want to pay €1000 for a stove? You pick up the angle grinder yourself.” This is repair and upcycling competency, sufficiency orientation and collaborative volunteer labour combined in prioritising making do with what is available as both a practical skill and life orientation. Rasa described similar approach to her own consumption practices: it is more advantageous for her to work less in formal employment and rather invest time in planning meals, researching purchases and visiting secondhand shops than to earn more and consume more easily to keep her preferred level of wellbeing.

SECTION #L5PE5X Valuation work without the context of price

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.

PARAGRAPH #ZJG8XW
  The gap between donor self-assessment and actual quality is a recurring burden for volunteers. Anna describes she has developed her intuition: "I really know it won't be good even before I've opened the bag. I ask them: 'Is everything really okay in there?' 'Yes, yes, only the best!' And you open it, and there are moth-eaten pillows, piss-soaked blankets." This competency has been developed over years of handling what arrives. The work of maintaining quality – assessing, sorting, deciding what goes out and what does not – is constant and largely invisible to visitors who mostly only the finished presentation.

PARAGRAPH #737NYX
  Curation extends valuation work beyond sorting into knowing and managing people's needs. Rasa describes it as having "a filter". She sometimes holds specific items for specific regular visitors based on accumulated knowledge about their life circumstances: a particular colour of top for a visually impaired visitor, a wedding gift set aside for a regular who recently moved from homelessness into social housing. This is care work and consumption work simultaneously – relational knowledge that cannot be systematised or delegated, and that makes Brīvbode function as something more than a drop-off point.

PARAGRAPH #MSGHYR
  On the taking side, valuation work means learning what the absence of price actually requires. As a novice to freecycling practice, Madara was able to recall how disorienting the freeness was on her first visit: "At first it felt a bit like I was stealing." She resolved this by reframing the transaction: "I see it as exchange. I somehow switch off the word 'free'." For her, freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition: "Someone maybe sees 'free' and thinks – everything is free, let's take, take, take. For me it works the opposite way." The absence of price shifts valuation work onto participants, requiring them to develop frameworks of evaluation that the market would otherwise supply automatically.

PARAGRAPH #HM3BWV
  The labour of divestment also varies by route. Selling online is preferred when an item retains monetary value, and it requires photographing, writing descriptions, communicating with buyers, arranging delivery or meetings. As one participant noted, for items that might still have some value, "you have to pull yourself together, photograph it and put it somewhere." Brīvbode lowers this work considerably: it is a known, walkable destination where divestment requires neither finding a buyer nor judging a recipient. In Wheeler and Glucksmann's terms, Brīvbode redistributes consumption work – absorbing some of it through volunteer labour while releasing participants from other forms of it.

SECTION #A43655 Modal labour across socioeconomic modes

PARAGRAPH #HGVGLS
  Wheeler and Glucksmann’s modal dimension attends to how labour is distributed across different socioeconomic arrangements – market and non-market, paid and unpaid, formal and informal. In their original context of waste recycling, household consumption work feeds into municipal waste management system: people prepare, wash, sort and transport materials, performing labour that contributes to a formal insitutional process.

PARAGRAPH #5ZQLP4
  While Brīvbode is indirectly embedded in wider textile collection infrastructure, its operation as an informal volunteer initiative is modally different. The chain of work usually connects one household to another. Objects leaving one home pass through the swaphsop and arrive in someone elses home where a new set of consumption work tasks begin – storing, integrating, eventually deciding what to do when the object might no longer be wanted.

PARAGRAPH #4PNKDC
  Brīvbode brings together different forms of work – unpaid volunteering, household management, neighbourly help, care work, and informal exchange – in ways that blur distinctions between market and non-market activity and make the labour difficult to recognise as work at all, even though the system depends on it. As Mesiranta et al. (2025) describe, community-based circular consumption initiatives perform care work that more marketised arrangements cannot. Sequential reuse, as Hobson (2020) argues, depends not on material availability alone but on the social circularities – the relational labour – that keep things moving between people.

PARAGRAPH #SP2V6Q
  Some participants choose Brīvbode precisely because they do not want to perform labour for formal waste management institutions – they prefer the more relational, informal route. This is a modal choice: the same divestment work takes a different socioeconomic form depending on the route chosen, and Brīvbode's modal distinctiveness is part of what recruits and retains its participants.

SECTION #38335C Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work

PARAGRAPH #73NW5B
  Wheeler and Glucksmann's processual dimension attends to how labour is distributed across the full span of a consumption process. In Brīvbode, this dimension is most visible in the extended divestment networks through which household surplus reaches the swapshop. The work that sustains Brīvbode is continuous with domestic consumption work  which is consistently organised through women's labour.

PARAGRAPH #8QVYKY
  Miller's (1998) research on shopping demonstrates that consumption is often organised around care for others rather than individual satisfaction, and that women frequently function as moral agents in household consumption as they are the ones acquiring, managing, and disposing of goods in relation to the needs of children, partners, and wider social networks. Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) find the same gendered pattern in recycling: women typically take responsibility for sorting while men handle transport. The fieldwork conducted for this thesis reflects this consistently. Anna states it directly: "It's on me. I'm the one who supplies everyone with clothes and shoes." Silvija organises all divestment decisions in her household and says her husband "would just throw it in the bin." Men's role, where it appears, is typically transport and carrying the bags that women have sorted, selected, and prepared.

PARAGRAPH #JY7V8V
  The reach of Brīvbode extends considerably beyond those who physically visit it. Several of the most embedded participants perform substantial divestment work not only for themselves but for neighbours, colleagues, and family members, functioning as logistics nodes through which others' surplus flows to the freeshop. Marija's neighbours give her things to take to Brīvbode as she is a frequent visitor and the role has naturalised into her social identity in the building. Māra coordinates pickups from at least five neighbours, takes requests for specific items, and is the only one of her immediate network who actually visits – the rest route their divestment through her. Anna's work colleagues prepare parcels for her to deliver: "They use me. They prepare the bags I need to bring to Brīvbode. And then they say: 'Can you look for something for my teenage daughter?'"

PARAGRAPH #DGLFX7
  Madara does divestment work for her aunt whose belief that worn objects carry the energy of previous owners prevents her from donating. In order to get to Brīvbode, the objects must pass through Madara first. "I know that most likely they would simply be thrown away or burned." The most laborious divestment case came from Aiga, who spent months coordinating the recirculation of her relatives' possessions after a relocation, making thirty trips to Brīvbode. A single call to a clearance firm would have resolved everything in one visit, Aiga says, but she chose the harder route because she could not allow things to be discarded: "Sometimes you really do want to just throw it out, but that inner feeling simply won't let me." This is consumption work as self-imposed ethical burden of activities that need to be done out of obligation.

PARAGRAPH #LQTPNH
  Consumption work is both currently gendered and being transmitted along gendered lines. Kristīne takes her daughters to Brīvbode and uses the visits as occasions for explicit moral education: discussing why they are giving things away, what makes a good divestment decision, what is too worn to donate. She sometimes goes without them to avoid the tears when they want things back; other times the difficulty is the point. "It's also an opportunity to talk about things." The children are learning material quality, the ethics of giving, and the difference between good enough to donate and good enough only to discard.

SECTION #GGGPNV Conclusion

PARAGRAPH #8JXBYH
  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. Bankovska and Graeber name the motivation: 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 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 #T5LNZ9
  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 #WQCQ9A
  CONCLUSION

PARAGRAPH #ENZMT5
  Naming the forms and distribution of consumption work is the chapter's contribution. Circular consumption requires substantial labor; that labor is unevenly distributed; and the sustainability of initiatives like Brīvbode depends on a structural condition – the sufficiency-oriented, time-rich, mostly female volunteer and participant base.

PARAGRAPH #JJA5J6
  Some of this work is unreflexive and habituated, some is deliberate and effortful (Madara working on her own impulse-acquiring, Kristīne's category-by-category method). Both are labor, but they are differently visible – and the unreflexive forms are the hardest to see and the hardest for policy to reach.

PARAGRAPH #ANCRJA
  Transactions of consumption work: “Rasa saka, ka darbs Brīvbodē dažreiz ļauj viņai nejusties vainīgai par to, ka viņa nesašķiro atkritumus.”

PARAGRAPH #YNFMZ5
  An example of acquisition functioning as a concerted social practice is found in Daniel Miller’s study of flea markets and antiques. For the participants, visiting these markets is a "highly regular commitment"–often a weekly ritual–focused on the constant circulation, exchange, and re-acquisition of objects. In this context, the routine of trading and collecting is more important than the individual objects themselves. This suggests that for some, the practice is not "using" the thing, but the rhythm of the search and the acquisition itself.

PARAGRAPH #H77SJA
  Līva L.: "Tā drēbju stanga... man liekas, viņa vēl kādam varētu noderēt. Un es neesmu to vēl tā kā izrisinājusi." A clothes rail that no longer has a place in her apartment but which she cannot yet bring herself to take anywhere – the sense that something is still good, someone could use it, but the act of routing it somewhere requires a decision and work to execute it (and appropriate divestment infrastructure).

PARAGRAPH #MC4GH7
  Visitors perhaps do not witness the complete material streams, but they see –

PARAGRAPH #QJNPTQ
  [No Singapūras pētījuma] Campbell-Johnston et al.’s (2020) argument that an item’s sequential (re)use is not a given. Rather, (re)use is underpinned by relational labour bound up in what Hobson (2020) calls social circularities.

PARAGRAPH #GDAK2E
  “As suggested by these researchers, joint efforts involving various types of actors, such as non-profit organisations and local communities, can help balance marketised care. Examples of this within circular consumption include repair cafés, clothes-swapping events, and community fridges for sharing leftover food in the neighbourhood. Community-based aspects of circular consumption have recently been highlighted (for a review, see Luukkonen et al., 2024), and the role of local communities in adopting and appropriating circular consumption and care should be further examined. Frontrunner consumers may have a significant role to play in establishing these communities and crafting policies that are built from the bottom-up and aligned with their everyday lives.” (Mesiranta et al. 2025: 26)

THESIS #FYG32U
Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia

SECTION #W8HHQV Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework

PARAGRAPH #Z582K2
  This chapter develops a theoretical framework for the thesis, connecting several bodies of work: a practice-theoretical approach to consumption with a focus not only on acquisition and attachment, but also divestment and disposal, and consumption work as a framework for naming the labour that circulation demands and examining how it is distributed.

SECTION #L2J4AM Theories of Practice

PARAGRAPH #366FWU
  The central theoretical grounding for this thesis is practice theory – or rather theories of practice – a heterogeneous cluster of approaches in humanities and social sciences in which practice serves as the primary unit of analysis for understanding human life and sociality. Shifting away from individual motivations and attitudes, behaviours and choices (ABC) based models for change, for example, practice theory rather examines how those doings are organized socially. It enables looking at the interconnectedness of the social and material realms with an emphasis on the role of objects, infrastructures and technology in practice enactment and maintenance. Evolved in a lineage from Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1984) in social sciences, in the past decades theories of practice have been influential and applied across various domains in social sciences and humanities, constituting what has been called a practice turn (reference).

PARAGRAPH #J6LBYD
  While varied definitions of social practice exist, Warde (2005) suggests a minimal definition: “An organized, and recognizable, socially shared bundle of activities that involves the integration of a complex array of components: material, embodied, ideational and affective. Practices are sets of ‘doings and sayings’; they involve both practical activity and its representations" (Warde, 2005: 134).

PARAGRAPH #2G2PYK
  Different frameworks have been articulated to account for the elements constituting practices.

PARAGRAPH #48M72B
  Practice-as-performance - “doings and sayings”, embodied actions.

PARAGRAPH #N7C7EW
  Practice-as-entity - materials, meanings, and competencies.

PARAGRAPH #DRYDV3
  Practice-as-bundle (practice-as-system)

PARAGRAPH #DMYKYA
  Practices as entities can be distinguished from practices as performances: the specific, recurrent enactments through which practices are reproduced or transformed. Transformation and change comes through  recombination of the elements of practice (Shove et al. 2012) – a complex process that is constantly evolving and difficult to predict.

PARAGRAPH #VVZXM9
  A particularly influential contribution, especially in anthropological approaches to practice, is the work of Elisabeth Shove, Mika Pantzar and Matt Watson (2012) in which the authors offer a deliberately compact three-component framework for analysing practices: practice as  entity. Shove and colleagues define a practice element frame consisting of meanings, materials, and competencies. “Meanings” refer to the ideas, aspirations, shared understandings and related values that give practice its purpose and make it intelligible for practitioners and guide how practices are performed. “Materials” refer to objects involved and used in practice, necessary technologies and infrastructure through which practices are enacted. It also refers to bodies and physicality. “Competencies” are the skills (across cognitive and physical realms) and practical knowledge necessary for participation in a practice, including understanding how to use objects, follow rules, and navigate social norms.

PARAGRAPH #S54S34
  The authors acknowledge that the model sacrifices some nuance to analytical clarity, yet argue that it is analytically productive, especially for studying how practices change and develop when their elements are reconfigured. It allows looking at practices as entities with their own histories and trajectories – recruiting or losing practitioners, appearing and disappearing.

PARAGRAPH #BYU2EP
  This threefold structure of elements of practice has been used widely across disciplines as it offers a clear conceptual approach for empirical research.

PARAGRAPH #RDZMW6
  Delineating a practice and setting it apart from adjacent practices can be one of the challenges in practice theory, as there are no fixed procedural rules for determining exactly where one practice ends and another begins. Nicolini (2017: 26-27) notes that, while for analytical purposes, practices can be conceived and examined individually, empirically they are always encountered in arrays and multiplicities. Practices “hang together” in bundles and complexes (Shove et al. 2012), distinguished by the density and “stickiness” of their patterns. Practice bundles refer to the more loose-knit relations between practices, often gathered around the same site or time – practices that are related and shape each other but not strongly. Complexes refer to more integrated combinations that can also constitute new practice entities if the relations become significantly denser. In this thesis, I analyse freecycling in Brīvbode as a practice entity and as performed, while recognising the emerging state of freecycling as a practice in Latvia.

SECTION #3DTHL8 Theories of Practice to Study Alternative Practices?

PARAGRAPH #QWNX7T
  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 #YRHJY3
  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 #4Y3CYV
  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 #6VBDKY
  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.

SECTION #UF33B6 Consumption practices

PARAGRAPH #J6ELX8
  Practice theories have been widely applied in studies of sustainability and consumption. Whereas previously widespread theories of consumption in the 1980s and 1990s often treated it as a matter of individual choice and identity-making (reference to illustrate these approaches), theories of practice enabled attending to consumption patterns that emerge from the practices in which people are engaged, rather than mainly from their preferences or intentions. This decentring of the individual marked a significant departure from both the rational-choice models of consumer behaviour research and the identity-focused approaches of consumer culture theory (reference).

PARAGRAPH #QG3MSW
  Warde’s (2005) paper “Consumption and theories of practice” is widely regarded as the first programmatic application of practice theory to consumption studies (Welch & Warde 2015). Its central contribution was to reconceptualise consumption as "not itself a practice but rather a moment in almost every practice" (Warde 2005: 137). Warde conceptualizes consumption not as a separate domain of social life organised around the acquisition of goods, but as an integral component of social practices through which people organize their daily lives. People consume in the course of doing other things: e.g. maintaining a household, raising children, managing seasonal change, responding to gifts received, keeping warm, eating, moving around. As Warde (2005: 146) puts it, from this perspective “the concept of ‘the consumer’ ... evaporates. Instead the key focal points become the organization of the practice and the moments of consumption enjoined.”

PARAGRAPH #ZYCYKG
  There is also a particular affinity between consumption and sustainability studies. Welch and Warde (2015) identify three reasons for it. Firstly, much of the environmental impact of consumption stems from routine practices – such as showering or doing laundry – that involve significant, yet often unnoticed, use of energy and resources (Shove, 2003). For such inconspicuous, resource intensive practices analysis of consumption as symbolic display and presentation of self that was more prevalent in consumption studies before is less relevant than attention to the material and social arrangements that sustain them. Secondly, because goods and services are primarily used for the accomplishment of social practices rather than for consumption per se. Thirdly, practice theory can provide a way out of discussions of the “value–action” gap – the persistent discrepancy between reportedly pro-environmental values which by contrast are not reflected in a person’s behaviour – by redirecting focus on the ways resource intensive practices capture and retain their practitioners.

PARAGRAPH #H9CGSB
  This thesis aligns with practice theoretical perspectives on sustainable consumption that attend to the full cycle of goods through domestic life – considering not only the goods and materials people acquire, but also divestment and disposal (Ehgartner and Holmes, 2022). For example, Evans (2020) responds to this by proposing an expanded definition of consumption as a process involving multiple moments beyond acquisition. Following Warde (2005), he identifies appropriation – the use, personalisation, and incorporation of goods into everyday life – and appreciation – the personal and symbolic frameworks through which goods are evaluated and enjoyed. To these he adds three further moments: devaluation, the loss of economic or symbolic value; divestment, the loss of personal meaning and the unravelling of attachments; and disposal, the physical act of getting rid of things (Evans 2020: 345). Taken together, these six moments constitute consumption as a full cycle rather than a single event. Evans notes that a case could be made for simplifying this further, though – replacing the three acquisition related moments with a single concept of attachment, and the three divestment related moments with detachment ¬ a formulation that captures the emotional and relational dimensions of both acquiring and letting go (Evans, 2020: 347).

PARAGRAPH #U8R7V6
  This expanded definition of consumption to include detachment (divestment, disposal) is at the basis of this thesis. Brīvbode can thus be understood as a consumption site in both directions: people come to divest goods that have reached the end of their household life, and they come to acquire goods that may be entering a new phase of their biography. The swapshop is a node in the ordinary circulation of goods through domestic life, distinguished by its non-monetary character and physical permanence.

SECTION #LMKLTZ Consumption Work

PARAGRAPH #6JKEPZ
  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 #796DZS
  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 #HVHQYS
  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 #HDN32L
  [“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 #U9VL8L
  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 #9NPNTZ
  [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 #PV4SZY
  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.

SECTION #Q3A3ZZ Conclusion

PARAGRAPH #TEEVBW
  This thesis brings together practice-theoretical perspectives on sustainable consumption and consumption work for a study of non-domestic site of goods circulation within a context of non-monetary exchange. Brīvbode is a site where the ordinarily private and dispersed practices of domestic material life become visible. The continued existence of the swapshop – sustained through regular volunteer labour, participant labour, and a relatively stable social and material infrastructure – can be read as evidence of the demand that household goods circulation generates: a demand for routes of divestment that, while taking some degree of effort, are socially acknowledged.

PARAGRAPH #86KGGB
  PIEVIENOT

PARAGRAPH #BRMHZX
  “Pinning down the actual practice and its scale, identifying overlaps with other practices or deciding which actions belong to which practice registers as a tricky task, further complicated by the fact that practices change over time.” (Sedlačko, 2017: 53)

PARAGRAPH #K4ELJX
  consumption as a middle class sustainability “issue”?

PARAGRAPH #FRNN7Z
  A central conclusion is that textile disposal has become normalized. – “Sustainability transitions in textiles therefore require systemic reconfiguration of what is considered ‘normal’ in household practices.”

PARAGRAPH #TVS3TS
  “this dissertation conceptualizes disposal as a material, cultural, and social practice central to consumption, rather than a peripheral or undesirable act.

PARAGRAPH #324S25
  Disposal is treated not simply as the act of discarding but as a meaningful practice that enables and intersects with the reproduction of broader everyday activities.

PARAGRAPH #V9AZYS
  In sociology, the study of consumption has evolved through three major phases: an early focus on economistic models prior to the 1980s; the ‘cultural turn’ of the early 1980s, which emphasized meaning-making, identity, and symbolic value; and, more recently, a ‘practice turn’ that reorients attention toward the routines, materialities, and shared norms of everyday life (Warde, 2014, 2015).

PARAGRAPH #2E5CLJ
  in clothing consumption research consumption of clothing is viewed as a habitual and socially embedded activity rather than a constant, deliberate process of choice and identity construction (Chamberlin & Callmer, 2021; Miller & Woodward, 2012; van der Laan & Velthuis, 2016).

PARAGRAPH #5M9UV4
  “In their classical taxonomy for describing consumer disposition behavior, Jacoby et al. (1977) illustrated that disposal may involve keeping, donating, selling, recycling, or throwing away, and even within each category, multiple practices exist. Disposal is thus not inherently destructive or wasteful and cannot be reduced to simply ‘throwing something away’, but is an active social practice embedded in ethical, cultural, and material contexts (Hetherington, 2004). This perspective recognizes disposal as an active, meaning-making practice. As Gregson et al. (2007b) argue, divestment is not simply a negative or absent moment in consumer life, but a practice that enables other practices. To sustain certain routines and identities, other objects must be removed. In this sense, disposal is not the final step in a linear production-consumption-waste chain but a recursive moment that helps reorder consumption itself (Gregson et al., 2007a; Hetherington, 2004). Following Douglas (2002), disposal can be seen as part of the ‘ordering work’ of everyday life, where waste becomes threatening not by its material properties but by its symbolic disruptions of social and domestic order (Gregson et al., 2007a; Heidenstrøm & Hebrok, 2021).”

PARAGRAPH #Q9FFDL
  “What we discard reflects who we are but also helps constitute who we become. In this way, waste is both expressive and constitutive of identity (Lucy, 2023).”

PARAGRAPH #Y7ZKKR
  Maldini et al. (2019), for instance, found that garments are often retained long after they stop being worn, while new items are added without replacing old ones, highlighting the entanglement with disposal and accumulation. Furthermore, as with disposal in general, textile disposal is not merely a matter of getting rid of unwanted things, nor is it a straightforward or linear process.

PARAGRAPH #QH6AFV
  “This theoretical approach shifts the analytical focus away from individual behavior to practices allowing textile waste to be understood not as the outcome of isolated decisions but as a meaningful and situated activity embedded in everyday domestic routines.”

PARAGRAPH #PURD5V
  “Social phenomena are understood as emerging from, and being embedded within, interconnected networks of practices and the materials that sustain them (Schatzki, 2019).”

PARAGRAPH #QM744E
  “Dressing is viewed as a dynamic, lifelong everyday practice comprised of three interdependent elements: materials (e.g., clothing, wardrobes, washing machines), meanings (e.g., symbolic notions such as cleanliness or fashion), and competencies (e.g., dressing, laundering, repairing skills) (Maguire & Fahy, 2022; Skjold, 2016).”

PARAGRAPH #B5MJ7V
  “Textile disposal is conceptualized as a social practice embedded within everyday routines and shaped by normative expectations, identity work, and material needs.”

PARAGRAPH #4364QB
  Schatzki’s site ontology

PARAGRAPH #XMLDYN
  “The deep interdependence between practices and material arrangements is a central theme in Schatzki’s site ontology. According to Schatzki (2002), a social site is not merely a spatial backdrop for action, but a constitutive milieu where social life unfolds across three interrelated dimensions. First, the site refers to the basic location where something happens, whether spatial, temporal, or relational. Second, it represents the broader thematic or systemic context in which specific practices are embedded. Third, the site encompasses a deeper, constitutive context that gives practices their social meaning. In social sites, actions are seldom shaped by a single practice alone but emerge from the complex interaction of multiple overlapping practices.”

PARAGRAPH #6JENT4
  ​​For example, textile disposal emerges from the intersection of multiple practices, such as cleaning, organizing, shopping, and caring, even when disposal appears as the main activity.

PARAGRAPH #MWD2WS
  Shove conceptualizes material entities as one of the core elements of practice, alongside meanings and competencies (Shove et al., 2012; Shove et al., 2007). Acknowledging the different roles that material entities can play, three categories of materiality are proposed: resources (consumables used up in practices), devices (objects directly mobilized during practices), and infrastructure (supporting systems not directly engaged) (Shove, 2016).

PARAGRAPH #PZAACH
  Practice as entity – how does the threefold model

PARAGRAPH #45S58L
  Looking at a practice as entity – materials, meanings, competencies. MESOLEVEL.

PARAGRAPH #EYXC82
  Individual level of practice – practice as performance – doings, sayings, embodied experiences, movements, everyday parts… PRACTICE AS PERFORMANCE.

PARAGRAPH #4532BE
  practice as bundle or practice as entity…

PARAGRAPH #HA2NMZ
  Acknowledge these three levels, focusing on practice as performance and practice as entity.

THESIS #FYG32U
Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia

SECTION #LMKLTZ Consumption Work

PARAGRAPH #6JKEPZ
  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 #796DZS
  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 #HVHQYS
  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 #HDN32L
  [“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 #U9VL8L
  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 #9NPNTZ
  [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 #PV4SZY
  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.

### 7. Tool result: get_document

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Title: Household Recycling and Consumption Work

Outline:
  - 1 #W238BY Front Matter
    - 1.1 #E5XDK4 HOUSEHOLD RECYCLING AND CONSUMPTION WORK
      - 1.1.1 #XWRA5U Consumption and Public Life
        - 1.1.1.1 #NSQB8U Titles include:
      - 1.1.2 #F3YHCS Consumption and Public Life
      - 1.1.3 #UL3ZGU Household Recycling and Consumption Work
      - 1.1.4 #9TTZVT Social and Moral Economies
    - 1.2 #GD23EY Contents
    - 1.3 #4KHJKM Figures and Tables
    - 1.4 #LENC4R Figures
    - 1.5 #G2K26L Tables
    - 1.6 #WQWB82 Acknowledgements
      - 1.6.1 #JE7B76 England
      - 1.6.2 #K9T6GJ Sweden
    - 1.7 #EQ9CYK Abbreviations
  - 2 #3BMVZP Picking a Way through Rubbish
    - 2.1 #F9BQ54 Narrating rubbish historically
      - 2.1.1 #8GATCB Ruth's recollections from England
      - 2.1.2 #Y8P6AX Ulrika's recollections from Sweden
    - 2.2 #3AX9RU Changing practices of reuse and recycling
    - 2.3 #54PR7R Capturing value
    - 2.4 #PLL67G Waste work
    - 2.5 #VYKGFA Moral messages
    - 2.6 #BZVVQK Household recycling and consumption work
    - 2.7 #52KHCY Research design and structure of the book
  - 3 #SG3XKH Consumers as Workers in Economies of Waste
    - 3.1 #MCE5DZ Introducing consumption work
    - 3.2 #S2CJEK Socio-economic formations of labour: Divisions of labour, socio-economic modes of work, instituted economic process
    - 3.3 #TNJ9YK Characterising consumption work
    - 3.4 #YZ3YS7 Consumption work as an economic activity
    - 3.5 #ZUQG3Z Acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills
      - 3.5.1 #L5YPGT Coordination
    - 3.6 #UN9LHM Outsourcing of consumption work
    - 3.7 #2LDKSC Differentiating consumption work
      - 3.7.1 #XQA6FE Consumption
      - 3.7.2 #VT776A Domestic labour
      - 3.7.3 #PVEUCS Self-service, co-production, prosumption, etc.
    - 3.8 #3ZN9RH Researching consumption work
  - 4 #TWZCKJ Environmentally Regimented Rubbish: Recycling Systems in Sweden
    - 4.1 #MKBGBE Policy context
    - 4.2 #D9L9H7 Waste, recycling and collection statistics
    - 4.3 #QCQQMY Lund and Stockholm
    - 4.4 #TGUVU5 Division of responsibility for waste management
      - 4.4.1 #BH7HR5 Central government
      - 4.4.2 #ZGSUV5 Producers
      - 4.4.3 #46T3XX Municipalities
      - 4.4.4 #XNKP7H Waste management companies
      - 4.4.5 #N6G8KF Third sector
      - 4.4.6 #SN2VW9 Technology
      - 4.4.7 #7STB5C Incineration
      - 4.4.8 #6GSA8K Recycling technology
    - 4.5 #WDSBDX The consumer's role in the division of responsibility for waste management
    - 4.6 #LWS3U2 Conclusion
  - 5 #NAF2QB Market and State Heterogeneity: Recycling Systems in England
    - 5.1 #86WDDY Policy context
    - 5.2 #U9TWHG Waste, recycling and collection statistics
    - 5.3 #BSXAM2 Varieties of waste management in three local authorities
      - 5.3.1 #8EADM6 Essex
      - 5.3.2 #F5EA4A Lewisham
      - 5.3.3 #3G6F4S Shropshire
    - 5.4 #T5VUGU Division of responsibility for waste management
      - 5.4.1 #Z6UERA Central government
      - 5.4.2 #3YA79B Local authorities
      - 5.4.3 #TJNKDM Waste management companies
      - 5.4.4 #ZFW3A6 Producers
      - 5.4.5 #WN6WPE Third sector
      - 5.4.6 #XM87AH Technology
      - 5.4.7 #ZJFANH Black bag waste
      - 5.4.8 #EEAZMR Recyclable materials
    - 5.5 #BGYSQZ The consumer’s role in the division of responsibility for waste management
    - 5.6 #KR8AFZ Conclusion
  - 6 #3SXB7F The Three Stages of Recycling Consumption Work
    - 6.1 #ST7AMV Consumer case studies in England
    - 6.2 #UJFPBM Gemma and Dave
    - 6.3 #Z3CCES Liz and Ron
    - 6.4 #7JQ423 Jane and Barry
    - 6.5 #86QEP3 Mark
    - 6.6 #JQANKU Consumer research in Sweden
      - 6.6.1 #ANYF33 The consumer as supplier
      - 6.6.2 #2WFNK3 The consumer provides a warehouse
      - 6.6.3 #P7SZDU The consumer as distributor
    - 6.7 #C9T857 Gender and the three stages of recycling consumption work
    - 6.8 #8V8H63 Socio-economic formation of household recycling labour
    - 6.9 #E4JZ2S Modal division of labour
    - 6.10 #V9VWQE Processual division of labour
    - 6.11 #BRWHQV Conclusion
  - 7 #CSWTDX Comparing Recycling Consumption Work
    - 7.1 #6GY7E7 Six key features of comparison
      - 7.1.1 #XKPVMJ 1) The key actors and institutions providing waste management services
      - 7.1.2 #LPYFXS 2) The role of the public and private sectors
      - 7.1.3 #RPPGKG 3) Variations in the collection systems between and within the countries
      - 7.1.4 #WJJUVA 4) The degree to which recycling waste is separate from other household waste
      - 7.1.5 #ACA5US 5) The technologies employed to deal with waste
      - 7.1.6 #N9NDZQ 6) Strategies for mobilising consumers to recycle
    - 7.2 #DT2EJP Comparative economies of consumer recycling
    - 7.3 #G7KZPW Applying the SEFL framework to household recycling in Sweden and England
    - 7.4 #U8BGUQ Conclusion
  - 8 #XBXPMG Moral Economies of Recycling
    - 8.1 #DDQXJ2 Moral economy revisited
    - 8.2 #A8XQ6F Sweden: Recycling for the environment
      - 8.2.1 #HP3BDX Institutional system of provision
    - 8.3 #XQ37N3 Collective customs and the legitimacy of this moral economy
      - 8.3.1 #3VF6PJ Do people find it difficult to recycle in Sweden?
      - 8.3.2 #8F5ZS6 Where does that awareness come from?
    - 8.4 #WYRXL7 Lay normativities and the moral economy of recycling
    - 8.5 #G624RG England: Recycling to save public money
      - 8.5.1 #P6WGQW Institutional system of provision
      - 8.5.2 #HVAK39 Why is Islington making recycling compulsory?
      - 8.5.3 #3E9WZP Collective customs and the legitimacy of this moral economy
      - 8.5.4 #336W8E Lay normativities and the moral economy of recycling
    - 8.6 #PAS94J Moral economies compared
    - 8.7 #FQFQWF Conclusion
  - 9 #RKL76Z Living Off Tips: Waste and Recycling in Brazil and India
    - 9.1 #Q45AD2 Brazil1
    - 9.2 #26YLBU Waste and recycling: Provision and policy
    - 9.3 #9KR3DV Division of responsibility for waste management
      - 9.3.1 #95EHAW Public and private sectors
      - 9.3.2 #LZHUEY Waste pickers, cooperatives and the third sector
      - 9.3.3 #TN4WMQ Consumers
    - 9.4 #GBJF2V India
    - 9.5 #R2LNJU Narratives of waste disposal
      - 9.5.1 #P2E7TZ Rie: Delhi
      - 9.5.2 #3TYMM7 Amit: Siliguri and Delhi
      - 9.5.3 #DL4H8Z Tara: Pune
      - 9.5.4 #UUHKY2 Human waste and 'manual scavengers'
      - 9.5.5 #39N48A Municipal solid waste collection
    - 9.6 #79KXQZ Recycling: The hierarchy of 'informality'
    - 9.7 #N2VHT2 Consumers and socio-economic formations of recycling labour in India
    - 9.8 #BJ4R8L Comparative contrasts: Brazil and India
  - 10 #E4VADY Varieties of Recycling Work
    - 10.1 #CQNVSV Comparative contrasts: Sweden and England, Brazil and India
    - 10.2 #ZN3G2A Waste, value and morality
    - 10.3 #XN35ZM SEFL and future directions
  - 11 #FDWYAB Back Matter
    - 11.1 #D43HZT Notes
      - 11.1.1 #NN4HH2 1 Picking a Way through Rubbish
      - 11.1.2 #HKEVA2 2 Consumers as Workers in Economies of Waste
      - 11.1.3 #TSA4CH 3 Environmentally Regimented Rubbish: Recycling Systems in Sweden
      - 11.1.4 #ECE5FB 4 Market and State Heterogeneity: Recycling Systems in England
      - 11.1.5 #NVDW7F 5 The Three Stages of Recycling Consumption Work
      - 11.1.6 #33AM9C 7 Moral Economies of Recycling
      - 11.1.7 #7PKEMQ 8 Living Off Tips: Waste and Recycling in Brazil and India
        - 11.1.7.1 #R359K8 9 Varieties of Recycling Work
    - 11.2 #KX3VX7 Bibliography
    - 11.3 #RE5Q74 Index
      - 11.3.1 #2MH6EF ethnic minorities
      - 11.3.2 #T2FURP European Community, 195
      - 11.3.3 #98APMD European Union (EU)
      - 11.3.4 #QJUA9G Eurostat, 60, 84
      - 11.3.5 #37HBKT Evans, D., 18, 206 n.4
      - 11.3.6 #SCVCU8 Ewert, S., 27, 104, 112, 115, 145, 153, 154, 207 n.15
      - 11.3.7 #77SYPN The Family from One End Street
      - 11.3.8 #XGCGD9 Ferragina, E., 146
      - 11.3.9 #MCAFMM Fine, B., 206 n.2
      - 11.3.10 #JGJX5Y food waste bins, 20
      - 11.3.11 #N2ZW2M Förpacknings- och Tidningsinsamlingen
      - 11.3.12 #WCENB8 'Forum on Waste and Citizenship', 173
      - 11.3.13 #N3ZWKH Fourcade, M., 146
      - 11.3.14 #ZM7CJ3 Friends of the Earth (FOE), 80–1, 152, 155, 158, 159
      - 11.3.15 #5ZJEXF Fuller, L., 52
      - 11.3.16 #X756L9 Gandy, M., 91, 92
      - 11.3.17 #PYDMF7 Gärtner, S., 146
      - 11.3.18 #LUHC3B Garrett, J., 107
      - 11.3.19 #U7U7JW gender
      - 11.3.20 #2MFKA4 George, R., 182
      - 11.3.21 #N23KB7 Gershuny, J., 48
      - 11.3.22 #FVGX99 Gill, K., 187
      - 11.3.23 #FXK4S8 glass recycling, 25
      - 11.3.24 #XQ2B8Q Glazer, N. Y., 29, 50
      - 11.3.25 #52MQ82 Gliig, A., 156
      - 11.3.26 #CXWUC8 Glucksmann, M., 12, 32, 33, 35, 39, 49, 55, 104, 132, 183, 204
      - 11.3.27 #5J27CB Goodman, M. K., 144
      - 11.3.28 #A72YE2 Gottsdener, M., 38
      - 11.3.29 #X8DK43 Granovetter, M., 146
      - 11.3.30 #GAPN56 grass-roots campaign groups, 97, 102, 136, 164
      - 11.3.31 #WGA3Z2 Grayson, K., 50
      - 11.3.32 #2ZL53Z Greater London Authority, 156
      - 11.3.33 #KYH9F6 Greater London Council, 92
      - 11.3.34 #2WX8L4 green economy, 82, 156
      - 11.3.35 #9TG5YC green groups, 190
      - 11.3.36 #X2HS9V Gregson, N., 14, 17, 147, 161
      - 11.3.37 #G65URY Grön Flagg (Green Flag), 72, 151, 200
      - 11.3.38 #VUNLUB Gyberg, P., 27, 145, 153, 155
      - 11.3.39 #B8XWGD Hage, O., 63, 66, 107
      - 11.3.40 #K8369N Håll Sverige Rent (HSR) (Keep Sweden Clean), 71–2, 150
      - 11.3.41 #DSAMNJ Harvey, M., 17, 34, 45, 189, 192, 208 n.3
      - 11.3.42 #F9QSST Hawkins, G., 144, 145
      - 11.3.43 #MC9TQ3 Hayami, Y., 187, 188
      - 11.3.44 #9J6ZF5 Healy, K., 146
      - 11.3.45 #GWM2W9 Henriksson, G., 75, 104, 112, 113, 114, 124, 209 n.3
      - 11.3.46 #WJ2EN8 Hilty, L., 206 n.4
      - 11.3.47 #VXRLMQ Hindu valmiki, 181
        - 11.3.47.1 #7BE8FE HMRC, 81
      - 11.3.48 #UFFSYC Hollbrook, B., 207 n.2
      - 11.3.49 #8Y2EBW Holm, Stefan, 153
      - 11.3.50 #WSN7GA Horne, M., 52
      - 11.3.51 #QJVUZP household recycling, 1
        - 11.3.51.1 #829743 see also recycling
      - 11.3.52 #CBPRK7 household waste, 2–4, 59, 62, 206 n.3

### 8. Assistant tool calls

#### Tool call: `read`

```json
{
  "blocks": [
    "MCE5DZ",
    "TNJ9YK",
    "S2CJEK",
    "2LDKSC",
    "C9T857",
    "8V8H63",
    "E4JZ2S",
    "V9VWQE",
    "DDQXJ2"
  ],
  "expand": true
}
```

### 9. Tool result: read

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #MCE5DZ Introducing consumption work

EXCERPT #5YBMYM p. 41
  This chapter develops the analytical approach underpinning our contention that consumers in England and Sweden perform a key role in the division of labour of waste management and our interpretation of recycling as a form of unpaid work. We introduce the notion of consumption work as a more general concept for recognising the work of consumers as a significant and growing field. And we propose a conceptual framework for understanding such work as an integral part of the division of labour which rests on reformulation and expansion of traditional approaches. The labour associated with consumption is not new, but it has been rapidly expanding in recent years as a consequence of socio-economic change and technical innovation. The requirement to sort and recycle household waste, introduced by national and local states, represents one instance of such developments. We are all familiar with self-service in supermarkets, with online checking-in and with self-assembly equipment. Not only is an increasing range of tasks transferred from producers and retailers to consumers, but emergent forms of leisure activity, travel arrangements, financial management that are often Internet dependent introduce new kinds of work for consumers that were previously unknown. Few goods or services are delivered 'complete' to consumers in the sense that they are ready for use without further activity. On the contrary, work is normally required before they can be consumed and, also, with the extension of recycling, after they have been used but before they can be thrown away. Recognition of the interdependence between the work undertaken prior to and after the purchase of goods and services and before their disposal problematises any assumption that post-purchase activity comprises only

EXCERPT #4DPPLQ p. 41

EXCERPT #4R4S4P p. 42

EXCERPT #WF9ACX p. 42
  consumption. It challenges the notion of 'production' and 'consumption' as watertight realms and calls for a conception of the division of labour that extends from the market and world of paid employment to encompass the end user. Recycling is to be understood as one example of the broader phenomenon of consumption work.

EXCERPT #LR5FFK p. 42
  Over the years, scholars have commented on developments requiring greater input on the part of end consumers, for example the growth of self-service in retail (Humphery, 1998) and fast-food outlets (Ritzer, 2001), the 'work transfer' in health care (Glazer, 1993) and the proliferation of 'self-provisioning' activities including Do It Yourself (DIY) (Pahl, 1984). Yet the full range of such developments, including the work associated with getting rid of waste, has not been systematically brought together, nor have their broader theoretical implications been explored. Incorporating the consumer into the division of labour poses a challenge to this foundational concept, given its traditional focus on the technical division of tasks within a labour process or sector of work relating to paid employment. Yet, insofar as the completion of a circuit of production, distribution, exchange and consumption, and its repetition, is predicated on consumers undertaking work in order to consume, analysis of the division of labour would be inadequate without their inclusion. If tasks are reallocated from municipal authorities or producers or retailers to consumers, then the framework of analysis requires extension in order to comprehend the reconfiguration of the division of labour. Work does not simply disappear when it shifts across socio-economic boundaries. Similarly, it is important to develop concepts capable of capturing the range of tasks required of consumers before or after they consume on which consumption itself is predicated. At present, this realm of activity figures neither in the study of work, nor of consumption, and a further aim is to establish another bridge between the study of these two fields.

EXCERPT #3WVQWA p. 42
  Two everyday examples provide a flavour of the issues involved, self-assembly furniture and the washing machine. Whereas in the past furniture was made and assembled by the manufacturer and sold and delivered by retailers in its final form, flat pack removes the assembling stage from paid employment and transfers it to the consumer. Transporting the goods from store to home also becomes the responsibility of the customer. The labour and costs of transport and assembly thus shift downstream and across socio-economic domain to the consumer. Insofar as the furniture has to be assembled in order to be useable, the consumer has labour to undertake after having bought the goods, but before they can be consumed and used. Consumers either accomplish it

EXCERPT #YJF8B3 p. 43

EXCERPT #UYXZ52 p. 43
  themselves (unpaid) or employ one of the new small companies offering assembling services. The self-assembly of furniture required by a company such as IKEA is an integral component not only of the firm's business model but also of its whole manufacturing and design process. All the different stages from raw material preparation, design, through manufacture, joinery and upholstery, to packing and distribution not only connect with each other but presuppose that final assembly work will be undertaken at its eventual destination by the consumer. Thus, the emergence of flat pack shifts the final assembly work associated with making furniture ready for use from the traditional terrain of 'production' to that of 'consumption', moving it out of the factory and shop and into the home, where it incorporates the unpaid labour of the consumer.

EXCERPT #6TEQ2U p. 43
  In the second example of a washing machine, the range of work activities undertaken by the consumer to support consumption is again fairly self-evident. When buying a new machine, the consumer will need to research the range of possible models to choose between, the retail options and which outlet sells what, and then order online, by phone or in store, and arrange for delivery. Plumbing alterations may be required prior to installation, so any necessary arrangements have to be made for these, normally by acquiring the paid services of a plumber. On delivery, the machine has to be unpacked, then installed, either by the consumer herself or himself or by paying for this to be done. She or he will also need to study the instructions, become familiar with the machine's functions and learn how to use it, undertake periodic maintenance and, at the end of its life, arrange for its disposal and recycling. All these tasks are distinct from the actual act of consuming or using the machine to wash and cannot be simply subsumed as domestic labour.

EXCERPT #Q4PRXF p. 43
  Both these examples highlight the distinction between the 'consumption work' that is a prerequisite for consumption and consumption itself, in the sense of consuming or using a product or service. The distinction between production, retail and consumption work is also evident. The first example points to historical reconfiguration of the technical division of labour involving the transfer of some production work across socio-economic spaces to consumers. Part of the more generalised expansion of consumption work is associated with such transfers in a variety of fields. By contrast, the second example does not point to anything new. Rather, it brings into view the normally 'invisible' range of tasks associated with acquiring and using a washing machine throughout its life cycle. A similar range of demands applies

EXCERPT #6XW55Z p. 44

EXCERPT #BNWWWF p. 44
  to the many kinds of domestic, leisure and personal equipment that our routine lives increasingly rely on. Work is necessary not only in order for the consumption of goods and services to take place, but many forms of consumption also create work as a consequence of use (e.g. disposal of the washing machines). And since many forms of consumption work presuppose particular competencies or knowledge, its relation to learning and skills acquisition is also an important area for consideration. Coordination represents a further significant aspect of consumption work: over and above the tasks linked with specific goods are those required both to coordinate a range of products that are used in combination and also to coordinate between consumers where consumption is a collective or social activity. Examples involving both these dimensions might include commensality (coordinating the various elements of the meal and the people eating it) or a camping trip (researching the location, getting together the equipment, means of transport, participants). These and other distinctive characteristics of consumption work will be developed below.

EXCERPT #B3GJXZ p. 44
  Recognising consumption work as a terrain for study in its own right entails a number of theoretical presuppositions and implications. Conventional approaches to the division of labour, which focus predominantly on the market and paid employment, or which study one industry or work place, are unlikely to include the work of consumers within their analytical frame. Yet such work, usually unpaid, is often essential to completion of a process of production or service provision. The following discussion aims to clarify the terrain of consumption work, its empirical significance as a field of research enquiry, and to define and delimit it in relation to existing concepts and concerns. The first section situates consumption work within a broader three dimensional framework for analysing divisions, or 'socio-economic formations', of labour. The second defines and characterises consumption work, using examples drawn from everyday life. The third section distinguishes consumption work and the approach we are developing to it from other activities and forms of work that may overlap with it and the literatures conceptualising them. The three main foci here are consumption, domestic labour and the linked approaches of co-production, prosption and co-creation. Finally, we summarise our understanding of the household recycling of waste as a form of consumption work, shaped by prevailing systems of provision and occupying a distinctive place within the division of labour. We suggest that the input of consumers is a key component of economic process in this as in many other domains.

EXCERPT #RRC8KD p. 45

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #TNJ9YK Characterising consumption work

EXCERPT #T32NX9 p. 50
  The work of consumers includes a whole range of activities both prior to, during and after acquisition of goods or services that are a precondition of using or appreciating them. Hence, our working definition of consumption work is as ' all work necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods and services '. Each good or service comes with its own specific range of consumption work tasks. These will be introduced sequentially with reference to everyday examples before more formally identifying certain generic characteristics of consumption work.

EXCERPT #B4RWGD p. 50
  Prior to the purchase or acquisition of goods and services is the associated searching and research work. Although a readily recognised feature of web-enabled or remote transactions, it is also presumed by other more traditional modes of purchase. Online searches and comparisons, consulting catalogues, visiting stores, becoming familiar with the range and specifications of items comprise the most common consumption

EXCERPT #S46UGW p. 51

EXCERPT #NG9RSH p. 51
  tasks associated with this initial phase by means of which consumers gather sufficient information to enable an informed choice. Clearly the nature of such research will vary according to the goods or services to be acquired, be they Internet service provision, concert tickets or clothing.

EXCERPT #G56HTG p. 51
  Following on from this is the actual purchase, involving shopping, effecting the exchange and, where necessary, the transporting of goods. Shopping at IKEA imposes quite different demands on the customer than buying goods from a traditional local grocery store, and this in turn differs from buying an insurance policy online or by telephone. New modes of shopping, often arising from technological innovation, presume new skills and work on the part of the consumer, if they are to be enjoyed as objects of consumption. Historical changes in modes of selling are necessarily accompanied by corresponding changes in modes of buying and their associated demands and skills (e.g. Gottdiener, 2000; Humphery, 1998; Kingston, 1994; Zukin, 2004). That work is required of consumers prior to purchase demonstrates that the exchange and distribution phases (IEPL) presuppose the active input of the end consumer prior to the final transaction or sale.

EXCERPT #WK5TZF p. 51
  Once acquired, a different range of tasks often has to be accomplished before goods or services can be used or appreciated. In the case of the washing machine, and much other mechanical equipment, this may involve making adaptations in order to install it, as well as learning how it works and how to operate it. Preparing a meal from bought ingredients would present a very different scenario, requiring a range of learned competences on the part of the cook, but also presupposing the presence of a working infrastructure of cooking equipment and utensils and a source of power. Appreciating classical music may not require any immediate input from the consumer, other than keeping equipment in working order. Nevertheless, appreciation could well rely on familiarity with musical forms and their complexities, and with particular modes of listening, representing knowledge and skills often honed over years. Assembling a desk or cupboard from a flat-pack kit poses a quite different range of demands on the consumer, which are more readily recognisable as requiring an input of labour after acquisition but prior to consumption.

EXCERPT #DJ8GS5 p. 51
  Maintaining goods and services may be required for their continuing reuse, the nature and frequency of such consumption work varying with the goods in question. Regular servicing, updating software, renewing contracts and coping with breakdowns all require attention which is the consumer's responsibility to organise or effect. Over time, technological developments, including the emergence of more user-friendly systems,

EXCERPT #AN5X37 p. 52

EXCERPT #5BQZ6F p. 52
  may reduce the time intervals or labour input required for maintenance. Thirty years ago, car maintenance was a far more onerous task than it is today, involving all sorts of checking under the bonnet with gauges and specialised instruments (e.g. to adjust the points gap) whose use had to be learned. Nowadays the demands are minimal by comparison: consumers are encouraged to take their cars to car dealers utilising computer-reliant maintenance technologies rather than to do it themselves.

EXCERPT #QKCNZ2 p. 52
  The eventual disposal of goods after they have been consumed may also demand work on the part of the consumer, and this is increasingly so as societies become more environmentally aware. Of the various modes of disposal, recycling of household waste, as already suggested, imposes regular and routine demands on consumers if their rubbish is to be collected. Over the last decade, transformation of waste collection and disposal especially in the global North has impacted on routine household activity, requiring consumers to sort and assemble various categories of waste in a particular manner either for kerbside collection or for transfer to recycling centres (Wheeler and Glucksmann, 2015). This represents a new and expanding form of consumption work and the main focus of this book.

EXCERPT #LFEGCA p. 52
  These are some of the tasks to be included under the rubric of consumption work. Different stages in the instituted economic process or cycle of production and provision, through distribution and exchange, to consumption, require different kinds of input on the part of consumers: before acquisition, selecting a provider or product and organising the exchange and delivery and, once acquired, preparing goods for use, as well as for their eventual disposal. Virtually all goods require further activity on the part of the consumer after purchase and prior to use in order to render them consumable. Following the final transaction, consumption work converts the product into an object for consumption and defines precisely what is in the end consumed. 2 Work undertaken post-exchange but prior to use has a non-market character: it is not organised or specified by the seller or other market agents but falls to the consumer to accomplish outside of exchange relations. The need for such activity on the part of the consumer remains the case even where the bulk of responsibility for preparatory work lies with the producer rather than consumer, or has moved towards the provider through a process of commoditisation (e.g. food) or public provision (e.g. water). 3

EXCERPT #FA7VBZ p. 52
  Delineating the tasks of consumption work as they arise sequentially in relation to particular objects of consumption helps to identify some of its more generic characteristics, four of which we now distinguish.

EXCERPT #LKKLLX p. 53

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #S2CJEK Socio-economic formations of labour: Divisions of labour, socio-economic modes of work, instituted economic process

EXCERPT #K4CB2W p. 45
  The approach towards consumption work builds on the multidimensional conception of the division of labour (Glucksmann, 2009, 2013) formulated to initiate renewal of this foundational concept. The complexity and diversity of contemporary forms and connections between labour of different kinds cannot readily be captured by a taken-for-granted understanding of this basic concept. To meet the analytical challenge, first principles need to be revisited. Fundamentally, every new specialisation of work (a process of differentiation) entails new interdependencies and coordination (a process of integration). At a first level, three dimensions of differentiation and interdependency can be identified. The first remains the traditional one of technical specialisation, both intra-organisational and sectoral. The second concerns historically and socially varied forms of work conducted in different economic modes and their interdependencies: market and non-market, paid and unpaid, formal and informal. The third concerns the shifting differentiation and interdependencies of work across the economic processes of production, distribution, exchange and post-exchange. Any work activity can be analysed in terms of technical, modal and economic processual differentiation and integration. A simple example here might be the baking of bread which can involve different specialisations of skills; can be produced by industrial or craft actors, in the private or public sector, or unpaid in the household; and can be fully produced by manufacturers, sold by retailers and sliced by consumers, or part-prepared by retailers in store to be finally baked by consumers.

EXCERPT #HYCPN4 p. 45
  This approach therefore distinguishes two further forms of differentiation and integration of labour from the dominant traditional understanding of the division and complementarity of tasks. The first dimension (division of labour, or DL) remains the technical division of skills and jobs within particular work processes, organisations or sectors, and their allocation to different kinds of people usually in a hierarchy. (To avoid confusion, the term 'division of labour' is here confined to the traditional definition.) Chapter 1 pointed to changes in the labour process for paid refuse workers consequent on the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering in English waste services during the 1980s (experienced as an intensification of work by municipally employed workers) and on the development of new types of waste wagon and waste bins in each country. Ulrika and Ruth both noticed a

EXCERPT #LKFDCK p. 46

EXCERPT #LQLZQL p. 46
  reduction in the number of dustmen or alteration of their tasks as new technologies of disposal and collection were implemented. Ruth recalled dustmen collecting and returning the bins from and to the porch by the back door when she was a child, whereas now their task is restricted to picking up a black bag she has placed in the road, while Ulrika signals the virtual disappearance of the regular dustman, the molok in the backyard now being emptied fortnightly by a lorry driver operating a crane.

EXCERPT #8F4SNG p. 46
  The second dimension of differentiation and interaction is of labour across socio-economic modes (total social organisation of labour, or TSOL) (Glucksmann, 2005). These domains include the state, market, not-for-profit sector, household and community, where the same tasks (e.g. care work) may be undertaken on very different bases (paid or unpaid, formal or informal). Work may shift across socio-economic boundaries from one domain to another for a variety of reasons (including privatisation, outsourcing or cuts in public services), and the boundaries themselves may change. The work undertaken in one socio-economic domain presupposes or interdepends with that undertaken in another. For example, the recent history of care work across many European countries provides an instructive case, where a pre-existing division between private and public provision has been reconfigured, often with the result that unpaid household and community labour assumes a greater role than previously (Glucksmann and Lyon 2006; Lyon and Glucksmann, 2008). In different countries and at different times, work activities are distributed in particular ways between socio-economic domains, resulting in distinctive 'modal' organisations of labour. These are operative and may be discerned at a variety of scales, from particular fields of economic activity to the national or societal level. Some countries are characterised by the dominance of the market, with the public and not-for-profit sectors being relatively undeveloped, while in others the public sector may account for a large proportion of employment and the market for less. Interaction and interdependence between the multiplicity of socio-economic modes is a basic characteristic of contemporary capitalism, which may be more accurately described as 'multi-modal' than a 'mixed' economy.

EXCERPT #XVC3Z8 p. 46
  The collection of domestic waste offers a clear example of multi-modal interaction, the unpaid labour of consumers in preparing their rubbish for collection being integral to the prevailing collection regime undertaken by paid workers employed by municipal authorities or private outsourced companies. Each form of work relies on the other. However, the boundary between paid and unpaid labour is subject to change:

EXCERPT #79F39U p. 47

EXCERPT #X9WL4L p. 47
  if the municipality introduces materials separation, the boundary will shift towards greater reliance on the unpaid work of consumers and away from the paid employment of dustmen. But, alternatively, if it opts for mechanical sorting of recyclables in a materials recovery facility, this reduces the extent of unpaid work required of consumers to separate their rubbish. A mix of paid and unpaid labour characterises waste work, the workers being variously employed by the public or private sector. At the level of socio-economic domain, however, rather than simply paid or unpaid work, the enterprise of domestic refuse disposal in present-day England relies on the involvement of and interaction between three domains, each of which operates on a different economic basis: the public sector, private profit-making companies and the household consumer. The Swedish system is more complex, encompassing a fourth socio-economic domain: the not-for-profit agency owned by a collective of packaging producers, who retain legal responsibility for its collection and recycling.

EXCERPT #RAHAS2 p. 47
  Shifting perspective, a third differentiation and connection of labour comes into focus when the work conducted at the various different stages of an overall instituted economic process is considered. Karl Polanyi's radical insistence on the shifting place of economy in society drew attention to the variability of that place across time and space, the different ways economic relations might be instituted within society, and differentiated to a greater or lesser degree from social, political, cultural and other relations (Polanyi, 1957). The content of economic relations is always specific. In his anthropological conception, 'economies' are constituted by two basic processes, distribution and ownership, whereby goods change place and hands by means of redistribution, reciprocity or exchange. In a recent development, the neo-Polanyian framework expands this with the addition of two further processes of transformation, of quality and of function or use, or in other words, production/provision and consumption. Harvey and colleagues (Harvey et al., 2001, 2002, 2007) consider production, distribution, exchange and consumption as a relational complex of four distinct but mutually dependent and interrelated processes. Their conception of instituted economic process (IEP) focuses on how these four processes are instituted and how relations between them become stabilised so as to form distinctive configurations enduring over a given space and time.

EXCERPT #97ML5B p. 47
  The framework being developed here approaches this conception of IEP from the perspective of work or labour. Adding work into the framework (instituted economic process of labour, or IEPL) involves

EXCERPT #PXB7NE p. 48

EXCERPT #NDHQUC p. 48
  recognising that the work undertaken to effect each process is also differentiated and interdependent. For example, work done in the exchange phase may impact on the work of distribution (Glucksmann, 2004, 2007), or the work of production may affect the work of consumption. 'Ikea-isation', as suggested above, reconfigures the work of production, distribution and consumption. So, the work activities of the different processes are also connected and mutually shaped, and they too may vary historically and/or shift between different stages. Crucially, this third component of differentiation and interdependence of labour provides the opportunity to include work undertaken at the consumption phase of an instituted economic process. It also recognises that the work of consumers cannot be understood in isolation or as self-standing, but only in relation to work undertaken in production/provision, distribution and exchange. Treating consumption work as part of an IEPL involves exploring how it is shaped in relation to work undertaken at other phases of that overall process. So, as we saw in Chapter 1, the amount and nature of consumption work undertaken by householders in preparing their waste for collection meshes directly with what is done by dustmen and subsequently by others working upstream in the disposal and recycling circuit. The tasks undertaken at all the various links in this chain, from household collection through to dumping in landfill or depositing in a materials recovery facility or being used as feedstock for anaerobic digestion plant, are mutually shaped and interdepend. They also change in relation to each other, as occurred in England following the introduction of wheelie bins and the 'rationalisation' of services linked to CCT and outsourcing. Ulrika's testimony points to similarly interconnected developments in Stockholm when the sopnedkast chute was replaced by the molok . The system of collecting rubbish was reintegrated on a new basis: what tenants did was still directly presupposed by the method of municipal collection, and vice versa, but the seamless transfer of waste depended on a different range of tasks now being undertaken by the tenants and municipality.

EXCERPT #VHZZXC p. 48
  In summary then, the analytical framework of consumption work rests on a multidimensional conception of 'socio-economic formations of labour' (SEFL) rather than a simple notion of a single technical division of labour. Three dimensions of interdependence and differentiation of labour are distinguished, as represented in Figure 2.1:

EXCERPT #ZCMUDX p. 48
  – Technical: the 'division of labour' as a technical division and complementarity of tasks and skills and their allocation to different kinds of people (DL)

EXCERPT #6F4VNP p. 49

EXCERPT #75NQG2 p. 49
  – Modal: interdependencies of work across differing socio-economic modes, where labour is undertaken on different socio-economic bases (market and non-market, formal or informal, paid or unpaid, etc.) ('total social organisation of labour', or TSOL) – Processual: connections of labour across the various stages of instituted economic processes encompassing work undertaken across the whole span of a process of production of goods or provision of services, including the work of consumers (instituted economic process of labour, or IEPL)

EXCERPT #K5ND2D p. 49
  Taken together, these three dimensions integrate a relational conception of the work of consumers within the analysis of the overall socio-economic formation of labour. Conversely, consumption work provides an analytically key entry route for exploring articulation of the three dimensions of socio-economic formations of labour. The work consumers undertake (what skills are acquired, the amount and range of work to make consumption possible) depends on how goods and services are sold, on how 'complete' they are and on their potential uses. As shown by the simple example of bread, the unpaid non-market mode of work that consumers need to do depends on how work is technically organised, as well as on how work is shifted upstream and downstream in the system of provision and marketing. In the case of recycling, the wartime experience in both England and in occupied France and the

EXCERPT #JG2HZ2 p. 49
  graph TD; Top[Socio-economic formations of labour]; Tech{{Technical Division of labour}}; Modal{{Modal Total social organisation of labour}}; Econ{{Economic processual Instituted economic process of labour}}; Tech --> Top; Modal --> Top; Econ --> Top; Tech <--> Modal; Modal <--> Econ; Tech <--> Econ; Diagram illustrating the dimensions of differentiation and integration of labour. At the top is a box labeled 'Socio-economic formations of labour'. Below it are three shapes: a hexagon labeled 'Technical' with 'Division of labour' inside; a diamond labeled 'Modal' with 'Total social organisation of labour' inside; and a pentagon labeled 'Economic processual' with 'Instituted economic process of labour' inside. Arrows point from each of these three shapes up to the top box. Additionally, double-headed arrows connect the 'Technical' hexagon to the 'Modal' diamond, and the 'Modal' diamond to the 'Economic processual' pentagon. A curved double-headed arrow also connects the 'Technical' hexagon and the 'Economic processual' pentagon at the bottom.

EXCERPT #HK7D5C p. 49
  Figure 2.1 Dimensions of differentiation and integration of labour

EXCERPT #3XBC6E p. 50

EXCERPT #L649QR p. 50
  Netherlands demonstrates how attempts at salvage relied on all the various phases of the operation, and the work associated with them, being developed in concert and integrated one with another. The absence of one phase or insufficient integration of the chain compromised the viability of entire venture. In contemporary England and Sweden, the consumer is situated at both ends of the circuit, at the end and the starting point of a continuous cyclical process of recycling, as producer of feedstock and as consumer of new recycled goods. Recycling creates new goods and markets, and in the process the downstream becomes the upstream.

EXCERPT #P2V22S p. 50
  In short, consumption work itself is characterised by inter-modal interdependence, by technical divisions of labour and by how work is distributed between actors across economic processes. This analysis will be further elaborated with respect to recycling in the following chapters.

EXCERPT #HTP7UW p. 50
  If the work of consumers is shaped in relation to work undertaken elsewhere in the particular process, and across socio-economic domains, then the primary research questions centre first on the shift of work (to and from consumers) across socio-economic boundaries and along instituted economic processes and, second, on interactions (between consumers and other workers) across modes and phases of work. Exploring these questions will throw into relief configurations where the work of consumers and others combines in specific ways, which may vary considerably between times and place. 1

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #2LDKSC Differentiating consumption work

EXCERPT #HM7EHD p. 56
  While consumption work may overlap with, or be undifferentiated from other practices, we suggest that it nevertheless comprises an analytically distinctive realm of activity, which is not coterminous with any of them. The attempt to conceptualise consumption work resonates with a number of existing literatures relating to some characteristics or aspects of what is here being brought together under one heading. This section attempts briefly to distinguish consumption work from three well-developed allied fields of scholarly research: consumption, domestic labour and 'co-production'/'prosumption' (the loosely linked group of approaches highlighting the active role of the consumer).

SECTION #XQA6FE Consumption

EXCERPT #U25ARG p. 56
  The characterisation of consumption work and the examples given so far posit a distinction, both real and analytical, between consumption and consumption work. The latter revolves around tasks and activities enabling the consumption of goods and services to take place, facilitating their appreciation and undertaking whatever is required for consumption to endure over time or to be discontinued. Consumption itself, by contrast, relates to the using or using up of goods and services, appreciating or in other ways consuming them. Of course, there are blurry boundaries between the two, with some activities comprising both consumption and consumption work (e.g. window shopping). Although much consumption is predicated on consumption work, the amount of work involved may be quite elastic, rather than being specified in a fixed manner by the consumption goods. Preparing a meal would be an obvious example: the amount of work depends both on the degree of preparedness of the ingredients and the labour required in

EXCERPT #5JL4US p. 57

EXCERPT #7N5FTE p. 57
  order for them to be made ready to be eaten and also on the many different ways of converting the same ingredients into a meal, from the simplest to the most elaborate. How much work is undertaken will depend on the particular circumstances of the occasion, personal preference and the cook's range of competence. Weekday meals are often simpler and quicker to prepare than those at weekends, and those prepared for guests tend to be more elaborate than those for household members. But this does not undermine the general point. Some people love cooking or engage in it as a form of leisure activity but this does not detract from it also being consumption work. While the expressive, normative and social aspects of cooking might be stressed by consumption theorists (e.g. Kaufman, 2010), there is, in addition to the consumption work, also a material social reproduction aspect to it. So, other important dimensions are present even if the activity is pleasurable. Activities do not have to be one thing only but may be leisure, pleasure, consumption and work all at the same time. Yet, the components remain analytically separable even if they are experienced as an undifferentiated mix.

EXCERPT #CU56BV p. 57
  The dominant approaches to consumption do not deal explicitly with consumption work, nor make a distinction between consumption and consumption work. Given the vast and disparate sociological literature on consumption that has accumulated over the last half century, it is difficult to generalise. Nevertheless, it is probably safe to say that, while lacking a shared or central definition, most are inclusive and tend to consider all the activities associated with consumption as consumption. Alan Warde provides a succinct and uncontroversial definition with which many would concur, '...I see consumption as a process whereby agents engage in appropriation and appreciation, whether for utilitarian, expressive or contemplative purposes, of goods, services, performances, information or ambience, whether purchased or not, over which the agent has some degree of discretion' (Warde, 2005: 137). Work is not mentioned, although it could conceivably be included under the rubric of activities associated with appropriating or appreciating. Much hinges on what is actually meant by 'appropriation', which, given the context, seems to imply 'taking control of' in a social rather than a proprietary sense and that the manner of using or consuming the goods or services is not scripted or pre-written into them. Warde's broader theoretical aim (e.g. Warde, 2010) is to ground consumption and consuming as distinctively social activities to be analysed in their own right, rather than in relation to the economic or political context in which they occur and which may shape them. Thus, the moment of consumption is bracketed off from the moment of production. In this sense,

EXCERPT #JR9ZQ6 p. 58

EXCERPT #3N6UCL p. 58
  his definition protects a sociological conception of 'appropriation' as opposed to an economic one, even though his analyses always highlight the significance of different modes of provision. An earlier co-authored piece had argued that

EXCERPT #C926U5 p. 58
  it is important to acknowledge the substantial, but partial, autonomy of consumption behaviour. From the point of view of consumers, utilisation of items, for purposes defined by the logic of their social practices, is at the core of the process of consumption. Consumption is not to be equated with purchase, but is the process of making use – practically and symbolically – of items.

EXCERPT #WJ5WS4 p. 58
  (Harvey et al., 2001: 52)

EXCERPT #U7BGG3 p. 58
  The work required for consumption is not singled out in Warde's definition, but may rather be subsumed within it. However, differentiating out consumption work as a specific activity distinct from use need not challenge his definition. The question hinges on the attention accorded to what occurs in-between his 'moments' of production and consumption and how the relation of consumption as a partially autonomous activity is seen as linked with economic activity.

EXCERPT #HKM5JR p. 58
  An earlier, also well-known, 'simple working definition' is that of Colin Campbell, who views consumption 'as involving the selection, purchase, use, maintenance and repair and disposal of any product or service' (1995: 102). This is clearly an extremely broad definition, including, in addition to use, many of the activities referred to here as consumption work. The explicit aim of his definition was to establish a material sociological stance towards consumption to counter the then-dominant postmodern and culturalist approaches whose primary focus was meaning and identity. However, carving out the material and social space of consumption was also problematic for Campbell, because of the perceived intrusion of the economy. He followed his definition with a caveat about the 'continuing influence of economic assumptions' (1995: 119) implicit in the terms 'product and service' with which he felt distinctly uncomfortable.

EXCERPT #S2YHPQ p. 58
  A wider review of the literature confirms that the study of consumption is characterised by a multiplicity of frameworks, empirical fields and theories, but very few, if any, include consideration of the work required on the part of the consumers in order to consume. Many volumes have been devoted to shopping as a form of consumption, for example, in both its exotic and routine manifestations (Chaney, 1983; Crossick and Jaumain, 1998; Lancaster, 1995; Miller, D., 1998, 2001;

EXCERPT #VNJEAW p. 59

EXCERPT #56FHD6 p. 59
  Miller, D. et al., 1998; Miller, M. B., 1981). But the prior knowledge and efforts associated with shopping are not often differentiated from the activity of shopping. Once acquired, the way that consumers individualise or personalise consumption goods and endow them with meaning are central foci of interest (Miller, D. et al., 1998; Radner, 1994; Shields, 1992), but the work that may be a necessary part of the preparation to consume does not often feature. However, if shopping is considered through the lens of instituted economic process, the picture alters: it becomes a clear form of consumption work involving research, searching, comparison, a necessary step in the transition of commodities and services into the hands of the consumer. This kind of consumption work has expanded with the extension of self-service into self-scanning and self-check-out, and their web-based counterparts in online shopping, though conversely it may also be reduced by the growth of one-stop shopping. Looked at it in terms of its interdependence with other stages of a system of provision, shopping is seen as work, even though many consumption scholars may view this as the first phase of consumption.

EXCERPT #ZSCDEK p. 59
  The impression of a black box intervening between the work associated with producing and distributing consumption goods and services on the one hand and their non-work appropriation and appreciation on the other is little challenged by the dominant approaches to both work and consumption. This is the space which consumption work aims to unpack. Our contention is that consumption work determines what is actually consumed. Different people may acquire the same goods, but what they consume will differ depending on the consumption work expended on them. What is bought does not determine what is consumed, and consumption work represents a key bridging activity between acts of purchase and acts of consumption.

SECTION #VT776A Domestic labour

EXCERPT #5XMP5L p. 59
  While consumption work and domestic labour overlap in the sense that certain activities might be considered both as contributing to reproduction or household work as well as to completion of a system of provision (e.g. recycling or food preparation), the two are not coterminous. Not all forms of consumption work may also be understood as domestic labour, or vice versa. Moreover, while many consumption work tasks may actually be undertaken within the home, they could just as well be effected elsewhere. Domestic labour is spatially located, almost by definition, in relation to the household, but the same does not hold for consumption work. Skills acquisition, online transactions and shopping are examples of consumption work that are not in themselves 'household activities' and need not be conducted in domestic space.

EXCERPT #UE3ZED p. 60

EXCERPT #5C8TV3 p. 60
  Studies of consumption work and of domestic labour are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they approach their subject matter from different analytical perspectives and with a different conceptual lens. These are not necessarily incompatible but ask different questions, have a different focus and so prioritise different aspects even of the same activity. While the consumption work frame is primarily concerned with the division of labour and work necessary for the consumption of commodities, the domestic labour lens is preoccupied with reproduction and the labour undertaken within the home to this effect.

EXCERPT #S7KWCT p. 60
  Discussions of domestic labour in the 1970s highlighted for the first time not only the significance of work within the home but also its glaring neglect in social and economic theory. The 'discovery' of its importance was predicated on recognition of the historical emergence of 'separate spheres', the domains of 'private' and 'public', home and work with their respective specialisation in reproduction and production, in unpaid work and paid employment. This dichotomy was overlaid and structured by gender division, with men firmly positioned on one side and women on the other. Drawing attention to women's unrecognised domestic labour was at the same time a challenge to male-centred accounts of socio-economy.

EXCERPT #DJR4CH p. 60
  Two basic approaches characterised the study of domestic labour: a socialist feminist discussion that emerged during the third-wave women's movement of the 1970s and a slightly later but eventually more enduring sociological version that drew on the original but prioritised different concerns. The former concentrated on analysing the household as the sphere for reproduction hitherto neglected by traditional Marxism's overwhelming focus on production and the commodity sphere. A variety of socialist feminist and/or feminist Marxist (depending on their emphasis) formulations countered this omission by stressing the contribution of unpaid domestic labour to both generational and daily reproduction of the species (through childbirth and childrearing and through reproducing the conditions of daily life so that workers could return for the next day's work fed, clothed and clean). Most of this discussion operated within the classical Marxist conception of the commodity circuit and the labour theory of value, which it did not challenge but rather attempted to revise and extend through the inclusion of domestic labour. The appropriation of women's domestic labour was a major preoccupation, revolving around the question of whether men (husbands, fathers, sons) or capital (employers) were the main beneficiaries and the mechanisms through which the value of the labour was transferred to capital (for lucid overviews, see Kaluzynska, 1980; Molyneux, 1979; Zaretsky, 1976). For present purposes, the most

EXCERPT #VFC44Q p. 61

EXCERPT #BLSZNM p. 61
  problematic aspect of the feminist socialist approach towards domestic labour was its productionist treatment of all work outside of employed labour as ultimately dedicated to the re/production of capital, through re/producing labour for the labour market. The paradigm was based on a rigid home/work, unpaid/paid labour dualism and had no space for consideration of the work necessary for the consumption of commodities, whether or not these contribute to reproduction, and irrespective of where they are undertaken.

EXCERPT #4KYZDH p. 61
  The more sociological approaches to domestic labour concentrate predominantly on the nature, extent and distribution of work undertaken in the home, the domestic division of labour and especially the disproportionate contribution of women to household and caring tasks. The precise link between performance of these tasks and the market economy is of less concern, except insofar as domestic responsibilities are seen as a barrier excluding women from the wage economy and making them financially dependent on men. Ann Oakley's Housewife (1974) graphically demonstrated the oppressive conditions of her existence and laid down the gauntlet to established sociological approaches to the family and to work. It was the most renowned in a continuing line of research (e.g. Malos, 1980) on gender division within the home. Over the decades, the politics has become muted and the focus shifted to investigation of the relative contribution of men, women and children to household work in terms of both time and labour, their respective areas of specialisation and the questions of convergence between the genders and across socio-economic groups (Kan et al., 2011; Scott et al., 2012; Sullivan, 2006). Again, prevailing household tasks are the prime object of scrutiny, rather than the work required for and by the consumption of commodities, or the connection between such labour and work conducted in other phases of a process of provision or production.

EXCERPT #L8E3SW p. 61
  Both these approaches define domestic labour in relation to the site in which it is undertaken, while the consumption work framework focuses on the division of labour and shifting boundary between work undertaken in different socio-economic modes. It has different theoretical objectives than the analysis of domestic labour and a different range of empirical subject matter, even if some of these overlap with and may also be interpreted as domestic labour.

EXCERPT #B4AL6Y p. 61
  In contrast to both approaches towards domestic labour, the prescient work of Pahl on 'self-provisioning' and informal forms of household labour, including DIY (1984) did draw attention to work that could be conducted on different economic bases. Similarly, Gershuny's 'chains of

EXCERPT #DUES72 p. 62

EXCERPT #JET56L p. 62
  provision' incorporates both paid and unpaid forms of work (2000: 18). Both prefigure the consumption work optic being developed here.

EXCERPT #DYPZ7B p. 62
  Food preparation work, to take one example, is certainly a form of domestic labour, but it is not defined solely by that feature, nor by its spatial location in the home. The 'consumption work' lens highlights the connection between food preparation work undertaken in the household and work undertaken by others in food manufacture and retail more widely, in production, distribution and exchange. Domestic food work thus completes a process that extends far beyond it (Glucksmann, 2014). While cooking offers a good example of domestic labour that is also consumption work in the sense that it is a prerequisite of consumption, other domestic tasks may not be amenable to such interpretation. Childcare is not consumption work, but finding the best nappies may be. Using a duster or a vacuum cleaner is readily understood as domestic labour insofar as cleaning contributes to reproduction of the household fabric. It might also be seen as a form of consumption (using the cleaning materials). But it would be a big stretch to interpret cleaning as consumption work in the sense of completing a process of production, unless cleaning is also seen as work in preparation for consuming the clean home.

EXCERPT #NC29XA p. 62
  There will be many grey areas, moot points and fuzzy boundaries, but these are part and parcel of the framework being developed here and do not present a problem. On the contrary, they help to clarify the different perspectives. The aim is not a taxonomy or categorical definition with sharp edges separating consumption work from consumption and domestic labour. What comes into focus depends on the optic.

EXCERPT #RKGR68 p. 62
  And of course the picture is not static. The spread of new domestic technologies is bound to reconfigure the nature and amount of work undertaken as consumption work and domestic labour, in many cases increasing the former and decreasing the latter. This could be argued for the vacuum cleaner, but perhaps not for the freezer. Searching for the right model of cleaner to buy and its ongoing maintenance are new consumption work tasks (when contrasted with brooms and brushes), but using the vacuum cleaner normally reduces the time and physical effort of cleaning. The freezer also requires searching, installation and maintenance, but may simply be associated with a different technology for food preservation (in contrast, say, to kilner jars) or even an increase rather than a reduction, given the new potential it offers for time-shifting food preparation (Shove and Southerton, 2000; Warde, 1999).

EXCERPT #8AN7XX p. 62
  Dealing with rubbish is a clear example of a household-based activity that may be understood as domestic labour. But that does not mean it

EXCERPT #88VGLS p. 63

EXCERPT #9RCPEN p. 63
  is not also a form of consumption work. Certainly it comprises labour undertaken in the home, which is often subject to a gendered division of labour (e.g. Oates and McDonald; and see Chapter 5). But it hardly figured, if at all, in either of the two main approaches towards domestic labour just outlined. Interpreting it only as domestic labour, however, confines its significance to its location and to the internal functioning of the household. This inevitably detracts from its key role in the wider circuit of the waste economy and the interdependence of household recycling activities with work undertaken to complete and repeat a tightly linked process. In the approach we are proposing, disposing of waste represents an integral component of the work associated with acquiring, using and reusing consumption goods. There is no contradiction between this and its interpretation as domestic labour: how it is seen depends on the question being asked.

SECTION #PVEUCS Self-service, co-production, prosumption, etc.

EXCERPT #K7NQZV p. 63
  Over the years, scholars have identified a variety of ways in which work has been transferred to consumers or where changes in production come to incorporate the labour of the consumer as an essential component of the process. Glazer (1993), for example, highlighted managerial practices of 'work transfer' in retailing and health service occupations in the United States in the 1980s where tasks were shifted from paid to unpaid labour. Self-service has been of particular interest to historians of retail, who have explored the spread of new shopping technologies with the switch from counter service to self-service in supermarkets from the 1950s onwards and the co-optation of customers to the new regimes of selling (Alexander et al., 2009; Humphery, 1998). They draw attention to the 'co-creation' of supermarket self-service, the contribution of shoppers being essential to the success of the project. Many examples of McDonaldisation exposed by George Ritzer (2001, 2010, 2012) rely on the consumer's input of labour to complete the process of purchasing at fast-food outlets (including McDonalds itself), at ATMs and in Internet shopping.

EXCERPT #M2X79B p. 63
  This section briefly characterises the disparate group of approaches that focus variously on self-service, co-production, co-creation or prosumption. Building on Toffler's 'proactive consumers' (1980), most reject a traditional sociological conception of the passive consumer 'dupe', emphasising instead a notion of the active consumer who is more involved in the process of design or customisation of the end product. Little attempt has been made to systematically compare the various approaches (but see Humphreys and Grayson, 2008), possibly because of

EXCERPT #GGSGWR p. 64

EXCERPT #PAC9PJ p. 64
  their diverse disciplinary identifications and aims, and empirical subject matter, and this is not the place to do so. Superficially, there appear to be similarities with consumption work. However, the framework being developed here differs in important respects from these approaches.

EXCERPT #QHBNB5 p. 64
  All the ‘co-production’ approaches emphasise the active role of the consumer in the production of goods, value, brands or services. For example, the consumption sociologist Colin Campbell argues for recognition of the ‘craft consumer’ where ‘craft is used to refer to consumption activity in which the “the product” is both “made and designed by the same person” and to which the consumer typically brings skill, knowledge, judgement and passion while being motivated by a desire for self-expression’ (2005: 23). Recent theories of prosumption or co-creation highlight the interactive relation, and feedback loops, between producer and consumer, especially prevalent in new media, such that consumers become co-producers, and the distinction between producer and consumer is blurred. Basing their interpretation largely on the spread of user-generated online content facilitated by Web 2.0, Ritzer (2014) and Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) go so far as to hail the emergence of ‘prosumer capitalism’, which they see as characterised by distinctive forms of control and exploitation, notably the trend towards unpaid labour, cost-free products and a ‘new abundance’. Zwick et al. (2008) have a quite different take on co-creation as ‘a political form of power aimed at generating particular forms of consumer life at once free and controllable, creative and docile’ (2008: 163) promoted largely by business schools and marketing gurus. Their Foucauldian and neo-Marxist analysis views the discourse of value co-creation as a new way of disciplining consumers, through exploitation of creative and valuable forms of consumer labour.

EXCERPT #AXKYES p. 64
  It is helpful to distinguish the variety of approaches into two broad camps. The first interprets consumers’ involvement as a broadly positive development which benefits consumers, either through a process of empowerment that enhances and acknowledges their impact, or which values their creative potential by incorporating their input into the design and production of goods and services. While online content co-creation is the dominant example cited by prosumer enthusiasts, others draw attention to its extension to marketing and branding. Frank Cochoy (2008, 2010, 2011) suggests the evolution of self-service into self-marketing, through new market devices including sophisticated bar codes (‘datamatrix’) and smartphones apps, which enable consumers to decide how much information they want to receive about products. This transforms them from passive receivers of noisy information

EXCERPT #9MBP7V p. 65

EXCERPT #QUU4EA p. 65
  to co-producers of commercial information. Co-production has also become a buzzword in public service provision, where it is heralded as a key innovation to involve citizens and service users in the design of services. A UK Cabinet Office Strategy Unit discussion document (Horne and Shirley, 2009) argues for the acceleration of co-production, defined as a 'partnership between citizens and public services ... [which] empowers citizens to contribute more of their own resources (time, will power, expertise and effort) and have greater control over service decisions and resources'. Co-production is presented positively in contrast with three alternative modes of governance: managerialism, paternalism and voluntarism. A plethora of public and non-governmental organisations echo the empowerment argument, including a comprehensive research report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Boyle et al., 2006) on co-production projects in the public and voluntary sector.

EXCERPT #MNF5XZ p. 65
  The second camp takes a much more negative view of putting the consumer to work, scholars interpreting co-production as the offloading of tasks from producer to consumer and as part of a process whereby the producer realises and retains the value created out of consumers' work. This complements the 'workshift' (noted above) where work previously undertaken as public services (especially in health and social care) in advanced Western economies is shifted onto communities, households and family members. Examples from the commercial world include the increasing prevalence of customer satisfaction and feedback surveys or online reviews of goods, understood as providing free market research for companies (e.g. Fuller and Smith, 1991; Sherman, 2011). The extension of self-service from its original location in supermarkets to many other spheres is also seen in this light, as is the spread of 'ikeaisation' where consumers complete the final stages of a process that used to be undertaken as part of 'production'. Ritzer's accounts of ATMs and fast-food outlets fall squarely under this negative heading and are symptomatic of the 'disenchantment' he attributes to McDonaldisation. 5

EXCERPT #R95Q27 p. 65
  Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis in this vein is that of French sociologist Anne-Marie Dujarier (2008), whose book on the work of consumers was almost a bestseller in France, seemingly speaking to a common perception that consumers were being required to do more than previously. She distinguishes three main ways in which consumers are put to work: first, 'managed or forced self-production' through 'externalisation' of simple tasks from producers to consumers, who have no choice but to undertake them if they want to consume (e.g. petrol stations, supermarkets); second, 'collaborative co-production', primarily

EXCERPT #ULL2PN p. 66

EXCERPT #7SRRFA p. 66
  deploying interactive web technologies, which is more 'voluntary' and focuses around transactions on eBay, creating a Facebook page or sharing photos through Flickr; and third, 'organisational work', resulting from new marketing techniques that transfer to consumers the task of undertaking product and price comparison, or lead them to buy something they don't really want on a special offer. Dujarier's emphasis is on the co-optation of the consumer by new business strategies to undertake tasks that were previously the responsibility of the producer or seller. Her three forms of consumer work benefit market organisations and turn the notion of the 'sovereign consumer' on its head.

EXCERPT #FXSYT2 p. 66
  Whether negative or positive, stressing exploitation or empowerment, these various accounts of co-production all differ in significant respects from the analysis of consumption work outlined above, despite some obvious empirical and analytical overlaps. Many remain descriptive, deriving from business and management approaches to advertising, marketing and branding. They are not attempting a broader analysis of the transformation of work, nor of reconfiguration of the division of labour across socio-economic modes or between instituted economic processes. Most operate within a dualistic producer versus consumer paradigm where production is undifferentiated and includes retail and exchange and all other market-based operations in addition to actual production itself, while the consumer is on the other side of a boundary, in the equally unpacked realm of consumption. The focus then is on the shift of work across this boundary. In the positive interpretation, consumers enter the producer camp, doing unpaid labour and dissolving the boundaries between paid and unpaid, and between production and consumption which become conflated. Yet, while the emphasis is on creativity and the positive nature of consumer input, there is little consideration of how power relations are affected. Internet companies continue to determine the contours of consumer-generated data and to make enormous profit from it. In the negative version, work is transferred out of the realm of production and dumped on consumers, but with little attention to the wider reconfiguration of the distribution and organisation of labour throughout the particular economic process. To say, for example, that IKEA transfers the tasks of assembly and distribution of furniture to consumers is true. But this it is only part of a much larger reconfiguration of the division of labour: the final flat-pack product is an entirely different one to traditional manufactured furniture and predicated on transformation of the work associated with design, tooling, manufacture and so on. Most of these analyses lack a historical dimension in their concentration on the present-day shift

EXCERPT #4LAB5Q p. 67

EXCERPT #Z3EGAB p. 67
  from market to consumer; they tend to ignore the large amounts of consumption work that had to be done in the past (including going from shop to shop) before commoditisation of many household activities. They focus on a one-way shift rather than a moving boundary and thereby also avert attention from domains (such as food production) where the current shift is in the opposite direction.

EXCERPT #5G2TQW p. 67
  In the case of recycling and waste disposal, it would, of course, be possible to view consumers as engaging in the co-creation or co-production of feedstock, in either a negative (work shift) or positive (benefiting from municipal heating systems) way. But this interpretation would take us only so far. The residue that ends in landfill and comprises an integral part of consumers' sorting work could hardly be seen in this way and would have to be excluded from the picture. More importantly, the tasks performed by the consumer are defined from the outside by regulation and controlled in a way that affords the consumer not many more degrees of freedom than a worker in shop or factory. To develop a co-creation take on recycling would also require situating the contribution of consumers not simply within a producer/consumer dichotomy, but rather within the particular system of waste management and division of responsibilities between state, private sector, not-for-profit organisations and households. And we are then back to the consumption work framework.

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #C9T857 Gender and the three stages of recycling consumption work

EXCERPT #AYEXHQ p. 131
  As highlighted in the case studies with English consumers, consumption work tasks appear to be differentiated by gender, with women typically taking responsibility for sorting materials and men usually taking responsibility for their distribution to the kerbside/recycling centre. Likewise in Sweden, 'it is mainly the men... who are responsible for taking the waste fractions to the recycling stations by car' (Skill, 2008: 183). Existing research that has explored the relationship between gender and recycling has found that women tend to be more likely to recycle (Oates and MacDonald, 2006; Pettifor, 2012). However, drawing on insights from research in both countries, we argue that recycling consumption work is divided according to the stage at which it falls, with women more likely to be involved in the supply of recyclable materials and men more likely to distribute the materials to the kerbside or recycling centre. So it is not the case that 'men or women perform more or less environmentally friendly activities, but that the responsibility

EXCERPT #ESLMYJ p. 132

EXCERPT #Y9PBY6 p. 132
  for different environmental activities is gendered' (Skill and Wihlborg, 2010: 53–4).

EXCERPT #L2QJFU p. 132
  In her study of the relationship between waste separation and housework, Pettifor (2012) finds that women were generally more likely to separate their waste for recycling than men, but this depended upon who did that majority of the housework in the household. Such a conclusion fits with our findings – recycling tasks are often coordinated with other domestic tasks, suggesting that consumption work is shaped by existing divisions of labour within the household. As one of our Swedish experts highlighted:

EXCERPT #4SCTQT p. 132
  Olivia: I think it's the one who takes most responsibility for preparing the food because it's when you prepare food that you open all the packaging and so on, but then from... that's the first step sorting out under the sink, but the next step is to take those bins to the recycling station and that could be another person.

EXCERPT #99QGR7 p. 132
  Interviewer: So there could be a division of labour within the home between sorting and transportation?

EXCERPT #DAEEQW p. 132
  Olivia: Mmm, mmm, yes it could be. But you could also say if you divide the responsibility for cooking so one day I do it, another day my husband does it so then it's divided and if you go together to buy new food, if you buy a lot of food then you go together and perhaps you have your children with you also then you do they transporting also together, so then I think it's difficult to say if it's a male or female, it depends on how you divide other kinds of household doings, don't you think?

EXCERPT #5YAYNN p. 132
  (Swedish waste expert)

EXCERPT #5C5TNF p. 132
  In addition to recycling tasks being coordinated with existing domestic routines, it is also likely that the types of material sorted for recycling are influenced by the type of activity being performed.

EXCERPT #N3EYGM p. 132
  I think it's more the lady, the mum that recycles. With the day to day things like glass, bottles, paper, cans but then the bigger things like the grass cuttings and the logs from the garden then that will be, more people going to the recycling centres are male than female.

EXCERPT #86948C p. 132
  (English local authority representative)

EXCERPT #7NL6FH p. 132
  If it is the case that women take main responsibility for the first two stages of recycling consumption work – given that studies persistently show that women continue to carry the burden of cooking in the

EXCERPT #8BENUG p. 133

EXCERPT #4W6NT2 p. 133
  household (Beagan et al., 2008; Kan et al., 2011; Warren, 2003) – it seems likely that women do spend more total time engaging in this work relative to men. In a recent article exploring who does the work in sustainable households, Organo et al. (2012) found that it was women who took on the everyday implementation and burden of sustainability practices, whilst men's contributions mostly related to gardening and transport in longer blocks of time. However within households, there can be diverging understandings amongst members regarding who does the most work.

EXCERPT #42HKUZ p. 133
  Interviewer: Who sorts the most then?

EXCERPT #KTAJU9 p. 133
  Agnes: It is actually mum who does.

EXCERPT #WK72YP p. 133
  Ulla: Yes, it is like that.

EXCERPT #2CVDG3 p. 133
  Ulrik: [But] if you count the weight, I sort the most.

EXCERPT #Q3Q9ZK p. 133
  Ulla: What?

EXCERPT #VLQ48U p. 133
  Ulrik: Well, I sort stones, and car tires, and pallets, I take trailer loads!

EXCERPT #B4QVCA p. 133
  Ulla: Don't be foolish. Since we sort, it requires a lot of time.

EXCERPT #28WQSP p. 133
  It requires a lot of time. I put the different fractions in a bucket here in the kitchen, and then I take it to the garage where I keep different containers for plastics, metals, paper, and batteries.

EXCERPT #LBBHUU p. 133
  (Ulla and Ulrik are aged 50 and 44; Ulla is on sick leave and Ulrik is an economist; they live in a house; cited in Skill, 2008: 170)

EXCERPT #7R5MG5 p. 133
  Exploration of the gendered division of recycling consumption work reveals a more complex picture than women merely doing more than men, with criteria for assessing relative contributions within households not always clear. Future research into this field ought to consider the different stages/tasks involved in household recycling rather than assume that the work of household recycling can be accounted for with a single variable.

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #8V8H63 Socio-economic formation of household recycling labour

EXCERPT #C7XPKS p. 133
  Having explored how consumers practically accomplish the three stages of recycling consumption work in England and Sweden, we use the rest of this chapter to illustrate how the performance of these three activities is influenced and shaped by the broader socio-economic formation of labour. In the framework outlined in Chapter 2, we argued that there are three forms of differentiation and integration of labour: the technical, modal and processual divisions of labour. The supply, warehousing and

EXCERPT #GU8RBS p. 134

EXCERPT #GA75YG p. 134
  distribution of recyclable materials can be thought of as the technical division of consumption work tasks. In the first half of this chapter, we have seen how these tasks are organised within households, with their allocation to different household members, who have differing levels of competence and responsibility for their completion. In this section, we draw on material from our expert interviews to provide examples of the ways modal and processual divisions of labour interact and interdepend with this technical division.

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #E4JZ2S Modal division of labour

EXCERPT #2ZDVR4 p. 134
  The modal division of labour refers to the way that work conducted under different socio-economic modes (public, private, not-for-profit, voluntary) interdepend. Therefore, what is of interest here is how the voluntary work of consumers who supply, store and distribute recyclable material interacts with work conducted by actors employed under different socio-economic modes. The most apparent example of this has already been highlighted when discussing whether consumers choose to recycle their material. The 'supply' stage of recycling consumption work can transform the same material into the responsibility of a different waste management organisation. In England, the division of responsibility between socio-economic actors for recyclable material and regular waste is quite complex. This means that the consumer's decision to place material into the regular waste could transform the responsibility for that material from the local collection authority to the disposal authority, or from a unitary local authority to a WMC, or some variant between these different actors. In Sweden, on the other hand, the situation is clearer. If consumers decide to supply their material to the producer-managed recycling station, this waste is transformed into a producer responsibility, whereas if they decide to put the material into the regular waste, it becomes a municipal responsibility. In all cases, the supply stage shapes whether a public, private or not-for-profit organisation is responsible for the material as it continues on its journey along the waste processing chain, after it leaves the hands of the consumer. In turn, the public, private or not-for-profit institution[s], with the responsibility for informing the consumer how to recycle and providing the infrastructure to enable this, also influence how competently the consumer performs their recycling consumption work.

EXCERPT #7D3SGM p. 134
  In England, the responsibility for informing the household about the recycling system usually falls on the local authority, but complex divisions of labour – within and between the public sector and private waste management companies – can influence how well the consumer

EXCERPT #LBETLG p. 135

EXCERPT #NZFEBP p. 135
  accomplishes recycling tasks. For example, in Shropshire it is the WMC that has the responsibility to tell the consumer what can be recycled and how to present their waste in the various boxes and bags at the kerbside. These sorting requirements changed considerably across the county when Veolia was contracted to provide waste services to the area. However, in practice, the local authority still plays a crucial role because consumers expect the local authority to have the responsibility as they did before the modal division of labour changed.

EXCERPT #PQFBQP p. 135
  I'd say probably the area where there is the greatest blurring of responsibilities is on our communications side where it is by the letter of the contract pretty much Veolia's responsibility to produce the communications, get them out to the public and ensure that they work. Shropshire council are probably more involved with that aspect of work still than perhaps Veolia would like and perhaps we ought to be. It carries Shropshire council's logo on there and if it's wrong or the public don't understand it or members don't understand it, or members feel the heat from the public who don't understand it, and don't follow it, then that criticism falls back on the client team here rather than on Veolia. So we still get very heavily involved in the communications work to the extent that we'll probably receive a first draft of a new document from Veolia and we will top and tail it and put it into Shropshire Council speak.

EXCERPT #7KEPT3 p. 135
  (Representative from Shropshire Council)

EXCERPT #C6WWBW p. 135
  In this way, we see how the expectations placed onto consumers about how to recycle interact with a new modal division of labour between the local authority and the WMC. Given the increasingly private nature of waste management in England, it is likely this will continue to be an issue influencing the performance of consumer recycling.

EXCERPT #SLPWHC p. 135
  If the consumer incorrectly interprets the information provided by either the local authority or WMC and supplies/distributes the incorrect materials, then those employed in the recycling industries can provide feedback to improve their work performance at the point of distribution.

EXCERPT #3H5GLM p. 135
  We have certain little flyers or stickers that we put on their green boxes saying your particular material wasn't collect today because you didn't put it out before 7 o'clock, or they have contaminated it (which is the official term) where they put one material, say paper or cardboard, where they shouldn't have done then we will also notify them of that. The crew might take the material out and they'd leave

EXCERPT #K5VX68 p. 136

EXCERPT #MN6XKJ p. 136
  it for the home occupier and then they'd give them the flyer and just say look, you left this out with this, and you can't really be doing that.

EXCERPT #CFVC3J p. 136
  (Local authority representative)

EXCERPT #D2LAVK p. 136
  Part of the waste collector's job, whether employed by the local authority or a WMC, is to educate consumers about what can and cannot be deposited into the system. If consumers consistently supply incorrect materials, they may be visited by waste officers or provided with educational leaflets to improve their work performance. Thus, we see the interactions and interdependencies between work performed under different socio-economic bases, with paid employment tasks (in the public/private sectors) being shaped by the unpaid work of consumers.

EXCERPT #2KHVKK p. 136
  In Sweden, on the other hand, it is the municipality that has the job of informing the consumer what can and cannot be recycled; however, they neither determine what can and cannot be recycled nor collect the material. 4 According to the FTI,

EXCERPT #HD9MWZ p. 136
  it's in their [the municipalities] interest to inform their inhabitants that they should sort out packaging because then the cost is for us to collect it.

EXCERPT #YJDNXC p. 136
  However, as highlighted in Chapter 3, the relationship between municipalities and producers has not always been good and giving the consumer the correct information depends on good working relations between municipalities and the producer organisation. Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) helps to coordinate these working relationships through the Waste Council, introducing another public actor into the modal division, as the representative from SEPA explained,

EXCERPT #4VN7AQ p. 136
  the producers are supposed to have some kind of additional consultative meeting, I think you call it, with the municipalities on how to design and implement their collection systems to adapt them to each other and it says somewhere in the Swedish legislation that they should be seen as one, by the households.

EXCERPT #UTFEVE p. 136
  In addition to ensuring consumers get the right information, the location of the recycling stations – and therefore the ease with which consumers can distribute their material – has to be negotiated between producers and municipalities because producers do not own any land.

EXCERPT #NCD95E p. 137

EXCERPT #GVVCBW p. 137
  As Desiree (a respondent in Skill's research) revealed above, the condition of the packaging stations also impacts upon the consumer's ability to successfully accomplish the distribution stage of recycling consumption work. If the packaging stations are too full or are unpleasant, consumers can leave the material outside the packaging container or bring it back home with them to deposit in the regular waste, in both cases turning this material into a municipal responsibility. Cleaning litter away from the stations is a particular problem:

EXCERPT #AC338E p. 137
  There's always problems with who should clean, how often should they be cleaned these sites because usually they can fill up quite fast, and if it's full then people put bags outside the bin and then it looks really messy and it could attract rats and once messy always messy, it's hard to keep it clean and tidy. So for example they empty the bins and then the next day it's already full and they can't empty it you know in another 4 days, let's say, and it's all messy and then people react and they start calling the municipality because they think that's their system and what should the municipality do. Should they say, no it's not our responsibility, we won't clean it, they usually do say that, they think 'ah, it's not good enough, it's a bad service', then they start cleaning because people think it's theirs, they want to have it nice in their town, so they actually take the cost that isn't their cost. (Swedish waste expert)

EXCERPT #FWJD8D p. 137
  We therefore see then how the work of the consumer interacts and interdepends with work conducted under different socio-economic modes, with those employed in the public sector or those contracted out in the private sector having to clear up litter or pick up extra residual waste as a result of the distribution tasks conducted by the consumer.

EXCERPT #MREQ76 p. 137
  Controversies surrounding the modal division of labour in Sweden have generated some discussions about changes to the system. In many ways, these have been sparked by the problems that consumers face when it comes to sorting their waste for recycling. The difficulty of distinguishing packaging from material, identified in Henriksson et al. (2010) research, for example, has started a debate about whether the system ought to be changed so that recycling is collected by material. It seems unlikely at present as questions remain regarding who would fund such a system, given that the FTI currently operates with the funding they receive from producers and a new system would require huge investment in infrastructure to make the bring-stations suitable for materials recycling. Additionally, problems with untidy recycling stations and consumers finding it difficult to distribute their material

EXCERPT #BFEKVN p. 138

EXCERPT #CH2MHS p. 138
  have led to the development of kerbside collection infrastructures in some parts of Sweden (as in Lund) and a new type of modal division between municipalities and producers, which in turn influences how the consumer performs the three stages of recycling consumption work.

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #V9VWQE Processual division of labour

EXCERPT #JERALK p. 138
  The processual division of labour refers to interactions between the work of consumers and the work conducted at the various different stages of the overall instituted economic process of waste management. Work done at any one phase of the labour process presupposes and is shaped by work undertaken at others. Therefore, what is of interest here is how the three stages of recycling consumption work influence and are shaped by the work that is done to this material as it is processed along the waste management chain. How well the consumers sort different fractions of recyclable material and whether they wash those materials does have implication for the processing stages that follow. As we have seen, consumers in both countries sometimes struggle to understand what items are recyclable. In England, the types of material that local authorities collect depend upon their access to sorting infrastructure, such as MRFs, and collection vehicles, as well as the end markets for materials. In Sweden, on the other hand, the types of material collected depend upon the distinction between packaging and non-packaging, which relates to definitions laid down by FTI and their members (the producers that own that packaging). Thus, the expectations placed upon and the skills required of consumers to discern between materials are directly shaped by the system of provision and division of labour along the waste processing chain. Let us look more closely, in turn, at these interconnections and implications of the performance of recycling consumption work in England and Sweden.

EXCERPT #SA67HD p. 138
  In England, the provision of information and household sorting infrastructure (the boxes/bags/bins for recyclable material) relates to journey that this waste material will travel after it has left the consumer's home. This means that if consumers incorrectly sort their materials, this has consequences for subsequent labour processes, as one expert told us.

EXCERPT #3L6YEL p. 138
  Some Authorities collect plastic bottles, but they don't collect other forms of plastic packaging, so they don't collect the yoghurt pots and the margarine tubs. But people just see plastic, and lob everything in, so you get quite high levels of contamination, so when that material goes to the MRF, then often the reject rate is quite high, because the MRF is not designed to cope with some of these materials,

EXCERPT #PJJZST p. 139

EXCERPT #PN993L p. 139
  or the contract with the MRF operator doesn't require them to sort them out.

EXCERPT #8V6V8Z p. 139
  (UK waste expert)

EXCERPT #V45DPW p. 139
  If processing infrastructure is unable to deal with mixed plastics supplied by consumers, this material is unlikely to be recycled, resulting in decreasing feedstock for processing and potentially high costs when disposing of this material on landfill. In one local authority area, an awareness that consumers struggled to distinguish between different types of plastic led them to search for an alternative MRF provider who could deal with mixed plastics as it was felt this was easier and more cost-effective than educating the consumer.

EXCERPT #E66U7U p. 139
  We have argued that the preparation (washing) and storage of recyclable material is an important part of the work consumers must perform. There are several important consequences if certain materials are not cleaned prior to their distribution. First, if we think of the journey that recyclable materials travel, it is not hard to imagine how dirty packaging might impact upon the job that waste collectors and material processors perform.

EXCERPT #UFFH5P p. 139
  If you've had cat food or something like that then you really have got to make sure they're clean. I mean I guess once they go into a furnace to be melted down, it's probably not the end of the world if there's a bit of baked bean juice on one, but it's the before that – the crews have got to physically pick them up, put them in a vehicle, get driven back to the depot, bulked up for maybe as much as 2–3 weeks before there's sufficient quantity to fill a lorry's load and send it off down to the smelter and even then, they might go through other processes like baling and separating and stuff so you know if there's trails of food waste all the way in that journey, it's not really very pleasant for anyone is it?

EXCERPT #MC3J25 p. 139
  (Local authority representative)

EXCERPT #2U7TBC p. 139
  Whilst not washing some materials may not affect the ability to recycle those materials, it does affect the working conditions of those handling them (e.g. health and safety regulations). On the other hand, there are certain materials where cleanliness does matter.

EXCERPT #XDDMWU p. 139
  For certain industries, the cleanliness of the product is quite important, glass manufacturers and paper being the two most important because if you think about it, if you've got a small contaminant in

EXCERPT #3C6ZX2 p. 140

EXCERPT #3KGRYM p. 140
  glass once you've gone through all the smashing up so it's sand, if you've got a stone in there that suddenly becomes a thousand, each one of those little grains of non-glass will affect a thousand bottles so that's why they're quite keen about it.

EXCERPT #MC5FB5 p. 140
  (Independent waste consultant)

EXCERPT #HLZWDG p. 140
  Thus, the condition in which consumers supply certain materials can impact upon the potential profits from the sale of materials.

EXCERPT #TK9J2U p. 140
  Possibly the best example of the interdependence between the work of consumers and other processual divisions of labour within the recycling chain is illustrated through the different phases that co-mingled and source-separated materials pass. Materials separated at source by consumers are usually collected by multiple vehicles (or specially designed vehicles) and then delivered directly to reprocessing companies, possibly via a warehouse for baling. Co-mingled recyclables, on the other hand, are collected by one vehicle and taken to a WMC-owned MRF to be separated by manual and technological labour, from which they are baled and sent to a processing company, or, as is argued by groups such as 'The Campaign for Real Recycling', exported to Asia where they are further sorted/landfilled. There is an ongoing debate in England regarding the relative merits of co-mingled versus source-separated systems, with kerbside sorts offering an alternative between the two (where consumers perform a rudimentary sort, which is then further sorted at the kerbside by a collection operative, thus reducing levels of contamination and reliance upon MRFs). This debate looks set to continue as technology and labour processes interact with the work of consumers.

EXCERPT #FEG7YT p. 140
  Co-mingled systems make things much easier for the household and there the division of labour shifts to the technology, it shifts to the industry to say we're going to do less at this end, so you need to do more. The labour just shifts down the supply chain, and yes that's exactly where the influx of technology does make things easier for the householder, whether that's the best way to go or not there's a debate to be had and is had at waste management conferences from month to month but the reality of it is that it's about divisions of labour. The collection system you use is about divisions of labour between the household and the industry and the product design.

EXCERPT #E9PBFB p. 140
  (Sher, 2011)

EXCERPT #AM5FKN p. 140
  In England, producers have no role in organising collection systems, so whilst voluntary targets for reducing packaging and making its design

EXCERPT #93UM37 p. 141

EXCERPT #NJFAH2 p. 141
  more ecologically friendly are in operation, this feature is not integrated in the same way as it is in our Swedish case study.

EXCERPT #BJE564 p. 141
  In Sweden, producer responsibility means that the life cycle of the material is embedded into the system of collection and reprocessing. Producer responsibility operates on a closed-loop system, meaning that once the consumer purchases a product and recycles its package, the packaging is returned to the organisation that made it so that it can be reused by that organisation to construct a new package for the consumer to purchase, repeating the cycle. But as in England, how the consumer supplies that package influences whether this closed-loop system can operate. An important difference between England and Sweden is that there are limited after-sorting processes, such as MRFs, so the system really relies upon and assumes that the consumer will perform a proficient sort.

EXCERPT #DY7CEC p. 141
  Respondent: No they [MRFs] don't exist in Sweden because the argument is that it's not economically feasible, the country is too big and the population is too small then there's perhaps, we've done some research on it and there could be room for 1 or at most 2 in Sweden, 1 around Stockholm and 1 on the West Coast. But then you have to deliver packaging from quite a big geographical area and perhaps the environmental benefit would be too little with all that transportation, and the cost will be too great, the investment costs. But it makes sense in big urban areas like London or Holland or big cities in Germany because you have a lot of people in a small area.

EXCERPT #9L5FQP p. 141
  Interviewer: So it becomes even more important that they sort it properly here?

EXCERPT #Q6TF87 p. 141
  Respondent: In our system yes, because in your system it's quite easy because it's sorted afterwards, but in our system it really comes down to the local consumer and the people are good on paper and glass, very good, and metal but then plastic and paper packaging is much worse, especially plastic.

EXCERPT #C5G5V8 p. 141
  (Representative from Avfall Sverige )

EXCERPT #K87Y6D p. 141
  In addition to MRFs being economically unviable in terms of their location across vast Sweden, the assumption amongst most Swedish experts was that the quality of material that comes from a MRF sort is not as good as the quality from a consumer sort.

EXCERPT #8CQARZ p. 141
  Interviewer: We use MRFs in the UK.

EXCERPT #ESKZA2 p. 141
  Respondent: Yes I know, but I also know that the quality of the material that you get out is very low, very low quality. In Sweden we have

EXCERPT #QYVCW9 p. 142

EXCERPT #MJ3HCN p. 142
  very high quality of the material so we can use it for new products very well, but the English system is a very low quality.

EXCERPT #PCBZFW p. 142
  Consumers are considered the most effective sorters of recyclable packaging material, and the system relies upon them doing this proficiently in order to turn the material into new products.

EXCERPT #AUQ2V2 p. 142
  However, as the data from Swedish consumers highlighted, consumers are not always sure what can and cannot be recycled and, if they do supply the incorrect material, this matters for its journey along the chain. As one expert pointed out,

EXCERPT #67VJQY p. 142
  if there's something big we discover we have to take it out, but if you put small things perhaps it's not. So depending on what type of thing you put there, it could destroy the recycling process of course.

EXCERPT #Z3V6RS p. 142
  As in the England, there are different types of material where contamination or incorrect sorting really affects the recycling process:

EXCERPT #VYXM4D p. 142
  I mean with metal it's easy because it won't affect the metal material because it will be incinerated, paper or plastic will disappear once it's incinerated or melted down, the metal heap, but in other terms, for example plastic, which in itself is very complicated to recycle because you have all these different plastic qualities. If you get light bulbs or your paint in that system it's really, that can ruin a lot, and glass for example if you get packaging glass, if you get light-bulbs or fuse in there, that could ruin the whole lot because in the melting process of the glass, if you have a fuse, it's ruined. Then you need to sort that out before it goes into recycling. And light bulbs too because that contains a lot of heavy metals and then you can't, if it's recycled over years and you get more and more light-bulbs in the system, at the end you have too high levels of lead, err heavy metal and then you can't use it for food or drink to be sold to the public. So you can't use it for food packaging, then you have to get rid of the whole lot in landfill.

EXCERPT #VYZ3AT p. 142
  (Representative from Avfall Sverige )

EXCERPT #PDUGV6 p. 142
  But unlike England, because of the style of collection system, there are few opportunities to identify who is sorting incorrectly and provide them with information/training about how to sort more efficiently. It is perhaps for this reason that so much is invested in educating young children about recycling in Sweden (see Chapter 7). The system has been developed in such a way that it relies on the consumer doing a good job

EXCERPT #GFQT2A p. 143

EXCERPT #W36TCH p. 143
  of sorting, preparing and distributing their recyclable material to the recycling station which enables successful processing of this material into new products along the chain.

DOCUMENT #4LST57
Household Recycling and Consumption Work

SECTION #DDQXJ2 Moral economy revisited

EXCERPT #QQ3HND p. 158
  Whilst the term 'moral economy' has most commonly been used to refer to 'traditional' or 'pre-modern' societies (because the economy was so embedded in social relations of solidarity and reciprocity that it was impossible to separate economic systems from the wider moral universe of action), this chapter maintains that all economies are moral economies. 'Moral economy' has been defined as 'the study of the ways in which economic activities, in the broad sense, are influenced by moral-political norms and sentiments, and how conversely, those norms are comprised by economic forces' (Sayer, 2000: 80). This useful theoretical definition highlights the interactions between, and co-constitution of, moral principles and economic activities. However, the concept remains underdeveloped despite its widespread usage, and there is a need to adopt an approach to studying 'moral economy' that can encompass both its institutional formation and everyday shaping by actors from within. Bolton and Laaser (2013) draw together different strands of the study of moral economy – informed by the writings of Polanyi (1944, 1957), E. P. Thompson (1991) and Sayer (2005, 2011) – into a holistic analytical frame that accounts for both individual agency and institutionalised structures of community and political economy.

EXCERPT #JTRY4Z p. 159

EXCERPT #FSF4TT p. 159
  The rest of this section introduces this analytical frame before applying it to the study of moral economies of recycling.

EXCERPT #WJJY3D p. 159
  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).

EXCERPT #4PRNSG p. 159
  The usefulness of Polanyian thinking for the exploration of moral economies of recycling in comparative contexts is found in charting how economic processes are differentially instituted in Sweden and England, considering the divisions of labour within waste management and how they foster relations of reciprocity. Importantly, Sweden and England represent different welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990) with their public/private sector dominance, respectively, shaping the provision of waste management services. Esping-Andersen's thesis has been critiqued, but the three ideal types he identified continue to be employed when differentiating between political cultures (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser, 2011). Sweden is described as a social democratic regime where the market is 'crowded out' and state policy is based upon principles of universalism and solidarity – 'all benefit; all are dependent; and all will presumably feel obliged to pay' (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 169). Although social democratic principles are arguably under threat from processes of marketisation, there remain high levels of generalised trust, low levels of inequality and a continuing role for the state in the provision of public services in Swedish society (Gärtner and Prado, 2012). England, on the other hand, is characterised as a liberal regime, in which citizens rely upon the market to maintain their standard of living with the state only stepping in when the market fails. This model is associated with high levels of social inequality and privatisation. As we shall see, waste management provision is shaped by these diverse regime types

EXCERPT #75856U p. 160

EXCERPT #RPEAP9 p. 160
  and the moral messages employed to encourage citizens to recycle reflect the roles of state and market within society.

EXCERPT #DRCXXB p. 160
  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.

EXCERPT #8JBKRN p. 160
  The final element of this moral economy framework is informed by Sayer's (2005, 2011) concept of 'lay normativity', bridging the gap between institutional/community norms and people's everyday reflective capacities. Here, questions about 'what is of value, how to live, what is worth striving for and what is not' (Sayer, 2005: 6) take centre stage, revealing the diversity and complexity of social and moral life. Humans are evaluative beings capable of embracing or rejecting community norms and offering reasons for participating in economic practices or not. Individuals may join together in collective movements as a result of unfair economic practices or, alternatively, they may prioritise their own family or local needs. At the heart of Sayer's concept is the reciprocal character of social relations and an understanding of humans as needy and vulnerable beings who can flourish or suffer under certain conditions. By paying attention to people's lay normativities surrounding recycling, we learn how the demands of governments, institutions and communities affect individuals in their daily lives and their response to these demands. Gregson et al.'s (2007) study was particularly strong in this respect, revealing how practices of saving and

EXCERPT #TTCJK8 p. 161

EXCERPT #P4CZ5J p. 161
  wasting were implicated in the maintenance of family and social relations. Attempts to change people's behaviour towards more sustainable goals must take account of lay normativities if they are to be successful (Wheeler, 2012). Of course, these lay normativities emerge in distinct socio-cultural and institutional contexts, thus highlighting how crucial it is to pay attention to all three analytical levels of this framework. It is through interactions between and within institutions, communities and individuals that morals and markets are co-constituted and challenged.

EXCERPT #ZMAXUR p. 161
  In what follows, we apply this moral economy framework to recycling practices in Sweden and England. The first element of this framework focuses on institutional divisions of labour and political economies of waste – this element has already been extensively explored in chapters 3–6; so, much of our discussion here provides a brief summary, pulling out the relevant points for the moral economy. We then go on to explore in more depth the collective customs that promote and legitimise responsible waste management and consumers' evaluative reflections on their engagement in recycling.

### 10. Assistant

# How the thesis uses Wheeler & Glucksmann, and where the swapshop strains the concept

## What the thesis currently does with W&G

The thesis cites W&G in three places:
- **#796DZS** (framework chapter): introduces the working definition – "all work necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods and services" – and the three dimensions (technical / modal / processual).
- **#HM3BWV**: Brīvbode "redistributes consumption work" – absorbs some, releases participants from other forms.
- **#F2943E** chapter: structures three sub-sections explicitly around technical, modal and processual labour, plus the gendered division (sort vs. transport, Anna, Silvija) that maps directly onto W&G's #C9T857 and #7NL6FH.

The application is faithful and does the basic work it needs to do. But it stays close to a vocabulary list. There are three aspects of W&G's own argument that the thesis doesn't yet engage, and engaging them would either sharpen the contribution or force a productive qualification.

## What W&G actually argue (and the thesis hasn't fully thematised)

**1. Consumption work is defined by its place in an *instituted economic process*.** The whole point of the framework (#K4CB2W, #97ML5B, #VHZZXC) is to recover labour that completes a *circuit* of production–distribution–exchange–consumption. The household recycler is meaningful because she is producing feedstock that interdepends with MRFs, smelters, remanufacturers; "downstream becomes upstream" (#L649QR). The work is rendered visible *because* it is part of a chain other workers (paid, in firms or municipalities) also work on.

**2. The work is structurally non-negotiable.** W&G repeatedly stress that consumption work is what consumers *have* to do for consumption to be possible at all – plumb the washing machine, sort the rubbish to get it collected. The bite of the concept comes from its compulsory character, externally defined "by regulation and controlled in a way that affords the consumer not many more degrees of freedom than a worker in shop or factory" (#5G2TQW). This is also why W&G distance themselves from prosumption/co-creation (#FXSYT2): co-creation emphasises consumer agency and creativity; consumption work emphasises captured, compelled labour.

**3. Modal analysis tracks shifts *between* state, market, not-for-profit and household.** It's a comparative-political-economy device: the same task (sorting plastics) lands on different actors depending on whether the system is liberal-marketised (England) or social-democratic with extended producer responsibility (Sweden) (#DDQXJ2). The modal dimension is interesting precisely because of the *boundary*: how much work the consumer has to do depends on what the municipality, the WMC and the producer do.

## Where Brīvbode strains or transforms the concept

This is where I'd push the chapter, because right now the friction between the framework and the case is buried.

**(a) There is no instituted economic process to complete.** In W&G's case the household labour is articulated to a downstream industrial chain. In Brīvbode the chain ends not at a smelter but at another household (the thesis already notes this in #5ZQLP4). There is no producer, no buyer, no waste authority whose work the volunteers' sorting "feeds into". The *processual* dimension therefore looks different: it is not labour distributed across phases of a production–consumption circuit, but labour distributed across the *afterlife* of commodities – the divestment-circulation-reacquisition arc that runs entirely *after* market exchange has stopped governing the object. This is closer to a Kopytoff/Appadurai biographical process than to a Polanyian instituted economic process. Worth naming explicitly.

**(b) The work is largely non-compulsory.** W&G's consumers can't get rubbish collected without sorting; Brīvbode's participants can always throw things in the bin (Madara's aunt would have, Aiga could have called a clearance firm – #DGLFX7). This is why the thesis keeps reaching for *care*, *obligation* and Bankovska/Graeber: the labour is structurally optional but ethically coerced. That's a different mechanism than W&G describe – and it's actually a contribution. The chapter could state it: in non-market reuse infrastructure, the *necessity* characteristic of consumption work shifts from external regulation to internalised moral economy. Compulsion comes from inside, not from the kerbside collection schedule.

**(c) Modal analysis becomes a question about a missing market.** W&G's modal dimension lights up because labour moves between modes. In Brīvbode the labour stays almost entirely inside a household–volunteer–not-for-profit zone, with the state and market essentially absent. The modal point isn't that labour has been "shifted" from one mode to another (W&G's IKEA-isation logic, #3WVQWA), but that an alternative mode has been *constituted* in the first place. #SP2V6Q already gestures at this with "modal choice"; it could be made the centerpiece of the modal section. Participants are not absorbing labour offloaded from a formal system – they are building an informal mode that runs alongside the formal one and partly substitutes for it.

**(d) This pushes Brīvbode work toward the prosumption/co-creation territory W&G explicitly reject.** W&G insist their consumers are not creative co-producers but compelled labourers (#FXSYT2, #5G2TQW). Brīvbode volunteers, by contrast, *do* exercise judgment, develop curatorial competencies, set the rules of their own labour, and feel ownership. There's something of Campbell's "craft consumer" (#QHBNB5) in Anna's developed intuition for bag contents and Rasa's "filter" (#737NYX). Acknowledging this complicates a clean import of W&G – but it's where the empirical interest lies. The chapter could argue that Brīvbode labour sits between the two camps W&G separate: it has the gendered, invisibilised, infrastructural character of consumption work, *and* the discretionary, evaluative, identity-forming character of co-creation. That's not a weakness of the analysis; it's a feature of non-market reuse sites that deserves naming.

**(e) The moral-economy chapter of W&G is your hidden ally.** W&G's Chapter 8 (#DDQXJ2) draws on Polanyi, E.P. Thompson and Sayer's "lay normativity" to explain how recycling is legitimated collectively. Their state-driven cases largely lean on the Polanyian/Esping-Andersen institutional level. Brīvbode is much more *Thompsonian* – community customs, traditional rights, moral evaluation from below, without state mandate. If you want one more sentence connecting the chapter back to W&G in the conclusion, this is the natural one: "Where Wheeler and Glucksmann's recycling cases are legitimated through state institutions and the discourses they propagate, Brīvbode's consumption work is legitimated through what Thompson would recognise as community moral custom – and what Sayer calls lay normativity – operating without state mandate."

## A concrete suggestion for #HGVGLS and #5ZQLP4

The current modal section is short and a bit understated. You could replace the current two-paragraph flow with something like:

> Wheeler and Glucksmann's modal dimension was developed to track how labour moves between state, market, not-for-profit and household, and how the same task (sorting a yoghurt pot) takes very different shape depending on which actor it has been allocated to. In their cases the analytical interest lies at the *boundary*: extended producer responsibility in Sweden means producers fund and organise collection, while liberal-marketised England relies on a patchwork of local authorities and private waste contractors, with consumers' unpaid sorting work calibrated accordingly.
>
> Brīvbode is modally distinctive in a different way. The labour does not shift between modes; an entire chain operates almost wholly inside the volunteer–household–not-for-profit zone, with the market absent and the state present only as background infrastructure (textile collection, the building's lease). The chain does not link a household to an industrial reprocessor but one household to another, mediated by volunteer curation. Some participants choose this route precisely *because* it is non-market and non-municipal (#SP2V6Q): the same divestment task can be performed in different modes, and the modal character of Brīvbode is part of what recruits its participants. In this sense, the modal question for an informal swapshop is not how labour is distributed across existing modes but how an alternative mode is constituted and held together by labour that no formal actor demands.

That would tighten the modal section and make the conceptual move – from "shift between modes" to "constitution of a mode" – explicit.