Signs of reuse are hard to miss in Maine. We define reuse exchanges, for the purposes of this project, as the redistribution of previously owned material goods, in their original form , from one agent to another through a transfer of ownership (sale, swap, barter, gift) or temporary use agreement (borrow, rental, lease, share, loan). 1 We also include consideration of the work required to prepare goods for reuse, including cleaning, restoration, and repair. In summer, it is difficult to drive more than a few miles in Maine without spotting a sign for a flea market, an antiques store, a yard sale, a home-based repair business, or a community swap. Throughout the year, Facebook groups, Craigslist, and charity stores combine with more than six hundred flea markets, antiques stores, scrapyards, vintage shops, and consignment boutiques to support a strong network of secondhand exchange. Observers have long noted Maine’s strong culture of reuse dating back to at least the nineteenth century ( New York Times 1894). Maine historians have also verified dense concentrations of antiques markets (Tuck and Fales 2000) and a supporting sense of self-sufficiency, frugality, and thrift throughout the state (Judd and Beach 2003). Spatial analysis of county-by-county economic data on formal sector reuse establishments and employment across the United States confirms that, relative to other states, Maine has a consistently strong reuse economy, even in periods of economic expansion (Isenhour et al. 2017; Berry, Bonnet, and Isenhour 2019).

Provisioning for children elicited a particular set of views of what was appropriate or decent. Maureen had started a small exchange system for children's toys, encouraging mothers to bring toys their children had grown out of and swap them for new ones. A young woman had also started her own exchange scheme with her friends. For the younger group, swapping toys became a social occasion, but most also tried to save up to splash out on at least one big, new toy for each of their children each year. The rising cost of these as the children hankered after electronic games worried the mothers, anxious to do the best for their children lest they be mocked by friends. Clothes were a different matter. Discussing a couple of local charity shops, the same young women all said emphatically that they would never dress their children in secondhand clothes. One added slowly that if she was really stuck for money and needed something she might think about it for herself, "but never for my kids. I get the best I can for them." Having to wear secondhand clothes or "hand-me-downs" from older siblings and cousins reminded her of her own childhood and being acutely aware of how little money there had been to keep the family going. Again, while some siblings might swap clothes, there was often a boundary drawn around immediate family—sometimes extending to close friends—beyond which clothes were not exchanged for reasons varying from disgust at an unhygienic practice to social embarrassment.

time bank and food swap, the high level of distinguishing practices makes matches difficult to achieve. These sites suffered from low trading levels, as noted above. Both sites are easily accessible in the sense that they advertise to a general public, are free, and have relatively low barriers to participation. Once people join, however, failure to display sufficient distinction undermines the willingness of others to trade with them, and matches across that cultural divide are not frequent enough to create a high volume of trades. In both cases, new participants often failed to carry through with trades, while others saw a fall in their trading activity after promising starts. In the time bank, we had difficulty finding members who had completed the five trades necessary for inclusion in the study. Lack of trading was even more pronounced at the food swap. It barely functioned for a time on account of an inability to retain sufficient numbers of new members. At one point, attendance fell to five or six people and as a result, swaps were occasionally canceled for lack of participation. In these cases, we believe trading is made more difficult by the enforcement of a uniform metric of exchange—in the time bank, everyone's time is equal, and in the food swap, members' offerings are roughly equal on a per item basis. Inequalities cannot be ameliorated by adjusting the trading ratio. Social inequality in the form of cultural capital creates mismatches in how people understand these transactions or what they hope to gain from them. In these cases, the structure of Bourdieusian cultural capital undermines good matching.

The policing of the circuit’s boundaries was particularly clear at one December swap, a charity cookie exchange that drew more than 90 participants—nearly all of them first timers. One regular pointed out that someone had made Betty Crocker cookies and admitted it on their information sheet. “I know it’s for charity,” one swapper remarked, “but they clearly don’t understand what a swap means for us.”

The distinguishing practices we observed were often subtle. The swap is a friendly environment, although conversations typically remain surface level. Casual questions about the food, where participants are from, and what they do for a living dominate the chatter. However, participants express clear preferences when engaging in exchanges, offering their items based on perceptions of worth. Since the objects of exchange are cultural goods and charged with high semiotic content, such propositions for exchanges are reflections of judgments of taste (Bourdieu, 1984). Given that such judgments occur within relationships of exchange, it is appropriate to consider how divergent definitions of what counts as real homemade food delineate boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.

economy with respect to charity shops and informal ways of trading in car boot sales. These are usually based on principles of exchange normally absent from first-hand purchase and sale, including negotiations over the utility and transformation of goods.

Giving in the garage sale is often unpretentious and unmediated. One older woman said of her generosity to others, "It's not charity , it's just giving ." In organized charity, the giver is generally of a higher social class than the receiver (Collins 1988; Ostrander 1984; Stein 1989); thus, charitable institutions (re)create and reinforce markers of social stratification. Collins (1988:43-44) observes that charity is readily converted into status, particularly by the middle- and upper-class "ladies bountiful." The giver gains easy symbolic capital since the recipients, who are poor, cannot reciprocate. Although most shoppers purchase goods from those of equal

meanings that are unique to specific exchanges, often rendering items inalienable, even within the context of overtly commodified exchange. 4 I also argue for the theoretical utility of maintaining the gift-commodity distinction in the context of Western culture, where it serves to outline the contours of this hybrid form of exchange.

The payment of some money allows garage sale transactors latitude to negotiate the degree to which they want to exchange goods as gifts or commodities. Many would be uncomfortable with a totally unmediated giving relationship with strangers, and some monetary exchange makes the degree of gift or commodity exchange voluntary. In this way, the giving can more closely approximate the ideology of the pure or perfect gift as unconstraining (Carrier 1990a). In 1994 a social worker who had just lost her job spoke of how she found herself giving many things away at her sale. A single mother, who had only $40, came to her sale and asked about furniture, since she had virtually none at home. The seller had a couch, an armchair, and a lamp, all in good condition, which she offered to the shopper free of charge. Yet the shopper insisted on paying her $40. In this way she could retain a sense of dignity and avoid feeling indebted in a gift relationship in which she could not reciprocate, although her "purchase" was in fact a heavily subsidized gift—a point that the seller duly noted. 22

The third form of gift that we encounter among dumpster divers is giving without expectation of return. While the free gift is valorized by every Western moral and religious tradition, anthropological and sociological approaches to the gift are especially suspicious of the existence of free giving and typically consider the gift in terms of reciprocity instead

A great deal of the existing literature thus suggests that the distributive labor at play in secondhand economies is a “crucial social activity that is constitutive of the social and not only the economic order” (Ferguson 2015, 90–91). Secondhand distribution is perhaps primarily a process “tightly woven into other desires—for sociality, intimacy and relations of care” (Miller 2018, 90).

become a boundary, or the indicator of a boundary, in relation to the activities of the people (or animals) for whom it is recognised or experienced as such.

Provisioning for children elicited a particular set of views of what was appropriate or decent. Maureen had started a small exchange system for children's toys, encouraging mothers to bring toys their children had grown out of and swap them for new ones. A young woman had also started her own exchange scheme with her friends. For the younger group, swapping toys became a social occasion, but most also tried to save up to splash out on at least one big, new toy for each of their children each year. The rising cost of these as the children hankered after electronic games worried the mothers, anxious to do the best for their children lest they be mocked by friends. Clothes were a different matter. Discussing a couple of local charity shops, the same young women all said emphatically that they would never dress their children in secondhand clothes. One added slowly that if she was really stuck for money and needed something she might think about it for herself, "but never for my kids. I get the best I can for them." Having to wear secondhand clothes or "hand-me-downs" from older siblings and cousins reminded her of her own childhood and being acutely aware of how little money there had been to keep the family going. Again, while some siblings might swap clothes, there was often a boundary drawn around immediate family—sometimes extending to close friends—beyond which clothes were not exchanged for reasons varying from disgust at an unhygienic practice to social embarrassment.

To practice a more circular mode of shopping, such as buying secondhand clothes, will then require a different set of competencies (e.g., determining where one can buy secondhand clothes and evaluating the quality of used clothes), meanings (e.g., secondhand as nostalgic, retro, sustainable, or a necessity), and materialities (e.g., stores and their organisations, the material of clothes, and apps and digital platforms that enable the exchange of secondhand items). In other words, for a more circular mode of consumption to be performed, several specific elements need

What we see here is the assembling of a different type of circular consumption, one configured to promote the reuse of clothing. As in the previous example, the formation of circular consumption is a complex activity involving the development of competencies, the interconnection of materialities, and the fostering of new meanings and goals. To begin with, regardless of whether the exchange of material resources (i.e., the sweater) from one user to another takes place offline or online, there is a need to have a platform for it (e.g., a physical gathering or an online platform). Assessing the appearance and fit of clothes is difficult to do, especially online, which makes the work done by secondhand experts crucial. The digital platform provides free training for expert consumers on issues such as how to price items, provide garment measurements, and take attractive photos. Therefore, material objects, such as measurements and photos, facilitate the practice of reuse. In addition, organising clothing swap events requires competencies, such as planning, marketing, and logistics (Camacho-Otero et al., 2020). The organisation of consumer-to-consumer markets involves considerable consumer work. More specifically, reselling goods also requires work from consumers to turn their devalued goods into valuable secondhand products by, for example, washing, sorting, pricing, packaging, and sending fashion items to be resold. Connected with this, consumers involved in reselling need to learn to reconfigure the meanings of secondhand consumption, counteracting its stigmatisation, which has often been seen as a low-status form of consumption. These consumers need to learn to re-appreciate both secondhand consumption in general and their used products. Thus, the formation of circular consumption, in this case, also involves cultivating new norms around secondhand consumption, as well as developing the ability to express and promote these shifting norms to others. That is,

for secondhand goods such as rummage sales or flea markets precisely because, in the former, they encounter the original owners of what they have bought and so can claim to be taking away something of the previous owners with their purchases.

One group of customers, the administration's least favorite, are traders who often arrive at opening time (administrator: 'I know many of them') and are always on the look-out for brand-name clothes and items that are worth more on the commercial second-hand market than the standard Fairkauf prices; hence the store's attempt to identify higher value items and to price them accordingly (see Hermann and Soiffer 1984: 410). There are 'buyers' who scout for larger traders or vintage stores and make frequent rounds of charitable stores for these enterprises, and smaller traders who resell items individually (mostly clothes) on eBay, other resale platforms, or flea markets. They reinsert things from this non-capitalist site into the capitalist market. They 'abuse' the labor of Fairkauf, which irks the store's administrators.

Re-selling by charitable causes is another exception that is permitted on Freecycle, for example, '[Named] School PTA are holding a Jumble Sale this coming Saturday... and would love any of the following items to sell: Adult and children's clothing Books Toys and Games DVD's Bric-a-Brac'. By implication, people could have already considered or actively tried divesting their items through these marketed channels but only as a last resort turned to Freecycle, when items proved unworthy of re-selling:

The sourcing of used goods is an increasingly competitive process where savvy traders comb markets for hidden gems and make sizeable profits which creates “complex, but highly localized and seemingly infinite chains of second-hand commodity circulation and re-use” (Gregson and Crewe 2003, 131). Traders seek “to buy (from the ‘unknowing’) to sell (to the ‘knowing’) in ways that are clearly about capturing competitive advantage and profit” (ibid.). In the process, valuable objects are removed from disadvantaged, often rural, communities to profitable urban markets (Isenhour and Berry, 2020). Second-hand markets become complex circuits that require considerable “commodity and geographical knowledge about disposal and sourcing” (Gregson and Crewe 2003, 141) and reflect dominant capitalist market dynamics and patterns of exploitation and exclusion.

Second-hand markets offer goods at cheaper rates but also reflect, “the very same motivations that shape consumer culture more generally” (Gregson and Crewe 2003, 11). They also harbor “potential for consumer activism and empowerment” ( ibid. ) as participants play an “active role” (Machado et al. 2019, 319) and subvert dominant consumption patterns, when they prolong the lifespan of goods and avoid buying new things. Second-hand markets and related projects further “offer the potential to better educate individuals in the value of sustainability” and trigger “deeper engagement” with such issues (Murphy 2017, 170; Schmid 2019, 238). Gregson and Crewe point to the “birth of value” (2003, 2) in second-hand exchanges that departs from dominant economic practices, when “people create the conditions for value to emerge in the context of transactions” ( ibid. ). Sellers and buyers are agents and producers of value rather than passive consumers. They produce “commodity biographies” ( ibid. , 6; Appadurai 1986) and infuse meaning into moments and spaces of exchange. Selling and buying second-hand goods involves more time and labor than mainstream transactions, as sellers might repair items and customers search markets for desired goods.

least of which is the general attitude in most western societies that the end products of consumption should be removed from sight by invisible means, and disposed of by specialists. Thus, the entire sector of the economy that deals with objects after someone has discarded or rejected them is symbolically separated from the parts of the economy that deal with 'virgin' materials. The activities of 'waste management' take place largely out of public sight, except when there is some danger of 'overflow' or 'leakage'. It makes great metaphorical sense that the United States Government is pursuing a long-term policy of dumping its most dangerous radioactive waste into deep holes in the ground, even if most scientific panels have questioned both the urgency and the logic of the process.

Waste management has become a pressing issue in Brazil, as urban population expansion over recent decades placed increasing pressure on the pre-existing infrastructures for disposal. In addition, rising standards of living for a minority and changes in consumption have resulted in an increasing volume of solid waste which outstripped population growth in the 10 years to 2013 (Consonni, 2013). Household waste collection and disposal is a statutory municipal responsibility and is carried out for 95 percent of the population (PNSB, 2008) But collection is rare in favelas , Brazil's shantytowns, due to illegal settlement, lack of provision and the logistical difficulty of collection where there are no roads, resulting in widespread dumping of household waste and fly-tipping along roadsides and riverbanks. 2

In 2005, I came to Delhi and stayed with my cousins in an unauthorised colony (which is not planned, and thus according to government rules not authorised), with mostly lower-middle-class inhabitants. Everyone there threw their household waste in a nearby open drain which was almost completely blocked up with rubbish. There was no segregation of waste and almost every kind of waste was dumped in the drain. There are around 22 big open drains in Delhi and most are used as for dumping. In the slums and jhuggi jhopdi (unauthorised) clusters you will find waste everywhere. No arrangements are made by municipal authorities, and waste disposal is 'managed' by the slum dwellers themselves.

These accounts highlight many distinctive characteristics of waste disposal in India. To start with, it is clear that the formal municipal collection and disposal of domestic waste does not extend to recycling. So these two comprise separate streams, organised independently of each other and on a completely different basis. Until very recently there has been minimal interaction or overlap between the two. Moreover, formal collection is highly restricted in terms of coverage: there is no provision for people living in so-called 'unauthorised' housing settlements, in the slums or on the streets in the expanding mega-cities or in rural areas and smaller towns. In other words, there is no provision of waste collection for very large sections of the population, including both the urban and rural poor, who end up dumping it either on open ground or in drains and rivers. Even amongst the better-off, many urban residents continue to pay for their waste to be collected either by private companies, as in the case of Rie's parents, or by hiring someone

Recycling in India does not rely on the work of consumers. Although middle-class or wealthier households supply feedstock, this has traditionally been the limit of consumers' contribution to recycling. In the absence of regulations about waste disposal, household practices vary considerably: some just dumping everything, while others sort and sell recyclables, often to particular collectors with whom they have an established relationship. If domestic servants take charge of their employers'

dumps ( Vazadouro or Lixão de céu aberto ), 3 although these are now widely recognised, particularly in the South and Southeast, as inadequate and unsanitary (PNSB, 2008). Brazil has had some of the largest uncontrolled open-air dumps in the world including the now closed Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro, documented in the film Wasteland (2010, directed by Lucy Walker). The land in these dumps is not treated before use, and disintegration of the organic and inorganic waste creates a liquid leachate (slurry) which penetrates and contaminates the earth and groundwater. The waste attracts insects and rats, creating high risk of contamination for those who work unofficially on the dumps (Brookfield, 2013). Waste pickers not only collect solid waste in these areas, but poverty and hunger sometimes drive them also to eat food found in the dump (Millar, 2011, 2012).

waste, and the family's cleaner tipped all of it into a large circular bin in the road. It was normal to see waste pickers selecting anything out of it they could to salvage and sell on or reuse. Every few days the municipal authorities emptied the bin and dumped its contents onto a tip where further waste pickers also sifted through the contents for plastic, metal or other recyclable materials. After 2000 and new regulations prescribed by the national government and adopted by the Pune Municipal Corporation, these arrangements changed. A new requirement was introduced for households to separate waste into two streams. They were now asked to deposit dry and wet waste in two separate bins of their own (rather than the public bin) and these are collected daily. The wet waste probably goes for composting, while the dry is sent to landfill where it is still further picked over.

Waste management has become a pressing issue in Brazil, as urban population expansion over recent decades placed increasing pressure on the pre-existing infrastructures for disposal. In addition, rising standards of living for a minority and changes in consumption have resulted in an increasing volume of solid waste which outstripped population growth in the 10 years to 2013 (Consonni, 2013). Household waste collection and disposal is a statutory municipal responsibility and is carried out for 95 percent of the population (PNSB, 2008) But collection is rare in favelas , Brazil's shantytowns, due to illegal settlement, lack of provision and the logistical difficulty of collection where there are no roads, resulting in widespread dumping of household waste and fly-tipping along roadsides and riverbanks. 2

The Budapest Chemical Works must not have been alone in seeing its reuse hopes fail and in having its requests for facilitating safe dumping turned down by state authorities. By the sixties, unreusable wastes were piling up on factory premises across the country in such quantities that enterprises were being forced to find illegal ways to get rid of them. Local government officials now started complaining about illegal dumps appearing, both next to dumps managed by councils (local governments) and on territories of closed dumps that had been declared full and were being recultivated. In 1961, a talk given at a conference on the problems of waste treatment in the capital claimed that “the trustworthy deposit of various industrial wastes is unsolved in our country” and complained that the practice of illegal dumping

the overflowing supplies of particular waste materials, but was looked at with suspicion when it competed with the state enterprises for wastes in high demand.