I checked the thesis draft against Wheeler & Glucksmann’s Household Recycling and Consumption Work and saved a durable note here: #GRWRWK.

Main finding

The thesis is using Wheeler & Glucksmann in a productive way, but one sentence should be tightened. The draft currently says:

“Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) contend that secondhand markets involve consumption work – sorting, cleaning, repairing” #796DZS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Consumption Work #LMKLTZ #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.

That is a little too strong. The book does not mainly study second-hand markets. Its empirical focus is household recycling systems, especially in England and Sweden. It does mention second-hand cultures, charity shops, car boot sales, eBay, and “ridding” goods with care #73YW3A Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Changing practices of reuse and recycling #3AX9RU #73YW3A Historical changes in ways of dealing with worn-out goods problematise what we mean by waste, at what stage in their life cycle material objects are designated as waste and what counts as rubbish. Many objects were mended or used for purposes other than the original one and so enjoyed a second life (e.g. quilts or rag rugs made from worn-out clothes and linen and fat, soaps or candles from rendered bones). Less residue was left as trash and considered useless than in later epochs. 6 But does this mean that towels already constitute waste material when they are torn up to be used as cleaning rags, or only when they are burned or put in the dustbin? 'Waste paper' may both be considered waste and have a use as fuel or firelighter. And what is disposed of as of no further use, or divested as no longer wanted by some, may well be used and wanted by others. Gregson and Crewe's (2003) and Gregson's (2007) investigations reveal the vibrancy and expanding modalities of second-hand cultures in the United Kingdom through charity shops, jumble sales, car boot sales and eBay. They also point to the care taken in the 'ridding' of goods and to the survival – perhaps revival – of a gift #S5UQYZ Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Changing practices of reuse and recycling #3AX9RU #S5UQYZ 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. , but it explicitly says that practices of giving/selling to second-hand outlets are not its focus #AJLVC7 Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Capturing value #54PR7R #AJLVC7 Just as waste is a contested concept, so is value. There is nothing absolute or intrinsic in either. Our concern in this book is primarily with understanding the role of consumers in the processes geared to capturing the economic value from waste. This is not to deny that many consumers attach an affective or emotional value to goods that they no longer want to use themselves. Many contemporary ways of divesting surplus goods are norm- or emotion-driven as demonstrated by the research of Gregson and Crewe referred to earlier. This and their subsequent work (Gregson et al., 2007a, 2007b) highlight the love and attention embodied in choosing a suitable destination for the disposal of valued objects. A different kind of affect in relation to waste surfaces in Evans' study of householders' practices in relation to food waste. Far from being blasé or uncaring about the food they routinely wasted through overprovision, they worried about it and experienced the process of getting rid of it as anxiety-laden. Indeed, they had developed quite complex procedures to dispose of the unwanted extra in ways that reduced their concerns (Evans, 2012: 53–4). While recognising its significance, this different kind of value is not our focus. As we shall see, many of those we interviewed were concerned about what happened to the objects they put out for recycling, but given our aims, we do not explore their own practices of giving or selling to second-hand outlets. .

So the thesis should not present Wheeler & Glucksmann as directly making an argument about second-hand markets. Better: they provide a general framework for seeing unpaid consumer labour in acquisition, use, re-use, and disposal.

What the book actually gives you

The strongest usable parts are:

1. Definition of consumption work
   They define it as “all work necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods and services” #T32NX9 Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Characterising consumption work #TNJ9YK #T32NX9 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. . This definition is broad enough for Brīvbode.

2. The point that this labour is usually invisible
   Consumers often experience these tasks as just “normal way of doing things,” not as work, but the tasks are still necessary for the system to function #P7DX65 Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Consumption work as an economic activity #YZ3YS7 #P7DX65 In most cases, consumers will take for granted the demands made of them as simply the normal way of doing things, without giving them a second thought or thinking of them either as work or as onerous. Yet, from the perspective of economic activity, accomplishment of the tasks is integral to and presupposed for completion and repetition of the process. The fact that they are individualised and become the responsibility of individual consumers or households, that they are undertaken outside of market or formal economy relations and that they are unpaid, should not detract from their role. Moreover, when considered separately in relation to a particular phase of the circuit, or to a particular consumption good, they may not amount to much. However, when considered collectively as the totality of all tasks associated with all the stages of a process, in relation to all consumption goods and services, the picture looks rather different. From this viewpoint, consumption work may be seen as an extensive realm of activity and one that is not normally acknowledged, certainly in theory but often also in practice. Just because the work required of consumers is not usually named, and may not be experienced as such, does not mean that consumption work is insignificant as a form of work, or not amenable to analysis. The aim in grouping together under one heading and naming the disparate range of tasks is to open up a large black box and to highlight a form of labour, which, although necessary, has largely been invisible or ignored. .

3. Technical / modal / processual framework
   They distinguish:

   • technical division of tasks and skills;

   • modal interdependencies across paid/unpaid, market/non-market, formal/informal work;

   • processual connections across production, distribution, exchange, consumption/post-exchange #K4CB2W Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Socio-economic formations of labour: Divisions of labour, socio-economic modes of work, instituted economic process #S2CJEK #K4CB2W 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. #75NQG2 Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Socio-economic formations of labour: Divisions of labour, socio-economic modes of work, instituted economic process #S2CJEK #75NQG2 – 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) .

4. Three recycling tasks: supply, warehouse, distribute
   In household recycling, consumers sort/clean/readify materials, store them at home, and move them to collection points #P7JM62 Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / The Three Stages of Recycling Consumption Work #3SXB7F #P7JM62 This chapter explores how recycling consumption work is practically accomplished by consumers in both our comparator countries, England and Sweden, drawing attention to what the work actually comprises and the implications of its successful accomplishment for the labour processes that follow. As already highlighted in chapters 3 and 4, we distinguish three distinct stages of work that consumers perform when preparing their household waste for recycling: first, waste has to be sorted into different categories (e.g. plastic, paper, glass, food, metal) and cleaned or readied for its onward journey; second, the different kinds of waste have to be collected together and stored in appropriate containers; and finally, consumers must leave their recycling outside their house or transport it to a bring-station/collection centre. This work varies according to the type of collection system in operation, as too does the propensity to carry out this work amongst household members, sometimes on the basis of gender and age. In terms of the socio-economic formations of labour (SEFL), these three tasks – supply, warehouse, distribution – can be considered the ‘technical division of labour’, whose performance is shaped by and influences both modal and processual divisions of labour. . This is the most directly comparable model for Brīvbode, though it needs adaptation.

How this differs in Brīvbode

The thesis already has the right instinct: Brīvbode is not just “another recycling case”; it is a non-monetary, semi-public circulation infrastructure.

In Wheeler & Glucksmann, household recycling work usually feeds into municipal, producer, private-sector, or not-for-profit waste systems. Households supply, warehouse, and distribute recyclable feedstock; then formal actors process and often sell materials onward #BLASPX Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / The consumer's role in the division of responsibility for waste management #WDSBDX #BLASPX In sum, the consumer performs three key consumption work tasks when they handle their recyclable waste – they supply this material, they store or warehouse this material and they distribute the material to the appropriate collection point. The supply, warehousing and distribution of recyclable material are tasks that form an integral component within the division of labour and responsibility for waste management. Without the consumer's input and performance of these three tasks, the waste management system would be unable to function. As such, the work of consumers is essential for the maintenance of the producers' system and supports the continued work of municipalities and private WMCs. Just because this work is unpaid and conducted outside of the formal or market economy does not make it any less important. In Chapter 6, we shall be returning to these three consumption work tasks and exploring how consumers in both Sweden and England perform and understand them within their own systems of provision. #5Y5X7S Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Conclusion #KR8AFZ #5Y5X7S This chapter has highlighted that the work of consumers forms an essential component in the maintenance and reproduction of waste management systems. Just because this work is unpaid and conducted outside of the formal or market economy does not make it any less important. Consumers act as suppliers, warehousers and distributors of materials, which are then appropriated by local authorities/private waste management companies before being sold on to processing companies for a profit. How the consumer performs the key stages of recycling consumption work is shaped by the institutional system of provision in which they are conducted, and in turn the labour processes within each distinct system of provision adapts to deal with the performance of this work by the consumer. Chapter 5 looks in greater detail at these interdependencies between the work conducted by consumers and the work conducted under different socio-economic modes at different points within the instituted economic process of waste management in our two countries. .

In Brīvbode, the chain is different:

household → swapshop → household

Objects are not primarily transformed into industrial feedstock or commodity value. They are kept as usable things. The work is still consumption work, but it is organised around reuse, care, moral valuation, and social circulation, rather than around formal waste markets.

What Brīvbode adds to the concept

1. Consumption work becomes visible in a semi-public space

The thesis nicely argues that Brīvbode makes normally private divestment/acquisition work visible #6G862E Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Introduction #SVS6HK #6G862E This thesis extends the consumption work framework in two directions. First, it examines consumption work at a semi-public site rather than within the domestic sphere. In discussion of research agenda for circular economies Hobson et al. (2021) call explicitly for research that moves beyond the household to examine how consumption work is organised and distributed in community and public initiatives. Brīvbode is such a space: a site where the ordinarily private labour of divestment and acquisition becomes briefly visible and socially acknowledged, and a site where also public volunteer labor – sorting, curating, maintaining quality standards, managing social dynamics – sustains a service, itself a form of consumption work that is continuous with the domestic labour it serves. #TEEVBW Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Conclusion #Q3A3ZZ #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. . This is a real extension of Wheeler & Glucksmann, whose work begins from household routines and formal waste infrastructures.

2. The absence of price creates new valuation work

This is one of the strongest original points. In markets, price does some valuation work. In Brīvbode, people must decide morally and relationally what is appropriate to bring, take, leave, or discard. Madara’s discomfort — “At first it felt a bit like I was stealing” — shows that freeness does not remove valuation; it relocates it into the participant #MSGHYR Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Valuation work without the context of price #L5PE5X #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. .

3. Brīvbode redistributes work, it does not simply reduce it

The paragraph on online selling is good: selling requires photographing, describing, communicating, arranging meetings; Brīvbode lowers this divestment burden for participants #HM3BWV Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Valuation work without the context of price #L5PE5X #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. . But the labour does not disappear. It shifts to volunteers who sort, assess, curate, maintain quality, and manage social needs #ZJG8XW Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Valuation work without the context of price #L5PE5X #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. #737NYX Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Valuation work without the context of price #L5PE5X #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. .

This fits Wheeler & Glucksmann’s core point: work does not vanish when systems change; it moves across socio-economic boundaries #LR5FFK Household Recycling and Consumption Work #4LST57 / Introducing consumption work #MCE5DZ #LR5FFK 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. .

4. Modal labour is especially important here

The modal dimension is probably the best fit. Brīvbode brings together unpaid volunteering, household management, neighbourly help, care work, informal exchange, and some indirect relation to textile/waste infrastructures #4PNKDC Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Modal labour across socioeconomic modes #A43655 #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. #5ZQLP4 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Modal labour across socioeconomic modes #A43655 #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. . Unlike Wheeler & Glucksmann’s recycling systems, the dominant mode is not state/market coordination but volunteer/community coordination.

5. Processual labour becomes networked and gendered

The draft’s processual section is strong: Brīvbode depends on extended divestment networks where certain women become logistics nodes for neighbours, relatives, colleagues, and families #73NW5B Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work #38335C #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. #JY7V8V Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work #38335C #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?'" . This parallels Wheeler & Glucksmann’s gendered recycling finding — women sorting, men transporting — but in Brīvbode the gendered work expands into social mediation, moral judgement, and care #8QVYKY Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work #38335C #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. .

Suggested replacement for #796DZS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Consumption Work #LMKLTZ #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.

I would revise that paragraph like this:

Wheeler and Glucksmann (2015) develop “consumption work” as a concept for naming the often invisible labour required before, during, and after consumption: the tasks necessary for the purchase, use, re-use, and disposal of goods and services. Their empirical focus is household recycling rather than second-hand exchange, but their framework is useful here because it shows how material circulation depends on unpaid and often unrecognised work by consumers. They distinguish technical dimensions of labour, concerning the allocation of tasks and competencies; modal dimensions, concerning interdependencies across paid and unpaid, formal and informal, market and non-market arrangements; and processual dimensions, concerning how labour is distributed across the full span of production, distribution, exchange, consumption, and disposal. In Brīvbode, this framework needs to be adapted from household recycling into a context of non-monetary reuse: goods do not primarily enter industrial recycling markets, but move from household to household through a volunteer-run infrastructure where sorting, storing, transporting, curating, and valuing remain necessary forms of work.

Also fix spelling: “Gluckmann” → “Glucksmann” in #796DZS Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / Consumption Work #LMKLTZ #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. and #DKNKM6 Practices of Divestment, Acquisition and Circulation of Things in a Swapshop in Riga, Latvia #FYG32U / The Work of Circular Consumption #F2943E #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. .

Bottom line argument

The concept works very well for Brīvbode if framed as an adaptation, not a direct application. Wheeler & Glucksmann help name the labour that makes circulation possible. Brīvbode shows what happens when that labour is organised not through commercial exchange or municipal recycling, but through a non-monetary, volunteer-run moral economy where value is kept in use, price is absent, and the work of deciding, caring, sorting, and routing becomes socially central.