The Assembling of Circular Consumption: A sociomaterial practice approach

Consumption plays a pivotal role in the transition to a circular economy (CE). The ways in which we, as consumers, buy and use products and services, how we take care of these through maintenance and repair, and how we get rid of and circulate things no longer needed or wanted are crucial for such a change towards a CE (Hobson et al., 2021; Sijtsma et al., 2020).

Many of the currently promoted CE policies and practices rely on consumers' post-consumption practices (Hobson et al., 2021). Often, policy-makers address different market actors, such as legislators, manufacturers, and retailers, in the transition to a CE (Mesiranta et al., 2022), but ultimately, the success of these policies relies on consumers. Consumers are expected to take on the responsibility of recycling products, redesigning their garments, or finding new homes for their discarded products by gifting them or reselling them. Despite this, relatively little research has been conducted on understanding the work that goes into making this possible. In general, consumption has only recently become a prominent topic in CE research (Camacho-Otero et al., 2018, 2020; Hobson & Lynch, 2016; Hobson et al., 2021; Mylan et al., 2016).

Moreover, previous consumer research in the CE field often takes an individualistic approach, focusing on attitudinal and behavioural changes at the individual level. This research has offered insights into the drivers related to the acceptance and adoption of CE solutions among consumers (for a review, see Camacho-Otero et al., 2018), showing that consumers' personalities, attitudes, and amount of knowledge, as well as the features of the CE solutions all impact consumers' willingness to adopt circular consumption practices. However, while not without value, this research is limited because it tends to reduce the consumer to a choice maker who, influenced by several factors (e.g., personality and available information), can merely choose to reject or adopt CE solutions (Hobson & Lynch, 2016; Hobson et al., 2021).

This individualistic approach overlooks the important aspects highlighted by sociological studies of consumption. First, more research is needed to explore and understand the actual practices and related consumer work involved in shifting to circular modes of consumption (see Hobson et al., 2021). Recycling and redesigning products, participating in sharing schemes, and reducing waste all require considerable consumer work to be accomplished. Some previous

studies have already started to explore the embodied, symbolic, and ethical work required from consumers so that they can do their part in a CE (Hobson et al., 2021; Lehtokunnas et al., 2022).

In addition, the individualistic approach to circular consumption tends to overlook or de-emphasise the social and material patterning of consumption. As research has decisively shown, consumption is intertwined and embedded in the everyday practices performed by consumers (Warde, 2005). In the CE context, Mylan et al. (2016) suggested that research should pay more attention to consumers' everyday practices, including their skills and competencies, shared cultural meanings, and social norms, as well as material infrastructures. Although CE and circular consumption are largely about the reduction, reuse, and recycling of material resources, theories on sociomateriality are only beginning to enter the discussion (Lehtokunnas & Pyyhtinen, 2022; van der Velden, 2021).

In this chapter, we conceptualise and empirically illustrate the formation of circular consumption. We approach circular consumption not as a ready-made pattern that end users simply adopt when they make choices about products and services, but as a continuous process and performance. Drawing upon the sociomaterial perspective, we argue that the performance of circular consumption is both enabled and shaped by broader sociomaterial processes. To understand the role that consumers play as catalysts of circular consumption, we must first understand how and under what conditions circular consumption is made possible.

To illustrate our theoretical arguments, we use empirical insights from a research project in which two of the authors generated data on circular fashion. Our method is inspired by narrative research (Polkinghorne, 1988; Riessman, 1993) and 'creative analytical processes (CAP) ethnography' (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005, p. 962). We narrate three different stories, each following the biography of a singular consumption object as it becomes entangled in three circular consumption scenarios inspired by the three commonly used Rs of the CE: reducing, reusing, and recycling. While we acknowledge that various interpretations of the partly overlapping Rs exist and that researchers have detailed more nuanced CE processes (Kirchherr et al., 2017), we believe that the three Rs fit our purpose of illustration. By offering a reading of the sociomaterial assembling (DeLanda, 2006) of circular consumption through these narratives, our chapter contributes to the field of sociological studies of circular consumption (Camacho-Otero et al., 2020; Hobson et al., 2021; Lehtokunnas et al., 2022; Mylan et al., 2016).

In this section, we briefly present our sociomaterial practice approach to circular consumption. After a brief introduction to practice theory and a description of how it has been applied and developed in consumption studies, we discuss our approach to the sociomaterial assembling of circular consumption.

Practice theory is a school of thought developed and broadly used in the social sciences and philosophy that focuses on practices (rather than discourse, interactions, understandings, attitudes, or values) and makes these the central units of analysis. Practice theory scholars argue that diverse social phenomena, such as ethics, sustainability, consumption, and organisations could and should be understood by examining social practices (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki et al., 2001). Therefore, practice theory offers a theoretical framework, a lens, if you will, for seeing and approaching social phenomena. It is what could be called a perspective theory; rather than

explaining why phenomena exist, it conceptualises how they are constituted and how the constituent entities relate to one another.

Since its formulation as a coherent approach in the early 2000s, practice theory has become a well-used resource across the social sciences in general. It has made an impact in the fields of management and organisation studies (Corradi et al., 2010; Orlikowski, 2007) and marketing studies (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007), and it is particularly relevant to our argument on consumption (Halkier, 2009; Warde, 2005).

But what exactly is a practice? According to Reckwitz (2002), a practice is

a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge.

(p. 249)

Practices can be carried out individually (e.g., reading a book or running) or can be collective and involve some sort of interaction (e.g., eating a family dinner, going to a concert, or playing soccer). However, whether done individually or in a group, practices are social because they are “a type of behaving and understanding that appears at different locales and at different points of time and is carried out by different body/minds” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 250).

Practice theory is widely used in consumption studies and has been employed to analyse a wide array of topics, including food consumption (Halkier, 2009), everyday household practices (Hand et al., 2005), and recreational practices (Shove & Pantzar, 2005). However, its main area of application has been sustainable consumption (Evans, 2019). In this area, practice theory has been used to understand the diffusion of sustainable product-service systems (Mylan, 2015), explore and assess the role of smart technologies in reducing energy consumption (Hargreaves et al., 2010), investigate the difficulties of promoting package-free shopping (Fuentes et al., 2019), analyse how food practices can be made more sustainable through design interventions (Devaney & Davies, 2017; Sirola et al., 2019) and speculative experimentation (Kaljonen et al., 2019), and, for our analysis, to conceptualise circular consumption (Hobson & Lynch, 2016; Hobson et al., 2021; Mylan et al., 2016).

This research stream has taken an interest in both how sustainable consumption is performed and what is involved in practices such as the shopping of fair trade products (Wheeler, 2012), and package-free shopping (Fuentes et al., 2019). Practice theory studies have also taken an interest in efforts to bring about sustainable consumption transitions, examining efforts to green household consumption through green technology (Hobson, 2006), or efforts to reduce food waste (Lehtokunnas et al., 2022; Mattila et al., 2019; Sirola et al., 2019). Finally, and importantly, theories of practice have been central to our understanding of escalating consumption. They have illustrated how combinations of materialities, conventions, and temporal rhythms of everyday life that support increasingly resource-intensive modes of household consumption, such as showering, laundering, and heating, become locked in (Hand et al., 2005).

Central to the practice theory approach to consumption is the assertion that “consumption is not itself a practice but is, rather, a moment in almost every practice” (Warde, 2005, p. 137). Warde defined 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, p. 137). This is a broad definition that moves beyond the act of purchase and includes use. Moreover, expanding on the idea that consumption is a process rather than a practice, Warde, and later Evans, conceptualised consumption as a process consisting of various phases, what they called the three As of acquisition, appropriation, and appreciation and the three Ds of devaluation, divestment, and disposal (Evans, 2019).

Acquisition entails processes of exchange, such as purchasing, but it can also include other ways in which people gain access to goods, such as gifting, trading, or borrowing. Appropriation involves the process of giving meaning to the things acquired and making them fit into one's everyday life. Appreciation refers to various forms of pleasure and satisfaction from the use of goods. Devaluation is understood as the counterpart of appreciation, which entails the loss of value, either materially through wear and tear, or the loss of cultural meanings, for example, by something going out of style. Divestment is the counterpart of appropriation and refers to instances in which goods no longer fit consumers and their everyday practices and are therefore divested from use. Finally, the counterpart of acquisition, disposal, involves the various ways in which goods are disposed of, such as gifting, recycling, or binning (Evans, 2019). Thus, a single good – a service or a product – can go through multiple phases of consumption from being acquired, appropriated, and appreciated to being devalued, divested, and disposed.

The previously discussed broad definition of consumption is important to the issue of circular consumption, as it includes not only the purchase and use of goods but also the processes and activities connected with the goods' (de)valuation and disposal or recirculation. Circular consumption is, in large, about recirculating goods through the phases of consumption. A consumption object, such as a piece of clothing, ideally moves in a CE through several rounds of acquisition, appropriation, and appreciation in several sets of different consumers' practices before it is finally used up.

However, accomplishing this typically involves the (re)assembling of the elements of practices. As is made clear from the definition presented previously, practices involve and interconnect several heterogeneous elements. For the sake of analytical clarity, this wide arrangement of possible elements is often summarised as meanings, competencies, and materialities (Shove & Pantzar, 2005; Shove et al., 2012).

Practices such as the shopping for clothes can involve competencies, such as an overarching understanding of the retail landscape and how the materials or sizes of clothes are evaluated. They also involve a set of meanings, an understanding of what shopping for clothes entails, what counts as proper shopping, and why it is meaningful to perform. Finally, shopping for clothes is also made possible and shaped by materialities, such as shops, the mobility infrastructure that allows consumers to travel to and from stores, packaging/wrapping, signs, apps, and other elements involved in shopping practices.

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

to be assembled, put in place, arranged, and interconnected. While this is not solely the responsibility of consumers, many actors are involved in developing and interconnecting the elements required for circular consumption to be performed. The CE model typically expects considerable work from consumers to make circular consumption possible.

Moreover, taking here a sociomaterial approach means not only considering devices, infrastructures, and materialities but also acknowledging that these have agency in the sense that they can come to change practices (Fuentes & Sörum, 2019). From this perspective, things are not merely used in practices; they also play a role in actively reproducing and reconfiguring practices (Preda, 1999). The materiality of things, such as how textiles behave when they are washed or how tools and devices direct us to use them in certain ways, shapes the way practices are performed, making certain actions more possible than others. This suggests that one needs to consider the active role of devices, infrastructures, and other materialities when trying to understand the assembling of a specific practice arrangement, such as the arrangements that make various forms of circular consumption possible.

Drawing on the theoretical framework outlined previously, we set out to examine various efforts to assemble circular consumption – efforts to assemble a specific type of sociomaterial arrangement that makes the performance of circular consumption possible. We discuss the arrangement and adjustment of the necessary elements to temporarily stabilise circular consumption arrangements. By examining the processes of assembling the necessary configurations of meanings, competencies, and materialities that make circular consumption possible, we can say something about the mechanisms and difficulties involved in enabling and thus catalysing circular consumption.

We exemplify alternative scenarios of assembling circular consumption arrangements in the context of clothing for several reasons. First, the textile industry is one of the most polluting industries globally, and the circularity of the industry remains low (Berg et al., 2020; Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2021). To reduce the fashion industry's emissions and meet the 1.5-degree pathway addressed in the Paris Agreement, one out of five garments would need to be traded through circular business models by 2030 (Berg et al., 2020). In a circular fashion system, fashion items are used more, made to be made again, and made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2020). Second, for consumers, clothes are culturally meaningful and relate to the construction of (social) identity (Matthews et al., 2021). However, clothes are not only 'containers of meaning' but also material objects that have biographies of their own (Cwerner, 2001, p. 88).

The data we draw from were generated in a research project conducted from 2020 to 2022 in Finland. It is an insightful country context to study the circular consumption of textiles. Increasing the circularity of the textile industry is part of Finland's pursuit of CE. For instance, Finland is aiming to start a separate collection of textiles by 2023 (Finnish Textile & Fashion, n.d.). This will highly depend on consumers who will need to sort and recycle their textiles. Our data include interviews with sustainable social media fashion influencers, as well as the social media postings they made. We also use secondary data and our own experiences as sustainable fashion consumers. Inspired by the tradition of narrative research (Polkinghorne, 1988; Riessman, 1993) and CAP ethnography (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005), we use narrative knowing to synthesise knowledge (Heikkinen, 2000). To keep with our sociomaterial approach, we structure

the fictional narratives by adopting a follow-the-thing approach (Evans, 2020), in which we follow the biography of a single garment. We follow this garment first in the linear economy and then through three alternative narratives that are based on the 3Rs of the CE: reduce, reuse, and recycle. We start the narratives from the point in the biography of a garment in which it meets the consumer, whom we refer to as Ann. However, we acknowledge that many other phases earlier in the supply chain are relevant to CE. Both Ann and the sweater are fictional characters created from a combination of the interviewees' and the authors' experiences and reflections. The fate of the garment is different in each narrative: in the first narrative, the garment is redesigned (Reduce), in the second it changes owners (Reuse) in the third, it becomes energy (Recycle). In the narratives, Ann is a 30-year-old high school teacher who lives in an urban area in Finland.

We exemplified three modes of circular consumption by following Ann's green sweater in three very different circular consumption scenarios. The accompanying theoretical readings of these examples showed that for each type of circular consumption mode to be possible, the garment had to go through several processes of acquisition, appropriation, and appreciation, as well as divestment and devaluation (Evans, 2019). A specific set of elements also had to be assembled for these to happen. This sociomaterial reading illustrated that the assembling of circular consumption arrangements was a complex accomplishment involving the cultivation of new meanings, the development of competencies, and the use of and access to materials, devices, and infrastructures. Figure 26.1 presents a summary of the insights from the three narratives.

Our reading makes several things evident. First, it stresses the importance of materiality for the assembling of circular consumption. To be clear, our reading of circular consumption does not deny the importance of consumer dispositions, which consist of, for example, personal attitudes, values, and goals. Ann was driven by her ambition to be more sustainable in her consumption. This shift in meaning came because of a new life situation and was reinforced by the information she had acquired. However, taking a sociomaterial approach to circular consumption shows that, while consumer dispositions can at times be necessary starting points for the formation of circular consumption, they also require access to several devices and infrastructures, as well as the development of competencies. It is only when all the elements are in place and appropriately interconnected that a new, more circular mode of consumption becomes possible.

Second, our reading illustrates that while materiality is key, performing circular consumption in all three versions involves considerable work from consumers. Time and effort must be spent to reduce, reuse, or recycle clothing; in other words, the re-appropriation and re-appreciation of consumer objects occur in a continuous manner. Considerable effort is also necessary to develop the competencies needed. Therefore, while the assembling of circular consumption is not solely done by consumers, as they are expected to perform much of the work of cultivating and interconnecting the necessary elements that make reducing, reusing, and recycling possible.

Third, our reading of circular consumption also suggests that understanding materiality is key to understanding not only how circular consumption is made possible but also what stands in its way. In the examples mentioned previously, it was clear that the materiality involved (e.g., the

fabric of clothes) or the lack thereof (e.g., access to social media or recycling stations) is a common problem for the assembling of circular consumption.

Our chapter contributes to research on CE in the following ways. First, we offer an alternative way of approaching and explaining circular consumption – one that goes beyond the consumer acceptance model. Mainstream research on CE has attempted to identify the reasons why consumers fail to accept or adopt new circular business models and solutions. For instance, failure to meet consumer needs and a mismatch between consumer values and the solutions provided to them have been identified, together with consumers' cognitive biases (Singh & Giacosa, 2019). By contrast, our work illustrates that the transition to circular consumption is not about simple adoption or acceptance. It entails assembling the necessary elements – meanings, competencies, and materialities – for the practice to be performed and reproduced. The work involved in accomplishing this is often at least partly performed by consumers. The motivation to be circular is not enough to bring about change. This indicates that we cannot, or at least should not, rely solely on consumers to bring about the transition to circular consumption. Assembling the necessary elements to perform circular consumption is time-consuming and resource intensive, and it requires contributions from several actors and the removal of structural constraints (Ertekin & Atik, 2020; Pekkanen, 2021).

Second, we contribute to studies that have addressed circular consumption from sociological perspectives (Hobson et al., 2021; Lehtokunnas et al., 2022; Mylan et al., 2016) by introducing the three narratives of assembling circular consumption arrangements in the context of fashion: reducing – the upcycled sweater; reusing – the sweater changed owners; and recycling – the sweater became energy. These narratives are illustrations of circular practices that are inherently sociomaterial in nature (see van der Velden, 2021), bringing forth the agency of devices, infrastructures,

and materials and the work involved in assembling the necessary conditions for circular consumption. There are still limited studies taking a sociomaterial approach to circular consumption, so we hope that our study can inspire other researchers to continue this fruitful path.

Third, our study contributes methodologically by using narrative research and CAP ethnography to follow the journey of a garment in circulation. This kind of approach is unconventional, as we do not include any direct quotations from the empirical data in our analysis. However, at the same time, it allows us to take advantage of creativity and knowledge synthesis, as well as to keep to our sociomaterial perspective. Qualitative and interpretive empirical approaches, such as in this chapter, have so far been in the minority in circular consumption literature (Camacho-Otero et al., 2018).

Finally, our chapter provides insights for practitioners in the CE context, be they business managers, policy-makers, societal organisations, or technology developers. Based on our findings, providing consumers with education and information about the CE is not enough to make them catalysts of change. More effort should be placed on increasing the availability of infrastructures (including places and spaces) for circular consumption and on developing people's competencies for enacting circular practices.

In addition, if we accept that circular consumption requires consumer work, facilitating this work when possible becomes important, for example, not only by equipping consumers to be more circular, providing devices that are easy to use, and making circular consumption more convenient but also by making their efforts and work more meaningful through, for instance, providing rewards for the work that they do in the transition towards more circular modes of consumption. For example, deposit systems for returning food packaging are already in place in many countries; the same could be applied to other types of consumption objects and materials. We also invite actors to collaborate and plan journeys for material objects (e.g., clothes, food, electronics, and plastics) that fit and support people's everyday lives and practices. In this work, our chapter can be a useful starting point. Beyond this, approaches such as service design can also offer practical tools. It is important to underscore that by the term 'infrastructure', we mean not only facilities for recycling different materials but also digital platforms and social media communities where people can interact with one another. In our narratives and the empirical data, social media was often used to obtain inspiration, ideas, and concrete advice for performing circular practices. Obviously, these digitally shared ideas can be spread in offline gatherings, too. Therefore, different actors should not underestimate the power of social networks in spreading circular practices among consumers.

Think about a consumption object you own. What was its biography like before you received it? How did you appropriate and appreciate it in your own consumption practices? What kind of work will be required from you as a consumer to circulate this object?

In what ways can consumer work for a CE be facilitated by other stakeholders?

The research has been funded by the Foundation for Economic Education, Finland (grant number 190290) and the FORMAS financed project Sustainable Clothing Futures, Sweden (grant number 2021-02516).