# Assistant conversation YPFDKJ

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

## Transcript

### 1. User

can you read the 'empirical' chapters 4 and 5 of the thesis draft (#FYG32U) with an eye towards connecting to the theoretical concepts and the literature, both in terms of concrete citations but also thinking about the flow of the chapters and their outlines like maybe some sections or paragraphs could be reordered or rearranged to make the chapters more cohesive etc

### 2. Assistant tool calls

#### Tool call: `get_document`

```json
{
  "id": "FYG32U"
}
```

### 3. Tool result: get_document

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

Outline:
  - 1 #SVS6HK Introduction
    - 1.1 #QXGS6P Policies
    - 1.2 #L2U838 Latvian context and background
    - 1.3 #PESH7N Research questions
    - 1.4 #AKBRP4 A note on terms
    - 1.5 #CHZ8HG The structure of the thesis
  - 2 #W8HHQV Circulation, Practice, and Consumption Work: A Theoretical Framework
    - 2.1 #L2J4AM Theories of Practice
    - 2.2 #3DTHL8 Theories of Practice to Study Alternative Practices?
    - 2.3 #UF33B6 Consumption practices
    - 2.4 #LMKLTZ Consumption Work
    - 2.5 #Q3A3ZZ Conclusion
  - 3 #YNEV47 Research methodology: In The Field To Freecycle
    - 3.1 #V98SCK The site
    - 3.2 #L5LL6E Setting the scene: A day in Brīvbode
    - 3.3 #54NUTA Ethnography of Practice
    - 3.4 #LEHJ6B Participant observation
    - 3.5 #KVQFHZ Interviews
    - 3.6 #PNY46U Data analysis
    - 3.7 #9RFZZ6 Research ethics
  - 4 #3X7JKL The circulation of things and things that sustain it
    - 4.1 #M45HLW Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home
    - 4.2 #WY6KPH Managing the flow on site
      - 4.2.1 #C2AQ4D Material elements in Brīvbode: the physical site and infrastructure
      - 4.2.2 #FUQJQ5 Circulation norms and competencies
      - 4.2.3 #QLVPVE Meanings: the moral economy of exchange
    - 4.3 #V753D5 Non-monetary exchange and attachment: competencies of letting go
    - 4.4 #Z7Y86N Plural meanings of acquisition that sustain participation in Brīvbode
    - 4.5 #6535KC Quiet or reflected sustainability?
    - 4.6 #QS26PQ Conclusion
  - 5 #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption
    - 5.1 #KWZ8DM Volunteer labour and sufficiency lifestyle
    - 5.2 #L5PE5X Valuation work without the context of price
    - 5.3 #A43655 Modal labour across socioeconomic modes
    - 5.4 #38335C Processual labour: exchange networks and gendered work
      - 5.4.1 #GGGPNV Conclusion
  - 6 #P4YU8Y CONCLUSION
  - 7 #W4BGDH SUMMARY
  - 8 #BA7Z5L LIST OF SOURCES
  - 9 #XR3UUN KOKKUVÕTE

### 4. Assistant tool calls

#### Tool call: `read`

```json
{
  "blocks": [
    "3X7JKL",
    "F2943E"
  ],
  "expand": true
}
```

#### Tool call: `read`

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

### 5. Tool result: read

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

SECTION #3X7JKL The circulation of things and things that sustain it

PARAGRAPH #E3QN63
  This chapter examines freecycling practice and how it is constituted by its physical venue and the materials flowing through it, the meanings that recruit and retain participants and the competencies that order the exchange processes in Brīvbode. Throughout the chapter I move between analysis of freecycling as practice-entity and the level of individual performances of freecycling as performed, especially attending to moments of friction and tension where the two pull against each other.

PARAGRAPH #QZ8Q4K
  The chapter follows the trajectory of things moving through Brīvbode. It begins with the incoming flow: how and in what cases people divest from their households, how meanings shape what arrives, and how Brīvbode is positioned among other possible divestment routes. It turns to the site itself and the material and infrastructural elements that sustain the practice, and how overflow is managed, including competencies of handling norms on the site. From there it turns to the plurality of meanings sustaining acquisition: how participants experience Brīvbode as useful for acquisition and how the non-monetary context shapes the giving and taking. The chapter closes with a consideration of participant orientation towards freecycling as a sustainability practice.

SECTION #M45HLW Incoming Flow: Divestment From Home

PARAGRAPH #GXDTQG
  The material outcome of one practice present in Brīvbode (domestic divestment: things arrive) is a direct resource for another (sequential acquisition: things are taken), sustaining the circularity between different households and the freeshop. Instead of starting at the “shop”, freecycling in Brīvbode can be viewed as starting with the outward flow of things no longer needed or wanted in the household and the question of what to do with them. The practice of managing this flow (what Počinkova et al. (2023) call voluntary disposal) is what brings most givers to Brīvbode. The swapshop offers them an opportunity for circulating materials as well as a way of managing attachment and detachment from things. Brīvbode is one node in the available infrastructure of divestment, and is distinguished from others by what it means to route things through it.

PARAGRAPH #S5FWGM
  Noting how meanings migrate across practices, Shove et al. (2012) mention how thrift, for example, is no longer expressed through darning socks at home – now a rather rare practice – but has moved, as Gregson (2007) shows, into methods and styles of disposal and divestment. Divesting responsibly has become one of the ways people sustain and recreate identity in relation to their things.

PARAGRAPH #BGYXVM
  The ideal encouraged by the organisers in Brīvbode is for participants to both give and take, yet the two roles do not always recruit the same carriers or sustain participation through the same meanings. Giving in Brīvbode is typically more structured by the motives of givers rather than by the needs of the receivers. Giving contributes to a stock of the swapshop and is shaped by the givers’ assessments of their sense of responsibility toward still-usable objects (too good to throw away), hopes for things finding new trajectories with other carriers, and their capacity to manage the work of getting rid of things well. The practice is donor-driven, and things arriving reflect more the rhythms and pressures of household life, and coordination with receivers’ needs is only indirect.

PARAGRAPH #FN9Y53
  Divestment in Brīvbode is distributed across time unevenly and concentrated around rhythms of domestic material arrangements and particular life events. People typically bring things in batches – no longer wanted items are set aside and accumulate at home until, e.g. a bag is full and is then divested to Brīvbode.

PARAGRAPH #FPHE4J
  Moving home, renovation, seasonal clearing, and sorting through a deceased relative’s belongings generate larger pulses of divestment. Participants described sorting through an entire previous owner’s life when buying a flat, routing things to Brīvbode and to friends when downsizing, helping relatives to divest after moving home.

PARAGRAPH #AZ2L4J
  The size of the home is a very constitutive material element for divestment as smaller living spaces generate a more immediate need to move things out in order to fulfill, for example, the ideal of an uncluttered home – this requires both strong competency for managing household material streams and established divestment routes for what must leave. Brīvbode functions as one such route.

PARAGRAPH #LGE48Z
  The ideal of a decluttered home functions both as cultural script and as embodied relief. Gundega puts on tidying consultant TV shows when she sorts at home, though the volume of advice tends to produce anxiety rather than clarity – no one person can remember it all. Viesturs is more pragmatic about decluttering methods: "I sense there are all sorts of methods and things, but it all seems like a luxury problem to me. Although maybe we should promote something like that – users of those methods would definitely supply us with better quality content."

PARAGRAPH #9XUQEC
  The act of bringing things to Brīvbode performs moral work that throwing away does not – it can relieve guilt of having acquired unnecessarily, maintain the identity of a responsible consumer, and transfer some of the responsibility for what happens next to the swapshop. Divesting well and finding a route that feels appropriate to the object's remaining value is itself a practice with normative dimensions: there are right and wrong ways to let things go, and Brīvbode offers one of the right ways.

PARAGRAPH #WWSZA8
  Participants who divest in Brīvbode mentioned the non-transparency of the textile container system in comparison to the freeshop. Both routes offer removal and a presumed social good, but participants expressed particular satisfaction for witnessing circulation in Brīvbode – moments when they saw someone taking the items they brought. Although giving and taking are decoupled and mediated by the swapshop, participants can sometimes observe the circulation during their visits, a characteristic noted by many with a kind of quiet pleasure. The divestment is completed by seeing or knowing an item was taken, and this visibility closes the divestment cycle affectively. The opportunity for other visitors to access the materials is valued, while the textile collection management system is deemed too distanced to imagine who benefits.

PARAGRAPH #QPZXSP
  In absence of a specific receiver,

PARAGRAPH #LHMEDR
  while trying to negotiate the appropriate value and quality standards for the items circulated, givers construct a figure of a receiver, a meaning which shapes the practice from the giving side. Aiga describes her hope that a homeless person from the neighbourhoods of Ķengarags or Purvciems, someone in genuine need would use what she brings. This imagery expands what counts as worth passing on: objects that might be marginal by taste standards become appropriate if genuine need is the criterion, and the threshold for what counts as good enough shifts accordingly.

PARAGRAPH #R6NNGM
  The threshold of acceptability in Brīvbode is negotiated situationally, and this uncertainty can become a source of tension. Aiga described how she continues wearing clothing that is slightly pilled and normally uses dry food items past their expiry date – her own standards of what remains usable are linked to the meaning of genuine need but she cannot know in advance whether the items she brings to Brīvbode will be acknowledged as suitable. After receiving comments once about the quality of something she brought to Brīvbode, she prefers to not linger and leave her things quickly. The imagined receiver who accepts everything gives way to the real social encounter where standards are negotiated by someone else.

PARAGRAPH #R7549E
  The supply arriving in Brīvbode is shaped by these contested meanings – participant competencies of evaluating items as appropriate and the rhythms of domestic life. As such it is often unpredictable.

PARAGRAPH #PUVY95
  In reality, Brīvbode also functions as a divestment route for items that more regulated reuse channels would not accommodate: unfinished repair projects and textile fragments can sometimes be found, photographs and used magazines, not entirely complete jigsaw puzzles. Sometimes volunteers would remark that they already look for signs of wear and tear in suspicion about reasons an item has been brought to Brīvbode. They are aware that the swapshop can become a route of last resort for objects that are genuinely difficult to route elsewhere. What counts as acceptable and what counts as waste is decided through social judgment rather than formal criteria. I sometimes brought things in my backpack but ended up not taking them out as on second thought they seemed too worn or not suited.

PARAGRAPH #GGRHDF
  Fieldwork observations reveal different versions and scales of what counts as usable and worthy: I recall a collection of single-use sugar packages; a bundle of expired covid tests (I spent time unpacking the alcohol wipes and watched a woman take them); carefully washed plastic containers that were taken to the recycling bin after all (although the sour cream containers are useful in spring for growing plantings). A regular visitor brought coloured wire offcuts generated by her husband’s wireworking practice – she imagined someone who makes art or does craft work with children could be taking them, as they were never on the shelf anymore the next time she visited. Her husband generates surplus, she routes it to Brīvbode through her domestic management, an unknown hypothetical third person absorbs it into their own. The trajectory is sustained by an imagined right-owner who may not exist, and the volunteers did not have the heart to tell her the bags of small plastic pieces were not used that way.

PARAGRAPH #QDFKGX
  Yet unpredictability of supply works both ways – e.g. the same giver who took extra effort to send Brīvbode a parcel with stained old plates that raised volunteer questions about the balance of invested energy for handling it, divested a bag full of colourful folk-style knitted mittens another time – laid out on the table, those attracted many visitors’ attention with shared beauty. This uncertainty of supply is itself part of what sustains participant engagement with the practice through meanings of “serendipity” and magic moments of unexpected “good catch”.

PARAGRAPH #YEPTVU
  The same logic that makes divestment easy also can make Brīvbode available as a pressure valve. Fast fashion sometimes arrives with tags still attached; one participant brought clothing she had purchased online – after it did not fit she arranged a return, and was told by the company to donate it rather than send it back – the retailer in this case is routing their surplus to volunteers to manage.

PARAGRAPH #QT3B9B
  Divestment is normalised and sought after. As Brīvbode manager Rasa observed: "Often we're simply a place to dump it all and go buy new things."  In this view, Brīvbode appears as evidence of the structural conditions it aspires to address rather than a solution to them. There is tension present in Brīvbode between the swapshop as an alternative caring system and as a low-threshold overflow channel, and this tension does not resolve easily.

SECTION #WY6KPH Managing the flow on site

PARAGRAPH #ALYNWW
  On Thursdays and Fridays a queue often forms by Brīvbode before noon – sometimes more than ten people wait to be let in. The first two hours are the busiest. Rasa sometimes takes a breath before unlocking the door: "It begins."

PARAGRAPH #2YWFSM
  After an item is divested to Brīvbode, it does not belong to the donor anymore, it belongs to the swapshop. This transfer of ownership is actively managed: takers are discouraged from taking things from the sorting table before they are processed, as their enthusiasm has caused discomfort to other visitors in the past.

PARAGRAPH #TVPES3
  However, sorting is done “on the spot” and in the same room, and things move fast. As Larsen (2023) observes, in thrift shops, practices are often characterized by a "reversal" of standard economic logic, where the goal is to move things along as quickly as possible rather than to maximize the profit per individual item. This can also be said about Brīvbode – there’s excitement about things moving quickly.

SECTION #C2AQ4D Material elements in Brīvbode: the physical site and infrastructure

PARAGRAPH #Z48STM
  Physical instead of virtual co-presence shapes the quality of encounters between people and objects. As Tan and Yeoh  (2024), writing about freecycling markets in Singapore, observe, “relational-material exchanges play out better as an embodied co-presence with others/things” – objects can be handled, tried on and assessed, and an item of decent quality will eventually find a taker.

PARAGRAPH #YLHWNT
  The physicality and permanence of Brīvbode as a site is one of the main attributes setting it apart from other similar initiatives that often struggle with availability of affordable rental space, especially in high density urban areas. Tan and Yeoh (2024) note how, because of this reason, organisers of Singapore markets must bin or redistribute excess items after every event. They identify availability of rental and storage space as one of the main pre-requisites for functioning freecycling initiatives – thus it is important to note how regular operation in the same physical venue constitutes the practice of freecycling, as it becomes a stable and recurring weekly infrastructure for participants. This enables visitors to sustain a regular visiting rhythm through which, for many of them, freecycling becomes genuinely embedded in everyday life.

PARAGRAPH #T7BS4V
  The space in Brīvbode is organised and decorated to resemble a retail environment with a DIY aesthetic –  with hangers and shelves, and garments sometimes arranged by colour in the manner of the formerly operating secondhand chain Degas. The aesthetic is not fixed, however, as curatorial disagreements exist over the best presentation and each shift can leave its own curatorial mark. Rasa describes the tension between celebrating volunteer initiative and an aesthetic that, in her view, would communicate more value through similarity to a retail environment, leaving more space between things, signifying that quality items can be found in Brīvbode. "The emptier the shelves, the more people find," she notes. A different aesthetic displaying abundance of things on offer and decorating with plushies appeals to another volunteer. These mundane disagreements hold competing views about which meanings the practice of freecycling should enact. Material and meaning elements of the practice are not settled but are actively contested through performance.

PARAGRAPH #PU3CKA
  The regularity of operation that the physical on-site format allows also fosters social contact among participants. Opening hours twice per week is both a way to manage the necessary volunteer labour and a social encounter catalyst – temporal tightening means that visitors are more likely to encounter each other. The volunteer in charge of the shift anchors the social experience, and the personal relationships accumulate over repeated visits. "On Thursdays everyone asks where Nadja is. And on Fridays everyone asks where Viesturs is." While Brīvbode is not a primary site for socialisation for most participants, regular visitors, especially those living in single person households, noted the meaningfulness of the social aspect of visiting, the casual contact with known “faces”, Brīvbode being a place to go and the visits giving a structure to the week.

PARAGRAPH #HZZ52R
  Within the material realm, Brīvbode is also embedded in and dependent upon broader infrastructural arrangements in order to manage the overflow it cannot absorb. The swapshop passes leftover textiles – in some estimates up to 30 % of the received flow (Akule et al. 2023) – to textile collection containers. The shop would not be viable if it had to cover the costs of regular unsorted waste collection. Also, off-season clothing such as winter coats that take a lot of space are stored in collaboration with charity organisations that have access to larger storage premises. Brīvbode can sustain – in a pragmatic, improvised manner – because of this material entanglement instead of trying to resolve the full material cycle on its own.

PARAGRAPH #EP6U2C
  The physical experience of overflow is a constant of volunteering, and bags often arrive faster than they can be processed. Often my task during shifts was to sort and put out children’s items. The boxes were already full, with piles forming, when I asked Rasa: 'Don't you feel like the things are just pouring down on you?' 'Yes, that's why I no longer have any tolerance for things. I realise I feel relief that these clothes are dirty, because there simply isn't any more space."

PARAGRAPH #AUZKM4
  During another shift, Rasa offered me a handmade black ceramic plate someone had brought that day. I was glad to take it, but before my departure confusion arose about where it had gone. It turned out, more stuff had piled up on top of it on the sorting table as visitors kept coming with their divestment. Rasa laughed: “This is how it is here.” As a material site, Brīvbode is an active flow that requires tending and occasionally swallows its own offerings.

PARAGRAPH #DZ72UL
  The pull of Brīvbode as a divestment destination persists even when the physical site is temporarily absent. For several weeks after the Brīvbode pop-up venue in Āgenskalns closed at the end of summer 2021, people kept bringing boxes and bags of belongings, leaving them in front of the empty shop. The practice had recruited carriers so effectively that the site’s closure did not interrupt the flow.

PARAGRAPH #BW6UMW
  The things are made visible by being put in the shop. It makes the material overflow more visible – there is no “away” to throw your things.

SECTION #FUQJQ5 Circulation norms and competencies

PARAGRAPH #C6YRCL
  The material composition of Brīvbode reflects the gendered organisation of (clothing) consumption more broadly. The majority of items circulating through the freeshop are women’s and children’s clothing – a pattern that mirrors the more feminised character of household consumption management. As noted in the methodology chapter, men do participate in Brīvbode, but on a lesser scale and with different practice career tendencies – while men’s clothing is sought after, they also look for books to circulate in second hand markets, CD’s, electronics.

PARAGRAPH #WVZQRH
  The gendered asymmetry extends to the competencies required to manage the space. Viesturs described his initial challenge of developing a workable system for sorting women’s clothing after he started volunteering: "Well, f*ck, look, where do I put it. Trying to systematize women’s clothing, it’s like a tree with many branches." The competence of sorting – especially women’s clothing as in this case – is not self-evident as the proliferation of categories resists simple organisation and has to be worked out through practice.

PARAGRAPH #LXRLTL
  The standards applied to men’s clothing also operate differently. There is simply less of it, and the threshold for what is acceptable is lower – men’s clothing is assumed to be used for physical work and is assessed accordingly. One day two young women looking through the clothing boxes for film costumes picked up an undershirt and commented on how disgusting it was, while a man right next to them took it. Rasa later confirmed the shirt was not in a good condition, but she had put it out because, as she noted, everything gets taken from the men’s section. The norms of assessment reflect whose consumption practices the swapshop is organised around.

PARAGRAPH #QY9B8B
  While there are explicit written rules governing exchange in Brīvbode, those are framed in general relational terms – “bring things that would bring joy to someone; bring things you would give to a friend” – and there are no formal categories of exclusion. Norms regarding acceptability are defined and enacted situationally and relationally, which can be both a strength and a source of friction about where the boundaries lie.

PARAGRAPH #9X74TE
  Being in Brīvbode is characterized by constant sorting decisions, trying to maintain an acceptable level of presentation and quality of items. The work of maintaining quality and the work of maintaining relationships sometimes pull in different directions, and the balance between lenience and care is negotiated in every shift. At times I heard people felt uneasy about Viesturs openly commenting on things they had brought.

PARAGRAPH #WUN97C
  This is observable even in the circulation of food items, which, although not central, are also present in Brīvbode. As opposed to many community-based exchange initiatives where the circulation of food is governed strictly, e.g. accepting only unopened items and carefully monitoring expiration dates, in Brīvbode the circulation is shaped less by formal regulation and more by trust and familiarity among participants. Open packages may be accepted when brought by known visitors, suggesting that assessments of safety and acceptability are negotiated socially.

PARAGRAPH #US7AXR
  A stronger boundary emerges in relation to certain categories of items, such as medicine. In one instance, a regular visitor brought various medications, explaining their uses to the day manager. While the items were initially placed on the table for taking, a while later another worker quietly removed them, remarking to me, “I don’t think I support this.” The removal was not communicated directly to the donor, suggesting a reluctance to enforce the norm explicitly. Instead of a formal refusal, workers might suggest that perhaps the giver has not noticed the defects, but items could be washed and brought back or simply delay decisions until the giver is no longer present.

PARAGRAPH #ZC2Z2F
  "Man kaut kā mazāka vēlme ņemt visu, ko es redzu, par spīti tam, ka tas it kā ir tas 'brīv'... es kaut kā vairāk cienu to visu, kas tur ir izlikts." Madara explicitly contrasts her response to freeness with others' – she imagines the hoarder who grabs because it's free, and positions herself as someone for whom freeness activates restraint rather than acquisition. This is the moral economy of freeshopping from the perspective of someone still in the early stages of learning the practice's norms. "Kādam varbūt tas 'brīv' rada vēlme, ka viss ir bez maksas, tagad ņemam, ņemam, ņemam. Man tas nospēlē kaut kā tieši otrādāk." "Es to uztveru kā apmaiņu. To vārdu 'brīvu' kaut kā izslēdzu... Sākumā tas tā bišķiņ mulsināja, ka esmu kā apzagusies." This is competency acquisition: Madara is learning how to understand and inhabit the value regime of Brīvbode, and she narrates the process explicitly.

PARAGRAPH #JXSMQW
  Competencies of Circulation

PARAGRAPH #YNMVCK
  The competencies associated with freecycling are not skills in the most traditional sense – freecycling does not require years of training. They are largely social and evaluatiove: knowing how to read quality, when to come –

PARAGRAPH #D33QL7
  No studentes lauka darba: “Rasa ir visuztrenētākā acs uz mantu kvalitāti; arī izvēloties mantas – visbiežāk apģērbu – ir konkrēti kritēriji, kam sekot, piemēram materiāla biezums vai veids (vilna, kašmirs u.c.). Īsāk sakot – kas ir dabai draudzīgāks, ekoloģiskāks un ilgmūžīgāks.”

PARAGRAPH #B66BK3
  On the acquisition side, competency is equally real: knowing when to come, how to navigate the space, how to read what is new. Agate has mapped the visitor typology and times her arrivals strategically. Finding things in Brīvbode rewards the person who comes regularly, builds familiarity with the stock, and returns when something new has arrived. Repeated visiting. Marta describes starting from the first room and returning when there is already something new.

PARAGRAPH #VG295X
  Cleaning and preparing: things brought to Brīvbode are expected to be clean and in reasonable condition. This means washing, checking for stains, sometimes minor repair. Sometimes people don’t wash – e.g. Marija expects the recipient to do it. Anna mentions she never divests anything that has been repaired.

PARAGRAPH #9LRKLZ
  Sorting and evaluating: deciding what to bring requires going through possessions, assessing condition, quality, suitability.

PARAGRAPH #GWTLZ7
  Material literacy – knowing what wool or silk feels like (often with composition labels missing), recognizing a well-made garment, spotting a hidden stain.

PARAGRAPH #JH9JK9
  Skill evaluation things – Laura describes herself as a talented secondhand user who checks everything carefully – but she also has taken things in Brīvbode that have turned out broken later.

PARAGRAPH #UBWP9G
  Knowing what you need and what you already have. Zane's phone list of things she is looking for, her stylist consultations as an investment in knowing her own preferences – this is the work of self-knowledge in service of not acquiring wrongly. Without it, acquisition becomes impulsive and the divestment work follows.

PARAGRAPH #Q2A66G
  Matching to existing possessions. Agate explicitly asks herself whether she could combine this with her other clothes, whether she will actually wear it. This is cognitive work – holding a mental model of your wardrobe and household while browsing.

PARAGRAPH #7AQN26
  “on material literacy, meaning the skills and knowledge about different materials, how durable they are and with what treatment they last longest. This includes knowledge about appropriate washing, storing (Figures 2 and 3) and other care techniques like using a lint shaver or an iron.”

SECTION #QLVPVE Meanings: the moral economy of exchange

PARAGRAPH #VJU6JZ
  Practices have normative meanings – understandings upheld about what correct participation looks like, what the practice is for, and who belongs in it. In Brīvbode, normative work is done by organisers to uphold the meaning of the freecycling as an exchange as opposed to a charity. This framing is a normative aspiration – a claim about who belongs and on what terms, actively maintained against pressure from resellers and heavy-takers. The normative aspiration is held together by a moral vocabulary of equality and reciprocity – the norm that participants bring something or at least contribute in kind or offer their help at the shop is part of what defines active participation in the practice rather than use of a service. This positioning work is felt as particularly needed by organisers also because Brīvbode is located in the neighbourhood of Gaiziņš night shelter.

PARAGRAPH #ETSGMU
  As Rasa puts it: “Exchange is a very honest way of operating, it requires responsibility from both sides. When both wealthy and poor, old and young can participate, and everyone knows it's on the basis of exchange, that you are equal, nobody gets a discount, nobody is more special. To many people we simply say: “We are not a charity. It's not the case that you come and now demand that you need clean trousers. We are not a charity point, this is an exchange point. Do you actually have something with you for exchange, before you start setting the rules here?” Nadja is very good at negotiating this. “Go to the Red Cross, go to other places that are specifically a charitable institution! We are not a help institution.””

PARAGRAPH #B3A7P8
  Widlok’s (2017) analysis of give boxes – small scale unattended exchange infrastructure in a German town – offers a frame for what the non-monetary arrangement achieves socially. Give boxes, he argues, separate the acts of giving and receiving – donors and recipients do not need to interact directly, and the intermediary space absorbs the social awkwardness of charity. Items move quickly, suggesting ongoing demand, while participants tend to frame their involvement in terms of giving even when they primarily take.

PARAGRAPH #AC8LX9
  Brīvbode operates on a similar logic: the physical space mediates between participants, making it possible to take without performing need. At the same time, Widlok notes that give boxes are not straightforwardly sharing practices – they tend to be understood within a moral register of charity or almsgiving rather than open-ended reciprocity, and tensions arise when participants extract items for resale rather than use.

PARAGRAPH #8Q8FJL
  The imperative to keep things flowing to avoid overflow creates a certain tolerance in case of suspicion for such practices that formally fall outside Brīvbode’s rules. Reselling is not allowed, yet resellers are a suspected presence in Brīvbode. Volunteers mentioned situations when other visitors in Brīvbode have told them they have recognized their divested items at the Āgenskalns flea market the following weekend, which Rasa acknowledges as straightforwardly unpleasant. Yet because it is not always possible to prove, there is also a working accommodation, and Rasa’s position is one of pragmatic acceptance: “At the same time it seems – if he'll find the next user for the thing anyway, the function is fulfilled. Better they make a little money and the thing finds its person, than some hoarder takes it and the things end up in a container." She laughs: "Well, what choice do I have but to believe… We support small businesses."

PARAGRAPH #MB7WW5
  This reveals a hierarchy of meanings operating within Brīvbode’s moral economy. The object’s arrival to a sequential user is weighed as more important than the forbidden monetary transaction that may or may not occur along the way. The ethos of non-monetary exchange can be subordinated to the deeper logic of circulation. Besides, if visitors come with something in return, further trajectory is difficult to control.

PARAGRAPH #VZMVZA
  Viesturs frames this ecologically: "Well, I could see them now as forest sanitarians." Without moral approval, the resellers, the hoarders and heavy-takers are reframed as functional elements as they clear out the accumulation of materials that would otherwise clog the space. Viesturs response to this is tactical curatorial competency: if a person he suspects is present at the shop, he often doesn’t put new items out on the shelves until they leave. This is his practical judgement and competency to “read the room” enacted situationally.

SECTION #V753D5 Non-monetary exchange and attachment: competencies of letting go

PARAGRAPH #G5UMDM
  The intensity of circulation of items in Brīvbode and its non-monetary context raise a question about the relationship between price and attachment. Evans’s (2020) framework suggests that attachment is produced through the acquisition-side moments of consumption – appropriation and appreciation, processes that are normally anchored by monetary investment. Assima et al. (2023) describe "financial myopia" – the difficulty of detaching from items one has spent significant money on, even when they are no longer used. This results in "neglected possessions" accumulating in wardrobes as disposal is deferred to avoid the feeling of wasting a significant investment.

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  The anchor of monetary investment is absent from acquisition in Brīvbode, and some participants articulate the shift in their own relationship to objects directly. Rasa describes how price normally operates as a binding force which Brīvbode alleviates: “You no longer have that heaviness around a thing – I bought it for €40, how can I now throw it out or give it away, not wear it. Now it's simply: if it doesn't suit, bring it back. Try it – it works, or it doesn't. It's much more free." She is pragmatic about this beyond Brīvbode too: “No matter where the garment comes from, there is that percentage of things I take or buy or acquire for myself that I always know won't get worn regardless of whether I've paid money for them or not. So the safest thing to do is to invest as little as possible, so that afterwards there are fewer regrets." This is a recalibration of what kinds of commitment acquisition is.

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  Fieldwork observations capture this in the dynamic of circulation. A woman arrives and leaves in different shoes than she came in: “I left mine here instead. Today with these trousers, the high heel doesn't suit. Hopefully no fungus..." Another laughs as she leaves her jacket in Brīvbode on a sunny day because she feels too hot: “I left home with clothes on but will be coming back in socks only. I don't need anything.” A third also swaps her jacket on the spot for one she prefers. The meaning of novelty comes across in these cases.

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  Another aspect to the quality of attachment is the possibility of a return after trial and seeing whether attachment will form. It can be difficult to assess in the moment of acquisition whether an item will settle in person’s life. Bringing something back if it does not further loosens the relationship between taking and keeping, allowing a lower stakes and a more experimental participation. This trial opportunity was appreciated by participants whose physical attributes and body shapes are not always catered to in retail: "Because for a small person it's quite hard to find trousers... But here there's the opportunity to try them for some time and see."

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  However, if acquisition carries less commitment, the same conditions that make divestment easier may make acquisition more frequent and less deliberate. My own divestment to Brīvbode often consists of things bought secondhand online as a preferred route of acquisition, but choosing not to invest effort in reselling when they don’t work out. The non-monetary regime does not automatically produce more careful consumption; its relationship to sufficiency depends on the meanings participants bring to it.

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  Elīna describes feeling a sense of responsibility toward everything she acquires – whether bought secondhand, taken from a swap event, or found in Brīvbode. Once something has come to her, she feels obligated to find it a good next home rather than simply discard it: "If this has come to me, then this material... energy and work and transport went into producing it, and I can't just throw it away. I feel I have a duty to figure out how to pass it on to hands where it will be useful." She adds, however, that this sense of responsibility sometimes feels like too heavy a burden to carry.

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  (Sometimes the relation to the shop is a source for jokes: “We have special mega discounts, 100 % – only today and tomorrow!”)

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  The self-management work

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  Managing the impulse to take because it is free. Marta describes this explicitly – learning to replace "free" with "exchange" in her mental vocabulary, developing the decision rule that if she is not sure she does not need it. This is deliberate self-regulation work, and it is not trivial. The non-monetary arrangement removes one natural brake on acquisition – financial cost – and participants who want to avoid accumulating must supply that brake themselves through conscious effort.

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  (moral economies of access and restraint)

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  "Man bija ļoti daudz dažādu veidu... pēdējos pāris gadus es kaut kā esmu no tā atkāvusies, ka es tā vairs nedaru. Es tiešām ļoti izvērtēju, vai man tā lieta tiešām ir nepieciešama." Madara describes a conscious shift away from impulse acquiring in secondhand contexts – she recognizes her own past behavior as a problem and has worked to change it. This is deliberate practice modification. Madara: “Es tiešām cenšos nebūt tā tante ar trīs maisiem, kas staigā katru dienu tur no vienas točkas uz otru. To es cenšos nepieļaut un cenšos arī sadraudzēties maksimāli ar tām lietām, kas man ir.” Making peace with what you have – sufficiency as an active practice of relationship with objects rather than deprivation. This is a positive formulation of sufficiency that does not rely on environmental discourse.

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  Elīna R. “S1: Bet kā tu nonāci pie tās sajūtas, pie tās atziņas – man jau pietiek? S2: Man vienkārši skapī vairs nav vietas. (smejas) Nu, arī, teiksim, tagad ir ziema, un ir džemperu laiks, un es saprotu, ka es tāpat neuzvelku visus savus džemperus. Nu, tātad man viņu ir acīmredzami par daudz. Un man arī patīk novalkāt lietas. Tur ir kaut kāds tāds, nu, man vismaz, īpašs tā kā kaifs, ka es ar šo lietu esmu tik daudz lietas darījusi kopā, ka viņa ir tik novalkāta, ka viņu, iespējams, pat vairs nevar salabot.”

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  "Es esmu krājēja. Jā, es esmu krājēja." Aiga recognised hoarding tendencies in herself. She links it to scarcity experience – not having had much as a student, learning to keep things because things were hard to come by. The accumulation habit is understood as a survival response to past material insecurity, but she is actively working to change. The turning point was a month-long solo trip through Europe after her employment ended: "Es aizbraucu, un tad ar to arī sākās, ka tagad, nu, tagad tas ir izdarīts, tagad ir jādomā kaut kas par lietām, kas ir par daudz." Travel – where you carry only what fits in a bag – reframed her relationship to possessions and worked as a biographical rupture that catalyzed practice change.

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  "Es labāk šobrīd lēnā garā atbrīvojos... man nav vienkārši žēl paņemt somu un aizbraukt." The war anxiety dimension: she is releasing things partly because she wants to be able to leave quickly if necessary. The geopolitical context of Latvia – proximity to Russia, uncertainty since 2022 – appears explicitly in her divestment motivation.

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  "Pieķeršanās jautājums tiek risināts. Viņš ir procesā." "Brīvbode palīdz, tā teikt, šim procesam attīstīties." "Šobrīd jau ir uz robežas, tāpēc es saku, ka ir jāatvadās jau no tā, kas jau ir atrasts." Māra is explicitly working on her attachment to things – she names it as a problem and frames it as ongoing work. Brīvbode as a tool for developing the capacity to let go. This is the freeshop as infrastructure for a personal practice of detachment. It is a positive framing of the same phenomenon that Rasa describes as generating excess – from Māra's perspective, having a route makes it easier to release.

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  Brīvbode as material infrastructure enabling the practice of letting go. The freeshop does not just receive things; it creates conditions that make divestment possible for people who otherwise could not do it. This is the role of material arrangement in sustaining practice.

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  the practice of divestment requires competencies that include emotional regulation and the capacity to detach from objects. Māra is developing these competencies deliberately.

SECTION #Z7Y86N Plural meanings of acquisition that sustain participation in Brīvbode

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  Taking things in Brīvbode is sustained by a variety of meanings that do not need to be shared or mutually coherent across practitioners. The heterogeneity of meanings allows the practice to recruit across a wide and socially diverse public. The following section examines the main meaning clusters and what each reveals about how the practice recruits and retains its carriers – what do people experience as useful and rewarding when they opt to take things in Brīvbode.

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  For Marija, the primary meaning is access and dignity as Brīvbode enables a form of self-presentation beyond her regular means: "I dressed like an absolute princess. You can’t even find things like that in a shop." She takes pleasure in the secret source as other people in her networks cannot tell the difference between her clothing originating from Brīvbode or retail. This also has a competence dimension: knowing where to look, when to come, having access to a source others do not use.

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  Anna frames her participation with a desire for aesthetic autonomy: “I've always really disliked it when I'm wearing something and someone else is wearing exactly the same." Instead of sustainability or thrift, this meaning is based on distinctiveness. Anna also has a sewing competency that works as an extension of the same desire – making her own clothing is the ultimate guarantee of uniqueness: the competency of sewing is sustained by the meaning. Additionally Brīvbode also enables Anna's daily performance of festivity: wearing a glitter dress as everyday wear is possible because Brīvbode provides a low-stakes supply resource.

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  Elīna describes a similar dynamic at a lower threshold of commitment: “You can try out different styles for free. I took a bomber jacket I would never have bought myself." The jacket became one of her most-worn items. Brīvbode enabled a style experiment that she would not have risked financially. Similarly, a practitioner who was exploring cross-dressing also described: "What gives me joy is that I can create different characters from those clothes. For example, yesterday I went to my first cross-dresser date with this beautiful purple wig. I also got these court shoes... And that somehow challenged me to put them to use."

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  Madara’s participation is organised around her craftsperson's gaze – a competency that allows her to notice objects as made of particular components and materials. "When I see an item, I see it not just as a finished garment, but also, for example, as a material – fabric, beads, zippers." This competency distinguishes her participation from others and allows her to find value also in objects that other people might not find useful at all: "I found an old, cut mosquito net, which I use as a base for embroidery." Something that appeared to be waste turned out to be a useful resource to her. This is a heightened version of the right-owner logic – the object finds not just a user but a user who recognizes a value in it that is largely invisible to others. Also Madara’s rugmaking practice originated in having accumulated too many secondhand clothes – material surplus became the origin of a new practice.

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  The craftsperson's gaze has a negative counterpart, however, when it is decoupled from valuing items as a shared resource: some visitors treat the shop as a source of free raw materials, cutting off buttons or zippers from garments, and leaving the damaged items behind – extracting the value themselves while diminishing it for everyone else.

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  While alternative, these meanings simultaneously overlap with some of the meanings present in capitalist consumption –

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  Alongside the meanings of novelty, originality and access is the meaning of class related stigma, and its presence significantly affects the practice’s recruitability. Some participants hinted at it subtly in conversation, but denied it when asked about it directly. Marija is the only one who explicitly named the shame associated with freecycling, and this cuts against any simple narrative of freecycling as normalized exchange practice for people of all walks of life. While actively and regularly using Brīvbode and also praising the things she has managed to acquire as high quality and aesthetically pleasing, nevertheless, she also compares taking from Brīvbode to going through someone else’s trash. Especially when a TV crew came to Brīvbode and a journalist approached her for a couple of words, she flatly refused “I will not let them see that I've fallen so low as to come to Brīvbode." Yet in the same conversation she also reclaims the class label: "I'm common, simply common (prasta – common, plain, I.L.). I will go and get what I need." The value is privately experienced, but restricted in representation.

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  For some potential practitioners this association with lower class status is a barrier to entry, while others manage it strategically. Several participants mentioned withholding information about the origin of items, especially when passing things acquired in Brīvbode to other people as gifts. As volunteer Anna noted, grandmothers say: “I don't tell my daughter where I got that jacket, because she wouldn't take it.”

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  A related strong negative meaning for second hand acquisition holds that these items carry the energy of previous – often deceased – owners. Several participants mentioned this trope but adjusted it to their practice. Viesturs, half-laughing, keeps the spiritual language but reframes it institutionally: "Others say that things have some kind of energy, or the aura of previous owners... We're able to transform that. In a way, Brīvbode is also like a kind of purgatory for things." With this adjusted meaning Brīvbode can function as a threshold space in the object biographies where the weight of previous owners can be released.

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  This stigma of second hand acquisition is, however, also generationally uneven and appears to be dissolving, similar to patterns reported elsewhere (Gurova, 2024). Changing meanings are shifting the practice’s recruitability. Madara notes how a broader normalization of secondhand acquisition in recent years has produced a shift within her own family, who previously held strong norms against it. Luīze, a highschooler preparing for graduation, uses the English word "thrift shops" to talk about her consumption practices, frames her participation in explicit environmental terms, and reports that her classmates are actively seeking secondhand options for graduation dresses. She attributes the negative meaning her parents hold towards second hand acquisition to “Soviet mentality”.

SECTION #6535KC Quiet or reflected sustainability?

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  In our conversation, Viesturs also positions Brīvbode against charity but from a different angle than Rasa: "Our goal is not to do good for people, I think. Our goal is to do good for the planet… Charity is always related to the meaning of poverty. I think that we need to emphasize the fun factor, the joy factor – swapping, changing clothes. That it's cool, fun, that it's joyful." He is not only describing the meanings that sustain his own participation, but also making a claim about which meanings should be foregrounded to recruit and retain more practitioners. This orientation is present in Brīvbode and practically expressed through organising photo shoots and parties, encouraging playfulness with clothing.

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  When I ask Viesturs if he sees working in Brīvbode as helping visitors or helping a cause, the question turns out to be beside the point: "To me it's so natural now, I don't evaluate it anymore. Others should evaluate it. It's simply a thing I do, without going into philosophical meanings." Sorting, switching clothing, chatting with visitors and attending to the shop so that it continues operating well – have become sufficiently routinised for him that they no longer require justification or meaning-work. The practice has stabilized to the point where the question of what it means has receded behind the doing.

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  Rasa answers similarly when I enquire about the environmental and sustainability aspects of Brīvbode: “Everything else is so intense… It has remained somehow, in a way, a little secondary." While the sustainability framing remains present – and is foregrounded e.g. when writing project funding applications or designing info materials – it does not need to be actively held by every practitioner in every performance. For both Viesturs and Rasa philosophical meaning-making has receded. This is what Smith and Jehlička (2013) describe as quiet sustainability: practices that produce sustainable outcomes without requiring their practitioners to hold or articulate sustainability as a motivation.

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  Sustainability as a meaning is present for practitioners, and e.g. Luīze is at the other end of the spectrum for whom it is expressed as primary rather than peripheral. She explicitly framed her participation in terms of ecological responsibility and the wider politics of avoiding fast fashion and microtrends.

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  Līva discussed how the environmental meaning is present for her, but in tension with her actual acquisition practices. She identifies textile consumption as probably one of her most environmentally problematic behaviors, yet was open that knowing it does not resolve it. She estimates she buys an item of clothing every month and frames this as more than she used to in adolescence. The meanings she uses to evaluate her consumption patterns are in tension with the meanings that sustain the acquisition, and neither cancels the other one out. Researching household textile disposal, Sigaard (2026) concludes that even while sustainable consumption is ideally endorsed, disposal is very normalized because it is strongly embedded in identity work, relational considerations and in facilitating other practices.

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  Also, as I argue, most participants come to Brīvbode for practical and social reasons instead of self-professed environmental conviction. This resonates with Smith and Jehlička’s (2013) concept of quiet sustainability, developed through their research on Czech urban gardeners: sustainable practices that can be widespread and effective but are not articulated in terms of sustainability by their practitioners. Smith and Jehlička contend that quiet sustainability is defined by practices “that result in beneficial environmental or social outcomes, that do not relate directly or indirectly to market transactions, and that are not represented by the practitioners as relating directly to environmental or sustainability goals. Cultures of sharing, repairing, gifting and bartering characterise quiet sustainability” (2013: 155). Latvia provides a productive context for this concept – several participants trace their orientations towards reuse and frugality to generational experience rather than sustainability aspiration. [..]

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  Some participants do find meanings for their participation in explicit sustainability terms, though, and this difference should not be overlooked. The thesis holds both the quiet and the articulated dimensions without collapsing them into a single category, treating the variation between them as empirically interesting. In practice-theoretical terms, however, what practitioners say about why they do what they do is only one element of practice and “doings” hold the centre.

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  (Lifestyles of Enough) “Finally, the meanings attached to sufficiency-oriented consumption practices go way beyond altruistic motives like environmental concern. As a study by Kropfeld et al. (2018) showed, environmentally concerned consumers (with more altruistic motives) have a higher environmental impact than voluntary simplifiers (with more self-related motives). Personal or egocentric motives, therefore, can lead to sufficiency-oriented behavior, as the example for sharing services from this review showed. This is in line with Sandberg’s (2021) findings on sufficiency practices related to miscellaneous consumption, as she connects a reduction of consumption of various products (incl. clothing) to anti-consumption lifestyles such as voluntary simplicity or frugality.

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  Quiet sustainability – sustainable practices without added sustainability meaning.

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  what matters in sustainability? e.g. people gather egg cartons because it is easy, but issues that are more impactful and require more resources are more difficult to enact.

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  Several participants in this study trace their orientations toward thrift and reuse to generational experience of the scarcity of the early post-Soviet period, or to upbringings in which resources were used carefully as a matter of practical necessity rather than environmental commitment.

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  The “activists” are part of the visitors, yet a large part do not frame their participation in Brīvbode primarily in environmental terms: they come because they have things to give away, because they sometimes find things they need. Their practices have sustainable dimensions that they do not necessarily name or claim.

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  This framing does not require flattening the diversity of participant orientations. Some visitors do articulate explicit sustainability motivations – concerns about fast fashion, about waste, about the environmental costs of overconsumption. The thesis holds both the quiet and the articulated dimensions without forcing them into a single category, and treats the tension between them as empirically interesting rather than theoretically problematic. One question that remains open is whether explicit articulation makes sustainable practices more effective at retaining practitioners – more resistant to disruption when material or social conditions change. This is beyond the scope of the present study but worth noting as a direction for future research.

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  Māra: "Mammai to lietu nebija daudz, un tās lietas tika visas, nu, ļoti labi uzturētas. Bet tad, kad jau parādījās tie humāno preču veikali, tad savukārt bija otrā drusku galējība."

SECTION #QS26PQ Conclusion

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  Freecycling in Brīvbode is sustained by a plurality of meanings that are compatible enough to coexist within the same space. Givers come to resolve the moral weight of unwanted things, the site’s permanence and visibility offer a trusted route for it. Takers come for dignity, experimentation, craft materials, social contact or simple convenience. The moral economy of exchange holds these heterogenous orientations together, as it is actively maintained against the pressure of resellers, heavy takers and people looking for charity, yet flexible enough to accommodate them when the alternative is overflow.

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  Sustainability can be an outcome without it being a requirement and a conscious orientation for practitioners. The practice recruits and retains carriers through meanings that also have little to do with environmental concern and yet the circulation it enables has sustainable dimensions that persist regardless of how participants frame their involvement.

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  This does not resolve the tension running through the chapter of Brīvbode functioning simultaneously as a moral circularity infrastructure embodying an alternative value regime of exchange and responsible material life – and as a low threshold overflow channel that absorbs the surplus generated by the consumption patterns it aspires to counter. This tension just reflects the observed dynamic of how sustainable practices are embedded in contemporary life.

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

SECTION #F2943E The Work of Circular Consumption

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  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.

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  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.

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  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

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  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.”

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  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

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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

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  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.

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  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)

### 6. Tool result: read

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.

### 7. Assistant

I've read both chapters and chapter 2 carefully. Here's a structural and theoretical assessment, with concrete next moves.

## Chapter 4 — "The circulation of things and things that sustain it"

**What's working.** The trajectory frame (#E3QN63, #QZ8Q4K) — incoming flow → managing on site → meanings of acquisition → sustainability — is clear and readable. The Shove et al. materials/meanings/competencies triad organises 4.2 cleanly, and you have very strong empirical anchors (Rasa "It begins" #ALYNWW; the swallowed plate #AUZKM4; Madara on "brīv" #ZC2Z2F; the wireworker's offcuts #GGRHDF). The Widlok placement in 4.2.3 (#B3A7P8, #AC8LX9) is exactly where it should be. The Evans framing of attachment/detachment opens 4.3 (#4ALAE2) elegantly.

**Structural issues to fix.**

1. **The "Competencies of Circulation" cluster in 4.2.2 is half-prose, half-list.** Paragraphs #JXSMQW (literally just the heading), #YNMVCK (broken sentence), #D33QL7 (raw Latvian field note), then a list of bullet-point-style paragraphs (#VG295X, #9LRKLZ, #GWTLZ7, #JH9JK9, #UBWP9G, #Q2A66G, #7AQN26). This reads as drafting scaffolding. Either turn them into 2–3 prose paragraphs (material literacy; self-knowledge in service of restraint; matching to existing possessions) or move them into 4.3 where they conceptually fit better — they're competencies of *not acquiring wrongly*, which is the same theme as the "competencies of letting go" already in 4.3.

2. **4.3 has a parallel "self-management work" sub-cluster** (#MPQ4JQ, #FJ79YF, #8ZPRYC, #UYL6TZ, #VBVVXQ, #5JJ4KK, #KWQ7AQ, #U575JS, #Z22MHT, #JV33M5). This overlaps directly with the bullet-list in 4.2.2. Consolidate: one tight subsection on "competencies of letting go and the self-management work that price normally performs," ordered as (a) the absence of a financial brake, (b) the self-imposed brake (Marta, Madara), (c) the deeper biographical detachment work (Aiga's hoarding, Māra's "process," war-anxiety divesting).

3. **#QPZXSP is a fragment** ("In absence of a specific receiver,") — it should join #LHMEDR.

4. **4.5 (Quiet or reflected sustainability) restates Smith & Jehlička twice** (#VQARCF and #NVL4HP). Pick one: I'd keep #NVL4HP because it has the full quote, and reduce #VQARCF to a transition into the concept. Also several paragraphs here are clearly notes, not prose: #UXQTEY (Lifestyles of Enough sticky), #T9XJDZ, #B3S7DW, #B4P2SJ — these need to be either drafted or cut.

5. **Larsen's "reversal of economic logic" (#TVPES3) is currently stranded** in a tiny intro to 4.2 above the materiality section. It belongs inside 4.2.1 alongside the "the emptier the shelves, the more people find" passage (#T7BS4V).

**Theoretical connections that are missing.**

- **Welch et al. (2020) / Askholm (2024) on second-generation, reflexive practice theory** (already set up in #6VBDKY): this is the *ideal* citation for 4.5 to frame the quiet/reflected distinction theoretically. Right now 4.5 just observes the variation; Welch's argument that reflexivity has been understated in earlier practice theory would let you claim more.
- **Nicolini (2017) on practice bundles/complexes** (already in #RDZMW6) is set up but not used in chapter 4. The whole point of Brīvbode is that divestment, acquisition, sorting, and socialising bundle at one site — say so explicitly when you introduce the chapter.
- **Gregson (2007) on divestment as ordering work** is cited in #S5FWGM but the rich version of this ("disposal as recursive moment that helps reorder consumption itself") shows up in your chapter 2 notes (#5M9UV4) and never lands in chapter 4. Pull it forward to the opening of 4.1.

## Chapter 5 — "The Work of Circular Consumption"

**What's working.** The opening bumblebee image (#AFFP4F) is genuinely good. The framework setup with Wheeler & Glucksmann's three dimensions plus the Bankovska/Graeber care-as-work move (#VFVNL8) is theoretically tight. The Miller anchor for gendered consumption work in 5.4 (#8QVYKY) is exactly right. The conclusion paragraph #8JXBYH is a strong summative statement.

**Structural issues to fix.**

1. **The three-dimension framework is announced but only two dimensions get section headings.** Wheeler & Glucksmann's *technical / modal / processual* triad is named in #DKNKM6, but you have sections only for "Modal" (5.3) and "Processual" (5.4). The chapter needs a section explicitly labelled "Technical labour" — and 5.2 ("Valuation work without the context of price") *is* that section in disguise. Rename it "Technical labour: valuation work without the context of price" or similar. This single rename will make the chapter feel much more coherent.

2. **5.1 (Volunteer labour and sufficiency lifestyle) sits awkwardly outside the three-dimension scheme.** Either (a) frame it as a structural precondition that the three dimensions then unpack, with an explicit transition sentence, or (b) integrate it into modal labour, since "sufficiency lifestyle as the structural condition that makes the unpaid mode possible" is itself a modal observation.

3. **The conclusion is a mess.** You have a sub-section "5.4.1 Conclusion" (#GGGPNV) nested wrongly under 5.4, with two solid paragraphs (#8JXBYH, #T5LNZ9). Then below them sit duplicate-conclusion paragraphs #WQCQ9A ("CONCLUSION" placeholder), #ENZMT5, #JJA5J6 — these say the same thing as #8JXBYH and #T5LNZ9 in shorter form. And then orphan note-paragraphs #ANCRJA, #YNFMZ5, #H77SJA, #MC4GH7, #QJNPTQ, #GDAK2E sit below the conclusion as unintegrated quote candidates. Decisions: promote #GGGPNV to a top-level Conclusion (5.5), delete the duplicate conclusion (#WQCQ9A, #ENZMT5, #JJA5J6), and either integrate or cut the orphan quotes. #YNFMZ5 (Miller flea markets) and #QJNPTQ (Hobson social circularities) actually belong inside body sections, not the conclusion.

4. **Ordering within the chapter:** the "logistics-node" passages in 5.4 (#JY7V8V Marija, Māra, Anna; #DGLFX7 Madara, Aiga) are some of your strongest material — currently they sit *after* the Miller framing. Good. But Aiga's "thirty trips" example would land harder if you moved it to the *top* of #DGLFX7 as an opener and worked outward from it. It's the most striking instance.

**Theoretical connections that are missing.**

- **Reno (2016) on women as moral agents** is set up alongside Miller in chapter 2 (#U9VL8L) but never returns in chapter 5. Add a sentence in 5.4 — Reno's gift-and-waste framing connects naturally to Aiga's "inner feeling" that won't let her throw things out.
- **Lindsay et al. (2024) and Organo et al. (2013) on sustainability labour absorbed into gendered domestic work** (#9NPNTZ in chapter 2, currently flagged as needing to be checked) is *exactly* the citation for #LQTPNH (Kristīne transmitting consumption work to her daughters) and the conclusion #T5LNZ9.
- **Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025)** is well-used at #ZU8ZS9 but their list of forms — *decanting, stock management, recirculating* — could be named in 5.2 as a way to connect Brīvbode work to the broader emerging vocabulary of reuse work.

## Cross-chapter overlap

The Madara "brīv → exchange" reframing appears in 4.2.2 (#ZC2Z2F) and again paraphrased in 5.2 (#MSGHYR). It's fine to reuse but make one the primary analytic and the other a brief callback — currently they read as parallel first-time analyses.

I'll save a durable note with these recommendations.

#### Tool call: `write_note`

```json
{
  "block_ids": [
    "3X7JKL",
    "F2943E",
    "W8HHQV",
    "E3QN63",
    "QZ8Q4K",
    "JXSMQW",
    "YNMVCK",
    "D33QL7",
    "VG295X",
    "9LRKLZ",
    "GWTLZ7",
    "JH9JK9",
    "UBWP9G",
    "Q2A66G",
    "7AQN26",
    "MPQ4JQ",
    "FJ79YF",
    "8ZPRYC",
    "UYL6TZ",
    "VBVVXQ",
    "5JJ4KK",
    "KWQ7AQ",
    "U575JS",
    "Z22MHT",
    "JV33M5",
    "QPZXSP",
    "LHMEDR",
    "VQARCF",
    "NVL4HP",
    "UXQTEY",
    "T9XJDZ",
    "B3S7DW",
    "B4P2SJ",
    "TVPES3",
    "T7BS4V",
    "6VBDKY",
    "RDZMW6",
    "5M9UV4",
    "DKNKM6",
    "GGGPNV",
    "8JXBYH",
    "T5LNZ9",
    "WQCQ9A",
    "ENZMT5",
    "JJA5J6",
    "ANCRJA",
    "YNFMZ5",
    "H77SJA",
    "MC4GH7",
    "QJNPTQ",
    "GDAK2E",
    "DGLFX7",
    "U9VL8L",
    "9NPNTZ",
    "LQTPNH",
    "ZU8ZS9",
    "ZC2Z2F",
    "MSGHYR"
  ],
  "text": "Review of empirical chapters #3X7JKL (ch. 4) and #F2943E (ch. 5) against theoretical framework #W8HHQV.\n\nCHAPTER 4 — structural issues:\n- Competencies of Circulation cluster in 4.2.2 is half-prose, half-list and reads as drafting scaffolding: #JXSMQW (just heading), #YNMVCK (broken), #D33QL7 (raw fieldnote), then bullet-style paragraphs #VG295X, #9LRKLZ, #GWTLZ7, #JH9JK9, #UBWP9G, #Q2A66G, #7AQN26. Either turn into 2–3 prose paragraphs or move into 4.3 where competencies of \"not acquiring wrongly\" overlap with competencies of letting go.\n- 4.3 has parallel \"self-management work\" subcluster (#MPQ4JQ, #FJ79YF, #8ZPRYC, #UYL6TZ, #VBVVXQ, #5JJ4KK, #KWQ7AQ, #U575JS, #Z22MHT, #JV33M5) that duplicates the same theme. Consolidate.\n- #QPZXSP is a fragment that should join #LHMEDR.\n- 4.5 restates Smith & Jehlička twice (#VQARCF and #NVL4HP); keep #NVL4HP, reduce #VQARCF to transition. Note paragraphs in 4.5 still need drafting or cutting: #UXQTEY, #T9XJDZ, #B3S7DW, #B4P2SJ.\n- Larsen on reversal of economic logic (#TVPES3) is stranded; move into 4.2.1 alongside #T7BS4V.\n\nCHAPTER 4 — theoretical connections to add:\n- Welch et al. (2020) / Askholm (2024) on reflexive 2nd-gen practice theory (already set up in #6VBDKY): perfect for 4.5 quiet vs reflected sustainability.\n- Nicolini (2017) on practice bundles/complexes (#RDZMW6): use it explicitly when introducing the chapter — Brīvbode IS a bundle site.\n- Gregson (2007) on divestment as ordering work: pull the richer version (chapter 2 #5M9UV4) forward to opening of 4.1.\n\nCHAPTER 5 — structural issues:\n- Wheeler & Glucksmann's three-dimension framework is announced (#DKNKM6) but only Modal (5.3) and Processual (5.4) get section headings. Section 5.2 \"Valuation work without the context of price\" IS the technical labour section in disguise — rename it to make the framework visible.\n- 5.1 (sufficiency lifestyle) sits outside the three-dimension scheme. Either explicitly frame as structural precondition, or integrate into modal labour.\n- Conclusion is a mess: #GGGPNV nested wrongly under 5.4 with good paragraphs #8JXBYH and #T5LNZ9. Below them duplicate conclusions #WQCQ9A, #ENZMT5, #JJA5J6 say the same thing. Orphan notes #ANCRJA, #YNFMZ5, #H77SJA, #MC4GH7, #QJNPTQ, #GDAK2E need integrating into body or cutting. Promote #GGGPNV to top-level 5.5; delete duplicates.\n- Aiga \"thirty trips\" passage in #DGLFX7 should open the logistics-node discussion, not close it.\n\nCHAPTER 5 — theoretical connections to add:\n- Reno (2016) on women as moral agents (set up in chapter 2 #U9VL8L) — connects to Aiga's \"inner feeling\" that won't let her throw out.\n- Lindsay et al. (2024) and Organo et al. (2013) on sustainability labour absorbed into gendered domestic work (#9NPNTZ, flagged as needing checking) — for #LQTPNH (Kristīne and daughters) and #T5LNZ9.\n- Beswick-Parsons et al. (2025) decanting/stock management/recirculating vocabulary — name in 5.2.\n\nCROSS-CHAPTER:\n- Madara \"brīv → exchange\" passage doubled at #ZC2Z2F (ch.4) and #MSGHYR (ch.5). Make one primary, the other a brief callback.",
  "title": "Structural review of empirical chapters 4 and 5"
}
```

### 8. Tool result: write_note

NOTE SAVED #AEAT4C
IRI: https://sheaf.less.rest/AEAT4C

### 9. Assistant

Note saved at #AEAT4C. The single highest-leverage move is probably the chapter 5 rename: "Valuation work" → "Technical labour: valuation work without the context of price." That one edit makes Wheeler & Glucksmann's three dimensions visibly structure the chapter, and several of your conclusion-level claims will read as the payoff of an explicit framework rather than a partial one. The chapter 4 fix that buys the most cohesion is consolidating the two competency clusters (4.2.2 list + 4.3 self-management) into a single tighter discussion in 4.3.