Objects and Social Actions: On Second-hand Valuation Practices

Larsen, Frederik Doctoral Thesis Objects and Social Actions: On Second-hand Valuation Practices PhD Series, No. 23.2015 Provided in Cooperation with: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Suggested Citation: Larsen, Frederik (2015) : Objects and Social Actions: On Second-hand Valuation Practices, PhD Series, No. 23.2015, ISBN 9788793339293, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg, https://hdl.handle.net/10398/9182 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/208940 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ OBJECTS AND SOCIAL ACTIONS Frederik Larsen PhD School in Organisation and Management Studies PhD Series 23.2015 PhD Series 23-2015 COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL SOLBJERG PLADS 3 DK-2000 FREDERIKSBERG DANMARK WWW.CBS.DK ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93339-28-6 Online ISBN: 978-87-93339-29-3 – ON SECOND-HAND VALUATION PRACTICES OBJECTS AND SOCIAL ACTIONS – ON SECOND-HAND VALUATION PRACTICES 1" " Objects and Social Actions – on Second-hand Valuation Practices Frederik Larsen Supervisors: Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen & Lise Skov Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies Copenhagen Business School April 2015 Frederik Larsen Objects and Social Actions – on Second-hand Valuation Practices 1st edition 2015 PhD Series 23.2015 © Frederik Larsen ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93339-28-6 Online ISBN: 978-87-93339-29-3 All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies (OMS) is an interdisciplinary research environment at Copenhagen Business School for PhD students working on theoretical and empirical themes related to the organisation and management of private, public and voluntary organizations. 3" " Foreword This thesis concludes a three-year research project on values in second-hand markets. During that time I have visited second-hand shops and markets around the world and talked to people about used things, recycling, antiques and especially about the relationship people form with objects. It is remarkable how old things make people talk, and everywhere I have visited I have heard new stories. I have also heard about what second-hand means to different people in different places. In some Asian cultures old things carry the ghost of previous owners with them and in some places in the Balkans buying used is considered a bad omen of future poverty. Second-hand objects are powerful cultural artefacts that are seen as reminders of a time when objects were properly made on the one hand and of overconsumption on the other. Second-hand objects are embedded in layers of social and cultural meanings, in exchange relations and in environmental debates and are constantly contextualized; cherished and discarded, bought and sold. Although they enter into relations throughout their social lives, second-hand objects also appear to drop out of the flow as they end up in the back of a cupboard, at the bottom of a box or on the shelf in a thrift store. In the following I have attempted to account for the complexity of the role of things in second-hand markets and combine attention to the social aspects as well as the material. The primary disciplinary orientation in the study is towards anthropology, which might be surprising since I am not an anthropologist. My 4" " background in the humanities, in art history and visual culture, accounts for my interest in objects, but anthropological theory has provided me with a framework that is able to bridge the social and the material. The accompanying ethnographic approach allowed me to experience the entanglement up close. I describe the study as material culture because of the interdisciplinary approach that also draws on cultural geography and consumption studies. I suspect my interest in anthropology stems from my experience in working with anthropologist. For a number of years I assisted Professor Brian Moeran on various projects on creative industries and helped launch the Journal of Business Anthropology. I want to thank him for encouraging and cautioning me, but most importantly for inspiring me to pursue the interesting, if not the easy path. Working on the journal showed me how persuasive anthropological literature can be and throughout this project I felt myself being drawn in that direction. The result is an approach influenced by anthropology with the addition of relevant perspectives from other disciplinary fields. The process of conducting a project like this, let alone writing it, is in many ways a solitary job. Throughout the process, however, I have been fortunate to have the support of colleagues and friends who have helped, inspired, criticised and listened. I would like to give all of them my warmest thanks. Most importantly I want to thank the employees, volunteers and managers at the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store for allowing me to poke around and ask silly questions and for patiently teaching and guiding me. As the thesis shows they were an enormous source of knowledge and insight as well as wonderful colleagues. Without their kindness and help this project would not have been the same. I would also like to thank Martín Sánchez-Jankowski and Christine Trost from the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California, 5" " Berkeley for hosting me while I was in California. I would also like to thank the people who made my explorative study in Bangkok possible. The owners of the companies I interviewed as well as the vendors and customers in the markets. Mostly I want to thank KT and Chet for their invaluable help and kindness, which has established lasting valuable relation across continents. At the Copenhagen Business School my colleagues have helped and supported my study and made the everyday life enjoyable, especially Robert Strand, Sarah Netter, Oana Albu, Tina Müller, Wencke Gwozdz and Ana Alacovska. Most importantly I would like to thank Kirsti Reitan Andersen for her constant support, wonderful company and invaluable discussions in the office and on our numerous travels to conferences, meetings and other escapes. I hope to be able to continue our working relationship as well as our friendship. For great help forming and positioning my project I would like to thank Eric Guthey, Ole Bjerg, José Ossandón and Janice Denegri-Knott. My supervisors Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen and Lise Skov have guided and helped me immensely and I thank them for moral as well as academic support. Lastly I want to thank my partner Anders for putting up with me over these last months. 6" " 7" " Abstract In this thesis I address the question of how value is created in second-hand markets. Focusing on the role of charity thrift stores I present an ethnographic account of fieldwork I undertook in the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store in San Francisco. I analyse my ethnographic findings in light of contemporary literature on values and valuations in material culture and reaching back through the anthropological literature on commodities and gift economies I build a framework around David Graeber’s formulation of a concept of social, relational value. In order to structure the analysis I take Mary Douglas’s seminal work on classification as a starting point and argue that the practices of valuation constitute a process of transformation form discard to commodity. To support the analysis I introduce theoretical concepts from the ethnographic literature on values, secondhand markets and valuations. Practices of categorization enable the employees to create value, but disorder is a condition of the process, which hinders the flow as well as provides opportunity for value. I describe thrift, a considered use of resources, as the main ‘infravalue’ that drives the valuations and allows the organization to create economic, social and emotional value. Next I zoom in on the interaction between people and objects on a micro-level. The theoretical framework here brings anthropological theory into play with actor-network theory (ANT) approaches to nonhuman actors, and I introduce the term withdrawal from object-oriented philosophy to address the agency of objects in valuations. By 14" " Objects as Part of the Social 179 Agency and Objects 180 Materiality and Object-Oriented Ontology 182 Materiality and Objecthood 184 A Matter of Distance 185 Analysis of Valuations from an Object-Oriented Perspective 189 Material Aspects of Organising Principles 189 Constraints on the Process 190 ‘Calling’ and the Response of Objects 191 Prices Make Things Move 196 Ambiguity and Disorder 197 Anthropomorphic Representations 199 Materiality and Dirt 202 Enacted Realities? 203 Benevolent Objects 204 Objects and Values 207 Chapter 5: Global Flows and the Role of Thrift 209 Following the Global Flow 209 Global Flows: an Explorative Study in Bangkok 210 Night Markets 213 Lotus Vintage 214 Moving up the Value Chain 215 Moving Prices 216 Categories of Value in Global Exchanges 216 The Proliferation of Second-hand Markets 220 Thrift in Global Flows 221 Doing Good through Commodification 224 Wider Effects of Thrift 225 Objectification and Material Use 226 Systemic Approaches to Resource Issues 228 15" " Chapter 6: In Conclusion 233 The Transformation of Discards 234 The Matter of Objecthood 240 Thrift in Context 241 Professionalization and Thrift 242 References 245 16" " 17" " Chapter 1 Introduction ‘We could do the eBay thing to make more money, but that kinda defies the purpose of a thrift store’ says Cliff as we walk behind the counter. Cliff is the manager of the arts department at the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store (CTS) and is showing me how he sorts and prices the artworks, records and decorative items that the organization receives as donations on a daily basis. His statement is not made in response to any question I have raised, but as an expression of the sensibility in the CTS that running a thrift store is about more than making money. Like other charities that raise money by accepting material donations for resale, the CTS operates within a mixed economic setting that combines elements of gifting as well as market exchanges. Raising money for the charities they partner with and making the most of the donations they receive is at the core of the operation; but throughout my fieldwork I found many examples of how other values, such as community spirit and concern for the need of their patrons, were regarded as equally important. Customers I talked to who buy the second-hand objects describe the value of their purchases in terms of the excitement or the pleasure they bring. Some donors find solace in giving to charities that their deceased relatives would have liked to help. These values, along with many others, are expressed in the sorting and valuation of the objects that are donated and resold. Through a set of practices, the employees and volunteers transform the donations or discards into marketable commodities. Although the value of second-hand objects is highly contextual, these practices stabilise the value momentarily by considering their material, social and economic 18" " good. In this thesis I present an ethnographic study of the practices of valuation in the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store in San Francisco. The purpose of the study is to identify what makes used things valuable as cultural commodities. In order to do so, I trained and worked in the organization as a sorter over a period of six months. Through that process I was able to observe and participate in the practices involved and to experience and record the formal as well as tacit knowledge that is necessary to value second-hand objects. I start by presenting an ethnographic account of the fieldwork I undertook in the CTS. Next I analyse my ethnographic findings in light of contemporary literature on values and valuations in material culture to address the question of how value is created in second-hand markets. Reaching back through the anthropological literature on commodities and gift economies I build a framework around David Graeber’s formulation of a concept of social, relational value. In order to structure the analysis I take Mary Douglas’s seminal work on categorization as a starting point and argue that the practices of valuation constitute a process of transformation. To support the analysis I introduce theoretical concepts from the ethnographic literature on values, second-hand markets and valuations. In some instances I compare my observations with related studies to address empirical as well as theoretical points. Next I zoom in on the interaction between people and objects at a micro-level. The theoretical framework here brings anthropological theory into play with actor-network theory (ANT) approaches to nonhuman actors, and I introduce a distinct perspective from philosophy to address the agency of objects in valuations. By dividing the analysis into two parts I demonstrate in greater detail how objects as part of valuations are given agency through social entanglements, but also how the objects by their mere existence influence valuations beyond this entanglement. Their presence as more 19" " than the sum of their social relations has a profound impact on the valuations. In the last section of the thesis I present an explorative study of the extended trajectory the objects take through markets and wholesale companies in Thailand. I discuss the role of the thrift store in the global context of second-hand exchanges and offer a critical reflection on the consequences of the proliferation of secondhand markets. This study highlights the importance of considering materiality, and especially objecthood, in the context of second-hand markets, and suggests a framework for understanding the relationship between objects and practices in the broader context of material culture studies. By way of introduction I will describe the field and the subject this study addresses. As valuations are embedded in a larger cultural context, I begin by presenting a number of discussions that have informed this study and address the literature on second-hand markets. Second-hand Exchanges Valuing used things is a practice that has become increasingly widespread around the world with the proliferation of second-hand markets. Online market places are growing and companies, organizations and individuals are involved in global flows of used objects on an unprecedented scale. Selling and buying used things has been done throughout history, but changes over recent decades have seen second-hand objects enter the cultural economy in new ways. Where used objects were earlier associated with poverty and carried social stigma, they are now featured in lifestyle magazines and are described as ‘fun’, ‘authentic’ and ‘unique’.1 Looking at the history of consumption around used objects demonstrates both changes and continuities. Although second-hand stores still """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 1 See for example Fontaine (ed.) (2008) for historical accounts of second-hand exchanges. 20" " cater to consumers who are financially challenged, and although used objects are still supplied in humanitarian crises such as wars, famines and natural disasters, the availability of cheap household products has led to a decrease in the number of consumers who are solely dependent on used goods in order to acquire basic household items (Arold & Koring 2008). Some consumer research suggests that second-hand shops are in fact offering a type of hedonistic shopping experience to less affluent consumers—an experience from which they would otherwise be excluded—and thus presenting an opportunity for empowerment to marginalized groups of consumers (Williams & Paddock, 2003). Modern thrift stores first started emerging during the Depression in the US (Strasser 1992). The number of second-hand stores and the size of the trade then greatly increased in the 1970s with the emergence of a budding consumer interest in protecting the environment. Especially since the mid-1990s, many western cultures have seen a dramatic rise in interest in used objects ( Gregson & Crewe 2003). A large part of this may be attributed to a cultural change that has seen a growing sense of nostalgia, retro, and referentialism enter popular culture. Fashion historian Barbara Vinken has described this ‘zeitgeist’ as post-fashion, involving a heightened attention to the temporality of fashion as a cultural expression, and she describes how designers express this awareness of the past, the transience of designs, and expose the construction of novelty (Vinken 2005). Although second-hand objects are reaching new markets, thrift and second-hand stores still provide accessible household products to less affluent consumers as well. Given the composite nature of the second-hand economy it is difficult to estimate the market share of charity organisations, but in Europe and the United States, and to a lesser extent in Asia, charity organizations make up a significant share, especially at the beginning of the value chain. The penetration of the Internet has facilitated the exchange of used objects online in a number of different ways, ranging from informal non- 21" " monetary platforms to highly commercial and formal marketplaces.2 Many charity organizations are also turning their attention online, with varying degrees of success, though most of them still operate primarily offline. The growing interest in second-hand over recent decades is also noticeable in a number of research fields, including anthropology, sociology and cultural geography. At the intersection of consumption and production, second-hand exchanges touch on a number of fields and most studies address issues relating to consumption and material culture. Current research includes studies of charity shops and second-hand markets in different parts of the world (Horne & Maddrell 2002, Tranberg Hansen 2000), the global flows of used commodities (Crang et al. 2012, Gregson et al. 2010) and the impact of second-hand trade on cultures all over the world (Gregson et al. 2003, Gregson & Crewe 1998, Norris 2010), but so far only a few studies have addressed the collecting and sorting that takes place in organizations (Botticello 2012). As many of these studies demonstrate, secondhand exchange and used objects are not limited to the realm of consumption and commerce. Objects as parts of the household and as objects of exchange have penetrated many areas of social life in many parts of the world and relate issues of consumption, waste and production. Second-hand Objects—Between Waste and Commodity Objects that enter second-hand markets have at some point been discarded. Talking to donors, it is clear, however, that that does not mean their potential reuse or resale value was not identified by the discarding party. Still, at some point the decision was made to get rid of the object. Therefore the objects can be considered discarded, at least until they are reinstated as valuable objects or commodities in """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 2"Denegri-Knott et al. (2009) have described these online exchanges as they are practices on eBay. 22" " the cultural circuit. Although not all discards are considered waste, the demarcation is often difficult to identify. Whether or not they constitute waste, second-hand objects often start their lives as leftovers of conventional consumption. In her book Purity and Danger (1966), Douglas defines dirt as matter out of place (1966:35). Her seminal statement has often been the starting point of studies of second-hand markets as well as of studies of waste and discards. By making dirt a structural matter, Douglas offers an approach to the study of the remainders of consumption. As she argues: ‘…if uncleanliness is matter out of place, we must approach it through order.’ (Douglas 1966: 40) When something is out of place it disturbs order and becomes dirt or waste. Order, of course, is contextual and can be highly local. Order in some places is considered disorder or unintelligible bulking in other places and to other people. Even to the same person, different orders may be at play at the same time, making it difficult to define one conclusive ordering system. Hence even the dirt that is out of place becomes unfocused and, in Douglas’ own argument, disables the restoration of the proper order. Even through order, trash can be difficult to define, but the statement offers a way to approach the uncategorizable and suggests both a method of how to deal with it and the danger or potency of discards. Dirt is a matter of cultural categorization, and it is clear from looking at the objects in second-hand exchanges that they are powerful as cultural representations. In the anthology Trash Culture (2010), Gillian Pye outlines how trash has influenced European literature and philosophy. She describes the ‘autonomy’ of things when they are outside the realm of the useful that constitutes 23" " a primary intelligible value or identity for objects in society (Pye 2010: 6) . Autonomy is a possibility for subversion but not a necessary direction; autonomy may also leave the object isolated and beyond visibility. In a symbolic sense, the object escapes reality and floats freely until reinstated by the rag-picker, a figure that was hailed by Benjamin and Baudelaire as a figure of freedom that represents an escape from bourgeois society. Adorno, on the other hand, described ragpicking as the ‘ultimate form of capitalism’ whereby the last drop of exchange value is extracted when the rag-picker repossesses the object. The practices of ordering and sorting trash become a form of sense-making of the abject, the repressed (after Freud). Reclaiming the object into the realm of things that can be dominated is the main objective of categorization. Waste becomes so powerful that, as Steiner suggests in the same volume, ‘Garbage makes it clear that things are not only objects, but subjects of culture’ (Steiner 2010: 133). Trash transcends the boundaries between the animalistic, the natural and the synthetic. Following Douglas, when something is trash it is difficult to differentiate whether it is a household good or a foodstuff, or perhaps a family heirloom. In that sense people’s relationship with things becomes uneasy. For while on the one hand they serve purposes and help make sense of our everyday lives, and are to some extent dominated by our ability to produce and use them, they also ‘refuse’ or oppose us in our usage. In a later chapter I will return to this point and also describe how they may even be said to rebel. Their anthropomorphic nature, or our desire to inscribe them with some sort of being, is in turn a relief as well as a curse: they may come back to haunt us. Steiner does not stop short of describing how inanimate objects remind us of death. The danger of impurity is ever-present. ‘Out of place-ness’ is a matter of cultural categories, but it is also a material issue. The use of used things raises questions of pollution, impurity and contagion. 30" " Douglas’s description of dirt has taken pride of place in discard studies, but has also been challenged. Fittingly, Moore criticises symbolic approaches such as the one Douglas adopts for not getting into the dirt but staying on a linguistic level of analysis. Still, Douglas’s structural perspective has been and remains highly influential and useful. Studies of reuse and second-hand industries, following Douglas and Appadurai (1986), have shown how systems and categories help organizations to create hierarchies of worth and re-establish discarded objects as valuable (Botticello 2012, Gregson et al. 2010). In the study I present here I follow the structural approach as an initial way of making sense of valuations; but keeping the view from the margins in mind, I also describe how contingency and disorder is crucial to the creation of values in second-hand exchanges. The difficulty of predicting what will be donated and the quality of the donations is a hindrance as well as an opportunity in the process of making discarded objects valuable. Denegri-Knott and Parsons (2014) have discussed disorder as a productive state that highlights the ambiguity of objects. Second-hand Consumption The demarcation between consumption and production is blurred in secondhand markets, whether directly when consumers become online vendors or through consumer donations that become the ‘raw material’ for organizations like the CTS to create value. Consumption is central to these markets as input and output at both ends of the markets. As such, consumption has great impact both in practical terms and analytically. Whether second-hand markets are signs of overconsumption, greater environmental concern, rising poverty or growing economic exploitation, what consumption ‘is’ has great relevance. Second-hand consumption is often considered an element of sustainable or alternative consumption (Gregson 2012) and understanding how practices in second-hand 31" " markets relate to conventional consumption practices is relevant. What secondhand markets make blatantly clear is that it is difficult to define what consumption is in the first place. As Graeber argues, the umbrella term covers most human practices (2011: 491). The term consumption, as opposed to production, is part of a dichotomy that separates the two spheres. Graeber describes how this separation became a defining feature of capitalism with the advent of industrial production. The separation may also in part be responsible for the marginal position occupied by second-hand industries and practices. Not only, as Strasser points out, did people need to be educated to stop taking care of and collecting and redistributing discards, the conceptual separation of production and consumption in capitalist economies helped make reuse seem immoral. The way second-hand consumption practices have been seen as alternative is connected to this blurring of the lines between different spheres and in the following I explore this notion as I describe the values that drive valuations in the context of a thrift store. At the intersection of production, waste and consumption, charity stores and thrift stores often represent the first step in a long line of organizations, buyers and individuals selling and buying second-hand objects. Charities accept donations directly from individuals and sell many of the objects on to private buyers. In the CTS, buyers are extremely important and have a direct and indirect influence on valuations and pricing. Many of the buyers are local and sell the objects on in their own stores in San Francisco or wholesale to local stores and companies. In some cases, the objects they buy are resold just a few hundred metres down the street for three times the price for which they were originally bought. Generally, the price of a second-hand objects increases every time they are sold on professionally after they are donated.4 As I will describe in the final section, the contextualization of """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 4 This is a very general statement and through the thesis I will describe the fluctuations of prices in more detail. 32" " the object is crucial to its increase in economic value. In each case the sorting is refined and the context is more specialized than the one before. This puts economic pressure on the organizations that handle the objects at the beginning of the trajectory; and the way in which thrift stores like the CTS negotiate this position demonstrates how different values are created and maintained. The role of charity organizations in global trajectories is not only that of the first step in a number of exchanges in consumer markets. Tranberg Hansen (2000) has described how donations from western countries are sold to private wholesale companies and then to vendors in markets in Zambia and other African countries. This represents one of the global trajectories that donated objects can follow, and in my explorative study in Thailand I encountered another trajectory from donation to resale. Many of the vendors and company owners I interviewed described a market on the Cambodian border where many of them would buy vintage and used American clothes. In this trajectory the donation is extended over decades before the objects return to the sphere of consumption. The subject of this project places the research conceptually between the spheres of production and consumption and between disposal and acquisition. The role of thrift stores constitutes a transformation where a number of practices are performed to turn discards from the sphere of consumption into commodities for the sphere of consumption. Following other approaches in cultural industries, Podkalicka and Meese have described the role of charity shops as that of a cultural intermediary (2012). This role, which combines economic and social responsibilities, works to remake the value of discarded objects. I have pursued this intermediary role from a slightly different angle by describing second-hand organizations as facilitators of events whereby things can change state on their social trajectory. The intermediary role of these organizations is further 33" " emphasized by the interaction between aspects of both gift and commodity exchanges in second-hand markets. Values and Valuation In a study of valuation, values are difficult to escape. As in any other market, what something is worth is of the utmost importance, and in second-hand markets the price is highly volatile. Unlike other consumer markets, second-hand markets rarely have prefixed prices attached to them, such as a recommended sales price or a calculation based on production price and premium. Of course, most pricings in consumer markets are market-based in nature and are established mainly on an estimation of what consumers are willing to pay. Value in secondhand markets comprises other measures as well, however, and in the following I will show how different values affect valuations and the markets in different ways. Gifts and Commodities Second-hand markets are complex economic settings that exhibit features of both market-based and gift economies. The objects clearly demonstrate that they indeed have what Appadurai has described as social lives (1986) as they move between waste, consumption and market. Although following the trajectory through sorting and resale I discovered that in second-hand markets it seems that the objects are both gifts and commodities at the same time. They arrive as donations, though not always as pure gifts, because some donors claim the donations for tax purposes. The commodities in the store are not pure commodities, since one of their purposes is to make gifts possible, and provide good for the community, as I will describe later. The relations that make the objects gifts or commodities establish them as being simultaneously both. These categories arise from the regimes of value that are in place in the charity thrift 34" " store, which include the values of providing cheap household products, raising money for charity and minimizing waste. In Appadurai’s framework, things move between stages of commoditization, and based on this notion others have explored the possibility of hybridity between commodities and gifts. Herrmann (1997) argues that garage sales represent alternative exchange spaces in western market systems—spaces where exchanges take market form while retaining elements of gifting. Herrmann’s characterization of garage sales mirrors Gregson’s extensive work on various expressions of second-hand exchanges, including charity shops, car-boot sales and retro vendors (e.g., Gregson & Brooks 2003). Herrmann and Gregson both describe how second-hand exchanges establish spaces for alternative consumption that challenge hegemonic perceptions of western market economies by blending ontological categories; although, as Gregson points out, there is a relational simultaneity and not opposition in place (Gregson, Brooks & Crewe 2003: 102). Herrmann sees the garage sale as an example of the hybridity of transactions in ‘the market’, but she also questions if all form of exchanges must be presented in the rhetoric of the market. In order to determine how second-hand objects become valuable the question is then which features of commodities and gifts the objects retain at any given time. Mauss’s theory of the gift (1990 [1950]) extends relations between the giver and the receiver and binds them in reciprocity. This property of gifting has allocated the practice outside western market systems. As Herrmann and others have since argued these two systems can operate simultaneously and second-hand markets demonstrate the complexity of this relationship. Although the overall aim of the charity organizations is to generate money for their charity work, many of them consider other aspects of the operation as valuable as well. For some, helping people get access to cheap household products is a priority; for some the social 35" " aspects of volunteering are important; and for others the environmental benefits of reuse are valuable to the organization. At least that is what I have encountered in the number of charities in different countries I have researched or worked with. These aims often go hand in hand with economic goals and make the valuation of donated objects a complex negotiation between different regimes of value. Considering the objects only as commodities would be to overlook important features of the valuation process. Alternatively, describing charity organizations and the donations people give as a system of gifting ignores underlying motivations and economic factors that are also important to the donors as well as the organizations and the causes they support. What appears to surface in this debate is that second-hand valuations cannot be understood only as an expression of economic maximization. Some donors mainly give to charity to get a tax refund, and some only donate to feel better about consuming; but, as Graeber argues, while you can always find self-interest you can also find altruism (2001: 29). Whether people are actually doing good by donating or by buying used items is an entirely different matter; the fact that they are driven by a desire to do good, and perceive their actions as beneficial, makes it a relevant aspect of the analysis. The same is true of the sorters and the organization as a whole. Whether the money they raise does good or whether it is better environmentally to reuse objects does not change the fact that this concern to do good is part of what motivates the sorters to get the most out of the donations. In the analysis, I follow Graeber’s argument that the best way to avoid reducing an analysis of value or valuations to an economic assessment is by understanding the relation aspects of value. Objects, Things, Stuff or Commodities 36" " This study is about valuation practices but it is also a study of objects. Entering a thrift store you realize how things, stuff and objects are everywhere and that the handling of used objects is what brings this whole market into being. In the literature, several terms are used to describe the non-human material entities that are the focus of this study—objects, things, stuff, goods, commodities and a number of other terms that indicate various levels of specificity in meaning. This multiplicity also reflects the broad selection of meanings the terms indicate, and the fact that many are used both in everyday language and in academic contexts makes them even more confusing. I use all of them with as much specificity as possible, but the disorder this inconsistency indicates is also a condition of any study in this field. Whether something is a thing or an object is often debatable, and I will not attempt to resolve the issue here—mainly because it is sometimes irrelevant given the broadness of the terms, and secondly because in many cases objects are simultaneously things. I generally use the term objects to indicate the specific orientation towards objects based on object-oriented philosophy (Morton 2011), which I will introduce to account for the agency of non-human objects later in the analysis. The instability indicated by the lack of terminological clarity, however, may also be a defining feature of objects. Parsons and Denegri-Knott have argued that disorder may be a productive state that establishes a space for the ambiguity of objects (Denegri-Knott & Parsons 2014). Going deeper into the materiality of the matter, Jane Bennett has argued that we need to reconsider our concept of matter and materiality in a way that allows vibrancy in the things that surround us (Bennett 2010). Bennett argues that things are constantly provoking our existence, as we are provoking or manipulating the existence of other materialities in the world. She insists that if we accept the material world, not as a manifest constant 37" " entity but as vibrant fluctuating matter not so different from our own human inconsistency, we can study cultural and social phenomena as unstable constructed objects without any pretence of fixating meaning into structured lasting truths. Following her line of thought in the study of value allows for a greater attention to the material features of things, and although values are not intrinsic or stable, attention to how the materiality of objects influences the valuation can affect the outcome. Terminology and matter address different levels of enquiry, but both indicate that ambiguity is a property at each levels. The materiality of objects affects social action, but what about the ‘thingness’ of objects— the temporary stability of these objects in cultural categories? In The System of Objects (2005) Baudrillard explores the relationship between objects and people in the age of modernity. He distinguishes between the technical aspects of objects and the practices and is interested in how practices affect techniques. According to Baudrillard, interior design, the way things are organized in the home, reflects a larger openness in the social interaction of human beings than in traditional bourgeois homes. It does not constitute a ‘liberation proper’ as Marx would say, as it only reflects a liberation from the function of things but not the thing itself (2005: 17–18). In his view, modernity has liberated things, including furniture, from ritual, ceremonial (moral) structures, and expresses the liberation of human beings. Again, however, it is only from their functional objectification that have they been freed, not in their entire person or object (2005: 18). Things no longer have individual presence, and there is a loss of understanding of thingness, materiality, in a world that is increasingly perceived to be immaterial. Baudrillard’s characterization of people’s relationship with objects suggests that they no longer believe objects hold any sway over them. But as Bennett (2010) describes, things have a unique way of assuming power over us, 38" " especially when they have the power of numbers. This suggests, that the power has been given very little attention with the availability of new things, especially the power of the individual objects. The thing-ness of things, or what I describe as objecthood, is dramatically different from their materiality. This difference and the undermining of objects as Harman (2011) would describe it is central to the second part of the analysis in chapter four, and in the final discussion I will return to the consideration of the presence of objects in relation to value and waste. Objecthood Objects are present in the world as material entities, but objects also provoke emotional reactions. In the anthology Evocative Objects, Sherry Turkle (2011) addresses the relationship between people and things. Turkle is especially interested in the evocative abilities of certain objects—those that remind us of the past or of specific situations. She examines the object as the centre of knowing and approaches objects from a number of different directions. Throughout the whole book a sense of loss is detectable, as objects somehow remind us of things, events and people passed away. Besides loss, objects in the Freudian tradition can also be uncanny—familiar yet unfamiliar. This quality suggests that objects are both powerful social actors, even emotional tools, and something we do not know or trust completely. This makes Bennett argument that the vibrancy of matter cannot be ignored even more potent, and when she uses the example of hoarding to describe vibrancy, the feeling of being literally overwhelmed by objects is not far away Bennett (Vera List Center 2011). Just like waste, objects are viewed with suspicion. Often in accounts of relationships between people and things the nature of things is portrayed rather 39" " malevolently: things ‘take over’, objects carry unbearable emotional weight.5 They even ‘withdraw’ as in Heidegger’s ontology of objects, —they hide something— and we can never fully access them, dominate or understand them (1953 [2010]). Most of these examples, whether artistic or philosophical, are meant to broaden our understanding of the human-object relationship, and as such seek to revitalize the non-human and make us aware of its influence. But the descriptions and characterizations often turn out rather foreboding. If material objects, things, are given any agency, it seems to be to refuse, reject and obstruct the structure of human life, or to be potent reminders of something we want to forget. In the study I present here I attempt to investigate the agency of objects in a more positive light by highlighting all the instances where objects play along as well. Most of the time the interactions between the employees and the objects they handle in the thrift store are uncomplicated. Although some employees expressed a weariness, like Ned, for example, who exclaimed ‘I’ve worked here for four years: I am through with stuff”, many employees expressed interest and delight in exploring the objects as they came in. Clive called the thrift store a cultural library: ‘you see stuff that you’d forgotten existed or stuff you never knew existed’. In general in the organization the relationship between people and objects is characterized by an interest in the objects as well as in what those objects can do. Even the objects that are uncategorizable or discarded provide enjoyment. The walls of the back room are covered with found objects that have been donated over the years but have not been sold. Many photographs of unknown donors decorate the walls, and from the gate at the back door there is a collection of stuffed animals hanging on display. The attitude towards objects is more playful than suspicious. The otherness of objects does seem to factor in, not as foreboding but as something that resists """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 5"Several of the accounts in Turkle (2011) express this tension and it forms the basis of Bennett’s discussion of hoarding as well (Vera List Center 2011)." 46" " 47" " Chapter 2 Research Approach The study of valuations in second-hand markets is the study of a particular kind of interaction between people and things. Without the material stuff there would be no valuation, and without the people there would be no one to perform these practices or to find them meaningful. The social aspects of second-hand markets have been the focus of several studies, from discarding to exchanges and consumption. Although most of these studies also deal with objects in some form or other, in this project I was determined to let the objects occupy a more central position. In practical terms this means that the role of the objects and their material presence has been the focus and that this priority has guided the theoretical inquiry as well as the methodology. As I describe in the introduction, second-hand industries have primarily been approached from the fields of geography, anthropology, and material culture studies. In a social science tradition these studies have focused on processes and social practices and on how people live with things. My background is in the humanities, in visual culture studies, where objects and the use of objects is often approached through the cultural theory of representations and objects are considered relatively autonomous, i.e., ‘the object’ is separated from the practices of which it is part in order to allow it to occupy a central position as a cultural representation. I have thus questioned the exclusive focus on relations in order to let the objects ‘speak’. My intention in this study has been to establish a middle ground that allows objects to speak and enter relations without reducing them. 48" " Actor-Network Theory (ANT) provides a framework for inquiries that allow nonhuman actors to take a central position, but I am not convinced that an ANT inspired approach to how things live with people entirely resolves the tension. This study is therefore an open enquiry into the interaction of people and things which considers social relations to be the foundation of meaningful structures while remaining attentive to the role of things in these relations. In that sense the study is a material culture study. Although material culture as a field describes a variety of approaches, the collective interest in the interactions of people and things creates a commonality. Where material culture studies have been dominated by an orientation towards commodities, other aspects of people’s lives with objects have increasingly been explored (Miller 1998). Anthropology has contributed widely and ethnographic inquiries have become a mainstay of material culture studies. Ethnographic Methods As Edgerton and Langness put it, the principle underlying the idea of fieldwork is that the best tool for studying a foreign culture is another human being’s intellect, sensitivity and emotion (Edgerton and Langness 1974: 3). There are different ways of accessing such qualities as a researcher, but the core activity has always been participant observation (Spradley 1980, Van Maanen 1988). There are varying definitions of participant observation, but Dewalt and Dewalt offer a simple one when they describe such observation as ‘a way to collect data in naturalistic settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the common or uncommon activities of the people being studied’ (Dewalt & Dewalt 2010: 2). Participant observation is often supported by other methods, such as structured and semi-structured interviews, pure observation, and the collecting and analysing of texts. Participant observation provides a situated and grounded insight into a 49" " particular cultural setting or activity and allows the researcher to experience what people do and how and why they do it. Participant observation is both a method of data collection and an analytical tool, and in my study I want to take advantage of both. I do not engage in participant observation only in order to create a holistic description of the particular organisation with which I work; I focus on the advantages of participating to provide an experience—and not only an account— of the practices involved, which highlights the physical, bodily and sensorial aspects of the practices I study. Participant observation can take many forms, from pure observation to full participation. Different levels are suitable for different types of studies, but often, during the course of fieldwork, an ethnographer will engage in various types of activities with different levels of participation. As I started my fieldwork on the assumption that value is the relative distribution of human actions invested, the crucial point was that of understanding exactly what those actions might be. I eventually decided that a high level of participation was a good way of getting to grips with actions, but this realization took some time. When I found out that a volunteering position might be available, I quickly decided this would be an excellent approach. That the organization was willing to offer me so much instruction made the approach even more useful, and I describe this method as an apprenticeship. In the end I conducted far fewer semi-structured interviews than I had planned, while much more knowledge was gained through casual conversations, learning situations and practising. Organizational Ethnography ‘Given the reductionism of any method of inscription, choice of method reflects researchers' deeper assumptions about social life 50" " and how to understand it. Fieldwork and ultimately the field note are predicated on a view of social life as continuously created through people's efforts to find and confer meaning on their own and others' actions.’ (Emerson et al., 1995: 10) The methodological framework for this study is mainly derived from the field of business or organizational anthropology and ethnography. The development of ethnographic methods in the context of business and organizations provides a fruitful framework that highlights the social and cultural context of organizations (Moeran 2012, Garsten & Nyqvist 2013, Baba 2012). Anthropological ethnography developed as a method of describing ‘whole worlds’ and has insisted on the situated nature of all socialities. While organizational ethnography is firmly grounded in social anthropology, business, work and organizational life present settings that make complete immersion difficult since they often represent temporally or physically limited spaces (Garsten 2009). Business and organizational ethnography provides a discussion of methodological and analytical implications that are specific to these situations. Unlike other methodological approaches to the study of organizations, ethnography questions the boundaries of organizations by focusing on informal structures within the organization (Garsten & Nyqvist 2013). While organizational anthropology is considered part of social anthropology and shares many of the methodologies at the core of the discipline, organization anthropology has raised exciting questions about methods. Although Nader’s call for anthropologists to ‘study up’ (1974 [1969]) was not directed specifically at organizational ethnographers, it had significant implications for the use of ethnographic methods in industrialised societies. Since then, other perspectives such as studying ‘sideways’ (Hannerz 1998), ‘through’ (Wright & Reinhold 2011) or ‘at the interphase’ (Garsten 2009) 51" " have been suggested in order to access complex structures and cultures. Similarly ‘the field’ has been questioned as a fixed geographical space by advocating instead for multi-sited (Marcus 1995) or networked fields. Although Marcus’s notion does not only apply to the organizational field, it is especially potent in settings where traditional field studies are unavailable. Methodological developments in organizational anthropology have been driven by the need to grasp highly complex organizational forms. The starting point for this study was not the organization itself but the practices of valuation. These practices are very much part of the social structures around the organization, though they are also bound by formal structures. The knowledge that goes into performing valuations is derived from within the organization as well as from wider experience of social and cultural contexts; however, the practices are performed inside an organizational form, both physically and socially. In order to understand the social in organizations, therefore, some knowledge of the formal structures is essential. As Garsten and Nyqvist explain, even though organizational ethnography approaches organizations through individual actions, corporations are more than the sum of their parts. A corporation becomes an actor in its own right (2013: 5). Through the production and dissemination of corporate ideology and normative ideals, it powerfully shapes the ways its members—its employees— think and act. It also moulds public discourse and practice through its public relations and marketing efforts, and contributes to the ideological transformation of the individual from producer to consumer. The individual methods I have used to conduct this study are all rooted in ethnographic traditions and have been developed for different kinds of settings. The organizational frame mainly serves to highlight the specificities that an ethnographer will encounter in this particular type of setting. 52" " Entering the Field Although the specific fieldwork that I draw upon in this thesis was performed in a certain place within a specific time frame, my entry into the dispersed field of second-hand markets started long before. Over the last six years I have been professionally involved in second-hand markets as a researcher and as an advisor to a large Danish charity organization. Together with Lise Skov and Sarah Netter, I conducted an explorative study of consignment stores in Copenhagen, interviewing shop-owners about their business, customers, valuations and other aspects of the practices involved in running a consignment store. A preliminary analysis of these interviews can be found in a report in Danish (Skov et al., 2011). The research I undertook in Denmark formed my initial engagement as a researcher in the second-hand market. In addition, I collaborated with a Danish charity organization over a two-year period on how to develop new retail strategies for their second-hand shops and got to know the organization quite well in the process. While I was visiting shops, attending annual meetings and discussing with the directors and consultants in the second-hand department, I collected data on the practices of the volunteers, managers and consultants in the head office. I will present some of these findings in my final analysis, but mainly they constitute a form of reflexive comparison with the main findings from the Tavern Guild Community Thrift Store (CTS). Although the three studies of the CTS, the Danish charity, and the companies in Bangkok vary significantly in terms of extent and level of involvement, not to mention cultural context, they were all carried out using participant observation, interviews and photographic documentation. 53" " The study in Denmark was my first engagement in the field of second-hand markets as a researcher, but I had already had plenty of experience as an individual. In the following I will elaborate on my role as an ethnographer with prior knowledge of the field and discuss how this helped me make sense of the findings and how I attempted to create or maintain a sense of alienation. In the US context, the geographical displacement made this easier, but mainly reflexivity and maintaining awareness of my role helped sustain a level of detachment. In practical experience, the fact that the employees and volunteers in the CTS would sometimes refer to my role as a researcher also maintained the distance. Studying Valuations As an advisor to a large Danish charity, I was charged with helping the second-hand department develop new business models and markets for secondhand retail. Both of these experiences took me inside a large number of stores, backrooms, basements and storage facilities, as well as providing me with many insights into the operation of second-hand organizations. With managers of the charity I would visit stores and talk to the store managers and volunteers as well as participate in meetings for managers, employees and volunteers. Through this work I first realised how many different actions are involved in bringing donations to market, and how individual are the valuations. The following extract of my ethnographic notes from a visit to one of the stores the charity runs just outside Copenhagen illustrates how many different actions are involved in the process and how interconnected they are: -On the day of the visit, 6 volunteers are at work, cleaning the store, sorting new donations, putting things in place and pricing new items. The shop appears loaded with stuff—clothes, books, records, 54" " photographs, bags, teacups, lamps, soft furnishings—as well as volunteers. The store carries all types of products: women’s clothing, men’s clothing, children's clothing, toys, ornaments, tableware, paintings, books, music, movies, small carpets, jewellery and handbags. According to the manager, much of the shop furniture was left by the former hardware store that inhabited the premises until 1972 and much of it has not been replaced since the store was opened. The handle on one of the doors of the shop, which was previously divided into two shops, still bears the Schou Epa’s logo of the former store. The division still characterizes the layout and it is only recently that a proper separation has been established between the kitchen and toilet at one end of the store. Due to the relatively modest conditions there is only a small back-office space, and the volunteers eat their lunch in the back of the store amidst the objects for sale. According to the volunteers, this does not prevent customers from accessing the goods, but serves as a social space where patrons can sit down and get a cup of coffee. The appearance of limited space can also be partly attributed to the ingenious use of the space, wherein broomsticks, picture-frames and old bicycle wheels are used as part of the presentation of the products. A large part of this use must be attributed to the volunteers' own creativity. Compared to an even smaller but newer store that I also visited, this store seems to stock all types of goods and presents itself as a treasure-chest for second-hand collectors. The appearance does not seem premeditated, however, and when I ask about the decor it seems to be a blind spot for the volunteers. It appears to be relatively unplanned, and besides a few new shelves that have recently been 55" " added, the racks and rails—and even the different product categories—have been in the same places for at least 18 years (as confirmed by a volunteer who has worked in the store throughout the whole period). The volunteers who work in the shop have been assigned different tasks depending on their interests and abilities. Two of the volunteers come in once a week and dress the windows. The shop also has the benefit of ‘a guy’ who comes periodically and prices the books and paintings. The guy is not officially a volunteer and is not described as such (perhaps because he is not on the schedule?) but he has been consistently helping out for as long as the others can remember. Volunteers who live close by take care of washing while other volunteers repair things. And whenever volunteers happen to pass the shop outside business hours and see that some donations have been left outside, they always open up the shop to put the donations inside. In addition to the shop, the organization has a full basement and a storage compartment in the building at their disposal. The only way to access the basement is through a hatch in the floor behind the counter, however, and the basement is therefore rarely accessible during business hours. The volunteers literally stand on the hatch while servicing customers. The steep staircase down to the basement restricts access and so some of the volunteers (who are all over 70) no longer go down to the basement. But other volunteers in their mid-80s went up and down the stairs several times during my visit. 62" " employees decide upon the value—or non-value—of an object. In many cases, the significant differences in the rationalizations behind these valuations nevertheless resulted in similar prices. The second reason for using this method was the ambition to get closer to the objects involved and question them as well. Valuation in Practice Objects move around a great deal within second-hand organizations; and these movements play an important role in creating or capturing value. Although the objects themselves are the ones being moved around, the movements are facilitated by employees and volunteers as part of a larger structure of practices. Studies of second-hand markets have often taken a particular type of object as their starting-point; in this study, however, my focus was on a practice that can involve different types of objects— the practice of valuation. Valuations as a form of social practice makes an otherwise intangible process accessible to social research (Moeran & Garsten 2013). In the literature valuations and evaluations are defined in a number of ways. Often the two terms are used interchangeably, but at other times they are separated to indicate monetary value on the one hand and qualitative values on the other (2013: 6). Here I use the term valuation exclusively, not to indicate a focus on monetary value, but to establish one term that refers to the practice of determining, creating, disseminating and assessing any number of values, economic or otherwise. As valuations are carried out they make visible the values that are at stake and they involve mental activities, actions and objects. Practice then becomes the entry point to understanding how used objects become valuables. Practices, are described more specifically by Reckwitz as ‘a routinised type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, things and their 63" " uses, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge’ (2002: 249–50). The decision to study any social or cultural phenomenon is usually based on the assumption that it is relevant as an example of something. Although many studies are carried out of highly singular events, actors, environments or communities, comparison and generalizability is at the heart of social science enquiry. Studying routinized aspects of what people do corresponds well with the aim of generalizability. At the same time practice perspectives also highlight the situated aspects of knowledge and enquiry, especially the types of behaviour social scientists study. The routinized aspects of practices, however, do not only refer to the iterative nature of certain activities but to the interconnectedness of actions, knowledge and context. Practice theory is not a consistent theoretical framework but rather a set of perspectives or readings that ‘present pluralistic and flexible pictures of the constitution of social life that generally oppose hypostatized unities, root order in local contexts, and/or successfully accommodate complexities, differences and particularities’ (Schatzki 1996: 12). While other approaches focus on assumptions or discourse, practice perspectives place social actions at the centre of analysis (Halkier 2009). In the study of value and valuation, practice perspectives draw attention to the situated nature of judgements and valuations and address the fact that valuations are rarely based purely on economic rationality. Value is contextual (Moeran & Pedersen 2011, Graeber 2001) and valuations of used objects are highly localized processes combining knowledge of organizational values, knowledge of the customer base, and knowledge of the desirability of the object with a historical knowledge of previous valuations. As Warde and Southerton note on practices in consumption, such practices reveal that ’Consumption is more a matter of the use of goods and services than of purchase’ 64" " (2012: 10). Moving the focus away from purchase in the study of consumption is even more relevant in the study of second-hand practices. Every social setting involves practices, and practices create and maintain social relations, structures and concepts. However, single actions and practices do not alter the social. The social is in that sense independent of individual actions. Practices are performative, and singular performances are sedimented into norms and structures. Practices such as shopping, cooking, eating, transporting, working and parenting are in this and other central definitions in practice theory seen as coordinated activities. Activities are doings and sayings that are coordinated by webs of a number of equally important and interconnected dynamics (Schatzki 2002: 77; in Halkier 2009). The situated nature of practices, which have been explored especially from a feminist perspective (i.e., Harraway 1997, Butler 1993, Entwistle 2000), also highlights the partial perspective that any practice offers, whether these be the practices we study or the practice of studying itself. The partial perspectives and different realities (Mol 2002) that make up the social world do not lend themselves easily to methods and perspectives that seek to unify and streamline complex and sometimes opposing realities (Law 2004). Researchers enquiring into the social thus need to be aware of this multiplicity and of their own situatedness. By focusing on practices, I acknowledge that no study would allow me to exhaust the infinitude of information, knowledge and experiences available in this field, but that practices are a tangible yet complex expression of ‘forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, things and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge’. Practice perspectives offer a mediating view between methodological individualism and holism by bridging the collective and the personal. From a 65" " practice perspective I also acknowledge the situated nature of my enquiry and the type of knowledge available to me without resorting to fragmentation or simplification. By focusing on practices, social enquiry abandons the strict empiricist paradigm that requires science to be disentangled from the social, as Law describes (2004), and accepts that the world is messy and that research must try to negotiate the realities, complexities and ambiguities. Objects and Practices Practice approaches have largely been defined by how they consider the role of material objects in practices, with some approaches highlighting routines, habits and competences, while others see the use of objects as integral to practices (Gregson et al 2007). Gregson et al. expand on the latter approaches—as exemplified by the work of Shove and Pantzar (2005) and Dant (1999). Gregson et al. extend practices perspectives beyond appropriation, and argue that the embodied nature of practices mean that they are transient and ephemeral. ‘Indeed, that to continue to be a competent practitioner of certain practices might require us to get rid of certain artefacts and substitute something different, newer or more appropriate.’ (188) They distinguish between individual and social communal practices and argue that individual practices involve specific appropriation but also the disposal of certain objects. Building on this approach, I extend the focus on practices and describe another set of practices that discarded objects facilitate. For while objects, like embodied practices, can be transient, break down, decay and age, they can also be remarkably resilient. 66" " Practices in Ethnographic Enquiries Practice perspectives have implications for method as well. Historically, most anthropological fieldwork has had a clear orientation towards practices by the very nature of ethnographic methods; but certain methods are better suited for getting to know the interconnectedness of knowledge, memory, feelings and formal structures as they are experienced by actors in the field. A high degree of participation, for example, allows the ethnographer to experience the world they are studying and to experience what would otherwise only be conveyed visually and linguistically. In order to experience embodied aspects of valuation practices, as well as the mental engagement they require, I therefore conducted participant observation in the form of an apprenticeship. Trial and Error In order to perform the main study, I entered the organization as a volunteer and was trained in each section of the process, from donation to resale. By training and working as an employee, the fieldwork became highly participatory (Dewalt & Dewalt 2011). The organizational context allowed me to move freely between the different stations in the process, from receiving donations to reselling in the store, and helped me get in contact with customers and partners as well. Getting so involved helped me situate the study not only in the organizational context of the CTS but within the individual practices involved. Arriving at this method was partly a process of acquiring knowledge of the field and partly a matter of trial and error. When I first set out to do the fieldwork for this study, I thought I would enter one of the large organizations such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army. I made contact with Goodwill and was met with a very open if slightly apprehensive 67" " response. Kirsty, the communications manager to whom I was referred, was very helpful and arranged for me to visit their large donation and sorting facility in the SOMA area of San Francisco. She also arranged for me to meet with the operations manager who would help answer any questions I had. Although I did not end up doing fieldwork in the Goodwill facility, the conversations, interviews and visits provided me with a valuable insight into the operations of a large sorting facility and helped me position my findings. However, as a site for a larger observational study it proved difficult. There was a time issue: setting up this meeting had taken two weeks due to all the clearance Kirsty needed to secure for me to enter the warehouse. She also needed to schedule a time when the operations manager of the warehouse, Louise, was available, since they could not let me enter without her. And because I wanted to visit all the different sites through which the objects move, I realized that this level of security could create obstacles later on. There were other access issues, too: both Kirsty and Louise had to accompany me the whole time we were in the warehouse, and Kirsty could not allow me to photograph the facility due to the employees’ rights to privacy. In my initial contact with Kirsty and my conversation with Louise, I sensed it took quite a lot of effort to get across what it was I wanted to do and why. Although they were satisfied with what I told them, I still felt that they did not really see how I wanted to perform my study and that they still understood it as if I wanted to conduct interviews. Therefore the visit also made me consider my approach in terms of access. I considered joining the work programme that Goodwill offers, but realised the programme was too extensive and would not have allowed me to move around as much as my study required. I thus started looking for a smaller and more manageable organization I could work with and decided that a fully participatory approach would probably make it easier for me to enter. 68" " Apprenticeship Engaging in apprenticeships can actually restrict access to certain practices because the role of apprentice usually has certain limitations (Downey et al. 2014, Lave 1996). In my own fieldwork I ensured from the start that I could move around. I did this both by telling the managers that I would like to learn all the different tasks involved in sorting and valuating, and also by proving— through ‘doing a good job’ and paying close attention to my instructors and peers—that they could trust me to learn swiftly how to perform the task and not be a hindrance to the person instructing me. This inevitably compromised the level of engagement I had in each different station because I would move on or move around depending on where my help was needed or what I deemed it relevant for me to engage in. But because the CTS is a relatively small organization and the physical environment is small, I was still visible to the majority of employees on most of the days I was working there. Following from my strong commitment to explore value as the importance of human actions, methodologically I wanted to get a close as possible to interactions between people and things in the process of valuation. Through the interviews I conducted I was able to access some of the structures, rules and knowledge as they were expressed to me; but assessing used objects is a project that requires skills and creativity, especially so as a result of the varied nature of the donations. The sorter constantly has to make decisions based on very little knowledge or experience regarding a particular object. The valuation therefore often becomes a matter of individual judgement, which was difficult for me to access and understand only through observation and interviews. Learning how to perform valuations allowed me to get a much closer understanding of all the aspects of the practices. 69" " Ingold (2000) has described this type of role in fieldwork as a ‘skilled practitioner’, highlighting the participatory and experiential aspects: ‘the novice becomes skilled not through the acquisition of rules and representations, but at the point where he or she is able to dispense with them.’ (Ingold 2000: 415) The learning experience of being taught how to sort and value used objects opened the field to me in new ways. I had previously made a good deal of observations and conducted interviews with other practitioners in other secondhand organizations, and I had had my own share of experience of shopping for used objects. Prior experience had given me an idea of the number of actions required to transform a discarded object into something marketable; but this experience had also demonstrated how intangible this process was. In general, the responses I got to my questions about how the valuation was performed were either very specific or very general. Learning to perform the valuations myself seemed to be the best way of accessing these specific forms of interaction between people and objects. Like other ethnographers engaging in an apprenticeship as the method of their participation in a given field, I immediately felt the benefits of entering the field as a volunteer ready to be guided and taught (Downey et al. 2014). I was very open about my interest as a researcher, but across the board, from managers to sorters, this did not seem to be of any particular relevance to my colleagues and managers. If anything, it helped them quickly to come to terms with why I was at the store so much, since other volunteers usually worked only three to four hours a week. I also felt included in the work relationship since my interaction with employees was initially based on figuring things out. 70" " Establishing Relations Although being a foreigner in some cases represented a barrier, I felt it also allowed me to ask a lot of questions that might have seemed unnecessary and to be non-threatening to the other employees. In fact I only once detected a resistance to my eagerness to learn how to perform a certain task when I asked Drew, the manager of the book department, if he would teach me how to price books. He responded, ‘Okay… but they won’t let you price stuff, you know,’ expressing some concern that I might be intruding on his territory. I assured him that it was merely a research interest, and he seemed to be okay with that. During my time at the CTS I interviewed managers and employees, donors, customers and professional buyers, as well as representatives from partnering companies that collect the objects which the CTS cannot sell. I tried to move between the different departments as much as possible, working with most of the employees and asking them about their work, their backgrounds and other subjects arising in the course of casual conversation. They were all very kind and happy to supply me with information about their work, as well as telling me about themselves and how they came to work in the second-hand industry and specifically with the CTS. One of the most helpful and informative was Seth. Besides being one of the people who had worked at the CTS for the longest time, Seth had reflected a lot on the CTS and the second-hand trade in general. He ran the book department and quickly became my key informant and someone with whom I would have long conversations. Sometimes we would even get into friendly discussions about the CTS, reuse, recycling, living in the city, the gentrification of the Mission District, politics, and a number of other subjects. These conversations helped me contextualize my observations and make sense of the social and cultural environment, both locally and nationally. 71" " Learning and Training Being a kind of informal education, apprenticeship as an ethnographic method understands research as learning (Lave 2011). Learning how to perform a task which demands a good deal of individual judgement, such as sorting and valuating used objects, requires training and experience in local values. Sorting and valuation relies on knowledge of pricing structures, knowledge of organizational commitments and values, markets and other factors. Getting it ‘right’ is thus not something that can be judged by any external objective measures (as would be in the case of assembling something correctly, for example). The managers that trained me would therefore advise me at the beginning, then later correct me if I did it wrong, and then, as a last step before I was allowed to perform valuations and pricing on my own, they would sample my work by picking out a random item and seeing if they agreed on my valuation. At the end of this process, if they did not agree completely, they would tell me but would not correct the price or valuation, thus indicating the individual nature of these judgements and acknowledging my increasing authority in the matter. Becoming Skilled in the Different Departments The CTS does not run an official training programme. Most of the employees have a background in completely unrelated areas and are working in the CTS on the side. Most of the employees had not planned to work in the reuse industry but needed a job and ended up staying on. However, one employee, Kelly, had trained with Goodwill in that organization’s work programme before coming to the CTS. Kelly has worked at the CTS for 13 years, almost as long as she has been in the States. (She was born in Peru and emigrated to the United States.) ‘I love working here—people are crazy!’ she told me. Before she started 78" " The store has a large pink façade facing Valencia Street, one of the most popular streets in the area, with new stores popping up all the time. The area has undergone a gentrification process since the late 1990s when the area first became popular with tech entrepreneurs. After the dotcom burst at the end of the millennium, the gentrification slowed off, but has resumed and intensified in recent years, leaving the CTS in a central and highly coveted retail location. The area is now inhabited by a mix of people from all ethnic groups and income levels, a diversity clearly reflected in the store’s clientele. When visiting the store as a customer, you first enter a small entrance filled with notices, posters and free magazines. As you walk through the next door, the first thing you see is a long counter stretching almost half the length of the large space that makes up the retail area. Everywhere there are things are on display: the more expensive and fragile items at the front, near or behind the counter, while all other product groups are divided in their respective departments throughout the store. Beyond the counter area where customers purchase the goods they have selected, the different departments are laid out in order—from shoes, clothes, electronics to furniture, music, homeware and books. The products are clearly divided into the different departments, although there is a moderate level of disorder. In most departments there are rough sub-divisions. In the Electronics department, for example, the products are subdivided into lamps, phones, kitchen appliances, and music equipment, etc. However, products often end up in the wrong department, either due to the difficulty of deciding where to put them or because customers pick up things from one section and put them down somewhere else. As most of the employees and volunteers are busy accepting, sorting, filling up shelves, or servicing customers, not much time is allocated to clearing up the disorder on a day-to-day basis. 79" " In every department, shelves and racks are positioned close together and packed with stuff, and the store easily holds thousands of items at any given time. To help clear out the stuff that does not sell within a short time, several sales are offered in the course of each month, the biggest one being held on the first Monday of the week, when everything in the store is sold at a 50% discount. Figure 1: Floorplan of the Tavern Guild Community Thrift store 80" " These sales are very popular and queues of customers for the register often stretch halfway through the store on these occasions. One employee, Karen, told me that sometimes people will even come in on the day before the sale and hide things between shelves in order to come back on sale-day to buy them. The retail area covers approximately two-thirds of the warehouse; the rest is the back area where only employees and volunteers have access. The store has two entrances, and two further doors are located on each side of the building facing the two alleys on either side. One of these is used primarily for access for employees and for loading stuff for recycling into vans; the other door is the ‘heart’ of the facility, as this is where people drop off donations and where objects are received, sorted and priced. Interior view of the store 81" " The First Day On my first day of volunteering I entered the store and the manager Armun7 came and met me. It was a very casual introduction and we then went through the store to the back area through two curtains. Back there, employees and volunteers were working on sorting and pricing various objects. We went upstairs to a platform built under the roof of the warehouse. This is where Armun’s office is located, which he shares with Zack, and there is also one more desk which Karen and Scott use occasionally. We sat down and Armun started telling me about the organization. After a quick introduction to the history of the organization, he asked how long and how often I would like to work. Normally, he said, volunteers come in for a minimum of three hours at a time. He gave me a sheet with the basic rules and guidelines to sign and we toured the premises, where I met many of the employees and volunteers. The people who work there are of all ages, genders and ethnicities. The majority are native English-speakers and others are not. I met the head of the clothing department, Meeta, and two of the guys—Ryan and Kaito— who operate the back door and receive the donations. After having stamped my time sheet, I was then dropped off in the book department. """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 7"All"names"have"been"changed"throughout"" 82" " View of the book department Drew, who runs the book department, has been working there for 17 years and works with one employee and a couple of volunteers. One is Mike, a retired book dealer who, as Drew informed me, is very knowledgeable. It is obvious that Drew likes his job, though he also feels he is struggling with the large number of books that come in. He immediately set me to work reorganizing a section of the shelves in the store to make room for new arrivals. Keeping on top of the order of the books in the store is beginning to be too much for the usual volunteer who puts out most of the books, so a lot of the books have been put up in no particular order. In order to sell the books, it is important that they are displayed in 83" " alphabetical order, so I began reorganizing. Mike was very helpful in handing me books and answering questions, but after an hour he left since he is also a volunteer. For the next couple of hours I was busy with the books and did not really talk to any of the other employees. But I was constantly surrounded by customers standing or sitting between the shelves as they browsed through the various sections. These many sections include sections for fiction, non-fiction, oversized books, spirituality, LGBT, children’s books, foreign language books, books on how to become a writer, celebrity biographies, books on women’s issues, cookbooks and books on social movements. Some of the customers were carrying baskets full of books and I was wondering if they were the booksellers that Drew had already told me about. The sellers are important customers because they take large amounts of stuff—and not only from the book department. There were many other customers in the department and some spent a long time looking and reading before leaving with only one book. As I was sorting through the books and removing the ones that had been there more than six months (as marked by a certain colour price tag), I was struck by how many copies of the same book there were. After having finished off the section and completed more than my scheduled time, I said goodbye to Drew and met another volunteer, Pete, with whom I would probably be working later on. I arranged to come back on Friday to do another shift. Adjusting to the Organization On Friday I arrived just when the store opened and was greeted by Armun outside the store. We went through the store and I punched in my card. Drew was already there. I talked to Armun about the different departments and he was very willing to help me work through all of them. During the day I was busy organizing books, as I had been on Wednesday. Spending quite a lot of time going in and out 84" " of the back, I noticed how people just seemed to roam around the back area. They all seemed to be doing something, but it was all very relaxed. Zack, the guy I talked to when I worked there the first day, was there again today and we talked a little more. He has been working there for eight and a half years and is the operations manager. He said that about a quarter of the employees were long-term, while the others come and go. He told me that he and Armun worked together most of the time, but that Armun takes care of the financial stuff. I asked him whether it was a lot to keep on top of, and he replied that ‘the store has been here for 30 years, so it’s not like it runs itself, but… people know what is expected of them’. Later I met Adam, the other volunteer in the book department, a very kind man around 60 years old. Before I was introduced, Zack came by looking a little apprehensive and asked what I was working on. He wanted to make sure that Adam knew I was there and what I was doing. Because people volunteer it seems the managers are very cautious not to step on anybody’s toes. Drew had told me on Wednesday how he was not sure if Adam could keep up with it all anymore, but nobody seems to have talked to Adam about that problem. Adam seemed very in tune with the department and went around with a trolley putting up new books. Whenever customers asked him the whereabouts of an item he would guide them—as he guided me—directly to the item. Over the next five months I worked my way through the different departments, learning, observing, talking and recording. In the following part, I present a more detailed description of the trajectory that most of the objects follow through the process of valuation. 85" " The Beginning of the Trajectory Figure one, as shown on page 77, is a schematic but comprehensive rendering of the physical structure and layout of the CTS. On it I have depicted all the departments and sections of the whole operation, and in the following I will describe the route which the various objects follow through the warehouse. The trajectory followed by the flow of objects takes them through of a number of ‘stations’ from donation to resale or discarding. The objects arrive as donations at the back door at the bottom of the figure and move through the different back stage areas to the front of the store through the register and out the front door following a sale, or return to the back area where the objects leave the CTS as discards, again in the top right corner. On several occasions I witnessed how objects that had left the CTS once through the front door entered again from the back in order to pass through once more. 86" " Donor dropping of donations at the back door The first station in the trajectory from donation to resale is ‘the back door’. The back door is located on the right side of the building opening onto a small street where vehicles can pull up and people can unload donations directly onto the dock. Inside the door, which is more like a gate, the donations go through the primary stage of rough sorting. Next to the gate there is a sign informing donors of which items the organization accepts and what it does not accept. Most of the time, two employees are stationed here to assist donors and perform the initial sorting. The donors are relatively involved in this process, since they hand over the donations directly to the employees. Most of the time this meeting is quite 87" " uneventful, but there are instances where these meetings become more engaging. The first day I worked at the back door I experienced some of the more emotional aspects of handling used objects: This first donor drove up to the gate with his whole car filled with boxes. They all contained his late wife’s clothes and shoes. She had recently passed away and he was getting rid of all her clothes. ‘It’s hard,’ he said, a little emotionally, as he dropped the first box on the ramp. I helped him carry the boxes to the gate and they were all marked with a description of the content of the box: 17 pairs of new socks, trouser suits, dresses, etc. He had also printed out an inventory of all the objects and noted the prices of all the things. The total amount came to over 5,000 $. Karen handed him a receipt that he filled out with his name, date, the amount and, at the bottom of the receipt, the name of the charity he wanted the money raised to go to. He wanted to donate the money to a women’s shelter his wife had volunteered for from time to time. Most of the encounters are less emotional, although there are instances where people become annoyed when they cannot drop off certain things. In these cases the employee hands them a list of other charities in the neighbourhood that do accept those items. When I experienced people getting annoyed, handing them a list always helped. However, Karen told me of situations where people have become quite offensive. “But when you explain why, most people understand”, she told me. Some donated objects are rejected and some are discarded, but most are divided into boxes, bags and crates to be taken to the different departments of 94" " will buy, combined with a sense of ‘What would I pay?’, ‘How new or old is this?’ and ‘What do we usually charge?’. Ralph will mostly price stuff at ‘something-plus-25-cents’, or ‘something-plus-75-cents’. Prices like 8 $ are rare, he says, and so is 5.50. He is completely aware that this is a psychological matter, but still keeps to the ‘principle’. Having spent some time in the different departments, I cannot help wondering if the managers ever calculate how much time the employees spend looking things up and testing things—and all this for a product that ultimately brings in less than 5 $. The Clothing Department A dominant feature of this process from donation to sale is the number of individual practices necessary for bringing objects back onto the market. From the first sorting at the back door, the objects reach the different departments. In the clothing department the clothes undergo a thorough inspection before they are priced and remarketed. First the employees at the backdoor accept the clothes (no bedding or children’s clothing), then attach charity numbers and put the clothing in crates. These crates are then moved to the clothing department where they are sorted into usable items and recyclable items (or consigned to the 1$ bin). The initial inspection ensures there are no holes in the clothes and that they are clean. The usable items are stacked and the stacks are separated with a piece of tape indicating the different charity codes. Tags are then attached with the charity code on them and the clothes are divided into men’s and women’s. They are then moved again into subsections according to clothing types: jackets, trousers, tops, etc. From there they are priced individually and hung on hangers and brought to the shop floor. 95" " The first time I worked in the clothing department, Karen showed me how to price designer jeans. She looked at the brand, and from her knowledge of what people want she priced them accordingly. Between 16–23 dollars is the average price if there is nothing wrong with the jeans. If they are a more popular brand and style they will go higher; if there is a small stain or they gyshow too much sign of wear, they will go for a lower price. Clothing priced above 17 $ is put in a special section and chained to the rack to prevent theft. The 17 $ mark seem to be important in the pricing structure. The 1$ bin, meanwhile, is where all the stuff is placed that is too good to recycle but too worn or stained to go in the ordinary section. I also performed pricing in the clothing department myself. The first time I did this I valued women’s and men’s jackets. The jackets had already been sorted and tagged with the charity code. I performed the final run-through, assigned a price and put them on hangers. They are placed on a rack that only contains items ready to go out into the store. In order to assign a price I examined the state of each jacket and determined whether it was a ‘high end’ brand. If it was not I referred to a list Karen had given me specifying the price-range of different types of clothing. The list is divided into categories of styles and brands. Women’s tshirts are priced between 2.50–3 $, though a vintage or brand T-shirt, for example, can go for up to five dollars. Outdoor jackets are more expensive, as are items from brands like J Crew, GAP, Jones of New York and others. While I was working on the jackets, Meeta came over to see how I was doing. He told me that one of the advantages of having different people doing the sorting and pricing was that different people see different things. On this particular day I found a few vintage pieces among the items I was valuating that should go in a separate section, as well as a few things with stains or tears. Using different people to value assures that more precise pricing is carried out. 96" " The Ordinary and the Unique Although much of the work involves routine tasks for the employees, every day something new comes in that needs special attention and requires the employees to spend time conferring with colleagues or looking the object up online. These special items can be many things. On one occasion, an old—almost antique—pewter thermos was donated. It was brought in inside a box with a lot of other objects and was immediately identified as something that had to be looked up. A few days later, when the ‘look-up’ box was full, Karen went through it and looked up the thermos online. I did a similar search and found it on eBay priced at almost 100 $. Karen decided to set the price at 32 dollars and 50 cents, which reflects the special status of the object, but still a significantly lower price than it might fetch online. This reflects the overall pricing strategy of the CTS. The aim is to price objects so that they bring in as much money as possible for the charities, but also with the aim that they should be accessible. Accessibility is considered both in terms of regular customers who may not be able to afford expensive items, but also to cater for professional buyers. Professional buyers make up a relatively large portion of the customer base and they generate a lot of income, as well as taking quite a number of items out of the store and thereby making room for new objects. The price should be low enough for professional buyers to want to purchase the items and be able to sell them on with a profit. In each department, objects that are considered more valuable are placed behind the counter in special cabinets or secured with wires. Another case of a unique donation involved a significantly larger object—a set of decorated screens painted by a local artist. The man who runs the art and music department, Cliff, had looked up the artist and found several of the artist’s works for sale at relatively high prices. None were as large as this one, he told me, 97" " but the fact that the painting was done on screens might potentially impact the price. The screens were displayed behind the counter with a printout of information about the artist from a website. When the screens had still not been sold a few weeks later, Cliff began considering putting them in an auction instead, at which time he moved the screens back to the sorting area and started calling auction houses. When I returned a year later I asked Cliff what had happened to the screens. He told me that the auction houses did not know how to include them in an auction so they were initially put back in the store at a lower price. He told me he had continued to lower the price until they were sold. After working in all the different departments, my main area of interest quickly became the homeware department. The variety of objects there was astounding, although most of them were perfectly ordinary items. This variety made the sorting of these objects exciting, but also more demanding than in the other departments. Practically every object required special attention. I discovered that analytically this section could be used as a form of augmented representation of all the sections. Clothing, artwork, books and electronics all have their specificities, but there are many similarities. The homeware department demonstrates how issues of condition, style, usefulness and demand all play into the valuation of the object. Even ordinary items like mugs, T-shirts and paperbacks need individual inspection and consideration to ensure their condition is up to standard. With most objects the condition has to be perfect. At the same time, because the organization has a strong commitment to generating as much profit for the charities as possible, the inspection and consideration of each object is taken very seriously. Everything that is donated is valued. One day when I was working at the back door with Scott pricing objects, I came across some office supplies that were left at the bottom of a 98" " box: some pins, a roll of tape, some post-its, pens, etc. I asked Scott if he ever priced stuff at less than fifty cents, because I had just priced a number of items slightly bigger and more attractive than these at fifty cents. He told me they did not and said I should ‘bundle them together’. Bundling means finding a way to ensure the items stay together, either by securing them with tape or using one of the various sized bags they keep for the same reason. I made bundles of ten pens and an eraser for two dollars, or three post-it blocks, or three packets of staples + five pens. I then taped up the bags, priced them and put them in ‘office supplies’ in the homeware section of the store. As an expression of the thrifty approach adopted in the CTS, investing some time ensures the leftover objects become marketable. Over the six months I worked in the warehouse I heard again and again the statement that ‘we just want the stuff to sell’. No one prices objects in the expectation that the items will hang around until the right buyer (maybe) turns up: the objects must move. This seems to be an underlying principle, just like the principle that the organization will try to raise as much money as possible from the donations they receive. In all departments the objects are tagged with different coloured tags to make it easier to identify how long the object has been on display in the store. This information is used when employees ‘pull’ objects from the store after they have failed to sell within a certain amount of time. The objects are then either reduced in price, which requires a new tag, or discarded, in which case they end up in boxes or bags and are placed at the back entrance. These bags and boxes are then collected by companies that either resell or recycle them in various ways. 99" " In the Store Having worked my way through the back area, I was interested in working at the register as well. The counter area of the store is located at the north end of the store, just opposite the entrance. When customers enter, they pass by the counter where large bags are checked in. The counter is very long, about five meters, and holds three registers and an area with glass display cases. These cases contain jewellery: earrings and bracelets in baskets, watches, smaller vintage items like silver spoons, baseball cards and metal lighters. They also contain items that need to be handled carefully, such as scissors and carving-knives. On top of the glass cases is another display case with a lid that opens, which is used to display silver or gold jewellery. On the last part of the counter, connecting the front to the wall, there is also another glass case where cameras, camera lenses, mobile phones and other more expensive electronic equipment are placed. All the items in the case are only taken out at the request of customers. Usually only two of the registers are manned, and during less busy hours the persons operating the registers will also be responsible for checking in bags and taking out items from the cases. If the store is busy there is an extra person operating the last register and checking in bags. At peak hours a fourth person will be there, helping out, checking bags, taking out items and keeping the back tidy. The fourth person will also answer calls on the intercom or call people out from the back if a customer needs help in the furniture department or wants to try on an item of clothing displayed on one of the mannequins in the window. The person will also call for assistance if a customer wants to try on leather or designer clothes, as these are secured by wires to avoid theft. At very busy times, up to three extra people are working in that area. 100" " Behind the counter is also kept a ‘take back’ basket. This is where the people at the registers will place items that customers have brought to the counter for purchase but have decided against, or things they just brought up to ask about. Normally this basket is emptied out the following morning, but if it is a particularly busy day someone might be called out to empty the basket during the day. Helping customers with the items at the counter allowed me to observe another aspect of handling used goods that is also time-consuming. When someone asks to see a camera, you take the cameras out and place them on the counter. Most of the time the customer wants to see several cameras in order to be able to decide and compare. This is a lengthy operation mostly because the customers cannot test the cameras so they have to examine them closely to check for flaws. Some of the digital cameras come with chargers, but this also takes time due to the need to plug them in, replace the battery and turn on the camera. The same goes for phones. In that case, customers can check if the phones turn on properly, but not if they actually work with a plan. A lot of the customers buying electronics are return customers who know the drill. One of the regular customers comes in often and looks up the online value of the cameras on his phone. He hangs out in a corner, typing in style numbers and marks on his phone, looking to see if he can make a profit on any of the items. A similar process is involved when someone asks for the basket of bracelets. Some customers will go through them only cursorily, probably deterred by the number of bracelets in the baskets. Some, however, spend up to 15 minutes going through them meticulously, picking up every single bracelet for inspection. Some of the customers who do this are return customers, while some of them are 101" " dealers seeking vintage items for resale. All the while, an employee keeps an eye on the baskets. Although I did not operate the registers during the five-month period I worked at CTS, I did observe the selling process. When a customer wants to buy something, the employee inspects the price-tag which has the price and the department number printed on it. The different departments have different codes and the clothes have separate subdivisions that are also expressed in numbers. The price-tag also has a charity number, referring to the particular charity the donor of the item has decided to support. This number is translated into the name of the charity on the receipt given to the customer. By hanging out near the register I was able to observe the last stage of the trajectory of the objects as they leave the CTS. Most of them go out without any interference, but some, especially the more expensive items, are reduced in price if they are to be sold to a returning customer or if a customer buys more things at once. One day, for example, Armun gave a 25 % reduction on a clock he sold to a customer who was also buying two speakers. Armun told me he gave the reduction because the customer was going to buy the speakers and because the clock had been sitting in the store for three weeks. In some cases the objects only leave the store temporarily. Some of them return because people no longer have any use for them and decide to re-recycle, while others return because some of the customers shop in the store as a form of hobby. These customers spend a long time browsing for things they want. They buy objects, sometimes every day, and then re-donate them. Sometimes the stuff comes back with the price tag on it showing that it was bought earlier that same month. 102" " Zooming in on the Practices of Valuation in Action Training and working in the different departments gave me an embodied understanding of what valuations entail and how formal indicators and tacit subjective knowledge, as well as sensations, emotions and energy levels, all play a part in the process. Most of my observations were grounded in these experiences, but I also used additional tools and methods to clarify how my experiences related to those of other more experienced sorters. Interviews and conversations were the main tools employed, but I also conducted sessions of joint interviews during the sorting of individual objects as they were donated. I have described the methodological considerations in a previous chapter, but here I want to zoom in on the content of the interview sessions to describe in detail what valuations involve. The following is a sample of the process: Zack, Scott and I sat down in the homeware department and looked at the box in front of us. The first object Scott took out of the box was an Arabiclooking metal teapot. It had a plastic ring round the top of the lid, which Scott removed to make it look more attractive. He said it didn’t really affect the price whether this ring was on or off, but he removed it anyway. Zack agreed on the price and Scott put a pink price tag on the teapot indicating the monthly colour code and stamped with the price and a charity code, in this case 176, which indicates that the object has been donated to raise money to Safehouse, a local charity dedicated to providing housing to homeless women who have been involved in prostitution. The second object was a handmade wooden candleholder. It was made of real wood, which Zack noted was important, and it had a ‘mid-century 103" " modern’ look to it, although it was not marked. Scott and Zack both considered it special and so the final price was set at 4.25 $. Next were four martini glasses which Scott and Zack considered to be quite nice but nothing exceptional. They were priced at 2.25 $. Right after, Scott pulled out another set of martini glasses. They were longer than the first four and generated some debate back and forth, since Zack thought they should be priced the same as the first four glasses while Scott insisted that they should be priced higher because they were longer and more attractive. In the end Scott won the argument and they were priced at three dollars each. We went through a number of other objects, amongst which was a set of French glass plates. According to Scott they were valuable, but since they were scratched he did not want to put a high price on them. Zack, on the other hand, would not have them put in the store at all and discarded them immediately because of their condition. 110" " spider to inform the employees about the different kinds of spiders they might encounter amongst the objects in the boxes of donations and which spiders they need to beware of. In the time I spent sorting I encountered numerous spiders, but luckily never a black widow. Spiders are not the only type of insect the CTS are looking out for. One of the reasons they do not accept bedding is the potential risk of bedbug infections. Just before I started working there they had a bedbug ‘scare’ in the furniture department, though this turned out to be a false alarm. All soft furniture is checked meticulously before being allowed to enter the store, and if the employees handling the piece of furniture are in any doubt, the object is rejected. On one of the walls in the back area is a large poster carrying information about bedbugs, alerting people to the dangers of bedbugs and reminding people to be on the lookout. The most common pollution that employees encounter, however, is dirt, including soil, dust, grit, food stains, etc. In the book department, mould and mildew are the biggest issues. Since people often leave their discards in carports or cellars, many of the boxes have attracted moisture, which affects the books. Some employees wear gloves, at least for some jobs, though not for the majority of jobs since gloves impede your ability to feel the object. Most of the employees never complained about the issue of dirt, and most of them did not consider it a major problem. The issue was addressed by some employees indirectly, however, in terms of their workwear. Employees have to wear clothes they do not mind getting dirty. Ana described the ‘risk’ that the employees put themselves at indirectly as we were talking one day about customers and reviews of the store online on sites such as Yelp. She told me she had read someone saying: ‘all the hipsters working at the CTS get all the good stuff’. She disagreed and said that many people she knows find really good stuff in the store, but added: ‘I don’t 111" " think people realise how much we have to sort through, like crap and mould—we deserve to get some good stuff once in a while!’ 112" " 113" " Chapter 3: Values and Valuations How is Value Created in Second-hand Markets? In this chapter I analyse my ethnographic findings based on contemporary literature about values and valuations in material culture to address the question of how value is created in second-hand markets. Reaching back through the anthropological literature on commodities and gift economies, I build a framework around David Graeber’s formulation of a social, relational concept of value that puts human action at the centre. In order to structure the analysis, I take Mary Douglas’s seminal work on categorization as a starting point and argue that practices of valuation constitute a process of transformation. To support the analysis, I introduce theoretical concepts from ethnographic literature on values, second-hand markets and valuations. In some instances I compare my observations with related studies to address empirical as well as theoretical points. The Value of Things: Gifts and Commodities Values, as a set of guiding beliefs as well as a measure of worth, are a complex subject to study. The word itself describes a number of things: what is ultimately good; the degree of desirability in objects; and, in a linguistic sense, ‘meaningful difference’ (Graeber 2001). Even if one is more specifically interested in the value of things, different levels of values interact. There are symbolic, social, ethical and economic values—and even objects that are traded, i.e., commodities, carry more than one type of value. In classical economic theory, 114" " Marx and others have argued that the exchange value of a commodity is measured by the labour spent on producing that commodity. Exchange value is not the only type of value a commodity has: as Marx notes, commodities ‘are only commodities because they have a dual nature, because they are at the same time objects of utility and bearers of value’ (1976 [1867]: 138). Utility in itself constitutes a type of value in objects or commodities, but other, cultural values are also at play. Brian Moeran has argued that values are never inherent and that it is human interactions which define what values are at stake and how they are measured (2009). He identifies a number of different values and argues that together they constitute something that can be exchanged into economic value. It becomes evident that what in fact has the most influence on value, and ultimately the prizing of most things and commodities, are social, cultural values. For example, it is the reputation of a designer that determines how their designs are prized (and valued for that matter). Commodities continue to be valuable even after being exchanged, and through use they acquire new value as their initial economic value diminishes. Through use, things are re-appropriated, which can also have an effect on their value. Moeran describes how things may have an intentional use or designated function but may in practice often be used for other purposes for shorter or longer periods of time. Putting a book under the leg of a table that is unstable or arranging flowers in water pitchers both constitute diversions from the intended uses of the objects. In the use phase, the use value of an object is also a vital aspect of its value, since use or function can be many things. As Moeran (2009) points out, besides practical functions the function of an object can also be to be looked at. An object can have a variety of functions and uses and may have several functions at the same time. Some of these functions may even be 115" " conflicting. A sock is not merely for putting on the foot or for hanging from the mantelpiece at Christmas; the function of a sock is also to express the stylistic choice of the owner, to give work to a number of people in factories and in retail. Some of the functions of an object may be considered as types of value rather than as functions per se. The relationship between an object and the people who produced it is not the first thing that springs to mind when you think about the use of an object; but disregarding this relationship as a use property of an object is too simplistic. For example, many socks never make it to the foot or the mantelpiece but are discarded, either by dissatisfied receivers of Christmas presents or in storage clear-outs. Even those instances do not remove all functions from the objects, since they may be picked up by second-hand dealers, donated to charity or sold to recyclers who shred them to stuff sofas. When objects move from first- to second-hand markets, their use affects their value in even more ways. Historically, the relationship between used things and economic value has been described as devaluation as a result of age. Except within the budding trade in antique objects from the 19th century onwards, only recently have old things been considered valuable to an extent that the value of certain old objects surpasses that of new counterparts.9 In most cases, old things are reused for the same functions as they were intended. However, this is only true according to a limited understanding of function, for the stylistic function of the object has changed, and its lifestyle function is likely to have changed too. Although Williams and Paddock remind us that compartmentalizing consumer motivation is simplistic, the social and emotional attachment to used goods can be very different for different users (2003). If economic constraints are the primary reason for """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 9"The"most"striking"example"of"this"is"perhaps"the"exorbitant"auction"prices"furniture"by"certain"designers"reach."In" most"cases"vintage"pieces"become"far"more"expensive"than"a"similar"piece"of"furniture"produced"today."" 116" " purchasing old things, the joy of acquiring may be reduced by a product’s being in less than mint condition. On the other hand, if purchasing old things represents a lifestyle choice, the used object may immediately be imbued with much more emotional value. These feelings will often differ from those of the first owner, giving the object a whole new function in the life of the new owner. The question is whether this constitutes a re-appropriation, since the function has changed, and therefore alters the functional value of the object even if it is used according to its original conception? Arguing whether stylistic or saleability constitutes a functional value or an appreciative value may be a moot point. However, it points to the difficulty of distinguishing categories of values, emotions or motivations when dealing with things and cultures in motion. In second-hand markets use constitutes value both as utility, as an aesthetic expression and as a social distinction. The Marxist Tradition Although use value is not the same as the value of used things, use as a type of value in itself would seem an important starting point for an exploration of the value of second-hand objects. A theory of use value has been a major contribution of Marxist economics that has influenced anthropological value theory throughout the last century. In Ricardo’s understanding of value, which to a large extent underpins Marxian economics, the use value of a commodity is determined separately from the exchange value (Milios & Economakis 2002). This distinction has to some degree persisted, but the specific circumstances in second-hand markets question whether this relationship absolute. Are there no instances in which use value becomes a prominent component of exchange value? In a simple sense, use value may be the last option for people to realize some kind of exchange value from a commodity. Even if the commodity is not of great quality, 117" " or if it does not have great symbolic value in terms of branding or heritage, at least if it is useful it may be exchanged for a small amount of money. In other cases, use can become an aesthetic value, as with certain antiques, carpets, etc., and so feeds into the symbolic value of an object or commodity. McCracken has written extensively, for example, on the value of patina (1988). In conventional understanding, however, use is still more likely to have a negative effect on the value of an object. In the Marxist understanding of value, labour provides the common property by which value can be measured (Milios & Economakis 2002: 8pp). How, then, is the value of used goods valued? Is the value the same as in the first exchange? Does the value remain unaltered although the buyer has already exchanged the labour value for money? Or is the value calculated on the basis of the labour expended in handling the goods in collection and sorting? In that case, the very sorting process itself creates the value of the object, not by assigning use, aesthetic and ethical values to the object but by the very act itself. The purpose of this chapter is not to present a Marxist analysis of second-hand exchange, and presenting the labour theory of value as a simple calculation of time spent would not do the theory justice. The point here is that many concepts of commodity value focus on production, and acquisition as the determining events. By doing so, the value of used and second-hand objects becomes difficult to assess. By defining value as inherent and determined by the amount of labour invested, the act of producing becomes fetishized. As an expression of wider cultural bias towards newness, production as the formative value-creating event may partly account for the widespread cultural resistance to used goods that is and has been predominant 118" " in many parts of the world.10 Conceptually, however, it also encourages a view of the process of sorting as a value-creating event—even as an act of production. From a Marxist perspective, there is an ethical commitment to human creative powers (Slater 1997: 3), and through the understanding of labour as the measure of exchange value, the value of used things materializes in front of our eyes. By picking up a certain object, scrutinizing it for flaws, determining colour, assessing size and condition and placing it in a certain category, the value ‘becomes’ in that moment. But the very act or labour of valuating lays bare the contextual nature of value. The labour itself would not exist if not to perform this determination. Determining values, or at least how value is created in a social setting, requires a wider understanding of the different ways in which the values and practices involved in establishing that value function. Economic assessment is not the only practice that is involved in valuations, and the practices are embedded in a socio-cultural context. In order to understand this context, the social value of objects must be scrutinized as well. Gifting Commodities The study of values and exchange in material culture has historically described the object of value as either a commodity or as a gift. This distinction divides the properties of an object and its value between economic market-based exchanges on the one hand, and relational, social exchanges on the other. Anthropologists have been occupied mainly with gift economies and have discussed the social value of highly unique objects drawing on Marcel Mauss’s accounts of Melanesian exchange relations (2000 [1990]). In anthropological """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 10"Although"an"extensive"historical"account"is"beyond"the"scope"of"this"thesis,"the"distinction"between"old"and"new" as"a"cultural"construction"adds"depth"to"the"conceptualization"of"the"value"of"secondPhand"objects." 119" " theory this distinction was traditionally part and parcel of a division between different types of societies, but with the development of contemporary anthropology the rigidity of the division has been questioned by a number of scholars (e.g., Miller 2000, 2001; Myers 2001, Herrmann 1997). One of the most influential attempts to bridge this division is found in Appadurai’s introduction to The Social Life of Things (1986), where he describes how things can move between different regimes of value along the trajectory of their social lives. In the same volume, Kopytoff (1986) describes how ‘biographies of things’ may help shed light on their transient nature. Miller (2000) criticizes the distinction from a slightly different angle, arguing that the dualism between the market and contextualized exchange (gifting) is nonsensical. All exchanges are contextualized; however, this does not only mean that markets are framed by culture but that markets also produce culture (2000: 78–79). Recently, David Graeber (2001) has offered a theory of values by reaching back through the Maussian tradition and arguing that value, as a cultural, relational phenomenon, is utterly social in both market and gift economies. In an attempt to create a new path away from a widespread economic rationality, Graeber argues that what people value are social relations, not the objects themselves. In doing so he presents a concept of value that resists fetishizing the object, which may have great consequences for the study of valuation in cultural production. Second-hand objects make visible the composite nature of objects as giftcommodities. Appadurai’s concept of the social life of things is sensitive to the instability of commodity states. Pursuing the complexity in the exchange of objects, Annette Wiener has expanded on the inalienable nature of certain objects (1992), while Fred Myers and Webb Keane have explored the complexity of the emotional and cultural attachments that determine the inalienability of all objects 126" " employees assess the objects and how these criteria are mutually exclusive in some cases and collaborate in others. Leading to the second part of the analysis, I demonstrate how disorder and ambiguity, a condition of the organizational form, creates obstacles and opportunities for value throughout the structure and is bound to the materiality of the objects. 127" " Categories of Value: Analysing the Practices of Valuation Practices are the main focus of this project. Attention to what people do has guided the choice of methods and shaped the theoretical framework. The following analysis is also structured around practices focusing on routinized aspects of valuations: bodily activities, forms of mental activities, or sensemaking, as well as different forms of knowledge. An important aspect of the practice approach defined by Reckwitz (2002), and the specific focus of this study, is the role of things and their use in practices. Therefore I have devoted a separate chapter to the analysis of objects and their role in valuations, which follows after this chapter. Although a defining feature of practices is the interconnectedness of activities, knowledge and objects, the separation only serves to provide clarity in the analysis. As the theoretical framework demonstrates, value is a social phenomenon and therefore I begin with an analysis of activities, sense-making and the knowledge that goes into practices of valuation at the level of social organization. Matter out of Place In order to perform an analysis of the trajectory from donation to resale, an understanding of the structure is important. Following Douglas, making sense of second-hand objects is mainly a matter of categorization. Dirt is matter out of place; thus categories produce dirt. As Botticello has described, by turning the 128" " process around and categorizing dirt or discards, the sorting process creates order and the potential for value (2012). Before the sorting begins, the piles of donations are unrecognizable as commodities and carry very little value. In this study I follow a similar approach, examining the flow of objects through the organization and beyond. The initial analysis I will present here carries the structural approach further to describe the trajectory as a transformation through categorization. Categorization as a practice creates a structure through the organization. This structure is relatively stationary since the different employees inhabit different stations throughout the organization. The mobility is in the objects. The trajectories that the objects follow highlight the instability in the lives of things. And in the CTS there are several possible trajectories. Appadurai (1986) describes a flow of objects, and in the CTS this visualizes the way objects move. A constant flow of objects pass through the organization, and at intervals the flow is structured by categorization practices. I use the term trajectory to indicate an intention in the projected route the organization sets out for the objects. By establishing trajectories the organization attempts to manage the constant flow. The particular interference the structure imposes on the flow are the actions that transform the discards into commodities. As Kopytoff (1986) describes, writing biographies of things can help make sense of the instances where things change states. The analysis I present here offers an augmented view of this event in ‘the life of things’ where the objects change from one state to another. What happens inside the CTS is an event with several possible outcomes. As Graeber, Miller and others note, the dichotomy between gift and commodity as completely separate states is too simple. In the CTS the objects arrive as gifts in one sense, as they are donated to charity, but they are also potential commodities. Otherwise the 129" " CTS would not accept them. They are also potential rubbish, since nobody knows if the CTS can make money on the donations. Rubbish in Disorder Thompson describes the rubbish state as a ‘region of flexibility’ (Parsons 2008: 390) which allows for different outcomes. The employees enforce a structure that aims to categorize the rubbish and turn it into valuable objects. The rubbish state at this point is the dominant one from which the donations can become commodities that can facilitate the original gift of the donor. In the way Thompson describes rubbish he is very clear about the possible transfers that can happen. Objects in the transient state can turn into rubbish in order to become durable. In Thompson’s view, transfers occur between transient, rubbish and durable states in that order. Objects do not move from durable to transient or from rubbish to transient. He addresses very specific types of objects, and in a wider use Flow"of"things:"Events"in"which"objects"change"state"from"discards"to"commodities" Back"door" Discards"in"disorder" Rubbish"value"" Departments" Valuation"through" categorization" transfer"" Store" Categorized" commodities" Transient/durable" value"" Value through categorization in second-hand markets 130" " the states need qualification to be applicable. The CTS mainly handles objects that Thompson would define as transient, namely household goods. Therefore the durable state in this analysis includes objects that have been reinstated as commodities, whether durable or transient. In the CTS the categories are less defined and some objects are donated as transient and continue as transient even after the valuations. Also, durable objects such as artworks and antiques are donated because of their value even though they go through a rubbish state. I will return to more specific examples of how these transfers happen, but the ambiguity has led me to describe the donations as discards instead of rubbish. I use the term discards because it can refer to objects that are considered rubbish as well as objects that are considered valuable but have been discarded by their previous owner anyway. Either way, the donations arrive because they have been discarded and are physically and categorically in disorder. The disorder, or being out of place in Douglas’ terms, is a potentially powerful state and, as I will demonstrate later, preserving or allowing some degree of disorder is valuable. However, the primary action which the donations activate is categorization through structure. From Disorder to Structure The back door, which forms the initial station in the flow, constitutes a liminal space for the donations within which their value is highly volatile. They have been stripped of their former identity and have yet to be assigned a new one. First they are deemed suited or unsuited to enter the organization. Some are refused access, either on formal or specific grounds. The large sign at the back door denoting the acceptance policy of the organization provides formal indicators to which the employees can refer, but in some cases they have to make ad hoc decisions about condition, state or spatial limitations. The donations go through the first crucial stage of categorization at this point, from discard to potential 131" " commodities. The employees, literally the gatekeepers of the process, make swift but significant decisions about the suitability of the donations, albeit at a superficial level at this point. Most donations arrive in bags, boxes or crates, and the decision is made partly on trust, asking the donor what the donation includes, and partly on quick visual estimates. The process here is a negotiation of a number of variables: accepting as many good items as possible (to raise as much money as possible); not accepting objects that cannot be sold and need to be recycled without having been marketed first; and not spending too much time deliberating over the decision to accept the objects or not. The types of objects that are donated are incredibly varied and they often arrive jumbled together in a box or a bag. The disorder is a matter of categorization: it is still unclear what objects are in the box and to which department they belong. Disorder is therefore also a matter of value, as any number of the objects may be valuable or worthless. The primary task of the employees is to make sense of this disorder through practices of categorization. The systematization is clearly expressed in the structuring of the work tasks involved in sorting and remarketing the objects. The clear lines of operation ensure this structure and help employees make fast and accurate judgements about the objects. The pricing strategy also expresses the drive to systematization. In the clothing department, the strategy is supported by written descriptions of different types of clothing, with notes on specific brands and a suggested price range for the different types and qualities. Unlike clothing, where a high degree of categorization is possible, other departments like ‘art and music’ and ‘homeware’ are not subject to the same simple categories. In these sections the valuation is based mainly on experience and the objects’ relationships to other similar objects become even more important. Everyday products like cups or coffee pots in one section and paperback books in another are often valued in 132" " relation to other objects: e.g., this cup is more interesting than that one, or this coffee pot is bigger than that one. The categorization is first and foremost a practice through interconnected bodily and mental activities involving different forms of knowledge as well as various objects. The categorization is a way of making sense of the donations and turning them into commodities. Practices of Valuation Repetition is crucial to valuation as to other practices. As ‘a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, things and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge,’ (Reckwitz, 2002: 249–50) practices are at once individual and collective. The structure I have described in the previous chapter rests solely on the systems of routinized actions that the employees and managers perform. These actions organize objects and social relations and are in themselves organized. The different practices are also interconnected. Single practices have no meaningful effect on the overall system unless they are aligned with other practices and/or reiterate other meaningful practices. Practices are always unique and at the same time a repetition of previous recognizable practices. As a single action or even a set of actions, a valuation is not rooted in a wider structure of meaning. Through the interconnectedness of the organization, the individual and the social context, valuations are stabilized. In valuation practices this is an important point: single actions do not produce value; practices, as routinized and socially accepted actions, do produce value. Valuation, the process central to organizations that operate in second-hand markets, has different 133" " features that suggest it belongs to a number of different types of practices. Thompson describes the process of moving objects from one state to another as a transfer (1979). He focuses on structural processes, but as the transfers in the CTS involve a number of practices and actions I expand the term and describe them as a transformation instead. The objects move as part of an active engagement and the categorizations make the objects recognizable as commodities. In that sense, the term transformation better indicates the activities and the change that is involved. The Powers of Transformation One day when I was working at the back door accepting donations and pricing homeware, one of the regular donors pulled up. Ryan obviously knew him from before and I later found out that most of the employees knew him too. He pulled up in his truck and opened the trunk. He took out five boxes and put them on the dock. They were full of assorted knick-knacks, cups, glasses, plates, a few ceramic vases and other household items, all of which the CTS accepts. ‘This is for the bird sanctuary,’ he said, ‘as usual’. Ryan started putting tags with the charity code on the boxes and pulled the boxes over to the back where the sorting area is while I asked the guy about the donation. He has been coming to the CTS for a long time donating stuff, but also occasionally buying. He has been involved in the bird sanctuary for a long time and is very passionate about the work they do. ‘I go to a lot of flea markets and estate sales and buy stuff. A lot of boxes like these. In most cases there are a few items of real value in them, so I sell those to cover the cost of the whole box, and then I donate the rest to the CTS. They are able to sell the items and make money out of them to donate to the sanctuary.’ 134" " This example demonstrates how the donor is able to take advantage of the transformative powers of the CTS to generate money for the bird sanctuary. Any objects that he does not believe he can generate a profit on as an individual he turns over to the organization to let them do so. The routinized practices of the organization enable him to benefit from the process. The CTS has gained authority over a long period of time amongst the donors and customers, who trust the organization to perform the task of turning donations into commodities to be sold for profit for charities. Utilizing the powers of the organization to turn discards into commodities also indicates that, while the overall structure from disorder to categorization creates the main value trajectory, the relationship between the analytical categories is fluid. Thompson argues that objects need to pass through the rubbish state to regain value in second-hand markets, but the example above questions whether this is the only path the objects take. The donor is perfectly aware of the donations’ potential value and does not consider them rubbish. Nor does the CTS consider them rubbish; if they did so, the donations would be refused at the backdoor. The former owner from whom the donor got the objects may have considered them rubbish; but, as the donor told me, in most cases he pays for the boxes of objects. This either means that the objects can pass from transient to transient through the CTS without ever being considered rubbish or that rubbish needs to be defined differently. Broadening the definition of the state of ‘rubbish’ by describing it as ‘discard’ makes room for a larger variety of flows, but in this particular case the objects may not even have been discarded: the former owner considered them valuable enough to demand money for them and the donor agreed to pay. Even though he only paid for the objects in the boxes he could sell, he still considered the rest valuable enough to donate to raise money for charity. And since the employees at the backdoor accepted the objects, they also must have considered them valuable. It thus seems the objects were never 135" " considered rubbish. In the larger flow, as Appadurai describes it, this does not present any real disruption: no transformation takes place and the objects simply remain in a commodity state. Thompson’s theory, however, does not provide the necessary tools to account for the specific processes. Douglas and Denegri-Knott & Parsons describe how the disorder that exists prior to categorization is also a space of possibilities. Disorder is not the same as rubbish, but it carries similar traits because the donations as a whole are potential rubbish until they are categorized. The practice of categorizing an object is transformative in that objects are transformed from discard to commodities through valuation. The transformation is unstable in the sense that objects can easily return to the discard state, but it is permanent in that the objects are now second-hand objects. Stability in Practice: Activities and Knowledge Although there is no formal training programme at the CTS, the important information and knowledge involved in valuations is passed on through verbal and written communication, and even more explicitly through negotiations and discussions. As Armun and the other managers told me repeatedly, they strive for uniformity and structure in pricing and in quality. This means informing the employees of what sells and what does not; but the communication of common measures mostly happens implicitly through routinized daily activities. The department managers also operate the register at some point during the day, which allows them to see what customers buy, and in the different departments managers and employees develop systems together. In some cases they write them down for reference. Uniformity is achieved through these negotiations, but it is always a question of overall uniformity. In individual practices, uniformity is hard to 142" " ‘Some days ago a Chinese silver bucket was donated, which one of the managers looked up online. They found a similar one which was antique, and the bucket was put in the shop for 350 $ because it was antique, Chinese and made of silver. Then yesterday a customer who was interested in the bucket told Armun that it was not made out of pure silver. Cliff decided to remove the bucket from the store to look for a new price, but he has not been able to find any so far.’ Normally the employee will not let a customer interfere with the pricing directly because they will only comment on the price in order to get something cheaper and the employer needs to know that they are being sincere. In this case, Cliff knew the customer and believed he was telling the truth. This is another example of how the authority of the organization and its ability to transform objects can be challenged; but because of the trust that the managers have in certain customers and buyers they are able to accommodate for adjustments based on the discussions they have. Donors also regularly question the organization’s authority. Some donors are concerned with what percentage of the sales are donated and others question the professionalism of the employees. Armun told me about a few instances in which donors, who also shop in the store, have approached him with questions or complaints. In some cases the complaint has to do with the price of a certain item. He described how a donor found an object in the store that she had donated and was disappointed by the price the organization had put on her donation. In other cases, donors discover that the object has been tagged with a charity code different to the one they named to the employee who received the donation. In all of these cases, Armun or another manager will engage in a conversation with the customer, trying to explain the pricing strategies and 143" " how in a large organization some objects will inevitably end up being tagged incorrectly, but that overall they take tagging very seriously.11 These negotiations between insiders and outsiders make the categorization—the way of making sense of the objects—apparent and make visible the situated nature of the practices that are performed. Categorization is localized through individual performances of routinized practices and these are influenced by external knowledge. Categorizing Uniqueness Other studies have also shown how systems and categories help organizations create hierarchies of worth and re-establish discarded objects as valuable (Botticello 2012, Gregson et al. 2010). Systematization is carried out through practices of categorization as an investment of energy and concern that enables employees to make sense of seemingly amorphous piles of discard. In my research I found the same striving for structure to be absolutely central—and the examples I have described above testify to this centrality. No matter how difficult an object is to categorize, employees will attempt to do so by performing ad hoc actions intended to enable the objects to be considered part of a category. In some cases, however, an object may be so difficult to categorize that the employee will give up and throw it away—and this may happen every day due to the sheer number of objects that pass through the CTS. The employee may also invent a new category, or adjust existing categories, to fit the new object. No matter how well the objects are categorized, some of them challenge the structures that the employees tirelessly seek to enforce. At any given time, a box """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 11"As a volunteer, I quickly became aware of the organization’s determination and commitment to getting the tagging right. The employees who were instructing me showed me how tagging with charity codes was the first thing to be done. If there are many individual items, they told me, you either put them in a box and tag the box or you tag all of the items individually." 144" " containing cups, paperclips, three pens, a pair of jeans and five books may be donated, activating the process in which the employees begin organizing the different objects. Almost every donation raises new questions and requires slight adaptations to the system. The individuality of the objects means that each category of the systematization needs to be broad. At the same time, knowing exactly where things go and why is important in order to perform a valuation and pricing of the object that balances the different dimensions described above. While the individuality of each object is crucial to their transformation into valuable commodities, at the same time it hinders a seamless flow from discard to commodity. I have described the transformation as a movement from disorder— matter out of place—into commodities through meaningful structures and categories. On one level, therefore, a semiotic, structuralist level, the objects are transformed into valuable commodities; while on another level the individual nature of the objects resists this structure and changes the categories. Don Slater (2014) argues that ambiguity is not a property of objects but of classification and practices, and goes on to outline a number of ways in which ambiguity affects objects in markets and in consumption. Along the lines of Douglas’s argument, Slater describes the potentiality of ambiguity as both a risk and an opportunity. Being uncategorizable is a potential taboo, but also a possibility for change. In the sorting of second-hand objects, uncategorizable objects are certainly potent and their position can result in a higher value. It may also mean that the object is discarded or disappears in the store because it does not sit comfortably among other similar objects. Adjusting categories is one of the clearest expressions of the performative nature of the valuation structure. At any moment in time, the CTS will operate with a specific number of more or less defined categories that appear stable to the 145" " employees and the customers. Over time, however, these categories change: new categories are invented and old ones are abandoned to fit the demands of the customers or the objects. Some of them are formal categories that are written down and enforced throughout the sorting process. Karen told me about how children’s wear had been a category for period of time, but had later been abandoned, to the point where the CTS no longer accepts children’s clothes. This category was removed due to the amount of work it took to keep that section of the store clear. According to Karen, customers shopping for children’s clothes would often take all the clothes off the hangers and just leave them on the floor. An executive decision was thus made to stop offering this type of products altogether. Other categories are removed or established more unnoticeably based on the donations that come in. Sometimes there are a lot of similar items, or a lot of things that can be grouped together. During the time I worked in the CTS, crystal glassware was one particular section that appeared and disappeared regularly. At other times there were a lot of ceramic items. So the different sections grow or diminish or even disappear over time to make place for something else. The book department provided another example. In July a large number of auction catalogues were donated, and hundreds more were donated over the next two months. Drew told me that they came from a man who used to own a second-hand book store but had been forced to close the store because of the rising rent. This story was similar to several I heard during the eight months I spent in San Francisco. When the auction catalogues started coming in, we made a clear section in the book department devoted to them so that all the employees and volunteers working in the book department would know where to put them. This also helped the customers interested in buying the catalogues to locate them in the store. Some days after as I was putting out objects in the homeware section, a customer approached me asking about the catalogues, wondering if we would be 146" " putting out more of them. I had seen him before and he told me he had been coming several times a day to look for more catalogues and that he had already bought more than a hundred. The temporary categories are an efficient means of creating order even of more specialized objects. As Botticello (2012) notes, donations produce categories that reclassify objects. Creating categories is a way of creating meaning and becomes a way of establishing relations between employees (who now know where to put things) and customers (who now know where to find them). In the CTS it is clearly visible how the systematisation and categorization of the objects along the trajectory through the process is crucial for the value creation. Each category relates the objects to other similar or comparable objects and to other external contexts. It also became clear to me how categorization is disrupted by the contingency of objects and their materiality. The fact that nobody knows what or how much will be donated also disturbs the categories. And the uncertainty of what the donations will include means that there has to be a certain amount of openness. However, for the individual doing the job of putting things out on the shelves, the sections are very helpful since they help you go through the cases quickly. In the book department, for example, there were many sub-sections, and as I got familiar with the different sections I felt a certain sense of satisfaction every time I was able to find the right spot for a book. After having done this for a while, I was able to find the right place for almost everything. The objects and the contingency in the donations and their material qualities affect the categorization, as do individual performances of practices. 147" " Customers and Disorder Even though the categories establish relations between the organization and the customers, the customers do not always respect or understand the structure. Every day, things get moved around in the store and left on racks, on furniture or on the floor. Employees are constantly putting clothes back on hangers and moving objects back to the right department. At the end of each day, the primary task before leaving the warehouse is that of clearing up the store. On sale days, the task is almost impossible. One of the first days I was working at the CTS was a sale day, and Zack asked me if I would help keep the floor clean of clothes and hangers. I started at one end of the long rack that covers the entire wall in the clothing department, but soon realised that this was an unachievable task. Customers were constantly pulling things off the hangers, trying some of them on in the aisles and leaving most of them behind. Some of these clothes slipped behind other racks or were left in the wrong department. Judging by the number of empty hangers I removed from the store during those few hours of the sale, many of the items were sold, but many end up in the ‘take back’ bin behind the counter where all the objects go that customers have brought to the register but have decided against buying. On sale day the bin is emptied quite often. The fact that customers move things around is an ordinary and necessary part of most retail operations. Customers need to try clothes on, consider if they actually want to buy the object and so on, and since they are not always familiar with the organization of the store, or do not care, things end up in the wrong places. The practice of categorizing and keeping order is crucial as a value project. This was amply described by Drew when he said: ‘it’s about putting the right things in front of the right people’. However, the examples illustrate that order and 148" " categorization is not a constant but an ongoing process that can quickly slip into disorder. Categories help employees determine value by connecting an object to other similar objects, but categorization is also a time-consuming practice, and the more categories there are the more time it takes. The process can also become timeconsuming if categories are unclear or because objects fit into several categories at the same time. As object categories are not a hierarchical ordering, like the ones Botticello describes (2012), this is not just a question of putting an object in the category that will enable the object to fetch highest price; rather it is a decision of where the right people are likely to find the object. The example of the auction catalogues describes this very well. Problematic Categorizations The problem with categories is not only a matter of ambiguity in the sorting process. The way the sections of the different departments are organized can also be problematic. One day when I was putting out new books I was approached by a guy who found our ‘ethnic studies’ section of the book department problematic. He had been hovering for a while and finally came up to me very politely and told me that he objected to the way we grouped all non-white authors into this section. He also found it problematic that George, the guy who usually puts out the new books, was African American, implying that we (Drew and I, or the whole organization) forced George to adhere to a racist or western-centric system of categorization. Another similar issue became clear to me when a woman asked for books in Spanish and I had to direct her to the ‘foreign language section’. In a neighbourhood where most people speak Spanish, it is hardly a foreign language. Also, books with a gay theme are always put in the gay-interest section and not in 149" " fiction. Considering the CTS’s strong commitment to racial, gender and sexual diversity and equality, it is hard to imagine that there is a deliberate strategy to supress or misrepresent minorities. The problem is due in part to the fact that few of the donors, especially the donors of books, are Spanish-speakers. For that reason a section of books in Spanish would be very small and that is probably why they end up in the foreign language section. Another, bigger, issue is that it is much easier to assign objects to broad categories when you have to get the stuff out quickly. Finding the right place to put an object creates a sense of satisfaction, and as the person doing the job you become immune to the content of the category. The difference between the categories are what matters in the practice, not the qualitative content. That does not mean that the categories are fixed or are conceived similarly by everyone. When either customers or employees contest the categorization or their implications their situated and sometimes problematic, meaningsare revealed. Categories are performative and rely on the practice of categorization. Establishing problematic categories that act against explicit value in the organization, such as racial and ethnic equality, demonstrates how practices are individual and collective at the same time. The interconnectedness of activities, formal and tacit knowledge in the practices that establish categories can result in contradictory outcomes. A Longer Trajectory In this analysis I have selected the backdoor as the beginning of the trajectory for the objects. It serves as the entry point into the organization, but of course the journey does not start there. During the time I spent working at the back door I met many donors and I learned about the routes taken by the objects before they enter the CTS. Most encounters with donors were rather uneventful, but some were more involved. Earlier in this paper I described my first meeting with a 150" " donor donating his late wife’s clothes, and although few encounters were so emotional, people would often tell the employees a little bit about why they were donating, or where the objects came from. In order to get a fuller picture I also conducted casual interviews with donors after they had donated at the back door. Most of the donations come from private homes. Some people get rid of stuff because they are moving, others just to clear some space, while quite a few bring in objects from the homes of deceased relatives. Some donations even come directly from other stores or from artists and collectors. While I was working there, for example, the CTS book department received a huge donation of used books from a bookstore that had to close, and the arts department received a large number of pictures—several hundred, in fact—by a local artist who had died. The trajectories followed by objects before they enter can thus be very different. The anthropological literature on commodities and gifts has often focused on the way objects of formal market-based economies become contextualized and take on gift-like qualities. In this study I address the opposite flow: gifts that leave the embeddedness of the home to be discarded and recategorized as commodities. The sorting and valuation process is a commodification process, but one that salvages the leftovers of previous commodity states as well as other social states of which the object has been a part. The amount of value that is transferred from previous states varies significantly from object to object. As I will describe in the coming chapter, the role of the organization is to detach the objects from previous emotional attachments, but some aspects of former use or ownership can be valuable—especially with unique artistic objects. In this sense the objects retain elements of gift exchanges even beyond their detachment. Categorization is an organizational project in which objects are transformed culturally from discards to commodities through interconnected individual 151" " practices. By making sense of the objects this structure stabilizes the organization and its powers of transformation through routinized practices. Arriving in a state of disorder, the objects have the potential to enter categories that create value by their being related to other similar objects and by the establishment of a meaningful relationship between the object, the organization and customers. The structure is constantly challenged by the individuality of the objects and the contingency of the donations, but the disorder that remains also provides opportunities for value. In the next chapter I will describe in more detail what kinds of value are at stake and how these values are measured. Which values? Valuation Criteria and Types of Values Through interconnected practices, valuations transform donated objects and realize their potential value. Although these practices quickly become routinized, they rely on a specific set of values which collectively make the object valuable. These values may be compatible, but in some cases they are conflicting. As Moeran describes, values may be in operation at any given time in the same setting, and they may be indicative of different sets of beliefs as well as different valuation criteria (Moeran 2009). 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Søren Friis Møller From Disinterestedness to Engagement Towards Relational Leadership In the Cultural Sector 40. Nico Peter Berhausen Management Control, Innovation and Strategic Objectives – Interactions and Convergence in Product Development Networks 41. Balder Onarheim Creativity under Constraints Creativity as Balancing ‘Constrainedness’ 42. Haoyong Zhou Essays on Family Firms 43. Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen Making sense of organisational confl ict An empirical study of enacted sensemaking in everyday confl ict at work 2013 1. Jacob Lyngsie Entrepreneurship in an Organizational Context 2. Signe Groth-Brodersen Fra ledelse til selvet En socialpsykologisk analyse af forholdet imellem selvledelse, ledelse og stress i det moderne arbejdsliv 3. Nis Høyrup Christensen Shaping Markets: A Neoinstitutional Analysis of the Emerging Organizational Field of Renewable Energy in China 4. 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Ana Alačovska Genre and Autonomy in Cultural Production The case of travel guidebook production 22. Marius Gudmand-Høyer Stemningssindssygdommenes historie i det 19. århundrede Omtydningen af melankolien og manien som bipolære stemningslidelser i dansk sammenhæng under hensyn til dannelsen af det moderne følelseslivs relative autonomi. En problematiserings- og erfaringsanalytisk undersøgelse 23. Lichen Alex Yu Fabricating an S&OP Process Circulating References and Matters of Concern 24. Esben Alfort The Expression of a Need Understanding search 25. Trine Pallesen Assembling Markets for Wind Power An Inquiry into the Making of Market Devices 26. Anders Koed Madsen Web-Visions Repurposing digital traces to organize social attention 27. Lærke Højgaard Christiansen BREWING ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS 28. Tommy Kjær Lassen EGENTLIG SELVLEDELSE En ledelsesfi losofi sk afhandling om selvledelsens paradoksale dynamik og eksistentielle engagement 29. 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Ming Hua Li Institutional Transition and Organizational Diversity: Differentiated internationalization strategies of emerging market state-owned enterprises 30. Sofi e Blinkenberg Federspiel IT, organisation og digitalisering: Institutionelt arbejde i den kommunale digitaliseringsproces 31. Elvi Weinreich Hvilke offentlige ledere er der brug for når velfærdstænkningen fl ytter sig – er Diplomuddannelsens lederprofi l svaret? 32. Ellen Mølgaard Korsager Self-conception and image of context in the growth of the fi rm – A Penrosian History of Fiberline Composites 33. Else Skjold The Daily Selection 34. Marie Louise Conradsen The Cancer Centre That Never Was The Organisation of Danish Cancer Research 1949-1992 35. Virgilio Failla Three Essays on the Dynamics of Entrepreneurs in the Labor Market 36. Nicky Nedergaard Brand-Based Innovation Relational Perspectives on Brand Logics and Design Innovation Strategies and Implementation 37. Mads Gjedsted Nielsen Essays in Real Estate Finance 38. 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