Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store

Abstract

This article documents the workings of a contemporary second-hand thrift store in California. The ethnographic notes collected during six-months fieldwork and subsequent returns present accounts of the practices, values and people involved in turning the remainders of consumption into cultural commodities, and the interwoven relations between object and people. The process of transformation is best understood in a nexus between gift and market exchange as an act of categorisation. Revisiting Mary Douglas’ statement on dirt as matter of classification, the article shows how value is momentarily fixed in the objects to allow them to re-enter second-hand economies, and how categorisation is an attempt to manage the reality of disorder.

Keywords:

• Second-hand
• thrift
• valuation practices
• material culture
• ethnography
• economic anthropology
• commodities
• Mary Douglas
• charity
• exchange
• value
• markets

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the employees, volunteers and Managers at the Community Thrift Store for their immense help with this research. I would also like to thank the editors and reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Armun is the director of the Community Thrift; All names have been altered throughout.

2. Appadurai, Social Life of Things.

3. Douglas, Purity and Danger.

4. A full roster of the different charities can be found here: http://www.communitythriftsf.org/charities/

5. Le Zotte, Not Charity, 170).

6. Crewe & Gregson, Alternative Retail Spaces.

7. Le Zotte From Goodwill to Grunge.

8. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment.

9. (Ingold, Ibid: 415).

10. One donor I spoke to had recently lost a lot of weight. He was donating a large amount of expensive and colourful shirts, and he expressed a combination of joy over the weight loss and sadness that he could not wear the shirts anymore.

11. Horne & Maddrell, Charity Shops and Le Zotte, Not Charity,.

12. Hansen, Salaula.

13. Crang et al. Rethinking governance and Gregson et al. Following things.

14. (Gregson et al. Second-Hand Cultures; Gregson & Crewe Performance and possession; Norris Recycling Indian Clothes and Rivoli The Travels of a T-shirt.

15. (Botticello, Between Classification.

16. (Abimbola The International Trade; Horne & Maddrell Charity Shops.

17. Douglas, Purity and Danger.

18. Botticello, Between Classification.

19. Kopytoff, Cultural biography of things.

20. Reckwitz Towards a Theory.

21. (Reckwitz, ibid: 249–50).

22. Thompson, Rubbish Theory.

23. Thompson in Parsons, Thompson’s Rubbish Theory: 390).

24. Don Slater Ambiguous goods.

25. Botticello Between Classification.

26. Graeber It is value: 233).

27. Miller, A Theory of Shopping.

28. Campbell in Podkalicka & Potts, Towards a general theory.

29. Thompson, Rubbish Theory: 8–9).

30. Kopytoff, Cultural biography of things.

31. Graeber Towards an Anthropological Theory and Miller Alienable Gifts.

32. ( Greaeber Towards an Anthropological Theory: 45).

33. (Schaffer, Discard Studies Compendium.

34. de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life.