Swedish press debate regarding the idea of a 'circular economy' is analysed to enable critical reflection on the development and use of the concept. We examine how actor positions formed around ideas of increased circularity. Using press material from 2012 to 2019 we identify positions on circular economy taken by Swedish companies, public authorities, political parties, and opinion makers. Our analysis reveals convergence amongst these actors at the national level despite ongoing situated local environmental conflicts. We show that this convergence is enabled by the convening power of ambiguity, which characterizes the use of circular economy ideas as an 'floating signifier' in the debate. In Sweden ideas of a circular economy may have been deployed by resilient capital to harness an otherwise economically disruptive process, as a new expression of ecological modernization. Further research into the political economy of circular economy ideas is encouraged.

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The idea of replacing the broken linear economy with circular forms to help address the current sustainability crisis is gaining world-wide traction in policy, industry, and academia. This article presents results from an international interview study with 34 repair practitioners and experts in different fields. The article aims to improve understandings of the potential of repair so as to contribute to a more just, sustainable, and circular economy. Through a five-step qualitative method the results reveal and explore three tensions inherent in repair: first, repair activities constitute different forms of subjectivity; second, repair entails different and sometimes contested temporalities; and finally, even though repair is deeply political in practice, the politics of repair are not always explicit, and some repair activities are actively depoliticized. The opportunities and obstacles embodied in these tensions are generative in repair practices and debates, but poorly reflected in contemporary circular economy discourse. We conclude that a richer, more inclusive, and politicized understanding of repair can support environmental justice in the implementation of circular economy (CE) and provide greater opportunities for just and transformational sustainability strategies and policies.

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The dominant technocratic and neoliberal imaginary of a circular economy dependent on corporate leadership, market mechanisms, and changed consumer behaviour is here explored using the findings of deliberative stakeholder workshops examining diverse scenarios for the promotion of repair as part of a circular economy. Stakeholder responses to four scenarios—digital circularity, planned circularity, circular modernism, and bottom-up sufficiency—are described with reference to the ideologies, interests, and institutions involved. We distinguish two levels of discourse in the stakeholder discussions. The main narrative in which individualist and consumerist ideologies dominate, even within ideals of sustainability, reflects a conjunction of corporate, labour, and public interests in the market liberal social democratic state, with proposed interventions focused on the institutions of markets and education. A subaltern narrative present in the margins of the discussions challenges the consumerist and productivist presumptions of the market liberal political economy and hints at more transformative change. These conflicting responses not only cast light on the ways in which the political economy of contemporary Sweden (within the European Union) constrains and conditions current expectations and imaginaries of circularity, but also suggest ways in which the future political economy of circular economies might be contested and evolve.