‘Antique’, ‘vintage’, ‘previously owned’, ‘gently used’, ‘cast-off – the world of second hand encompasses as many attitudes as there are names for it. The popular perception is that second- hand shops are largely full of junk, yet the rise of vintage fashion and the increasing desire for consumer individuality show that second hand shopping is also very much about style. Drawing on six years of original research, Second-Hand Cultures explores what happens when the often contradictory motivations behind style and survival strategies are brought together. What does second hand buying and selling tell us about the state of contemporary consumption? How do items that begin life as new get recycled and reclaimed? How do second hand goods challenge the future of retail consumption and what do the unique shopping environments in which they are found tell us about the social relations of exchange? Answering these questions and many more, this book fills a major gap in consumption studies. Gregson and Crewe argue that second hand cultures are critical to any understanding of how consumption is actually practised. Following the life stories of goods as they travel into and through second hand sites, the authors look at the work of traders as well as consumers investments in second hand merchandise including gifting and collecting as well as rituals of personalization and possession. Through its revealing investigation into the practices and customs that make up these unconventional retail worlds, this much-needed study carefully unpacks the persuasive allure of the previously owned.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Abstract This paper provides a geographical analysis of divestment. Drawing on two years of intensive qualitative research with households, we explore empirically the range of conduits that figure in household divestment, showing how surplus and excess things are routinely moved through specific conduits. We argue that, rather than focusing on the trajectories of things in divestment, it is practices of divestment that merit attention, and that divestment itself is also a practice. Further, we argue that divestment practices are about trying to constitute a normative around surplus and excess things; that they connect up to the reproduction of particular consumption practices and to the meta practice of consumption (Warde, 2005). The paper also considers the relation between divestment practice and the question of disposal. We argue that, as well as paying attention to conduits, connectivities and the work of the return, there is a need to focus on placings and practices, that not only have the potential to act-back but which are always acting-back.

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I A reconstructed retail geographyIn this, the first of three reports on geographies of retailing and consumption, I will attempt to map out and delimit the boundaries of this large and growing research area. From being one of the most undertheorized and 'boring of fields' (Blomley, 1996), retail geography has come to occupy a central position within social-scientific research. Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that the spaces, places and practices of consumption, circulation and exchange lie at the very heart of a reconstructed economic geography (Crang, 1997), and that retailing is in many ways redefining the economic and cultural horizons of contemporary Britain (Mort, 1995). Quite how such a transformation has occurred forms the basis of the following account.Part of the problem with early work in retail geography was its inability to take either its economic or its cultural geographies seriously, the result being a largely descriptive and all too often simplistic mapping of store location, location, location. While many cultural theorists, historians and anthropologists at the time were exploring the ways in which retailing and consumption spaces act as key sites for the (re)production of meanings and the constitution of identities (

Marginal and/or resistant consumption practices have been neglected in current geographical debates on consumption and retailing. This has resulted in partial and skewed theorizations of exchange within contemporary consumption. Consumption spaces such as car boot sales represent sites in which the conventions of the marketplace are suspended or abandoned, and replaced by forms of sourcing, commodity circulation, transaction codes, pricing mechanisms and value quite different from those which typify more conventional retail malls and department stores. Drawing on the anthropological literature on traditional and peasant markets, we argue that exchange within the car boot sale is socially, culturally and geographically embedded and we emphasize the intrinsic importance of fun and sociality to such activities. Marginal spaces such as the car boot sale offer both some important clues into the potential for rethinking marketplace dynamics, notably with respect to our understandings of value, and some intriguing possibilities for consumer politics.key words marginal spaces of consumption car boot sales exchange value commodity circulation