The work of shopping: Resellers and the informal economy at the goodwill bins

Ayres, Jennifer

doi:10.1080/00076791.2017.1369962

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This immeasurable river of stuff that flows, unseen, through communities is often managed at the local scale by community reuse organizations. These small organizations are a feature of towns and cities across the United States, yet they are under-studied in the academic literature, which has tended to focus on larger organizations (see, for example, Minter 2019; Crewe et al 2003;Halvorson 2012;Larsen 2019;Ayres 2019) or direct peer-to-peer exchanges like garage sales (Herrmann 1997(Herrmann , 2015Crawford 2014) . 1988;Albinsson and Yasanthi 2012).…”

Section: Literature Review: Waste and Waste Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glut: Affective Labor and the Burden of Abundance in Secondhand Economies

Berry

2022

Anthropology of Work Review

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This paper explores the interlinkages between the abundance of stuff moving through community-based reuse organizations and the labor needed to manage this material. The glut of donations is due to the sheer volume of materials moving through a wasteful linear economic system, as well as the practice of donation dumping, where unusable used goods move through reuse economies, washing their previous owners free of guilt while entangling laborers in messy relationships with objects. I draw on theories of gendered, social reproductive labor to explore how the work of localized reuse, disproportionately borne by unpaid women, reproduces communities. Following calls for work that explores the social dimensions of circular economies, this research uses a qualitative approach that draws on two main methods: participant observation in reuse establishments and in-depth interviews with reuse participants. This qualitative data provides a picture of reuse activities at a local scale and helps us understand the complex relationships formed and perpetuated through reuse. I find that the labor of volunteers is often unseen and undervalued and suggest that policies designed to address material surplus do so with these laborers in mind.

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Section: Literature Review: Waste and Waste Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glut: Affective Labor and the Burden of Abundance in Secondhand Economies

Berry

2022

Anthropology of Work Review

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“…There are various ways a consumer can engage with sustainable fashion including: upcycling, repurposing, thrifting, and newly produced sustainable shopping (Bhatt, Silverman, and dickson 2019;Bukhari, Carrasco-Gallego, and Ponce-Cueto 2018;Ayres 2019). Upcycling refers to creating newness or better quality in an item from waste or used materials that adds value to the item (Bhatt, Silverman, and dickson 2019).…”

Section: Sustainable Fashionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable fashion social media influencers and content creation calibration

Jacobson

Harrison

2021

International Journal of Advertising

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Given the rise of social media, social media influencers have become an essential part of marketing agencies' strategies. Advertisers seek to leverage influencers' large community of followers who place trust in influencers' recommendations. This trust makes the use of influencer marketing a powerful tool for advertisers. With increasing consumer interest, the sustainable fashion industry has grown and social media influencers are being leveraged to shift consumer perspective and purchasing behavior. Using semi-structured interviews, this research addresses the use of influencers as an advertising tactic in the sustainable fashion industry to analyze the social media practices and monetization strategies of sustainable fashion social media influencers. The term 'sustainable fashion social media influencers' is introduced to describe influential content creators who discuss sustainable fashion on social media. Importantly, the research identifies 'content creation calibration' , which refers to the practice of social media influencers calibrating their content to account for their ethics and desire for compensation. The research highlights the future challenges for advertisers and influencers when linking sustainability to entrepreneurship in influencer marketing.

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“…The digital vintage economy is part of a larger wave of artisanal nostalgia, mobilized in response to post-Fordist modes of production and based on re-imaginings of 19th and 20th century craft labor practices that often elide their gender, sexual, racial, and class politics (Gajjala, 2015). Vintage clothing and vinyl records entail older ways of looking, listening, and being, not just as consumption and leisure, but as lifestyle, identity, ethics, and even new forms of labor (Ayres, 2019; Cassidy & Bennett, 2012; Clark & Palmer, 2005; Harvey, 2017; Thorén et al, 2017). In this section, we follow feminist critiques of post-Fordism (Gill & Pratt, 2008; McRobbie, 2010) and the “digital double bind” (Duffy & Hund, 2015) by describing how nostalgia and platformization cooperate to produce the mutually constitutive authenticity of goods and sellers in the digital vintage economy.…”

Section: Valuing Vintagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dedicated platforms for vintage goods have increased the number of individual online sellers. Competition for rare collectibles is intense, among sellers as well as buyers (Ayres, 2019), and branded shops who sell online also have to keep their brick-and-mortar prices in line with those found on sites like Etsy or Discogs, despite the higher overhead of running a physical store. While record stores tend to list rare or expensive merchandise online, records tend to cost slightly more in shops than online.…”

Section: Listing Labor Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While brick-and-mortar shops and online sales can work in tandem, moving the entire store online is often easier for shop owners. At a brick-and-mortar location, small business owners have to employ workers to cover the shop while they go out to look for more secondhand merchandise, which involves going to yard, garage, or estate sales and thrift shops, painstakingly digging through Goodwill bins before other sellers nab the best goods (Ayres, 2019), scouring eBay or Craigslist for deals, or meeting with individual consigners. As both owners and employees noted, standing in a store is physically tiring and monotonous, and shop owners who cannot afford to pay clerks may find themselves stuck in their shops five or more days a week.…”

Section: Listing Labor Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Brick-and-Platform: Listing Labor in the Digital Vintage Economy

Kneese

Palm

2020

Social Media + Society

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Vintage goods are valued for their nostalgic association with pre-digital modes of production, but their contemporary trafficking is increasingly organized by processes of platformization. The central component of what we call “listing labor in the digital vintage economy” is the online display of collectible merchandise, but listing labor also entails promoting sellers’ brands on social media and using sales platforms and other logistical media to manage inventory, process transactions, and handle shipments. Listing labor is performed by branded merchants and their employees alongside independent entrepreneurs. The digital vintage economy connects brick-and-mortar shops and resale supply chains organized around flea markets, thrift shops and charity bins, estate sales, and consigners, to online clearinghouses like eBay and Craigslist, and to social media and payment apps. In this article, we argue that listing labor in the digital vintage economy further develops the concept of “platform labor.” We focus on vintage clothes and vinyl records, dominated by women and men, respectively, to help us analyze divisions of listing labor organized by gender, race, age, and class. We draw upon 20 semi-structured interviews with shop owners and employees and on participant observation in independently owned clothing boutiques and record stores in several US cities. The digital vintage economy provides another angle for understanding how identity-based distinctions affect the opportunities associated with platform labor, and our account of listing labor highlights the need for studies of platformization that analyze its effects on specific local economies as well as on job markets and commercial sectors.

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The work of shopping: Resellers and the informal economy at the goodwill bins

Cited by 13 publications

References 35 publications

Glut: Affective Labor and the Burden of Abundance in Secondhand Economies

Glut: Affective Labor and the Burden of Abundance in Secondhand Economies

Sustainable fashion social media influencers and content creation calibration

Brick-and-Platform: Listing Labor in the Digital Vintage Economy

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