Abstract
The reimagination and revaluation of discarded goods, through repair and reuse is, for many, a quotidian and mundane element of everyday life. These practices are the historical precedent and continue to be the stuff of common sense for a significant portion of human society. And yet, reuse, repair and other elements of a ‘circular economy’ have recently emerged as a significant focus in environmental and economic policy. Proponents claim that reuse practices represent a potentially radical alternative to mainstream consumer culture and a form of carework that generates new social possibilities and personal affects. This essay explores the myriad dimensions of reuse as care, relational practice and as consumer alternative by examining these practices in their social context, lived experience and as embedded within larger political and economic structures of capitalist accumulation and abandonment. We argue that the study of reuse, in old and new forms, takes on added political significance in an era of environmental and economic crises, especially as a critical part of state-based approaches toward the circular economy that attempt to appropriate carework in new forms of value generation.
Highlights
Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy In a time of acceleration, over-production and hyper-consumption (Crocker and Chiveralls, 2018; Lipovetsky, 2011; Schor, 1998) reuse represents an obstacle, or perhaps a countervailing tendency: to slow things down, to reassess what has been cast aside, to go back rather than forward
Contributors engage many of the theories reviewed above, with the benefit of ethnographic detail, to address a variety of questions including: How are waste and residual value variously and situationally determined; How do discarded goods or ‘abandoned things’ circulate in space and across scales; How can posthumanist perspectives provide novel ways of conceptualizing human-object relations in the contexts of reuse; What is the generative capacity of reuse to shape/reshape livelihoods, waste infrastructures and materials markets; How can we best understand everyday practices of maintenance, repair and care among diverse groups of people; and What is the potential for reuse markets and practices to bring transformative change?
As we hope the contributions to this special issue make clear, reuse and repair are about much more than economic efficiency
Summary
Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy In a time of acceleration, over-production and hyper-consumption (Crocker and Chiveralls, 2018; Lipovetsky, 2011; Schor, 1998) reuse represents an obstacle, or perhaps a countervailing tendency: to slow things down, to reassess what has been cast aside, to go back rather than forward. Contributors illustrate that reuse involves deliberate acts of revaluation and care which recall and build upon embedded meaning, affect, social histories and the properties of materials.
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