Second-hand shoe circulations in Tunis

Abstract

Research on the second-hand clothes trade has focused on global value chains and transnational circulations from the Global North to the Global South. This article instead investigates the circulation of a ubiquitous and highly popular second-hand commodity, namely shoes, in the Tunisian capital city Tunis. The second-hand materials – referred to as “fripe” in Tunisia – that arrive in the Tunis cargo port have been donated or discarded in their countries of origin and their commodity value is thus uncertain. In addition, second-hand shoes are officially banned from sale on the Tunisian market. In order to explain how fripe shoes are nevertheless transferred into new commodity situations in Tunis, this article hones in on processes of valuation at the urban scale. Three locations that feature prominently in the urban trajectory of second-hand shoes – a sorting factory, the wholesale quarter, and a specialised market street – are examined as distinct sites for valuation that enable the renewed circulation of fripe shoes in the city. Investigating valuation and circulation with an explicit focus on urban space demonstrates how such processes not only transform fripe objects in circulation, but are also constitutive of socio-spatial relations: At times, valuation becomes manifest in urban form, or situated urban change; At other times, fripe shoe circulations generate linkages and interdependencies that tie seemingly bounded sites of valuation to diverse actors and spaces across the city. As inherently contested commodity form, second-hand shoes thus provide insight into the complex social and political negotiations that define commodity circulation as both contingent and productive urban process.