Identity, Mobility, and the Throwaway Society

Abstract

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Following things of rubbish value: End-of-life ships, ‘chock-chocky’ furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer

“…Where extended lives have been addressed within geography, this has largely been in terms of constituting the home -especially 'the material cultures of objects and their use, display and meanings within the home' (Blunt, 2005, page 506;Leslie 6 and Reimer, 2003) -where the linkage of products and practices is seen as what consumption actually involves (Shove and Southerton, 2000;Warde, 2005;Watson and Shove, 2008). The thing is occasionally followed into the domestic world, but rarely beyond it, in spite of the emerging work on second-hand exchange, consumption and disposal (Gregson and Crewe, 2003;Clarke, 2000;Gregson et al, 2007aGregson et al, , 2007bReno, 2009). Taking its inspiration from both Kopytoff and Thompson, this latter work rests on a reading of consumption that emphasises not the realisation of value in the initial point of sale but combines the senses of consumption as practice or making use with the material etymological sense of consumption as depletion, exhaustion and using-up, and as intrinsically linked to ridding, disposal and wasting (Hetherington, 2004;Gregson, 2007;O'Brien, 2008).…”

Young People in the Global North: Environmental Heroes or Pleasure-Seeking Consumers

“…Concerns around the generation of waste have caused the term 'throw-away society' to be associated with consumer cultures in the Global North. But the presumption of thoughtless and wasteful disposal has been challenged by geographers, including Gregson et al (2007) andCollins (2014), who have argued that it is important to remember that the pathway to divestment is more than getting rid of an item. Divestment is equally about the movement of an item, the development of self-identity and a reflection of the relationship between people and things (Collins 2014).…”

Stewardship of things: The radical potential of product stewardship for re-framing responsibilities and relationships to products and materials

“…When it comes to certain classes of possessions, such as valuable antiques, family heirlooms or a cherished vintage car this is unsurprising, but it nevertheless already problematises any easy characterisation of a 'throwaway society' (Gregson et al, 2007). Indeed, work on enthusiastic hobbyist groups who invest substantial time, energy, money and skill in the maintenance of particular highly valued things, such as wooden boats (Jalas, 2006) reveals much about the potential depth of people's caring relation for things.…”

“…Research from Australia and the UK shows that consumers are motivated by a range of factors, not just economic dimensions and not just environmental ethics (Hobson, 2003(Hobson, , 2004Gregson and Crewe, 2003;Gregson et al, 2007;Lane et al, 2009;Lane, 2011;Barr and Gilg, 2006;. As the provision of kerbside collection of materials and associated infrastructures have made recycling a great deal more convenient, new social norms have emerged.…”

“…This can be framed in scalar terms: the macro-scale (of governments and large corporations), the meso-scale of households and neighbourhoods, and the micro-scale of individual behaviour. While social research in relation to materials recycling and reuse has been conducted at a range of analytical scales, from the macro-scale of changing waste management regimes (Gille 2007, Cooper 2008, Bulkeley et al, 2007, the meso-scale of the household and neighbourhood (Gregson et al 2007, Williams and Widebank 2005, Lane et al 2009, Watson and Lane 2011, through to the micro-scale of individual behaviour (Barr and Gilg 2006), these understandings of social institutions and processes operating at multiple scales have not yet come to inform waste management policy generally or approaches to product stewardship in particular. This may be in part due to the lack of explicit engagement with the themes of IE and EM within social research in this area.…”