Secondhandedness: Consumption, Disposal, and Absent Presence

Abstract

In this paper I argue that in the now-extensive work on the sociology of consumption there is very little that addresses directly the important issue of disposal. Furthermore, I argue that disposal is not just about questions of waste and rubbish but is implicated more broadly in the ways in which people manage absence within social relations. I develop this argument through a critical engagement with the work of Mary Douglas, Rolland Munro, Michael Thompson, and Robert Hertz. I seek to show that disposal is never final as is implied by the notion of rubbish but involves issues of managing social relations and their representation around themes of movement, transformation, incompleteness, and return. I suggest that rather than see the rubbish bin as the archetypal conduit of disposal within consumer practices the door might be seen as a better example. This has implications for understanding questions of representation, ethics, and the management of social relations within the practices of consuming.

Identity, Mobility, and the Throwaway Society

“…Hetherington, 2004). In this our intent has clear affinities with Simpson's (1998) study of divorce.…”

“…1999;Hallam and Hockey, 2001), to the neglect of how we live with ordinary, everyday things (Attfield, 2000;Colloredo-Mansfeld, 2003) or abandon them (Young, 2001). But to go further and to equate discarding things with waste generation is both to assume, thirdly, that that which is discarded automatically becomes waste, and fourthly, to neglect that acts of discarding are not just physical acts involving material things, but culturally and socially productive too (Douglas, 1966;Hetherington, 2004;Hertz, 1960;Munro, 1995).…”

Mapping international flows of electronic waste

“…Thus, in the case of e-waste materials we do not necessarily see a one-way transformation of value-to-waste along a linear chain of production-consumption-disposal. E-waste flows are neither linear nor easily construed as simply cyclical in form; what returns as a source of value can simultaneously function as a source of uncanny danger and anxiety (Hetherington 2004)-as the recent recalls of 'lead-tainted' Chinese products illustrate (Lindner 2007;CTV News 2008). What these scenarios suggest is a need to more carefully conceptualize the 'transubstantiation' of 'waste' electronics into 'value' through highly contingent processes linking different geographies.…”

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

“…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). 'Following' for this approach does not end with the western consumer.…”