The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

Abstract

Many commentators recognise the need to make clothing more sustainable due to its deleterious environmental and social ramifications. However, it is challenging to change the consumer behaviour that drives fast fashion markets because people have complex relationships with clothing. In this study, we illustrate how the relationships that people have with clothing can be shaped by workshops that immerse them in making, mending, and modifying garments. Such experiential learning can encourage adoption of more sustainable clothing choices, such as reducing consumption of new garments and prolonging the life of already owned items of clothing. We present findings on a strand of work from the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project, which explored the affective economy around clothing, and considered how emotive affects around garments operate as a conduit to self-sustain particular practices. Our significant contribution brings political analysis firmly into the debate about sustainable clothing by merging literatures on behaviour change and affect, through exploration of a novel longitudinal (9-months) qualitative data set. At the start of the project, participants generally thought of clothes as being low-cost (and therefore disposable) items. The workshops, in contrast, presented garments and the materials from which they are made as precious, complex and fluid – in a process of continual possibility. For pro-environmental behavioural change, we find that immersion in the materiality of clothing mobilised affective processes, enabling potentially transformative affective encounters. Further, we found that group learning environments need to do more than simply teach approved normative values and behaviours. Pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives need to provide people with the space to create and situate their own knowledges, enabling affect to be mobilised, activated and supported by appropriate cultural milieu.

A Social Practices Approach to Encourage Sustainable Clothing Choices

“…In her seminal wardrobe studies work, Woodward [21] reveals how women use the contents of their wardrobes to create and recreate their identities. The emotional connections that people have with clothes are central to this perspective, which recognises that clothes are much more than functional: they shape the wearer's identity [22][23][24], not always positively [25]. In our work, we used a version of Woodward's [21] wardrobe audit exercise.…”

Fashion Color in Yoga Community in Indonesia: Yoga Commodification

“…The fact that yoga goes international also means that it experiences and reflects also the ideology and myths shared globally. In response to the global idea of sustainability, for example, (Willett et al, 2022) mentioned the importance to consider "the cultural meanings embedded within a sensibility for sustainable clothing".…”

Affective Dimensions of Compound Crises in Tourism Economies: The Intermountain Western Gateway Community of Nederland, Colorado

“…Affective tourism economies may be understood as critical conceptualizations of the circulation and exchange of emotion mediated by tourism economies aligning people and places according to identities and emotional capital. This theme builds upon research of affective economies of tourism [6,48,49] to specifically incorporate lived experiences mediated by the power dynamics of tourism-based economies in many gateway communities. Critical exploration of this theme demonstrated four interrelated expressions of affective tourism economies including communal loss, queer optimism, empathy and sympathy, and humor.…”