The work of shopping: Resellers and the informal economy at the goodwill bins

Jennifer Ayres

Business History, 2019, vol. 61, issue 1, 122-154

Abstract: In this article, I examine the material and everyday practices of a community of thrift-shoppers at the Goodwill Bins. Their practices reveal that shopping in these cutthroat environments is anything but leisurely. By attending to how these spaces are utilised as resources for independent ventures in the informal economy, I show how the occupation of reselling blurs the lines between consumption and production, and shopping and work. I argue that the thrift store can be viewed as a microcosm of the broader shifts occurring in the economy and the latest capitalist reorganisation of work into non-standard and precarious forms.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00076791.2017.1369962 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:61:y:2019:i:1:p:122-154

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FBSH20

DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2017.1369962

Access Statistics for this article

Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms

More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().