Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store

Frederik Larsen

Business History, 2019, vol. 61, issue 1, 155-171

Abstract: This article documents the workings of a contemporary second-hand thrift store in California. The ethnographic notes collected during six-months fieldwork and subsequent returns present accounts of the practices, values and people involved in turning the remainders of consumption into cultural commodities, and the interwoven relations between object and people. The process of transformation is best understood in a nexus between gift and market exchange as an act of categorisation. Revisiting Mary Douglas’ statement on dirt as matter of classification, the article shows how value is momentarily fixed in the objects to allow them to re-enter second-hand economies, and how categorisation is an attempt to manage the reality of disorder.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2017.1418330

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