This article explores the digital exchange and moral ordering of sustainable and ethical consumption in online Freecycle groups. Through interactive exchanges in digital (online posts) and material (consumer items) modes, Freecycling blurs three common binaries in analyses of consumption: (1) consumption/production, (2) digital/material and (3) mainstream/alternative. Drawing on Ritzer’s notion of ‘implosions’ as well as practice theory, I show that Freecycling practices reimagine and reproduce both products and consumers, practising prosumption through mixed digital and material practices in a performative economy, and how mainstream and alternative ways of consuming are entangled in pursuit of more sustainable, ethical consumption. This challenges us to think beyond these traditional binaries and to conceptualise a more blurred, less analytically clean and more circular approach to studying consumption.
BarnettCClokePClarkeN (2011) Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
2.
BauhardtC (2014) Solutions to the crisis? The green new deal, degrowth, and the solidarity economy: Alternatives to the capitalist growth economy from an ecofeminist economics perspective. Ecological Economics102: 60–68.
3.
BulkeleyHGregsonN (2009) Crossing the threshold: Municipal waste policy and household waste generation. Environment and Planning A41: 929–945.
4.
CallonM (2007) An essay on the growing contribution of economic markets to the proliferation of the social. Theory, Culture & Society24(7–8): 139–163.
5.
CastellsM (2010) The Rise of the Network Society: Preface, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
6.
CurrahA (2003) The virtual geographies of retail display. Journal of Consumer Culture3(1): 5–37.
7.
Denegri-KnottJMolesworthM (2010a) Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption. Consumption Markets & Culture13(2): 109–132.
8.
Denegri-KnottJMolesworthM (2010b) ‘Love it. Buy it. Sell it’: Consumer desire and the social drama of eBay. Journal of Consumer Culture10: 56–79.
9.
Gibson-GrahamJK (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
10.
Gibson-GrahamJK (2008) Diverse economies: Performative practices for ‘other worlds’. Progress in Human Geography32(5): 613–632.
11.
GrahamSThriftN (2007) Out of order: Understanding repair and maintenance. Theory, Culture & Society24(3): 1–25.
12.
Gregson N and Crang M (2010) Materiality and waste: Inorganic vitality in a networked world. Environment and Planning A 42(5): 1026–1032.
GregsonNMetcalfeACreweL (2007) Moving things along: The conduits and practices of divestment in consumption. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers32(2): 187–200.
15.
HetheringtonK (2004) Secondhandedness: Consumption, disposal, and absent presence. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space22: 157–173.
16.
JacksonT (1996) Material Concerns: Pollution, Profit, and Quality of Life, London: Routledge.
17.
LemaîtreAHelmsingAHJ (2012) Solidarity economy in Brazil: Movement, discourse and practice analysis through a Polanyian understanding of the economy. Journal of International Development24: 745–762.
18.
LepawskyJMatherC (2011) From beginnings and endings to boundaries and edges: Rethinking circulation and exchange through electronic waste. Area43(3): 242–249.
19.
LeyshonA (2003) Scary monsters? Software formats, peer-to-peer networks, and the spectre of the gift. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space21: 533–558.
20.
MichelettiM (2003) Political Virtue and Shopping, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
21.
MillerD (2011) Tales from Facebook, Cambridge: Polity.
22.
Miller E (2006) Other economies are possible! Dollars & Sense, July/August, pp. 11–15.
23.
Miller D (2010) Stuff. Cambridge, Polity.
24.
NelsonMRRademacherMAPaekH-J (2007) Downshifting consumer = Upshifting citizen? An examination of a local freecycle community. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science611: 141–156.
25.
PecoraroMGUusitaloO (2014) Conflicting values of ethical consumption in diverse worlds – A cultural approach. Journal of Consumer Culture14: 45–63.
26.
ReischLA (2001) The Internet and sustainable consumption: Perspectives on a Janus face. Journal of Consumer Policy24: 251–286.
27.
RitzerG (1999) Enchanting a Disenchanted World, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
28.
RitzerG (2014) Prosumption: Evolution, revolution, or eternal return of the same?Journal of Consumer Culture14(1): 3–24.
29.
RitzerGJurgensonN (2010) Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’. Journal of Consumer Culture10: 13–36.
30.
SahakianMWilhiteH (2014) Making practice theory practicable: Towards more sustainable forms of consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture14(1): 25–44.
31.
SayerA (2003) (De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space21: 341–357.
32.
ShoveEPantzarMWatsonM (2012) The Dynamics of Social Practice, London: Sage.
33.
ShoveEWatsonMHandM (2007) The Design of Everyday Life, Oxford: Berg.
34.
SoperK (2007) Re-thinking the ‘good life’: The citizenship dimension of consumer disaffection with consumerism. Journal of Consumer Culture7: 205–229.
35.
ThompsonCJCoskuner-BalliG (2007) Enchanting ethical consumerism: The case of community supported agriculture. Journal of Consumer Culture7: 275–303.
36.
Warde A (2005) Consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer Culture 5(2): 131–153.
37.
WatsonMShoveE (2008) Product, competence, project and practice: DIY and the dynamics of craft consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture8: 69–88.
38.
ZwickDBonsuSKDarmodyA (2008) Putting consumers to work: ‘Co-creation’ and new marketing govern-mentality. Journal of Consumer Culture8: 163–197.
