Valuing precarious commodities : an ethnography of trade in three charity shops in the Cape Metropolitan area

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study I investigate how the value of factory manufactured second-hand objects is determined within three charity shops in the Cape Metropolitan area. I argue that the value of the second-hand object sold in the charity shop cannot be determined solely from the quantifiable abstract labour of its 'initial production', or the perceived depreciation thereof. Nor can it be ascribed to the meanings produced in exchange. Instead I propose the histories of use and biographies of the objects in conjunction with the expectations of charity that emerge within the charity shop render them 'precarious commodities'. The value of the precarious charity shop commodity is informed by the socio-spatial conditions inside and outside the charity shops that, I suggest, propagate racial nostalgias from which notions of 'expensive respectability' and the middle class emerge as valuing. Within these conditions the charity shop acts as a point of production, in which staff labour to reconstitute value and transform donated objects into resalable commodities. These labours include the purging, sorting and distribution of objects in the 'back-space' of each shop and the commodity aesthetics of the 'front-spaces'. This labour is not limited to sellers; buyers also negotiate the dynamics of value within the 'front-space' of the charity shop, drawing upon similar notions of racialized respectability as they seek out 'quality' shopping experiences and engage in 'treasure hunting' and 'aspirational shopping'.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University