Harnessing the Unruly- Anthropological Contributions in Applied Reuse Projects

One of the major global challenges of our time is the question of how to transition to more sustainable and less environmentally damaging ways of living. The ecological footprint of consumption in Sweden is estimated at four times what is considered a long-term sustainable level (WWF 2016: 74-79). Swedish material consumption is still on the rise landing at a 9% increase from 2016 to 2018 (Naturvårdsverket 2018: 21; Sveriges Miljömål). Furthermore, quantities of waste are expected to increase by over thirty percent in Sweden by 2035, and two thirds of greenhouse emissions in Sweden come from consumption within households (Naturvårdsverket 2018: 11, 21). How then, can we find more sustainable approaches to the way we accumulate, live with, and discard things – the kind of stuff that overflows our everyday life and has become so central to our lifestyle – and in what ways can anthropology contribute to this?

As two anthropologists, working on a research project on consumption of second-hand and reuse objects that began in 2014, we found ourselves increasingly preoccupied with this question. The focus of the project was on the circulation of aging material culture in second-hand markets as an alternative form of heritage making (see below for details).

Through fieldwork in second-hand shops, flea markets and private homes we explored everyday practices of care for old things and were intrigued by the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that people live with and relate to their belongings and to their physical process of aging (Appelgren and Bohlin 2015, 2017; Appelgren 2019b; Bohlin 2019). As issues of environmental degradation, climate change, and sustainability became increasingly prominent topics, not just for us, but for our interlocutors, we began to recognise that these ways of relating to material culture offered important perspectives on the 'throw-away society' of mass consumption and consumerism often depicted and lamented in media and the academy (see Gregson et al. 2007 for a critique of the notion). We also found that our anthropological focus provided knowledge that various groups of professionals in the field considered not merely interesting, but in fact useful. Faced with increasing pressure to get staff, customers, or citizens to adopt new and more sustainable practices or modes of thinking, these professionals were keen to learn more about how people behave and think, and to find appropriate conceptual tools for communicating the changes that they considered necessary to implement. As a result, what began as a small-scale collaboration with a municipal museum, as part of the original research project, rapidly extended into a number of applied spin-off projects, where we collaborated with professionals in city management, interior design, and the heritage sector in order to address concrete problems related to private, corporate, and public consumption and global sustainability.

The sheer magnitude and urgency of the larger issue – the future of life on the planet – not only propelled us into applied collaborations outside institutional academic research, but also threw us into normative engagements which, unlike our previous academic research, did not stop at understanding, interpreting, and critiquing what we saw, but ultimately aimed at influencing and changing the way people think and act. Despite generally adhering to the common stance in anthropology of deferring moral judgments on social-cultural practices and norms encountered in the field, we became involved in projects where the stated goal was to transform human thinking and behaviour – in small and partial ways; here, to reuse more – to achieve a transition to less damaging ways of living and consuming. In what follows we reflect on these experiences and discuss how developments and challenges in the field resonated with processes within the academy. Like the Australian environmental humanities scholar, Gay Hawkins, we found ourselves "...working at the interface between interesting conceptual intellectual work and applied engaged research that's tackling a global crisis" (Hawkins et al. 2019).

Applied anthropology is often thought of as the practice of enrolling anthropology in order to address human and societal problems (van Willigen 2002: ix). Methods, perspectives, and knowledge emerging out of the discipline are used for utilitarian purposes where "[t]he primary goal is getting things done" (Nolan 2017: 33). 'Solving problems' then, is central to applied anthropology, sometimes even to the point of defining it. But what is a problem and what does a problem do? The word 'problem' derives from the Greek word proballein, which in turn breaks down into pro, before, and ballein, to throw (Oxford Dictionary of English 2015). In other words a problem can be seen as something that is thrown before us: something that we find ourselves facing and which we need to consider and respond to. In what follows, we will outline how we used anthropological knowledge and tools to address problems in two applied projects. It will become clear that rather than merely accepting how the problems had been defined and offering solutions to them, what we did was primarily

to ‘throw’ the problems differently. Through being ‘unruly’ – probing deeper into seemingly self-evident questions, recontextualising issues, and making associations between domains – we tried to encourage critical thinking and reflection in order to formulate alternative understandings of how the challenges could be met.

The following account will draw on a longer history of collaborative work that we undertook in relation to our original research project, but the main focus will be on two distinct applied projects. The first, here called ROF (Reuse Office Furnishing), was a collaboration with a municipal department and an interior design company specialising in reuse interior design and furnishing.¹ From the City administration, we mainly worked with the Department of Sustainable Waste and Water, which housed a pilot project aimed at exploring ways of making the entire municipality more sustainable, both in terms of its citizens and in terms of internal administration. Together with the project leader and staff members from this initiative, and the owners of the interior design company, we wrote an application for funding for an eight-month project, which was granted by the Swedish Energy Agency. The aim of this project was to facilitate large-scale reuse of furniture and furnishings in public offices, using the City administration as a case study. Our motivation was that transition to sustainability is generally far easier to achieve within the private sector, which tends to be more flexible and more easily adapts to changing circumstances, than in the more rigidly structured and controlled public sector. If we could show that transition to increased reuse is possible within the City, then, we argued, this could set an example that others – for example, other cities, regional administrations, and private companies – could follow.²

The project was designed around exploring a series of obstacles or barriers to reuse. We had identified a number of such barriers that we believed would be useful to study, and part of the undertakings within the project was a series of workshops and think tanks, where we invited various stakeholders (architects, caretakers, sustainability officers, furniture producers and sellers, removal specialists, etc.) to discuss these barriers, as well as add more. The project thus had an open and inclusive approach built into its design in order to maximise its value to, and relevance for the users.

The second project, here called LwT (Living (with) Things), was undertaken as a state-run museum. We had approached the director of the museum, saying that we were interested in exploring possibilities for collaboration, and as it happened, the museum had just begun the planning of a major new exhibition on the theme of consumption and sustainability. After an initial meeting we decided to apply for separate funding for this collaboration, with the aim of jointly designing a physical component of the upcoming exhibition using findings from our research project, but also to implement a citizen science component in the exhibition feeding data into our research. In total, we had monthly or bi-monthly planning meetings for two years, and also held two workshops at the museum where we tried out prototypes for the exhibition with two focus groups from the public, one school class, and one adult choir. The result was a demarcated section of the exhibition called Living (with) Things which contained three visitors’ activities and formed part of

the overall exhibition Human:Nature. An exhibition about consumption and the future of the planet that opened in February 2019 and will close in Stockholm in 2021. In addition, we helped design, and during 2019, participated in an experimental outreach component of the exhibition in the shape of a mobile, 'pop-up' exhibition that travelled to a number of locations throughout the city to meet new publics. Simply put, this 'pop-up' was a tiny caravan, entirely built from scrap material, peddled by a tandem bike. It contained informational material, miniature versions of some exhibits from the main exhibition, and a range of interactive material, used to engage passers-by. This was a new form of outreach that the museum had never tried before, and the theme of the 'pop-up' was based on our component of the main exhibition.

Both ROF and LwT came about as a result of activities within the cross-disciplinary research project Re:heritage. Circulation and Marketization of Things with History, funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2014-2019.

Before outlining the details of how we worked with anthropological knowledge and methods in the two projects, some words need to be said about the broader field that we came into, and how our approach differed from some of the dominant ways of thinking.

At the time that we began exploring reuse and second-hand consumption, discussions on the promises of the 'circular economy' (CE) had begun to emerge in Sweden. The concept circulated in national media, and in Gothenburg where we were doing fieldwork, various meetings, workshops, and lectures on the topic illustrated the growing interest in this new way of conceptualising the economy. Indeed, the City administration pilot project we collaborated with was called Circular Gothenburg. In short, CE thinking takes a systematic approach to the economy that should benefit industry, society, and the planet by disconnecting growth from resource exploitation. Inspired by the restorative and regenerative powers of ecological cycles in nature it argues for closing the loops of material flows in order to reduce resource extraction and waste production. In symbiotic networks corporations are supposed to turn waste and by-products into resources for production. Design for disassembling and recycling is crucial in this, as is design for care and repair in order to extend the lifespan of things before being returned for another production cycle (McDonough and Braungart, 2002; Webster, 2017). CE has received criticism, not least in regard to the limited evidence of large-scale practical CE cases (see Gregson et al. 2015; Blomsma and Brennan 2017; Valenzuela and Böhm 2017; Corvellec et al. 2020), but overall has been met with enthusiasm from industry, policy makers, and social movements and is being increasingly adopted as an imagined solution to sustainability challenges in Sweden. This is reflected for example in the way that the Swedish government sees it as a cornerstone of the sustainable consumption strategy (Ministry of Finance 2016), recently formed the Swedish Circular Economy Delegation (Government Offices of Sweden 2018) and ambitiously stated that "Sweden will develop the resource-effective, circular, bio-based economy" in its latest Government Declaration (authors' translation, Government Offices of Sweden 2019: 6).

Although initially attracted to CE, particularly in the way it resonated with our previous work on the circulation of material culture, care and repair, and the interconnectedness of humans and things, we realised that our research findings spoke of issues that could not easily

be reconciled with CE thinking. First, it became clear that CE thinking, still in the process of formation, tended to take the perspective of big and established actors, leaving little room for small entrepreneurs. For example, discussions on the importance of being able to track furniture and their parts in order to recycle and reuse them became overshadowed by large corporations' wish to retain control over the entire process to the point of claiming and maintaining ownership over materials and disenfranchising the user from the right to repair.

Second, despite all the talk about the importance of all the different 're-'s, i.e. reduce, reuse, repair and recycle, the dominating discourse of CE prioritises recycling, since this is where the economic interest of the main actors lies, and the economic gains are most easily made (Alexander and Reno 2012; MacBride 2012). 'Reduce' uncomfortably conflicts with growth, while 'reuse' and 'repair' in general are considered too specific and messy for an economy of scale (Crocker and Chiverrals 2018; Isenhour and Berry 2020; Norris 2017). This despite the fact that recycling is burdened by costly and energy consuming infrastructures (Corvellec 2019). Third, and the most important divergence however, was how mainstream CE thinking by being concerned with recycling, tended to prioritize resource efficiency, faster loops, and the dissociation of materials from their users. CE thus becomes more of a conceptual continuation of the modern linear production system – promoting the core values of efficiency, reduction, and detachment that led to an extreme form of planetary resource depletion in the first place – than a break with it. It shares much of its foundation with eomodernism in its reliance on technological innovation and market capitalism for its operation (Genovese and Pansera 2020: 9).

Many of the professionals we came into contact with, during both ROF and LwT, were well versed in the CE thinking, were often motivated by its core principles, and tended to be relatively uncritical of it. Given that our own research pointed in directions that contradicted or were incompatible with many of the aspects of CE theories, when entering this field, we often sought to recast issues and suggest alternative interpretations. On the one hand, then, our 'unruliness' consisted in critiquing some of the main assumptions and dominant ways of thinking, a well-established mode of academic engagement that will be further described below.

On the other hand, we also went beyond this mode of critique and criticism. As will be shown below, in both projects we collaborated with partners around a series of co-hosted events, as well as co-produced more tangible, physical artefacts – a jointly authored 'furniture guide'; a jointly designed exhibition – that can be likened to the 'fieldwork devices' discussed by anthropologists Adolfo Estalella and Tomás Sánchez Criado (2018: 2). These are creative interventions that "...turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration" (Estalella and Criado 2018: 2). As they point out, when anthropologists do fieldwork in distinct sites with 'epistemic communities', such as experts, scientists, public servants, or artists, this often leads to collaborative relationships where the counterparts become epistemic partners and involve a distinct ethnographic modality that differs from the traditional trope of participant observation (Ibid 2018).

The main reason why we ventured into such experimental collaboration however, did not come from within anthropology, but from the emerging set of theoretical approaches and methodological tools often labelled under 'posthumanism'. We had become interested in such perspectives because they offered us conceptual tools for thinking about ethics and responsibility that go beyond care for humans to also consider things and non-human

processes, such as, in our case furniture or household belongings (Appelgren 2020; Bohlin 2020). Yet, we also found inspiration in the way that posthumanist approaches explicitly encourage combining critique with constructive and speculative approaches. Political philosopher Jane Bennett for example, discussing the relationship between humans and things, argues that there is a need to move beyond 'demystification', a critical mode which aims at exposing, revealing, and denouncing human, often exploitative or oppressing, intentions (2010: xiv). Besides broadening our view to also consider how non-human forces affect our lives, she argues, we need positive formulations of alternatives, since ethical political action "... seems to require not only a vigilant critique of existing institutions but also positive, even utopian alternatives" (2010: xv). In a similar move, philosopher and feminist Rosi Braidotti (2018) argues for an affirmative critique that is both critical and creative. She and other scholars associated with posthumanism and feminism have long emphasised how analysis is performative: how when we describe what we find, "wording", becomes "worldling"; in other words, we co-produce reality by describing it. For this reason, one way of bringing about the change we wish to see is to "write it"; to put it into words (Åsberg 2012: 15). For us, such arguments gave us theoretical license to step outside of the usual mode of critique associated with academia – a mode we were used to – and engage more creatively and constructively in the "collaboration, sharing and co-thinking" that is emphasised by Nolan (2017: 33) as key characteristics of applied anthropological work. Such a stance also resonates well with recent anthropological work that emphasizes how creative, improvisational, speculative, and participatory techniques may have the potential to significantly contribute to and intervene in contemporary worldmaking activities (Pink and Salazar 2017: 3).

Reflecting on the different collaborations with non-academic partners that we have undertaken, both as part of Re:heritage and in the various applied projects, certain patterns emerge. Put simply, the level of success of a project seems to depend on two interrelated issues: first, whether there are good and trusting relationships between the collaborating partners; and second, whether the anthropologists are given room to be “unruly” (and of course, that partners regard this unruliness as beneficial). The two are intimately connected. As is clear from the above discussion, what is referred to here is not unruliness or disruption in a social sense as in being rude or impertinent, but rather in terms of cognitive strategies and ideas. Even so, to articulate an alternative way of conceptualising something in a meeting, or to insist on abandoning an established typology or way of classifying phenomena, might not work very well unless good relations have been established.

One of the lessons we had learned from previous collaborations, which we brought into the cases discussed here, was the importance of making sure to provide ample opportunities to get to know each other preferably outside of the conventional meeting format. This meant being ready to quickly respond to opportunities that presented themselves; for example, in the case of the ROF project, an invitation to go on a day trip to a town known for its many furniture factories and reuse initiatives. Despite not being sure what the exact purpose of this visit was, we had learned the value of doing something concrete together as a group. Chatting in the rented car trying to find the way, keeping each other company when the train turned out to be many hours late, and visiting a range of reuse initiatives indeed helped to consolidate the group and establish trust. The concrete tasks that needed to be solved along the journey pushed us all to step out from our professional roles and to relate to each other in a more relaxed and informal manner. Similarly, once the project was underway, collectively hosting “team labs” events for invited stakeholders, with all that this entailed in terms of practical planning such as sending out invitations, preparing coffee and snacks, getting stationary, and cleaning up afterwards, further strengthened relationships in the group and created good conditions for productive forms of unruliness.

Finally, a note on the conditions for such collaboration to be successful. In the cases discussed here, we were fortunate that two funding agencies supported our projects, meaning that our and our collaborators’ labour was paid for and we had the time to build solid relationships. Had this not been the case, and we had lacked the possibility of laying the groundwork for these relationships, it is possible that the same unruly interventions

that proved successful here would have been received very differently and our input into the processes might have been more limited.

When we began our initial research project Re:heritage, the field of reuse and second-hand was dominated by debates on structures, regulations, policies, and big actors that were often disconnected from the experiences and perspectives of ordinary people and everyday social life. Discussions on recycling and CE seemed to miss what was so clearly visible in our fieldwork: how ordinary household belongings are used to express identities, negotiate social relationships, and form an intrinsic but often unacknowledged part of people's lives. In our experience, CE thinking tends to disregard the inherently complex layers of material, historical, cultural, and social values and meanings of things in order to isolate and exploit their material resource value in new production cycles. This reductive process is in itself wasteful as important socio-cultural qualities of the thing are neglected and lost (Appelgren 2019a). In addition, CE thinking encourages further dissociation of materials and things from humans. By giving the control of the resources of production to corporations, even during the consumption phase casting consumers as users rather than owners and providing a function rather than a commodity, people are set apart from things. Ultimately their engagement in things becomes watered down, as practices for reinforcing relationships to things, such as ownership, care, and repair are undermined by corporate control.

In contrast, in both the applied projects discussed here we sought to engage in a critique of wasteful and unsustainable practices that was combined with a more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted and complex role of objects in people's lives, whether in private homes or in offices. Here we were able to draw on posthuman insights that stresses relationality, coexistence, and material vitality and on insights from critical heritage studies that acknowledge the layers of significance of things to be actively valued and cared for (Appelgren and Bohlin 2015, 2017). Instead of further dissociation of humans from things and from the material implications of life, a sustainable economy needs to stress interconnectedness and interdependence as well as the importance of staying in vital relationships even when they cause troubles and inconveniences (Haraway 2016).

These insights inspired our involvement in both projects. In the ROF project, it meant that whenever we could, we tried to counteract the large-scale, abstract concepts and logic of CE language that we often encountered with attention to actual, situated human-thing relations, highlighting how social, cultural, and material processes come together. In the museum project, LwT, these ideas inspired us to steer away from the initial focus on reuse and circulation as a solution, instead concentrating on not sending things into circulation, but rather to keep them for as long as possible. The process was different in each project, with a clearer division and separation of labour in the ROF project, which meant a greater freedom for us to conduct our part, and a stricter and more structured format in LwT, but where we, to a larger extent than in the former, shared an explorative and creative approach with our partners. In both projects, however, we often experienced that we were "unruly" in the sense of asking questions or coming with suggestions that were clearly not expected, and that sometimes threw the process in entirely new directions.

Going back to the issue of what a problem is, the etymological origin of the word highlights that a problem is far from a gap or an empty void that can simply be filled

with a solution. In contrast, it is something thrown before us; it has substance, much like an obstacle on the ground in front of us, bringing our onward movement to a halt. If we understand problems as things thrown in particular times and spaces, the techniques that have been discussed above – probing deeper into issues, recontextualising them, and drawing unexpected associations between separate domains – may create new understandings of the ‘then’ and ‘there’ of a particular issue. Rather than removing the obstacle as quickly as possible, the task of the anthropologist is to throw it differently, and to harness the possibilities and energies emerging from the different notions of “then” and “there” that may thus become accessible.

The particular benefit of bringing in an anthropologist in an applied project, then, is not so much to get the problem solved, as to have the problem thrown differently before the stakeholders in order to engender reflection and consideration. The challenge for the anthropologist is to stay with the issue broadly defined, but not be limited by a preconceived or premature framing of the problem. When we ask what happens if office furniture is seen as valuable by staff and fellow colleagues, or when thing-relationships are modelled on human romantic love, we put anthropology to work by engaging in the kind of speculative acts Tim Ingold identifies as central to the discipline (2017). These are occasions for exploring possibilities – other ways of being and other worlds – that may contribute to the articulation of new and unexpected alternatives and solutions.

We would like to thank the editors of this special issue, and the two anonymous reviewers, for the thoughtful and constructive comments they provided on earlier versions of this text. We also gratefully acknowledge the Seedbox initiative, Linköping University, and the Swedish Energy Agency, for funding the two applied projects and the Swedish Research Council for funding the main research project (VR 421-2013-1923).