Valuation in action: Ethnography of an American thrift store

The first station in the journey from donation to resale is ‘the back door’. Inside the door, which is more like a gate, the donations go through the primary stage of rough sorting. Next to the gate there is a sign informing donors of which items the organisation accepts and what it does not accept. Most of the time, two employees are stationed here to assist donors and perform the initial sorting. The donors are relatively involved in this process, since they hand over the donations directly to the employees. Most of the time this meeting is quite uneventful, but there are instances where these meetings become more engaged. The first day I worked at the back door I experienced some of the emotional aspects of handling used objects:

This first donor drove up to the gate with his whole car filled with boxes. They all contained his late wife's clothes and shoes. She had recently passed away and he was getting rid of all her clothes. 'It's hard,' he said, a little emotionally, as he dropped the first box on the ramp. I helped him carry the boxes to the gate and they were all marked with a description of the content of the box: 17 pairs of new socks, trouser suits, dresses, etc. He had also printed out an inventory of all the objects and noted the prices of all the things. The total amount came to over $5,000. Karen handed him a receipt that he filled out with his name, date, the amount and, at the bottom of

the receipt, the name of the charity he wanted the money raised to go to. He wanted to donate the money to a women's shelter his wife had volunteered for from time to time.

Most of the encounters are less emotional, but many 'drop-offs' are prompted by emotional events in people's lives: moving house, clearing out relative's belongings and even weight loss.¹⁰

When the donations have been dropped off, some are rejected and some are discarded, but most are divided into boxes, bags and crates to be taken to the different departments of 'homeware', 'clothing', 'books', 'art and music', and 'electronics'. The first sorting does not entail any pricing, but it does involve an initial valuation in the form of decisions as to which objects need to be discarded immediately and which of the remainder should go where.

After the rough sorting stage, the objects are taken to the different departments for closer inspection and valuation. The departments have different ways of performing valuations, but there are similar concerns for all of them. The most important feature in the valuation is the condition of the object, since most objects have to be in good material condition to be remarketed. In rare cases, the brand or name of the artist behind an object can justify it being remarketed despite flaws, but formal indicators like designer names or label are mostly secondary to material condition. Desirability and demand is usually the next feature considered. Most objects will go out on display if they are not broken or flawed, a though if they are highly sought-after they may still be remarketed with minor flaws. Conversely, if there is a lot of the same type of objects then some may be discarded. In the following text I will describe in more detail how the objects are handled to exemplify the practices and considerations involved.

When a crate of electronic devices is brought from the back door into the electronics department, Ralph, one of the employees working in this department, cleans and tests each object. A crate can include anything from TVs to phones, memory cards, blenders, lamps, and amplifiers. CD players are plugged in and connected to speakers and PCs are connected to monitors and all content is erased. Coffee makers are only turned on: 'no coffee is actually being brewed!' Ralph tells me jokingly. He keeps odd plugs, bulbs, batteries and adaptors so that he can test any objects that come in without leads or cables. If the objects work they are priced, and if not they are either marked 'as is' and labelled as non-functioning, or are recycled. Customers who can fix them will buy the objects at a lower price, Ralph tells me. Odd cables, memory cards and other accessories are sold for approximately 50–75 c. He prices stuff based on his knowledge of what customers will buy, combined with a sense of 'What would I pay?', 'How new or old is this?' and 'What do we usually charge?'. Ralph will mostly price stuff at 'something-plus-25-cents', or 'something-plus-75-cents'. Prices like $8 are rare, he says, and so is $5.50. He is completely aware that this is a psychological matter, but still keeps to the 'principle'. In the clothing department the objects, in this case clothes, also undergo a thorough inspection before they are priced and remarketed. First the employees at the back door accept the clothes, then attach charity numbers and put the clothing in crates. These crates are then moved to the clothing area where they are sorted into usable items and recyclable items (or consigned to the $1 bin). The initial inspection ensures there are no holes in the clothes and that they are clean. The usable items are stacked and the stacks are separated with a piece of tape indicating the different charity the clothes were donated to. Tags are then attached with the charity code on them and the clothes are divided into men's and women's. They are then moved again into subsections according to clothing

types: jackets, trousers, tops, etc. From there they are priced individually and placed on hangers and brought to the shop floor.

The first time I worked in the clothing department, Karen showed me how to price designer jeans. She looked at the brand, and from her knowledge of what people want she priced them accordingly. The average price is between 16–23 dollars if there is nothing wrong with the jeans. If they are a more popular brand or style they will go higher; if there is a small stain or they show too many signs of wear, they will go for a lower price. Clothing priced above $17 is put in a special section and chained to the rack to prevent theft. The $1 bin, meanwhile, is where all the stuff is placed that is too good to recycle but too worn or stained to go in the ordinary section. After Karen had instructed me I started performing pricing in the clothing department myself. The first time I did this I valued women's and men's jackets. The jackets had already been sorted and tagged with the charity code. I performed the final run-through, assigned a price and put them on hangers. They are placed on a rack that only contains items ready to go out into the store. In order to assign a price I examined the state of each jacket and determined whether it was a 'high end' brand. If it was not I referred to a list Karen had given me specifying the price-range of different types of clothing. The list is divided into categories of styles and brands. Women's t-shirts are priced between $2.50 and $3, though a vintage or brand T-shirt, for example, can go for up to five dollars. Outdoor jackets are more expensive, as are items from brands like J Crew, GAP, and Jones of New York. While I was working on the jackets, Meeta came over to see how I was doing. I had found a few vintage pieces among the items I was valuing that should go in a separate section, as well as a few things with stains or tears. Meeta, who is the manager in the clothing department, explained to me that one of the advantages of having different people doing the sorting and pricing is that different people see different things.

Although much of the work involves routine tasks for the employees, every day something new comes in that needs special attention and requires the employees to spend time conferring with colleagues or looking the object up online. These special items can be very different. On one occasion, an old – almost antique – pewter thermos was donated. It was brought in inside a box with a lot of other objects and was immediately identified as something that had to be looked up. A few days later, when the 'look-up' box was full, Karen went through it and looked up the thermos online. I did a similar search and found it on eBay priced at almost $100. Karen decided to set the price at 32 dollars and 50 cents, which reflects the particular status of the object, but still a significantly lower price than it might fetch online. This corresponds with the overall pricing strategy of the Community Thrift. The aim is to price objects so that they bring in as much money as possible for the charities, but also that they should be accessible. Accessibility is considered in relation to regular customers who may not be able to afford expensive items, but also to cater for professional buyers. Professional buyers make up a relatively large portion of the customer base and they generate a lot of revenue, as well as taking quite a number of items out of the store and thereby making room for new objects. The price should be low enough for professional buyers to want to purchase the items and be able to sell them on with a profit.

Training and working in the different departments gave me an embodied understanding of what valuations entail and how formal indicators and tacit subjective knowledge, as well as sensations, emotions and energy levels, all play a part in the process. Most of my observations were grounded in these experiences, but I also used additional tools and methods like Interviews and casual conversations to clarify how my experiences related to those of other more experienced sorters. To supplement my knowledge, I conducted sessions of joint interviews during the sorting of individual objects as they were donated. The following is an excerpt from my notes from one such session:

Zack, Scott and I sat down in the homeware department and looked at the box in front of us. The first object Scott took out of the box was an metal teapot in Arabic style. It had a plastic ring round the top of the lid, which Scott removed to make it look more attractive. He said it didn't really affect the price whether this ring was on or off, but he removed it anyway. Zack agreed on the price and Scott put a pink price tag on the teapot indicating the monthly colour code and stamped with the price and a charity code, in this case 176, which indicates that the object has been donated to raise money to Safehouse, a local charity dedicated to providing housing to homeless women who have been involved in sex-work.

The second object was a handmade wooden candleholder. It was made of real wood, which Zack noted was important, and it had a 'mid-century modern' look to it, although it was not marked. Scott and Zack both considered it special and so the final price was set at $4.25.

Next were four martini glasses which Scott and Zack considered to be quite nice but nothing exceptional. They were priced at $2.25.

Immediately after, Scott pulled out another set of martini glasses. They were longer than the first four and generated some debate back and forth, since Zack thought they should be priced the same as the first four glasses while Scott insisted that they should be priced higher because they were longer and more attractive. In the end Scott won the argument and they were priced at three dollars each.

We went through a number of other objects, amongst which was a set of French glass plates.

According to Scott they were valuable, but since they were scratched he did not want to put a high price on them. Zack, on the other hand, would not have them put in the store at all and discarded them immediately because of their condition.

What these sessions helped me identify was the individual involvement and judgements in the valuations. Although the underlying principles clearly inform the fundamentals of valuations, ultimately it is a personal call that decides the price and whether the objects will continue the journey.

Objects that have been discarded during the valuation or after being 'called' in the store are collected in bags and boxes and put in a corner in the back area, to be picked up by other companies that either recycle them or sort them again to see if there is anything of value. The donated clothes that go to recycling are those that have turned out to be too dirty or in too poor condition. There are also items that have been in the store for a long time but have not sold. These clothes are all put in plastic bags and are picked up several times a week, by a recycling company. I observed the pickups of most of the different types of objects, from pottery to clothing and books. In the book department Drew explained how the decision is made to get rid of books that have been in the store for too long: 'I try not to get rid of stuff that might sell, but you have to throw some things away'. Like all the others working at the Community Thrift, Drew is highly aware of the organisation's principle that they want to make as much money for the charities as possible, so that getting rid of stuff that might sell is a difficult decision. Since the company that picks up the books pays by bulk and not by individual value, there is no need to throw out valuable books. The process of creating or capturing the value of the donated objects relies on a combination of organisational principles and ad hoc judgements. As the objects leave the thrift store, either as recycled material or by being sold they enter a larger second-hand economy that constitutes the context of valuation practices.

Following Mary Douglas,¹⁷ making sense of second-hand objects can be seen mainly as a matter of categorization. Her statement that 'dirt is matter out of place' offers a structural

approach and suggests that categories produce dirt. Framed by this approach Botticello argues, when describing the sorting process in second-hand industries, that, by turning the process around and categorising dirt or discards, the sorting process creates order and the potential for value.¹⁸ Before the sorting begins, the piles of donations are unrecognizable as commodities and carry very little value. What goes on in the Community Thrift can thus be described as a transformation through categorisation.

Sorting, or categorisation, creates a structure, a trajectory, through the organisation. This structure is relatively stationary since the different employees inhabit different stations throughout the organisation. The mobility is in the objects. The trajectories that the objects follow highlight the instability in the lives of things. And in the Community Thrift there are several possible trajectories. By establishing trajectories the organization attempts to manage the continuous flow of donations. The particular interference the structure imposes on the flow are the actions that transform the discards into commodities. As Kopystoff describes, writing biographies of things can help make sense of the instances where things change states.¹⁹ The present account offers an augmented view of this event in 'the life of things' where the objects change from one state to another. What happens inside the Community Thrift is an event with several possible outcomes, to which I will subsequently return.

The structure I have described rests solely on the systems of routinised actions that the employees and managers perform. In fact, practicing valuation is in itself what creates value, both by making sense of the objects and by investing time and energy in them. These actions organize objects and social relations and are themselves organised. Practices are always unique and at the same time a repetition of previous recognizable practices. A defining feature of practices as described by Reckwitz, is the interconnectedness of activities, knowledge and objects and those connections are evident in valuation processes.²⁰ Repetition is crucial to valuation as to other practices. As 'a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, things and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge,²¹ practices are at once individual and collective. As a single action or even a set of actions, a valuation is not rooted in a wider structure of meaning. Through the interconnectedness of the organisation, the individual and the social context, valuations are stabilised and are central to the process of turning discards into commodities.

I have used the term discards about the objects as they arrive. They could also be understood as rubbish. Thompson,²² when defining his seminal approach to the study of economic value in second-hand markets describes rubbish as a 'region of flexibility,²³ which allows for different outcomes. According to Thompson, consumer objects have transient value that at some point turn them into rubbish. But by entering the rubbish state they also have the possibility to gain durable value as antiques or collectibles. In Thompson's view, transfers occur between transient, rubbish and durable states in that order. Objects do not move from durable to transient or from rubbish to transient. The Community Thrift mainly handles

objects that Thompson would define as transient, namely household goods. The employees and volunteers enforce a structure that aims to categorise the rubbish and turn it into valuable objects. Therefore the durable state in this analysis includes objects that have been reinstated as commodities, whether durable or transient. In the Community Thrift the categories are less defined and some objects are donated as transient and continue as transient even after the valuations. Also, durable objects such as artworks and antiques are donated because of their value even though they go through a rubbish state. Thompson describes the process of moving objects from one state to another as a transfer. He focuses on structural processes, but as the transfers in the Community Thrift involve a number of practices and actions I expand the term and describe them as a transformation instead. The objects move as part of an active engagement and the categorisations make the objects recognizable as commodities. In that sense, the term transformation better indicates the activities and the change that is involved.

The ambiguity in the process has led me to describe the donations as discards instead of rubbish. I use the term discards because it can refer to objects that are considered rubbish as well as objects that are considered valuable but have been discarded by their previous owner anyway. Either way, the donations arrive because they have been discarded and are physically and categorically in disorder. The disorder, or being out of place in Douglas' terms, is a potentially powerful state and preserving or allowing some degree of disorder is valuable. However, the primary action which the donations activate is categorisation through structure and a move out of the rubbish state.

No matter how well the objects are categorised, some of them challenge the structures that the employees tirelessly seek to enforce. At any given time, a box containing cups, paperclips, three pens, a pair of jeans and five books may be donated, activating the process in which the employees begin organising the different objects. Almost every donation raises new questions and requires slight adaptations to the system. The individuality of the objects means that each category of the systematisation needs to be broad. At the same time, knowing exactly where things go and why is important in order to perform a valuation and pricing of the object that balances the different dimensions described above. While the individuality of each object is crucial to their transformation into valuable commodities, at the same time it hinders a seamless flow from discard to commodity. I have described the transformation as a movement from disorder – matter out of place – into commodities through meaningful structures and categories. On one level, therefore, a semiotic, structuralist level, the objects are transformed into valuable commodities; while on another level the individual nature of the objects resists this structure and changes the categories. Don Slater points out that ambiguity is not a property of objects but of classification and practices, and goes on to outline a number of ways in which ambiguity affects objects in markets and in consumption.²⁴ Along the lines of Douglas's argument, Slater describes the potentiality of ambiguity as both a risk and an opportunity. Being uncategorizable is a potential taboo, but also a possibility for change. In the sorting of second-hand objects, uncategorizable objects are certainly potent and their position can result in a higher value. It may also mean that the object is discarded or disappears in the store because it does not sit comfortably among other similar objects.

Adjusting categories is one of the clearest expressions of the performative nature of the valuation structure. At any moment in time, the Community Thrift operates with a specific number of more or less defined categories that appear stable to the employees and the customers. Over time, however, these categories change: new categories are invented and old ones are abandoned to fit the demands of the customers or the objects. Some of them are formal categories that are written down and enforced throughout the sorting process. Karen told me how children's wear had been a category for a period of time, but had later been abandoned, to the point where the Community Thrift no longer accepts children's clothes. This category was removed due to the amount of work it took to keep that section of the store clear. According to Karen, customers shopping for children's clothes would often take all the clothes off the hangers and just leave them on the floor. An executive decision was thus made to stop offering them altogether. Other categories are removed or established more unnoticeably based on the donations that come in. Sometimes there are a lot of similar items, or a lot of things that can be grouped together. During the time I worked in the Community Thrift, crystal glassware was one particular section that appeared and disappeared regularly. At other times there were a lot of ceramic items. So the different sections grow or diminish or even disappear over time to make place for something else. The temporary categories are an efficient means of creating order even of more specialised objects.

As Botticello notes, donations produce categories that reclassify objects.²⁵ Creating categories is a way of creating meaning and becomes a way of establishing relations between employees (who now know where to put things) and customers (who now know where to find them). In the Community Thrift it is clearly visible how the systematisation and categorisation of the objects along the trajectory through the process is crucial for the value creation. Each category relates the objects to other similar or comparable objects and to other external contexts. It also became clear to me how categorisation is disrupted by the contingency of objects and their materiality. The fact that nobody knows what or how much will be donated also disturbs the categories. And the uncertainty of what the donations will include means that there has to be a certain amount of openness. However, for the individual doing the job of putting things out on the shelves, the sections are very helpful since they help you go through the cases quickly. In the book department, for example, there were many sub-sections, and as I got familiar with the different sections I felt a certain sense of satisfaction every time I was able to find the right spot for a book. After having done this for a while, I was able to find the right place for almost everything. The objects and the contingency in the donations and their material qualities affect the categorisation, as do individual performances of practices.

The experience of working in the Community Thrift and being taught how to perform valuations showed how the dominant value that guides practices throughout the organisation is thrift. At every station along the trajectory, as well as in the larger structures of the organisation, being thrifty – i.e. using resources in a considered way and not being wasteful – is expressed through actions and words. From taking responsibility for the donations at the beginning of the trajectory to bundling office supplies or pricing bedding that accidentally enters the flow, the employees make the most of whatever they receive. Thrift is often at odds with pure economic rationality, since the investment of time involved in making objects valuable does not always transform into higher economic output. Being thrifty certainly means making the most of the donations, but not only in terms of economic gain. Making the best use of the donations includes bundling objects, reducing prices, looking things up, testing, cleaning and sorting. Thrift as a value in the organisation can perhaps be understood as what Graeber describes as an 'infravalue'.²⁶ Being thrifty is not an end in itself but a means to obtain other values. By being thrifty, the Community Thrift is able to create economic, social and emotional value. Thrift has mainly been treated as a feature of consumption and the household;²⁷ it is closely associated with saving and even, as Podkalicka and Potts point out, with 'conspicuous conservation'.²⁸ As Miller describes it, thrift is an attempt to stop resources flowing out of the household. In the context of the thrift store, however, thrift is mainly a way of moving things along.

Thompson's rubbish theory highlights the presence of objects that are no longer wanted or valued by their current owner and how value decay and material decay do not go hand in hand.²⁹ The objects linger long after they are no longer valuable to anyone. Second-hand markets exist because of this fact; but the specific knowledge of these practices makes it clear that as soon as the object enters a larger social relation, the possible value of the object become a subject of negotiation. It is clear that one of the purposes of the Community Thrift is to determine whether an object is in one of the states along the trajectory from discard to commodity; but in the thrift store objects can pass from rubbish to transient again – at least if discards are the same as rubbish. If ridding oneself of unwanted objects is to consider them rubbish then the donations that the Community Thrift accept are, for the most part, rubbish. But only a fraction of these enter a durable state after they have been discarded. Most of the objects re-enter the precarious position, where their value is diminished over time due to wear and desirability. Many objects gain value from this process even if they do not become durable, but the value they gain is not constant. A Pyrex bowl in a thrift store is in most cases more valuable than it was to the person who discarded it. But it will only retain that value as long as demand is high. Fluctuations in prices in second-hand markets are very common. Many traders I have talked to attest to this. Objects that seemed to be a solid investment ten years ago can suddenly fall out of favour with customers and their prices drop radically.

Thompson is concerned with the economic aspect of second-hand markets. But in the thrift store other types of value are also in play. A concern for the community and offering affordable household goods is a form of social value central to the Community Thrift. The emotional aspect of donating to a charity a loved one would have liked to help is valuable to the donors and increasingly an environmental concern is becoming important to the organisation. In this article I will not present a lengthy analysis of how these values interact with each other, but briefly suggest that the practices of valuation in the thrift store display properties of both market and gift exchanges.

Writing biographies of things, as Kopytoff suggests, offers a temporal understanding of the changing nature of objects in a social sphere. He describes how objects change category over time as a result of biographical events such as buying, giving, selling, etc. It is one of these events, or sets of events, that is the focus of this article: the remarketing of used objects. These events, the result of a number of practices that include donating, sorting and valuation, transform objects from a relatively invaluable bulk of discards into singularized commodities. Gifting and commoditisation are equally important, and as such the value of these objects is affected by both. Kopytoff suggests that an object can be an heirloom and a commodity simultaneously to different people in accordance with different value systems.³⁰ In the process of remarketing used objects the objects have to potentially be both to the same person, i.e. the person sorting them. As Graeber, Miller and others note, the dichotomy between gift and commodity as completely separate states is too simple.³¹ In the Community Thrift the objects arrive as gifts in one sense, as they are donated to charity, but they are also potential commodities. Otherwise the Community Thrift would not accept them. They are also potential rubbish, since nobody knows if the Community Thrift can make use of the donations. If the objects were treated only as potential commodities, more things would be looked up and sold online, the prices would be higher, and

many of the cheaper objects would be discarded. In fact, as Armun described to me, the Community Thrift would most likely cease to exist in this case, since they would generate more money from the sale of the warehouse than they would from many years of operating. In other words, commodification of the entire operation could, potentially make more economic sense. An entirely economic analysis would likely find several instances of inefficiency in the operation, but looking at the elements of a gift exchange these practices make sense as part of the aim of the Community Thrift. As Cliff expressed it: 'we could do the eBay thing to make more money, but that kinda defes the purpose of a thrift store'. Gift exchange is not only carried out by donors, it pervades the whole organisation: from sorters 'giving' their time to bundle non-valuable objects to pricing structures that are sensitive to the economic circumstances of some of their customers, to the employees allowing patrons to nap or hang out in the furniture department, and to the overall aim of the organisation to generate money to the various charities they partner with. The gift givers, that is the donors, are also caught up in this duality: they are not necessarily driven by altruism alone, since, for example, they can get a tax refund from making the donation. In some cases, donating unwanted items may even provide absolution from indulging in overconsumption. But focusing on the practices involved and how employees and donors invest actions and concern in them makes it possible to consider both economic market-driven structures and social and emotional influences as well. Considering only the social aspects of the exchange of donations also creates a simplified image of the reality of second-hand markets. Graeber offers an inclusive concept of value that can grasp both market and gift relations, by suggesting that value, in the broader sociological sense as well as economic, is constituted by the actions, thought and energy invested in an object.³² In the context of the thrift store the actions invested in something, be it in the value of an object or an organisation, is a potentiality in that relation until it is capitalised. Capitalising or making something exchangeable in the form of an abstracted medium of equivalence releases that potential and renders the relation stale. But in the Community Thrift the capitalisation of (some of the) value generates social value in other areas. It is clear that thrift is the dominant value in the Community Thrift and making the most of the donations transcends all aspects of valuation practices. Seen as an expression of thrift, the negotiations between economic and social and emotional values create coherent patterns of value.

The process of turning donations into cultural commodities relies on knowledge, experience, actions and principles. Categorisation constitutes the primary form valuing the objects with the activity itself creating value by investing time and energy in the object. As a form of conclusion, however, I want to point attention to what is left behind: throughout the process from donation and sorting through pricing and selling, waste is constantly being generated. Although the whole process is one of re-establishing discards as valuable commodities through rigorous practices of categorisation, something is always left behind. Things are broken or get dirty or are just not saleable. Looking at the 'uneven remainders' a central concept in the emerging field of discard studies,³³ illustrates how valuations in the second-hand trade create a system that orders (read: dominates) objects into systems of meaning. However, it is also a system that relies on these remainders and on the individual employees' ability to creatively recontextualise them. Although some discard literature has

a tendency to romanticise waste, the attention to structures and organising as a form of domination is important to keep in mind. The spectre of the cultural taboo of impurity that Douglas describes still lingers. By retaining a sensibility to the disorder, ambiguity and dirt that is part of this process, discarded objects form a commentary on organisational attempts to marginalise waste both materially and symbolically. The account of the practices of valuation that I have presented above testifies to the adaptability and creativity of the employees in making the most of the donations, no matter how small or unmanageable they are. Disorder is an important element of valuations that also provides the opportunity for value. It is also an illustration of an adaptable organisational system that, no matter how well it categorizes, creates remainders. Thrift as an infravalue, even a form of 'tactic' in de Certeau's terminology,³⁴ is a situated response to reality of the flow of objects that allows the organisation and especially the individual employees to navigate the larger structure and balance different kinds of values.