Trade and Transformations

of Secondhand Clothing:
Introduction
 Abstract
T  his article draws out some of
the broader themes arising from
the study of secondhand clothing
economies, as an introduction
to this special issue. The articles
in the issue address worn
clothing markets and recycling
technologies from a variety of
disciplinary perspectives, charting
the expansion of the trade from
relative scarcity in the longue
durée to the current global industry
dealing in millions of tons of
used clothing. The used clothing
economy brings into one frame
the links between the market,
materiality and morals, revealing
complex connections as gifts
of clothing are commodified by
charities in the Global North, sold
onto the international market, and
Keywords: secondhand clothing, textile, waste, recycling, charity
donations, sustainability, economic anthropology, economic geography
Lucy Norris
Lucy Norris has completed a Research Fellowship
in the Department of Anthropology, UCL, where
she worked on the Waste of the World project
(2006–11). She has conducted research in the
UK and India on the global secondhand clothing
economy, local systems of reuse in Delhi, and
industrial textile recycling in north India. She is
the author of Recycling Indian Clothing: Global
Contexts of Reuse and Value (Indiana University
Press, 2010).
become a resource for developing
local livelihoods in the Global
South. The heterogeneity of
materials and the temporalities
of fashion cycles and disposal
strategies create a variable supply
of unknown quality and quantity,
for which differential markets must
be developed, yet more work needs
to be done to understand where
the maximum value is extracted,
and how this might be measured;
issues of reciprocity, power and
inequality are implicated at each
stage. This article suggests that
the specificity of the secondhand
clothing economy has much to offer
contemporary theoretical concerns
with economization, marketization,
and the convergence of economic
value with cultural values.
Textile, Volume 10, Issue 2, pp. 128–143
DOI: 10.2752/175183512X13315695424473
Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
© 2012 Berg. Printed in the United Kingdom.
Trade and Transformations
of Secondhand Clothing:
Introduction
Introduction
A long chain of charity and
commerce binds the world’s
richest and poorest people in an
accidental intimacy. It’s a curious
feature of the global age that
hardly anybody at either end
knows it.
George Packer, New York Times
magazine, March 2002
It is striking how unaware most
people are of what happens to their
donations after dropping off the bag
of cast-offs at the charity shop. Often
a convenient means of disposing
of unwanted garments (Fisher et al.
2008), there is a network of mutually
reinforcing values that appear to
be supported through recycling old
clothes. It is believed to be more
environmentally sustainable by
avoiding landfill and reusing the
embedded carbon,1 its remaining
usefulness is not wasted once the
personal associations have been
stripped away (Gregson and Crewe
2003), and the charity can create
exchange-value to be used for its
“good works,” transforming riddance
into thrifty behavior directed
outwards to benefit wider society.
Nevertheless, in the UK in 2008
more than half of annual clothing
purchases were simply thrown away,
and only a quarter collected for reuse
and recycling (Morley et al. 2009).
Recent research confirms the trend
towards consumers on aggregate
buying an increasing quantity of
clothing for ever-decreasing prices
(see Schor 2005), leading to rising
volumes of poor-quality, cast-off
clothing; about 2 million tons of
new clothing were consumed in
the UK in 2007 (Morley et al. 2009).
Interest in the global production
and consumption of new textiles
and clothing is slowly moving up
the political agenda in the Global
North, driven by general concerns
of environmental and social
sustainability (Allwood et al. 2006;
Clark 2008; Defra 2010; Fletcher
2008; Lee 2007; Scaturro 2008; Siegle
2011). Applying the waste hierarchy of
reduce, reuse, and recycle, a handful
of fashion designers are beginning
to upcycle worn clothing into more
valuable garments as part of the
growing “green fashion” movement
(Black 2008; Brown 2010; Clark
2008). But reducing consumption
and spending more on longer-lasting
clothing is of course a strategy rarely
articulated as a viable option for
the mass market. While this might
be an obvious reflection of the
underlying “crisis of capitalism” and
the incommensurability of expanding
economic growth through increasing
spending with the sustainability
agenda (Hart et al. 2010; Harvey 2010),
ethnographic research reminds us how
ridding ourselves of stuff is not only
central to our ability to reformulate
the self but also to reconfigure
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 131
social relations established through
consuming, exchanging, and living
with things (Gregson 2007; Norris
2010). Unwanted clothing and textile
waste are the inevitable consequences
of these processes. Unlike growing
public awareness of sustainability
issues concerning food waste, plastic
packaging, electronic goods, and toxic
chemicals, for example, the value
of used clothing is conceived in the
Global North through the model of
charitable donations, environmental
protection, and widely distributed
benefit. How accurate are these
perceptions? How do we measure the
value of our old clothes?
Clothes that charities cannot
sell locally are sold to commercial
textile recyclers, who also buy
the clothing dropped into textile
banks. They are the lynchpins of
the global trade, transforming
discarded and donated worn
clothing into a finely graded
range of commodities in huge
sorting factories. Just over half
a million tonnes (metric tons) of
old clothing was collected in the
UK in 2008, of which 60 percent
was exported to developing
economies for reuse (Morley
et al. 2009). In 2010 this
comprised 320,000 tonnes worth
US$42.5 million, a 15 percent
increase in value on the previous
year. The main markets were
Poland, Ghana, Ukraine, Benin,
and Hungary, all major re-
exporters (COMTRADE 2010).
The positive environmental
framing is complemented by the
charitable sector’s reliance on
the considerable revenues raised
through clothing donations, and
the profitability of the trade for
commercial recyclers who pay
relatively little for their stock.
Few people seem to realize
how much used clothing is
profitably sold abroad, and those
that do know a little about the
market are completely unaware
of its value, scale, and impact.
The value of the global trade in
secondhand garments has risen
to US$2.97 billion in 2010, an
increase of 13 percent from 2009
alone (COMTRADE 201). Available
figures are underestimated in this
under-regulated trade: the value
of sealed bales of worn clothing
are notoriously hard to judge
(Brooks and Simon forthcoming;
Hansen 1994: 265; Norris 2005),
the increasingly complex network of
global re-export hubs and special
economic zones make tracking
commodities extremely difficult,
and many countries that officially
ban the import of used clothing
operate substantial black markets
fueled by neighboring entrepôts
such as Cottonou and Dubai
(Abimbola, this issue; Norris 2010).
The emergence of new
markets in the “second” world
also highlights the need for
further research on the economic
relationships between used
clothing economies embedded
in particular regional markets,
and the means through which
these groupings connect to
wider capitalist economies in
the Global North. Comparative
examples include the circulation
of old clothes within the East
African Community (EAC) studied
by anthropologist Sayaka Ogawa
(2011), Milgram’s fieldwork on the
links between the Philippines and
Hong Kong (2008), and work on
cross-border smuggling between
the USA and Mexico (Gauthier
2009). There is little research
into this largely unregulated,
internationally networked market,
involving a multiplicity of actors
extracting value from cast-offs by
separating things into specifically
targeted categories of clothing,
making profits by forming
connections with niche consumers,
and trading across social, cultural,
and economic divides, as well as
political and legal borders.
Research into the global trade
in textile waste, a corollary of
secondhand clothing sold for reuse,
constituted part of a wider ESRC
research project, the Waste of the
World. Based in the Department
of Anthropology at UCL with
Danny Miller, the textile project
included my own ethnographic
research on Indian textile recycling
factories (Figure 1) (Norris 2012,
forthcoming), work on the recycling
of denim jeans in the USA (Olesen
2010a, b), and an ethnography of
working in a London sorting factory
(Botticello, this issue, forthcoming).
To place anthropological work on
these recycling industries within
the broader context of secondhand
clothing economies, in June
2010 we organized the workshop
Recycling Textile Technologies.
This special issue, edited
by Norris and Botticello, brings
together a cohesive selection
of those papers. The articles
address worn clothing markets
and recycling technologies from a
variety of disciplinary perspectives,
charting the expansion of the trade
from relative scarcity in the longue
durée to the current global industry
dealing in millions of tons of used
clothing. Their analysis of specific
examples at points throughout the
network give rich insights into the
strategies different traders employ
132 Lucy Norris
Figure 1
Piles of imported Western clothing in a
warehouse in Panipat, north India, waiting
to be processed for fiber reclamation.
Photo: www.timmitchell.co.uk.
to make a profit, but they also
show us just how little we know
about how the global used clothing
economy really works, which is,
after all, the destination of so many
of those billions of garments whose
design, style, and consumption we
pay so much attention to.
Public policy in the UK is to
increase textile recycling, although
the regulatory frameworks that
determine which kinds of worn
clothing is reusable and which
is waste (and hence comes
under legislation to prevent
overseas dumping via the Basel
Convention) are often unclear
(Oakdene Hollins et al. 2006). The
system is grounded in charitable
donations yet provides a market-
based solution to managing the
textile wastestream that appears
to benefit everyone (Defra 2011).
There has been little published
research into the political economy
of the trade on a global scale, and
work has been fragmented. The
secondhand clothing economy
has much to offer contemporary
theoretical concerns with
economization, marketization, and
the convergence of economic value
with cultural values.
Berndt and Boeckler identify
three research strands that they
claim reveal marketization to be
deeply ambivalent, incomplete,
and prone to failure (2011). In the
first, markets are conceptualized
as heterogeneous arrangements
of people, things, and socio-
technical devices—processes of
marketization are characterized
by distributed agency. The second
is grounded in a substantivist
approach conflating moral
economies with market economies,
and thus cultural value(s) with
economic value. The third strand
concerns work on markets in
motion, or global supply chains,
where the performativity of
economies is analyzed through
mapping commodity production
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 133

chains and how value is distributed
along them.
These theoretical approaches
view markets as “bundles
of practices and material
arrangements always in the
making,” where links are
continually established and
severed, and people, places, and
things are both incorporated and
expelled. Callon suggests that the
dynamics and instability of markets
trigger new matters of concern
(overflows), new social identities,
and unexpected social communities
(2007). Using these approaches
to study the rapid growth of the
global secondhand clothing
economy affords an opportunity
to make visible the links between
micro-practices of consumption
and riddance on one hand, and the
macro-politics of waste economies
on the other, revealing the wider
impact of emerging political,
economic, and social concerns.
Collecting Clothing: Charities
and Markets
While the current scale and
reach of business growth may
be remarkable, its structural
relationship to capitalist production
and consumption is not new. The
historical development of the used century the commercial trade
textile trade as charted by Lemire
(this issue) rises alongside the
development of early capitalism
in Europe. She identifies three
broad phases of economic and
social change between 1600–1850, poor (Hansen 2008). Cheaper
corresponding to scarcity, growing clothing and growing consumer
abundance, and industrial plenty.
In the earliest phase, used clothing World War led to an increase in
acted as an alternative currency,
encouraging the growth of
economic activity during a period
where clothing was a repository
of savings that could be sold into
the secondhand economy when
necessary (cf. Fontaine 2008). As
such, garments were always open
to transformation and exchange;
detailed knowledge about their
materiality, construction, and
fashionability meant that their
value was widely understood.
However, rather than see
these payments in kind as being
alternative liquidities outside
the developing market economy,
following Braudel (1985), Lemire
argues that these hybrid practices
are essential to economic
development, opening up routes
for enterprise alongside capitalist
markets. The trade became a
route for women in particular to
develop small businessed and
expand the circulation of goods.
As colonial trade routes expanded,
the secondhand clothing market
followed alongside. By the late
nineteenth century the effects
of industrial plenty enabled
increasing numbers of middle-class
consumers to increasingly shun
used clothing markets, a trend
which has continues down the
social scale today.
Hansen shows that already
by the end of the nineteenth
in secondhand clothing was
limited to exports, especially to
colonial Africa; at the same time,
charities began to collect used
clothing for redistribution to the
purchasing power after the Second
donations to charity. She identifies
a fundamental shift in used
clothing distribution from charity
to commerce post-Second World
War, whereby philanthropic groups
in the USA stopped giving away
clothing to the poor and started
selling them in shops instead
to raise money for their diverse
causes. (Similarly, the first Oxfam
shop opened up in London in 1948,
selling donated used clothing to
support other projects.) By the
1980s the falling costs of garments
and the growth in supply coincided
with the liberalization of African
markets in particular, resulting
in a spectacular increase in the
amount of worn clothing being sold
to commercial textile recyclers for
expanding reuse markets.
From the 1980s, Hansen finds
both an increase in commercial
used clothing traffic and
humanitarian aid flow to African
countries at the same time
(2008). As Tony Clark, the former
manager of Oxfam’s Wastesavers
depot, explained to me during my
own research, clothing is rarely
directly given away to those in
need by organized charities, even
as emergency relief in disaster
zones. This is due to logistical
reasons and, in the majority of
cases where potential recipients
are overseas, donations from
developed countries are often ill-
matched to the basic climatic and
cultural requirements of recipients
in developing, often southern,
economies. But as Hansen
ironically notes, “clothing donated
for crisis relief often ends up sold
commercially in local markets”
(2008: 223).
Used clothing is a means to an
end; for most UK charities, overseas
development is tangential or
unconnected to their core activities,
and clothing collection is simply
134 Lucy Norris
a relatively easy way to make
money. They have a duty of care
to make sure that used clothing is
exported legally and textile waste
is not dumped in countries that
cannot process it properly, but no
further obligation. Members of
the Charity Retail Association sign
up to a Code of Charity Retailing
that encourages them to consider
whether their commercial activities
could compromise the objective
to maximize income for the charity
through selling donated goods.2
Formerly relying on the less
remunerative recycling business
for their profits, commercial
textile recyclers have grown into a
significant market sector controlling
a highly profitable export trade.
In the UK, the textile recyclers
have their own representative
organization, the Textile Recycling
Association (TRA), and form an
integral part of the UK’s waste
management strategy, taking part
in formulating guidelines and
policy development. But the current
system for collecting used clothing
is becoming increasingly complex
and competitive. The relationship
between the charitable sector
and commercial firms and the
financial benefits for both sides are
not publicized. Recently various
scandals have surrounded the low
returns paid to charities, such as
the deal whereby the Variety Club
earned just £5,000 in royalties in
2009 for donated shoes reputedly
worth £1.9 million (Booth 2011a).
In 2011 a recycler was prosecuted
over a deal between the Salvation
Army and his firm, Kettering
Textiles, whereby directors of the
commercial recycling firm earned
over £10 million in three years
collecting clothing for the charity,
and the recycler himself sat on
the charity’s main board (Booth
2011b). The Salvation Army has now
purchased the company.
Market values of used clothing
have been growing steadily. In
December 2011, letsrecycle.com
estimated the average paid to
charity shops for unsold stock at
the backdoor was £490–£550 per
tonne, and for stock collected in
banks it was £275–£349, with the
firms paying charities as little as
£50 per kg in royalties to use their
logos. Charitybags.org.uk estimate
that a dress weighing 1 kg given to
a charity bag collection would raise
5 pence for the charity. The same
dress given to a charity shop might
raise £10, minus their overheads.
The latest competition for charities
is recyclers opening up shops next
door on the high street and offering
to pay the public directly for their
old clothes by the kilogram.3
The large-scale theft of clothing
from textile banks (run by both
charities and commercial firms) in
the UK is another growing problem
(McVeigh 2009). The British Heart
Foundation states “Stealing stock
that is intended for our charity is
akin to robbing people with heart
conditions of a better quality of life”
(British Heart Foundation 2011).
It estimates revenue losses from
doorstep collections and textile
bank theft to be £6 million (up to a
quarter of their £22 million revenue
from shops in 2009–10), and lists
a variety of techniques including
skimming (where the contents are
hooked out), breaking and entering,
climbing in (sometimes involving
the use of children, and occasionally
requiring thieves to be cut out after
getting stuck inside), cutting their
way in with acetylene torches,
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 135
distracting drivers and stealing the
contents, and simply tipping the
banks over (the latter filmed by the
Sunday Mirror and posted online).
As the TRA commented:
Theft of used clothing left for
collection at the kerbside and
in collection banks is on the
increase and is helping to fund
more serious criminal activity,
such as drug trafficking and
people smuggling. (Mann 2011)
The TRA are now working with the
National Fraud Intelligence Bureau commodities; the success of value
to map the activities of criminal
gangs in the UK and abroad.
Domestically, theft of bags left
out for doorstep collection is so
rife that there is now a hotline to
report instances, and the Crown
Prosecution Service has prepared
guidelines for the police on
prosecuting clothing bag thieves.
Transforming Cast-offs into
Commodities
Cast-offs become source material
for markets in the Global South,
and value is extracted and
reinscribed through processes of
decomposition and reincarnation.
It is the work of sorters to create
exchange-value, from the charity
shop volunteer to the textile
recycler, importer, local market
retailer, and itinerant seller (Hawley up by the rag sorting factories—
2001, 2006). Although traded in
bulk as a commodity, each and
every bale has been carefully
packed and repacked two, three,
or four times in transit, to refine
selections and redirect pieces to
more financially, culturally, and
climatically suitable markets. The
sorter’s profits rely upon the scale clothes. This shifts the focus away
and reach of their networks, their
concentration in particular places
acting as nodes, and relations of
trust between brokers.
Externalizing waste to the
economic periphery is at the
heart of the capitalist system,
where it may be transformed
and reincorporated (Alexander
and Reno 2012). Used clothing
is a heterogeneous category, the
specificity of each garment means
that a lot of work is required in
order to extract value from a
mass of unsorted garments and
turn them into exchangeable
transformations are bound up
in the ability of recyclers to find
a niche market for the peculiar
materialities of clothing discards
(Crang et al. forthcoming).
Botticello considers
contemporary categorization
and revaluation of secondhand
clothing in a UK rag sorting
factory prior to its export to global
destinations, revealing that it is in
fact dirt as a productive entity that
creates the complex categories
of reprocessed clothing for the
market. Significantly, this is the
reverse of the discarding process
by which they arrived at the factory,
as “matter out of place” (Douglas
1966). Which clothes goes to
what part of the world is mutually
dependent upon the categories set
worked out over time through their
relationships with global buyers—
but also by the material qualities
of the clothing and the sorting and
discernment skills of the workers.
Furthermore, how the factory sorts
and grades their clothing inscribes
an alternative brand value onto the
from labels on individual items to
a collective brand of the sorting
company, who generate a definitive
mark of quality through the sorted
constitution of their bales.
Developing Markets
The fact that these value
transformations take place
out of sight at the margins of
the global economy leads to
the compartmentalization of
debates about its impact. Aid and
development professionals have
heated online exchanges about the
potential damage to local markets
done by well-meaning donors
collecting unwanted garments and
gifting them directly as aid-in-kind
to developing countries, potentially
depressing local markets.4 The
underlying issue is the impact
of used clothing sales on local
textile manufacturing, primarily
in Africa, with widespread belief
that it has led to its virtual collapse
(e.g. Morley et al. 2009; Siegle
2011). The neoliberal opening up of
markets in developing economies
in the 1980s to used clothing
imports coincided with a decline
in local textile production, and
Mangieri suggests that increasing
imports in the 1990s were at least
partially blamed for the collapse of
the Kenyan textile industry catering
to the local population (2008).
However, Brooks and Simon
argue that the relationship is
not necessarily causal, that
general trade data is inaccurate
and insufficient to back up these
claims, and that grounded research
reveals the complexities of a
market where “traditional” cloth
is no longer worn daily, it is now
cheap Chinese imports that are
the main competition, and that
these are valued less than better
quality imported cast-offs (Brooks
136 Lucy Norris
and Simon forthcoming). Abimbola
outlines the case against used
clothing disrupting local production
more forcefully in the example
of Nigeria, one factor being that
the highest-quality, locally worn
textiles were originally made in
Europe and now suffer competition
from cheaper Chinese cloth
(Abimbola 2011).
The trade itself creates a wide
range of jobs in local economies,
from large-scale dealers, market
traders to itinerant peddlers,
augmented by tailors and people
mending, washing, and ironing
sacks of clothing (Baden and Barber
2005; Field 2000, 2007; Hansen
2004a). Indeed textile recyclers
in the UK often use this research
to support their claims that the
international trade brings benefits
abroad rather than suppresses
local economies, although the
research is limited to a few studies
in a handful of Africa countries,
and quickly becomes out of date.5
As Abimbola has commented
(personal communication), Nigerian
traders are proud to demonstrate
their ability to turn a good profit
out of someone else’s waste,
and the sophisticated urban
market includes middle-class
professionals who appreciate the
value of buying high-quality, used
Western clothing for themselves
and their children. Value lies not
only in profits and livelihood,
but also in the importance of
clothing itself as an agent of social
change. Used clothing in Zambia
affords the provision of a much-
needed resource that permits
end consumers to appropriate
and construct complex modern
identities from heterogeneous
elements; end consumers refuse
to view used clothing as “need”
in preference for “want” (Hansen,
1994, 2000, 2004b). Similarly,
traders dealing in imported
clothing in Delhi (Figure 2) are
able to offer good-quality, foreign
styles to attract better-off buyers,
while those selling recycled Indian
clothing on the pavement opposite
(Figure 3) are supplying customers
in need of clothing with cheaper,
more familiar items.
Observers of wholesale markets
for imported secondhand clothing
typically describe the frenzy when
a new bale is opened, where the
specific qualities of garments
inside are never guaranteed, and
the difference between the “right”
jeans and the “wrong” jeans has a
critical effect on all of the traders’
capacities to make even a small
profit. Abimbola’s article focuses
on the personal relationships
through which trade between
Britain and Nigeria is conducted
as a means to overcome the
information asymmetry between
buyers and sellers regarding the
quality of consignments. With a
lack of standardization of goods,
the development of trust in the
brand value of the exporting firms
helps to reduce the financial
risks of buying bales unseen.
He focuses on Igbo traders,
who are significant importers of
used clothing, and their use of
an embedded local apprentice
system to place junior relatives
in UK source factories to both
select clothing styles and manage
financial transactions at that end.
The assurance given by the British
origin of the clothes, together with
the brand of the sorting factory,
and the personal ties underpinning
business serve to bridge the
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 137

Figure 2
Traders in the Sunday Coat Market, opposite the Red Fort, New Delhi. These men sell used Winter clothing imported
wholesale, arranging jackets and coats on hangers high up on bamboo scaffolding, while jumpers and thick shirts are
piled up on trestle tables in front. Photo: www.timmitchell.co.uk.

gaps in knowledge available to
buyers, secure the best stock in a
competitive market, and improve
their chances of making a profit.6
Milgram’s article shifts the focus
to the Philippines to show how
the street trade in recycled textiles
is mobilized to support women’s
incomes. These women capture and
reconfigure spaces in between the
formal and informal economies,
establishing vendor associations
and making agreements with local
shopkeepers, and transforming
public space into one that services
the needs of the urban population.
The women cultivate networks
based on trust and loyalty to obtain
the best boxes of clothing, with
the chain often stretching back to
Hong Kong in order to overcome
local cartels of middlemen. The
traders maintain good relationships
with a range of suppliers, and will
complain when bad consignments
are received; worn clothing routes
are also used for other valuable
illicit goods. The vendors strategize
their retail practices by refreshing
stock between sites, selling off
bales cheap when stock does not
move, and circulating types of
garments around the country to
match climate conditions.
In contrast, Brooks’ contribution
highlights how the used clothing
trade does not always provide
adequate livelihoods for street
vendors in Mozambique. His
article shows how traders struggle
to overcome similar problems of
stock quality as those addressed
by Milgram and Abimbola, but
have much less influence with
their suppliers, the gatekeepers to
the wholesale trade. Significantly,
the importers are Indians with
links to originating countries
in North America, Europe, and
Australia, who operate in different
social circuits from the local
Mozambican market traders. As
foreign intermediaries, they appear
to present a barrier to vendors
138 Lucy Norris
Figure 3
Rows of Indian Waghri traders sell used Indian clothing at the Sunday flea market outside the Red Fort, New Delhi.
These clothes have been bartered from middle-class householders in exchange for new kitchen utensils, steel
pots, and glasses. Photo: www.timmitchell.co.uk.
who might hope to strengthen the
personal ties in their supply chains,
and thus directly influence the
contents of their bales. Although
the article primarily deals with
the street vendors’ livelihoods
rather than the wider networks
of supply, the article’s broader
conclusions are that the trade in
and consumption of secondhand
clothing does not afford them the
cosmopolitan lifestyle and dress
they desire; in Brooks’ words, “their
pathway to modernity has petered
out,” resonating with a “sense of
loss of membership of the world
society.”
The collection includes a
short article by Ryder and Morley
on current technical research
investigating how low-grade
mixed textile fibers reclaimed
from used clothing can be
recycled across both cultural and
historical registers into another
medium, in this case paper, in
an effort to “re-innovate” older
technologies. The category of
“recycling grades” that cannot
be sold for reuse is significant
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 139

(see Botticello, this issue) and the for the re-contextualization of its some dealers processing shipments
tonnage is likely to increase as the material properties propel the in liminal zones, allegedly paying
quality of new clothing continues used clothing trade; scarcity of for consignments in cash, and thus
to fall in the overproduction of affordable, good-quality clothing converting local soft currencies into
cheaply made goods (Oakdene is a marker of the developing hard currencies, black money into
Hollins et al. 2006). In the UK, world. The trade operates through laundered funds. The used clothing
the flocking industry currently the contingency of disparate market itself visibly demonstrates
converts reclaimed fibers into factors such as the consumption in and of itself how value is
low-value mattress protectors, of new garments and the rate created, added, and extracted in
carpet underlay, and geo-textiles, of ridding in the Global North, the process, and how the material
while many garments are exported international waste management and the market are co-constructed.
to India to be shredded for the policy and trade regulations, Yet, the invisible spaces in the
“shoddy” reclamation industry currency exchange rates and global market where additional,
(Norris 2005, 2012, forthcoming). the costs of transport, and often alternative value is created are less
But the recycling industry needs social networks and personal trust easy and sometimes dangerous to
new, higher-value products that are are developed to stabilize these research and document (Gauthier
in more general demand, as paper external fluctuations and improve 2010).
made from cotton rags used to be quality control. Guyer (2004) offers one
prior to its sourcing of mechanical The used clothing economy also approach from which to develop
wood pulp as its main constituent brings into one frame the links research into the entanglement
material. As Ryder and Morley between the market, materiality of these economies in new
remind us, cotton rags used to be and morals, revealing complex directions, through her work
a convenient and cheap source of connections as gifts of clothing on African cash economies and
cellulose, but now the issue is to are commodified by charities poverty. In an attempt to move
find markets for waste textiles that in the Global North, sold onto beyond the perceived dichotomy
would otherwise go to incineration the international market, and between the universalism of
or landfill. The article shows become a resource for developing capitalist relations and the
how broadening the scope for local livelihoods in the Global specificity of local forms of
refashioning new products includes South. Differential markets must economic arrangement, she turns
incorporating diverse socio- be developed, and more work to ideas of temporality rather
technical sources to reimagine needs to be done to understand than spatiality, an approach that
textiles in new forms, and as such where—or by whom—the maximum resonates with Lemire’s analysis.
extends the themes central to this value is extracted. Research on Her work on finance (Guyer
special issue in new directions. the contexts of this material flow 2004), and concepts of credit
prompts questions not only about and money (e.g. Guyer 2010)
Conclusions the specific and changing forms of contrasts two different monetary
The global secondhand clothing value materialized in this network, principles, drawing on Simmel
economy has a number of but also foregrounds political (1978), amongst others. The first
heterogeneous, idiosyncratic issues of power, governance, and are hard-currency economies
characteristics; fundamentally it sustainability between developed based on “liquidity” (the capacity
is grounded in its very materiality and developing economies which to convert assets kept out of
and temporal relationship to link primary garment production circulation over longer timescales
consumption trends, fashion all the way through to the into cash), characterized by long
cycles, redundancy, and material consumption of cast-offs. arcs of intermediate links and
decay, creating a variable supply As a global trade in waste living formalized through the life
of unknown quality and quantity. that thrives on developing niche cycle. The second are soft-currency
Clothing’s inherent refashionability markets, it skirts the borders economies based on “liquidness”
and the numerous possibilities between the legal and illegal, with or the availability of money (Amato
140 Lucy Norris
and Fantacci 2011), characterized
by short arcs of intermediate links
and livelihoods of daily duration.
In soft-currency cash economies,
debt must be cleared: traders rely
upon measurement in transactions
over time, such as accounting,
scheduling, and enforcement,
releasing money for subsequent
transactions and requiring a high
velocity of circulation and the
capacity to evacuate hoards.
Articulation between these two
spheres has to deal with these
different temporalities; for example,
traders in cash economies often
use “deferred payments” (rather
than “credit” or “debt”) requiring
relational systems and guarantors,
and the mobilization of skills and
resources in an alternative set of
transactions. Thus on the one hand
cash economies are not the same
as informal economies, and on
the other, although they may use
formalized systems, they do not
convert money into an asset system
that cannot be cleared, sometimes
resulting in a shortage of cash itself.
Guyer goes on to suggest that
more research is required into
multiple economic spaces and
rankings found between them, in
order to “identify the exact points
of linkage between cash economies
and the dynamics of acquisition”
(Guyer 2010: 11); it is at these points
that “marginal gains” are made
(Guyer 2004). Her development
of concepts such as the role of
performance and composition in a
“pragmatics of valuation” draws on
an empirical understanding of the
role of people and things in the co-
construction of value.
The used clothing economy
affords a rich case study for
investigating the interlinking
of various different types of
economies through global trade
and the nature of the opportunities,
risks, and profits made possible
by these. Multiple sequences of
exchange, transformations, and
re-embedding in local economies
are dependent upon the intrinsic
material nature of the commodity
itself, its close relationship to
the body, the unique context of
its transformation from gift to
commodity, and social relations
in the local markets in which they
are traded. These repeated cycles
of consumption and disposal
operate on vastly different scales,
and within varying business
frameworks, weaving in and out of
national economies, multinational
corporations, and family
businesses, all based on clothing’s
essential reusability as material
object and the exchangeability of
this form. The only way to make
money out of the used clothing
trade is to keep it moving, keep
sorting and recombining it,
imagining new contexts and
creating those pathways.
Acknowledgments
Both Botticello and Norris would
like to thank all the conference
participants for their contributions
(not all of which we were able
to include here), and the chairs
of each session: Daniel Miller,
Nicky Gregson, Dinah Eastop, and
Susanne Küchler. We are grateful
to all the referees of individual
papers for their valuable and
timely responses. The Waste of
the World project was funded
by the ESRC (RES 000-23-0007);
the Journal of Material Culture
and a British Academy Small
Research Grant (SG100952)
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 141
provided additional support for the   6. This works in a parallel
conference.
Notes
  1. The reuse of clothing saves
29 kg CO2e (carbon dioxide
equivalent) per kg of clothing
compared to recycling, and
33 kg CO2e compared to
disposal, according to the
Charity Retail Association. It is
estimated that the potential for
reuse enabled by charity shops
in the UK helps reduce CO2
emissions by about 6.3 million
tonnes per annum. See http://
www.charityretail.org.uk/
reuse.html#sustain (accessed
March 21, 2012).
  2. See www.charityretail.org.
uk for their members’ ethical
code.
  3. For example, see www.
european-recycling.com/
cash4clothes.co.uk.
  4. For example, in May 2010,
Jason Sadler set up the “One
Million T-shirts2 campaign
intending to donate shirts
freely to four countries in Africa
(http://1millionshirts.org/,
accessed July 5, 2011). The
campaign drew severe criticism
across the development sector
(e.g. http://aidwatchers.
com/2010/01/nobody-wants-
your-old-shoes-how-not-to-
help-in-haiti/, accessed July
5, 2011). Similarly the gift
of 100,000 misprinted NFL
T-shirts to World Vision in
February 2012 provoked a
wealth of negative commentary
(see Schimmelpfennig 2011
for a list of blog posts on the
controversy).
  5. See www.textile-recycling.org. Booth, R. 2011a. “Charity Received
uk, for example.
Trade in Old Shoes.” The Guardian,
fashion to the intentions of December 18.
the Geographical Indicator
Booth, R. 2011b. “Salvation Army
system, which should function
Called to Account by Charity
to overcome information
Watchdog.” The Guardian, January 31.
asymmetry for buyers of
new products from specific Botticello, J. Forthcoming.
regions. “Re-producing Western Goods
for Transnational Markets: Case
Studies in Re-branding and Re-
References
valuing Secondhand Clothes.”
Abimbola, O. 2011. “Does Second-
Critical Studies in Fashion and
hand Clothing Kill Local Textile
Beauty special issue.
Industries?” Blog on betterplace-
Braudel, F. 1985. Civilisation and
lab, http://www.betterplace-lab.
Capitalism: The Structure of Everyday
org/en/blog/does-second-hand-
Life. New York: Harper & Row.
clothing-kill-local-textile-industries
(accessed March 19, 2012). British Heart Foundation. 2011.”
Alexander, C. and Reno, J. (eds). Our Clothing Banks are Being
2012. Global Recycling Economies. Raided.” http://www.bhf.org.uk/
London: Zed Books. shop/donating-goods/stolen-
donations.aspx (accessed March
Allwood, J., Laursen, S. E., De 22, 2012).
Rodriguez, C. M. and Bocken, N.
Brooks, A. and Simon, D.
M. P. 2006. Well Dressed? The
Forthcoming. “Untangling the
Present and Future Sustainability
Relationship between Used-
of Clothing and Textiles in the
Clothing Imports and the Decline
United Kingdom. Cambridge:
of the African Clothing Industry.”
University of Cambridge Institute
Development and Change.
for Manufacturing.
Amato, M. and Fantacci, L. 2011. Brown, S. 2010. Eco Fashion.
The End of Finance. London: Polity. London: Lawrence King Publishing.
Callon, M. 2007. “An Essay on the
Baden, S. and Barber, C. 2005. The
Growing Contribution of Economic
Impact of the Second-hand Clothing
Markets to the Proliferation of the
Trade on Developing Countries.
Social.” Theory, Culture & Society
Oxford: Oxfam.
24(7–8): 139–63.
Berndt, C. and Boeckler, M.
Clark, H. 2008. “SLOW + FASHION—
2011. “Geographies of Markets:
an Oxymoron—or a Promise for
Materials, Morals and Monsters.”
the Future?” Fashion Theory 12(4):
Progress in Human Geography
427–46.
35(4): 559–67.
COMTRADE. 2010. 2010 International
Black, S. 2008. Eco-Chic: The
Trade Statistics Yearbook, Vol. II:
Fashion Paradox. London: Black
Trade by Commodity. New York:
Dog Publishing.
United Nations Statistics Division,
Department of Economic and Social
just £5,500 in 2009 from £1.9m Affairs.
142 Lucy Norris

Crang, M., Hughes, A., Gregson, N.,
Norris, L. and Ahamed, F.
Forthcoming. “Rethinking
Governance and Value in
Commodity Chains through Global
Recycling Networks.” Transactions
of the Institute of British
Geographers (NS).
Defra. 2010. Sustainable Clothing
Action Plan. London: Department
for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs.
Gauthier, M. 2009. “The Fayuca
Hormiga of Used Clothing and the
Fabric of the Mexico–U.S. Border.”
PhD dissertation, Concordia
University, Montreal.
Gauthier, M. 2010. “Researching
the Border’s Economic Underworld:
The ‘Fayuca Horniga’ in the US–
Mexico Borderlands.” In H. Donnan
and T. M. Wilson (eds) Borderlands,
pp. 53–72. Lanham, MD: University
Press of America.

Defra. 2011. Government Review Gregson, N. 2007. Living with

of Waste Policy in England Things: Ridding, Accommodation,
2011. London, Department for Dwelling. Wantage: Sean Kingston
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Publishing.

Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Gregson, N. and Crewe, L. 2003.

Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts Second-Hand Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
of Pollution and Taboo. London: Guyer, J. 2004. Marginal Gains:
Routledge & Kegan Paul. monetary transactions in Atlantic
Field, S. 2000. “The Africa. Chicago, IL: University of
Internationalisation of the Second- Chicago Press.
hand Clothing Trade: The Zimbabwe Guyer, J. 2010. “Making Money:
Experience.” PhD thesis, Coventry Artisanship, Transactions and Value
University. Beyond Finance.” Understanding
Field, S. 2007. Who Benefits from African Poverty over the Longue
the Second-hand Clothing Trade?: Durée. Accra: International Institute
The Case of Kenya. Full Research for the Advanced Study of Cultures,
Report, ESRC End of Award Report, Insititutions and Economic
RES-000-22-0617. Swindon: ESRC. Enterprise [IIAS].
Fisher, T., Cooper, T., Woodward, Hansen, K. T. 1994. “Dealing with
S., Hiller, A. and Goworek, H. 2008. Used Clothing: Salaula and the
Public Understanding of Sustainable Construction of Identity in Zambia.”
Clothing. A Report to the Public Culture 6: 503–23.
Department for Environment, Food Hansen, K. T. 2000. Salaula: The
and Rural Affairs. London: Defra. World of Secondhand Clothing and
Fletcher, K. 2008. Sustainable Zambia. Chicago. IL, and London:
Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys. University of Chicago Press.
London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan. Hansen, K. T. 2004a. “Controversies
Fontaine, L. (ed.). 2008. Alternative about the International
Exchanges: Second-hand Secondhand Clothing Trade.”
Circulations from the Sixteenth Anthropology Today 20(4): 3–9.
Century to the Present. New York Hansen, K. T. 2004b. “Crafting
and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Appearances: The Second-hand
 Trade and Transformations of Secondhand Clothing: Introduction 143
Clothing Trade and Dress Practices
in Zambia.” In A. Palmer and H.
Clark (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks,
pp. 103–18. Oxford: Berg.
Hansen, K. T. 2008. “Charity,
Commerce, Consumption: The
International Second-hand Clothing
Trade at the Turn of the Millennium—
Focus on Zambia.” In L. Fontaine
(ed.) Alternative Exchanges: Second-
hand Circulations from the Sixteenth
Century to the Present, pp. 221–34.
New York and Oxford: Berghahn
Books.
Hart, K., Laville, J.-L. and Cattani,
A. D. 2010. The Human Economy.
London: Polity.
Harvey, D. 2010. The Enigma
of Capital: And the Crises of
Capitalism. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Hawley, J. M. 2001. “Textile
Recycling as a System: The Micro-
analysis.” Journal of Family and
Consumer Sciences 92(4): 40–6.
Hawley, J. M. 2006. “Digging for
Diamonds: A Conceptual Framework
for Understanding Reclaimed Textile
Products.” Clothing and Textiles
Research Journal 24(3): 262–75.
Lee, M. 2007. Eco Chic: The Savvy
Shopper’s Guide to Ethical Fashion.
London: Gaia Books.
Mangieri, T. 2008. “African Cloth,
Export Production and Secondhand (eds) Economies of Recycling:
Clothing in Kenya.” In L. Labrianidis The Global Transformation of
(ed.) The Moving Frontier: The
Changing Geography of Production Relations, pp. 35–56. London: Zed
in Labour Intensive Industries,
pp. 301–18. London: Ashgate.
Mann, N. 2011. “Textile Recycling
Theft ‘on the Increase.’” http://
www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest- Clothing into Aid Blankets.” Journal
news/textiles/textile-recycling-
theft-2018on-the-increase2019
(accessed March 22, 2011).
McVeigh, K. 2009. “Charities Fight
over Secondhand Clothes Market.”
The Guardian November 16.
Milgram, B. L. 2008. “Activating
Frontier Livelihoods: Women and
the Transnational Secondhand
Clothing Trade between Hong
Kong and the Philippines.”
Urban Anthropology & Studies
of Cultural Systems and World
Economic Development 37(1):
5–47.
Morley, N., Bartlett, C. and McGill,
I. 2009. Maximising the Reuse
and Recycling of UK Clothing and
Textiles. A Report to the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs. Aylesbury: Oakdene
Hollins.
Norris, L. 2005. “Cloth That Lies:
The Secrets of Recycling in India.”
In S. Küchler and D. Miller (eds)
Clothing as Material Culture,
pp. 83–106. Oxford: Berg.
Norris, L. 2010. Recycling Indian
Clothing: Global Contexts of Reuse
and Value. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Norris, L. 2012. “Shoddy Rags
and Relief Blankets: Perceptions
of Textile Recycling in North
India.” In C. Alexander and J. Reno
Materials, Values and Social
Books (in press).
Norris, L. Forthcoming. “Economies
of Moral Fibre: Materializing the
Ambiguities of Recycling Charity
of Material Culture.
Oakdene Hollins, Salvation Army
Trading Company and Nonwovens
and Innovation Research Institute.
2006. Recycling of Low Grade
Clothing Waste. Aylesbury:
Oakdene Hollins.
Ogawa, S. 2011. Toshi o ikinuku
tame no kōchi: tanzania no reisai
shōnin machinga no minzokushi
(The Art of Surviving in the City:
An Ethnography of Machinga
Petty Traders in Tanzania). Kyoto:
Sekaishisōsha.
Olesen, B. 2010a. “Denim Shoddy
and the Recycling of Values.” Textile
9(1): 12–25.
Olesen, B. 2010b. “How
Blue Jeans Went Green: The
Materiality of an American Icon.”
In D. Miller and S. Woodward
(eds) Global Denim, pp. 69–86.
Oxford: Berg.
Scaturro, S. 2008. “Eco-tech
Fashion: Rationalizing Technology
in Sustainable Fashion.” Fashion
Theory 12(4): 469–88.
Schimmelpfennig, S. 2011. “Tracking
the World Vision/NFL Shirt Donation
Controversy.” Blog on good
intentions are not enough. http://
goodintents.org/aid-debates/world-
vision-nfl-controversy (accessed
March 19, 2012).
Schor, J. B. 2005. “Prices and
Quantities: Unsustainable
Consumption and the Global
Economy.” Ecological Economics
55: 309–20.
Siegle, L. 2011. To Die For: Is
Fashion Wearing Out the World?
London: Fourth Estate.
Simmel, G. 1978. The Philosophy of
Money. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.