Practices of thrift among high cultural capital consumers. When economic status gets in the way of ethics

Abstract

Practices and preferences of high cultural capital consumers are being reconfigured as a consequence of their incorporated ecological and social concerns. Yet, while their status and tastes are primarily influenced by their cultural position, their consumption logics also reflect their economic situation, which tends to be relatively secure and comfortable. As the limits of ethically-labeled substitution strategies are being exposed, high cultural capital consumers are forced to reconsider their living standards. In this context, the spread of online gifting communities in rather well-off and highly-educated neighborhoods suggests that thrift practices are popularizing, while being ethicized, among advantaged individuals. How does thrift fit into these consumers’ lifestyles? To what extent does it contribute to alleviate the tensions between their ethical principles and material standards? Through an analysis of thirty-five semi-structured interviews with participants in online gifting communities, this study finds that the adoption of thrift practices by high cultural capital consumers is indeed largely motivated by anti-consumerist concerns. Yet, the extent to which these consumers incorporate them in their everyday lives is conditioned by their position within the dominant consumption field, itself partially determined by their economic status. While trash-avoiding practices are highly consistent among respondents and align with their declared aversion to material waste, consumption reduction strategies vary by income level and are influenced by conventional logics of consumption. By adapting critically-motivated practices to their existing consumption patterns, these high cultural capital consumers redefine ethical consumption from within the broader field of consumption, not simply opposing it. At the same time, they legitimize its contesting dimension, revealing a dialectical relation between ethical and conventional consumption.

Keywords

ethical consumption anti-consumerism no-buy practices thrift cultural capital economic status

Introduction

Serena joined her local Buy Nothing group in 2017, when she was pregnant with her first child. She “was told by some other expecting parents to look into it because [she] could get things like newborn clothes, sheets, towels and stuff like that.” Serena has a comfortable situation. She is a postdoctoral research fellow with no student loan debts and an annual household income of more than $125,000. Serena takes as much as she gives from her gifting group. She sees it as a way to reduce her consumption and the material waste her household generates. For the same reasons, she also gives used clothes to donation centers and frequently buys second-hand items. In parallel, however, Serena continues to shop at regular stores and “would love to boycott things like Amazon”, but finds it “just not possible.” Like Serena, millions of Americans participate in online gifting (Buy Nothing, 2021a; The Freecycle Network, 2021), a majority of whom live in neighborhoods with above-average income and educational levels (Peters, 2020). Online gifting communities encourage waste-avoiding practices and second-hand provisioning for ethical reasons related to environmental conservation and local solidarity. Their popularity in highly educated areas suggests that thrift practices are being incorporated into high cultural capital consumers’ (HCCs) repertoire of political consumption.

“Conscious” consumption, understood as forms of consumption that express “values of sustainability, social justice, corporate responsibility, or workers’ rights” (Willis and Schor, 2012), is characteristic of consumers with high levels of cultural capital (Baumann et al., 2015; Kennedy et al., 2019; Kennedy and Givens, 2019). Sustainability concerns have become a dominant orienting logic in HCCs’ consumption patterns, causing an inversion in long-established class-based taste binaries and the emergence of a new class habitus, or “eco-habitus” (Carfagna et al., 2014). In this view, conscious consumption practices serve to signal an elevated cultural status and respond to class distinction strategies deployed within the moral realm. Yet, HCCs’ embeddedness in the dominant production system prevents them from embracing truly sustainable lifestyles and constrains them to performing symbolic acts of consumption (Holt, 2014). Increasingly, however, “responsible” forms of consumption that consist in marginally changing one’s consumption behavior are being criticized for having little effect on the social and environmental problems that motivate them (Csutora, 2012; Koskenniemi, 2019; Thøgersen and Crompton, 2009), while consumption restraint is being presented as the only truly effective solution to sustainability issues (Black, 2010; Jackson, 2008; Kropfeld et al., 2018). For HCCs, restraining their consumption choices means limiting their ability to enjoy and signal their social position (Isenhour, 2012). Unlike status-signaling forms of sustainable consumption, thrift practices misalign with the logics of the dominant market in which HCCs are embedded. Commonly associated with situations of material necessity, frugality can also be interpreted as a marker of lower income status. How do HCCs incorporate anti-consumerist views and culturally motivated thrift practices in their everyday life without jeopardizing their social status? Do economic logics intervene at all in this process?

Online gifting communities are sites that participants join for a mix of self-oriented and ethical motivations (Aptekar, 2016; Nelson et al., 2007). As such, these groups provide an opportunity to explore how culturally privileged consumers resolve the tensions between their anti-waste ideals and dominant consumption logics. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-five participants in online gifting groups operating in advantaged areas of Boston, I examine how thrift practices fit into HCCs’ discarding and acquiring practices. Results show that, while HCCs value the ethical benefits of thrift, the extent to which they embrace it is determined by both the status-signaling capacity of such practices and respondents’ material situation. Furthermore, while higher and lowerincome HCCs exhibit differentiated conscious consumption patterns, these are ultimately hybridized ones that respond to a mix of ethical and more conventional, status-related consumption logics. I argue that, by doing so, HCCs are normalizing critically-motivated forms of consumption that are increasingly at odds with the dominant logics of consumption, and reconfiguring the dynamics of the broader field of consumption from within.

Literature review

Understanding ethical consumption from a class-based perspective

In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984) demonstrates that social positions are the bedrock of class-based dispositions that generate a system of preferences (or “habitus”) which, in turn, serve to signal and reproduce class positions. Tastes are shaped by the total volume and composition of capital possessed by each group in economic, cultural and social terms. Groups whose social superiority derives from high levels of economic capital typically adopt conspicuous, often wasteful, lifestyles that signal their detachment from material needs. In opposition, individuals whose social status primarily originates in their volume of cultural capital assert their intellectual superiority through elitist aesthetic choices, prioritizing form over content and asceticism over lavishness. While the taste configurations described in Distinction are particular to 1970s French society, deeper-level aesthetic dispositions have been found to be very similar among 1990s American HCCs (Holt, 1997). As HCCs’ moral concerns for the environment are intensifying, however, previously established taste binaries are transforming, giving way to a reshaped class habitus, or “eco-habitus” (Carfagna et al., 2014). HCCs are notably displaying a novel form of materialist disposition, a “true materialism” concerned with the physical qualities and origin of the products they consume (Schor, 2010), and are more likely to engage in political forms of consumption (Baumann et al., 2015; Willis and Schor, 2012). By doing so, they are defining the norms of sustainable consumption while asserting their cultural distinctiveness (Baumann et al., 2015; Carfagna et al., 2014; Kennedy and Givens, 2019).

Eco-mindedness is more effectively signified through conspicuous consumption acts, such as the purchase of green, fair trade or eco-tech products, than through invisible consumption reduction efforts (Griskevicius et al., 2010; Isenhour, 2012). More radical embraces of sustainable and anti-consumerist lifestyles such as voluntary simplicity and freeganism remain non-conventional choices (Amine and Gicquel, 2011), precisely because of their anti-conformist dimension (Barnard, 2016). Becoming a voluntary simplifier has been described as a demanding process (Boström, 2022), highly constrained by a social pressure to consume (Shaw and Newholm, 2002) and the necessity to conform to dominant socio-cultural norms (Ballantine et al., 2011; McGouran and Prothero, 2016). Adopting a simple lifestyle is especially challenging for HCCs, who also tend to be upper middle class and are deeply embedded in the structures that produce the dominant market ideology (Holt, 2014). Having grown up in a consumer culture and benefiting from rather secure and comfortable economic positions, these individuals “are not interested in joining a subculture or movement,” argues Holt (2014: 211); instead, they consume the myth of sustainability in a ritualistic and conspicuous manner. Yet, as the effectiveness of marginal sustainable lifestyles changes are being contested (Csutora, 2012; Koskenniemi, 2019; Thøgersen and Crompton, 2009) and anti-consumerist discourses consolidating (Humphery, 2019), HCCs are forced to reevaluate their consumption standards and consider practices more directly aimed at decreasing their personal levels of waste and acquisition.

Consumption reduction practices among HCCs

HCCs have an integrated disposition for restrained forms of consumption (Bourdieu, 1984; Holt, 1997). To distinguish themselves from groups whose social position is primarily defined by their economic capital, HCCs tend to reject wasteful behaviors, and, instead, valorize certain forms of second-hand consumption (antiques, vintage) and minimalism. Yet, their tastes and practices also translate a certain distance to material necessity that distinguishes them from those possessing lower volumes of total capital (Bourdieu, 1984: 53–56), particularly in consumerist cultures (Isenhour, 2012). In Holt’s account (1997), HCCs’ anti-materialism is primarily aesthetically motivated. More recently, Carfagna et al. (2014) showed that HCCs’ anti-waste disposition was increasingly ecologically driven, leading them to pay greater attention to their ecological footprints. Still, Isenhour (2012) finds that consumption reduction practices constitute a challenge for affluent consumers. She shows that the practices of eco-minded Swedish consumers desirous to consume less continue to be shaped by class-based standards, while more radical consumption-minimizing efforts are deterred by the social tensions associated with living alternative lifestyles.

Online freecycling groups have become popular in predominantly well-educated, high-income areas (Peters, 2020). These neighborhood-based groups allow members to post pictures of their no-longer wanted possessions and offer them free to all other members, under conditions of non-reciprocity (offers for money or material compensation are typically not allowed). When more than one member is interested in an item, the choice of the recipient is left to the discretion of the giver. Customarily, the selected receiver takes responsibility for collecting the gift at the giver’s domicile. Online giving groups operate outside the dominant market and valorize waste-avoiding and local solidarity practices (Buy Nothing, 2021b) that do not respond to, and to some extent contradict, mainstream consumption logics. The popularity of online freecycling in privileged neighborhoods indicates that HCCs no longer content themselves with purchasing sustainable myths and seek to signify their moral opposition to “consumption-as-usual” (Koskenniemi, 2019) through more radical anti-consumerist acts.

Despite operating outside of conventional commodity circuits, however, studies have found that online gifting groups are permeated by mainstream consumption norms (Eden, 2017), reproduce geographically based social divisions and stereotypes (Rufas and Hine, 2018) and allow affluent consumers to assuage the guilt associated with their personal levels of consumption (Aptekar, 2016). This suggests that HCCs’ heightened anti-consumerism places them in a delicate situation, where their moral disposition increasingly contradicts the consumption norms associated with their socio-economic position. By situating online free giving and receiving practices within practitioners’ broader consumption patterns, I aim to reveal how HCCs reconcile their increasingly diverging cultural and economic dispositions, both in practice and rhetorically.

Data and Methods

To relate online giving and receiving practices with HCCs’ broader consumption patterns, I conducted in-depth interviews with thirty-five active members of two vibrant online gifting groups operating in the Boston area, Buy Nothing Brookline South (BNBS) and Everything Free JP (EFJP), both situated in neighborhoods with high concentrations of highly educated, higher-income residents (Table 1). While geographically adjacent, the two areas have sensibly different cultures. With a higher median income level than Jamaica Plain and a reputed public school system, Brookline is a family-oriented town, with a high concentration of international and college-graduated residents. Less international but more racially and economically diverse, Jamaica Plain is known among locals to have a more “alternative” culture than Brookline Figure 1.

Table 1.

Socio-demographic characteristics of selected geographical areas.

	Population	Median HH Income	Poverty Rate, %	Bachelor’s degree or higher³, %	Graduate or professional degree³, %	% White alone
Massachusetts¹	6,892,503	$85,843	9.40	45	20.3	77
Jamaica Plain²	40,749	$94,733	13.60	66	36.5	66
Brookline¹	59,180	$117,326	12.30	84	53.5	72

¹source: 2019 American Community Survey, 1-year estimates.

²source: 2019 American Community Survey, 5-year estimates.

³population 25 and over.

Figure 1.

Geographical areas included in the study.

With more than 7000 members at the time of fieldwork (March to July 2020), EFJP was one of the largest social media freecycling groups in Massachusetts. In comparison, BNBS counted somewhat fewer than 700 members,¹ but had a higher activity rate (average number of posts publishedin the past month). Two other independent Facebook gifting groups operate in these neighborhoods, Free2me (in Brookline), and Buy Nothing Jamaica Plain. According to the guidelines of the organization at the time (Buy Nothing, 2021c), Buy Nothing communities were asked to “sprout” when they reached a threshold of around 1000 members, so as to preserve a community-focused spirit. When the administrators of the original Buy Nothing Jamaica Plain group communicated their split decision, members heatedly opposed it, arguing that it would divide the community along socio-economic and racial lines (Fischer, 2018; Kowitt, 2021). The discord was such that the movement’s founders ultimately decided to close the group, which was quickly replaced by two independently managed groups, EFJP and the new Buy Nothing Jamaica Plain group, which is no longer affiliated with the global Buy Nothing Project.

With the approval of the administrators, I recruited participants by posting one message in each group, followed by a reminder a few days later. I interviewed every participant who volunteered and followed through the process of setting up an interview (thirty-five persons in total, see list in Appendix (Figure A1)). As expected, my sample exhibited above-average educational levels (Table 2). Out of the thirty-three respondents who disclosed their educational level, only two had some college credit but no degree, and one of them was attending college. Two others had an associate degree. The rest (88%) had a bachelor’s degree or more, twenty of whom (61%) had an advanced degree. Economically speaking, sample variations were greater, with participants earning over $200,000 at a household level and others less than $25,000.56% of the thirty-two respondents who reported their annual household income earned over $75,000 (the median household income in Massachusetts was $85,843 in 2019). Two of those who did not communicate their income held typically well-paid positions. The third one was a retired kindergarten teacher who owned her house. These twenty-one participants constitute the study’s higher-income group. Within the lower income group, seven respondents were relatively financially secure, with yearly incomes (singly earned for most) situated between $50,000 and 75,000. These respondents either held professional occupations or were graduate students with good employment prospects. The seven respondents who earned less than $50,000 were in more precarious situations, yet only one, Elizabeth, who subsisted on social security income, presented herself as such. The six others had lifestyles and an orientation to consumption similar to those situated in the middle-income bracket. In my analysis, I consider this second group of thirteen participants as HCCs with lower incomes.

Table 2.

Sample description.

	Total Respondents	HH Income >$75,000¹	HH Income <$75,000¹	Bachelor’s degree or higher¹	Graduate or professional degree¹	Women	White alone
Total sample	35	18	14	29	20	30	27
Total sample	100%	56%	44%	88%	61%	86%	77%
Everything free JP	27	12	14	23	14	23	20
Everything free JP	100%	46%	54%	85%	52%	85%	74%
Buy Nothing Brookline South	8	6	0	6	6	7	7
Buy Nothing Brookline South	100%	100%	0%	100%	100%	88%	88%

¹Percentages expressed out of the total of respondents who provided their information.

Consistent with other studies on freecycling, women represented 86% of my sample. This also seems to align with the composition of the groups. The average age was 38, with 44% respondents between the ages of 18 and 34, 41% between 35 and 54, and 15% over 55. Finally, 71% of those who reported their ethnicity self-identified as white only, which is consistent with the neighborhoods’ characteristics.

Due to Covid-related restrictions, I conducted most of my interviews through video calls. I also offered the alternative of a phone call, which only two persons took. I found video calls to be more engaging than phone calls, and comparable to a real-life interview setting. In some instances, I was even shown the interior of respondents’ houses and the possessions they had acquired through their gifting group(s).

The thirty-five interviews were transcribed verbatim and I conducted a qualitative content analysis using NVivo. Following an abductive analysis approach (Tavory and Timmermans, 2014), I generated codes both inductively and deductively so as to capture emerging unexpected themes while remaining within the scope of my research question.

An oppositional ethical discourse

Most respondents criticized consumerism for various reasons. Some, like Judi, a 65-year-old long-time resident of Jamaica Plain, deplored the centrality of consumption in contemporary culture:

“I feel like my parents weren't like that, but when I was a teenager that was definitely what a lot of the kids did. They… you know, it's like a social thing. And then our whole culture, is I feel like, geared toward enticing people to need things they don't need, and to think of shopping as a pastime, not just a necessity, you know?”

Like a few other respondents, Judi made a distinction between a not-so-distant past (her parents’ generation), which she idealized as a time of “good” consumption because driven by necessity, and the present context, where people shop for fun, which, to her, represents a debased form of consumption. For those with extensive foreign cultural experiences (immigrants, second-generation Americans and US-born Americans having lived abroad), the contrast between normal and aberrant forms of consumption was geographically rather than timely anchored. Michelle, a 30-year-old second-generation Asian American, did not understand why people in the US “have like, thousands of handbags” and felt “it's just like a very American culture,” contrasting it with the culture in “different countries,” where “they're all about having happiness and being happy in general.” In both the historically and geographically comparative discourses, the critique was largely targeted at contemporary American consumer culture, viewed as the most extreme variant of consumerism.

For a majority, however, the core issue was not so much the vacuity of shopping as leisure but the environmental and social consequences generated by its cultural valorization. Such eco-minded critique was clearly articulated by Laura, a 36-year-old former microbiologist, now a “pedicabber” (bike taxi driver):

“It's the sense that there's so much stuff that gets produced and pulled out of the earth and transported all around and packaged and unpackaged. And so much of it goes right back into the garbage and people get new stuff. I just can't imagine how we could keep that up without destroying the planet.”

Ecological problems associated with the excessive levels of waste generated by consumerism were the most commonly raised critique. Many participants, like Laura, also made a connection between excessive consumption and excessive production, and the subsequent overexploitation of natural and human resources.

Socially oriented issues were also brought up in relation to consumption. A few respondents denounced material disparities between affluent and destitute consumers on a global or national scale. Others had a more localized view of inequality issues. Many acknowledged the presence of low-income participants in their groups and sought to support them through their donations. There was also a sense, among some, that solidarity among neighbors had somewhat been lost, especially in urban areas, and that gifting groups helped recreate it.

Overall, utilitarian purposes aside, respondents’ participation in free exchange groups was highly motivated by concerns related to the dysfunctions of the consumer society. Whether environmentally or socially driven, these moral concerns were materially anchored and translated into overarching consumption principles—mostly around material waste—which, in turn, shaped respondents’ consumption practices within and beyond the groups.

Homogeneous trash-avoiding preferences

All participants shared a strong aversion to waste, which translated into a relatively homogeneous set of trash-avoiding practices. Such concern pre-dated respondents’ participation in gifting groups and, in many cases, was their primary motivation for joining. Many went a long way to avoid having to throw out things that still potentially held some use-value. Trashing objects was so problematic for some participants that they preferred to hold on to them until they found a suitable outlet, sometimes leading to concrete dilemmas. Catherine, a retired kindergarten teacher, was trying to declutter her house, but did not know what to do with the vases that she had accumulated over the years. She could not recycle them, because of the type of glass they were made of, but she could not “bring [herself] to throw them away” either. So, she held on to them in the hope that she would eventually find somebody willing to accept them. Likewise, Eyal, a 38-year-old stay-at-home dad, kept broken things in case he or someone else could fix them, even when it seemed unlikely.

Respondents’ reluctance to throw things away was in many cases related to their concern for environmental degradation, often associated with aesthetic representations. Emilie for instance, a 32-year-old PhD student, was troubled by visions of “landfills filling” and “plastic islands in the ocean.” Like many other participants, Emilie’s aversion to garbage was ethically and aesthetically triggered by the vision of distant oversaturated landfills, and donating rather than throwing things away allowed her to alleviate this double tension at an individual level.

Patsy, for her part, a 68-year-old retired professor, attributed her waste-not attitude to her parents’ habitus, who had both grown up during the depression era. Patsy found the activity of salvaging things from dumpsters or the curb and repairing them pleasurable and highly satisfying. Yet, she mostly justified her waste-saving behavior through environmental and altruistic arguments. Such reframing of ingrained no-waste habits as green or other-oriented, as opposed to economically driven, was a rationalization mechanism that I frequently found among upwardly mobile respondents. This adaptive strategy was also identified by Boucher (2017) in his study of frugality logics among climate activists. In these cases, trash-avoiding practices did not just align with respondents’ pre-established cultural dispositions, they were also revalorized through their ethicization.

Participants usually considered all possible donating and recycling outlets before resorting to the trash container. Whenever possible, donating was preferred to recycling, and among all available donating options, gifting groups typically ranked first. Participants particularly valued the matching capability of the groups. They also appreciated that the groups would accept items that no other donation outlet would, particularly perishable goods such as food and cosmetics, which allowed them to extend the limit of what they could avoid trashing. More importantly, because interest was expressed by other members, participants felt that their gifts were more likely to be put to “good” use. This contrasted with tainted perceptions of donation centers that many respondents held, like Mary, a 23-year-old communication specialist:

“I'll give things to Goodwill, or like the Marines, but a lot of stuff that gets donated just gets thrown out. I know that's how these stores work because they're trying to turn a profit and so they're not going to keep something that doesn't sell. But I don't like to just throw away things that are still useful. So, it feels fine to give things away in these groups because I know that somebody's actively seeking it out, or at the very least saw it as like, “Oh yeah, I want that.” Whatever they do after, it is not my problem.”

Mary’s reasoning reveals a rationalized search for ecological efficiency and a willingness to keep looking for solutions that better address her moral concerns. Yet, her last sentence also exposes the moral limits of her logic. By transferring her no-longer wanted possessions to someone willing to take them, she simultaneously transferred the responsibility of having to deal with the rest of their trajectory, and ultimately discard them. Such reasoning echoes Aptekar’s (2016) conclusion that freecycling groups serve to assuage participants’ guilt associated with their personal consumption, except that, in Mary’s case, guilt was related to her discarding practices.

Perceived efficiency was not the only reason why respondents gave preference to their local gifting group when discarding things. They did so also because they enjoyed the social benefits generated by their participation. For most, helping neighbors was secondary to their main, trash-avoiding goal. Yet, they all appreciated the personalization of the exchange made possible by the group, as expressed by Audrey, a 38-year-old financial analyst:

“Definitely from a community standpoint, I do think it does a better job of building the community because you actually get to see who picks up your item, and there's a little bit of a reward because you've given something to someone that you view as, quote unquote, trash, while they view it as like, “Oh, this is a cool gift.” So, there's a little bit of like pat on the back, of like you made someone's day today. That's kind of cool.”

Audrey enjoyed the gratification derived from the interpersonal character of the donations, as well as the overall sense of community that it generated. Like her, a majority of respondents saw community building as the most tangible contribution made by gifting groups, even when their participation was primarily motivated by de-cluttering and anti-waste imperatives. Participation in free exchange groups is thus more than just a way of avoiding waste, it also creates a sense of groupness around a consumption ethos particularly well suited to eco-minded, privileged HCCs who are in a position to gift things that still hold considerable use-value, and more often than not, also have non-negligible monetary value. It also provides them a space where to display their virtuous consumption behaviors. In other words, online gifting groups allow HCCs, especially the more economically secure, to reap maximized ethical and social benefits in exchange for their material donations.

The moralization of restraint and its limits

Anti-consumerist participants framed waste as the central problem of consumerism, a concern consistently reflected in their waste-avoiding practices. However, most acknowledged the limits of responsible discard strategies, reckoning that excessive consumption should be addressed by avoiding it in the first place. Consequently, many respondents exerted control over their possessions’ level through reasoned forms of acquisition. Not buying anything at all, however, was rarely an ideal that respondents pursued, except for Laura, the previously cited 36-year-old pedicabber, and Andrew, 55 years old, whose corporate career had been stopped after he had become disabled. While Laura, who had just moved to Jamaica Plain after ten years of living on a boat, was looking for ways to subsist on other people’s “garbage” in her new neighborhood, Andrew was starting an urban garden with the intention to become more self-sufficient. All other respondents, despite worrying about the impact of their consumption, put certain constraints on their purchases without deeply challenging their lifestyle.

A handful of respondents self-identified as minimalists. Among them was Selma, a 43-year-old executive assistant and mother of two, who explained:

“I'm definitely trying to minimize clutter. And I bought into the whole Marie Kondo thing of like. things that bring you joy and stuff like that, make it easier to clean. So, I'm definitely trying to be mindful of the things that we have and why we have them. And if it can be better about using… things that can be reused. So, I don't like to use paper cups and plastic plates and all that stuff. Again, there was a lot of that in Tennessee where people have no regard for how much garbage they got rid of. And so, I am trying to be conscious about what I'm bringing into my home.”

Seven participants, including Selma, mentioned the “konmari method,” which focuses on the process of parting with things and maintaining uncluttered home interiors (Lucy, 2022). But for Selma, keeping a “clear space” did not just mean discarding no-longer-loved objects; it also implied controlling the material flow that entered her house. In particular, she carefully avoided consumption habits that she perceived as waste-generative (the use of disposable goods), and which she associated with a culturally distinct group (the people in Tennessee). In this eco-minded version of minimalism, restraint is thus not just “aestheticized” (Khamis, 2019), it is also moralized, thereby magnifying the appeal of ascetic practices already valorized among HCCs (Holt, 1997). Furthermore, convenience was stressed as an added benefit by Selma, for whom having less stuff made it “easier to clean” and reduced the “hassle” of “hav[ing] to go through the thing of giving them away. In other words, Selma saw a triple benefit in making reduced and selective acquisition choices, which satisfied both her cultural (aestheticism, morality) and economic (convenience) dispositions.

Overall, one third of all respondents declared minimizing or reducing their consumption, thereby implying a reference to their own past behavior. In this perspective, defining an appropriate consumption level was highly subjective. Personal consumption was also typically indexed on “regular” consumers’ perceived behaviors. Respondents commonly described their consumption patterns in the negative form, such as “I’m not a big consumer, I don’t consume that much” (Esther, 64 years old) or “I’m not a high consumer, I don’t consume a lot” (Antonia, 38 years old). By situating their consumption level on the lower end of an imagined scale, these respondents evaluated it as reasonable, and thus morally acceptable.

In most cases, consumption control required conscious efforts, and shopping was often experienced as a chore, a moment of complex and constrained decision-making. Two thirds of the sample expressed dislike or ambivalence toward “regular” shopping. Many described feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of goods available at large retail stores. Catherine, for instance, the previously cited retired teacher, no longer liked shopping since she had become more ecologically conscious and minimalistic:

“I used to enjoy shopping. I don't enjoy shopping so much anymore, it's a little overwhelming. I don't mind going for something I need, but I don't go through a place saying, ‘Oh, look at all these possible things that I might use?’ I think about the space in my house and I think, ‘I don't want to add anything’.”

Choice, in Catherine’s experience, was problematic on two accounts. It complicated her purchase decision-making and generated temptation, which she had to resist in order to comply with her ascetic lifestyle ideals. Being a frugal shopper, for those who questioned the legitimacy of their “needs,” required self-sacrificing efforts, which explains why, almost invariably, participants portrayed their consumption control practices as attempts. In the previously cited quote, Selma “tried” to be cautious about what she brought into her home. Like her, Miriam, a 38-year-old clinical researcher, was “trying very hard to minimize [her] buying”; while Tammi, a 31-year-old doctoral student, was “trying to be minimalist,” but found that she still had “way too much stuff,” “crap” that she did not “need.” Clearly, for these participants, reducing their consumption meant restraining themselves from self-indulging, pleasurable acts of consumption that they could financially afford. Their moral positioning therefore opposed their economic disposition, creating tension as they attempted to distance themselves from the hedonistic dimension of mainstream consumption.

Income-related justifications of consumption

To resolve tensions caused by morally questionable acquisition practices in regard to their anti-consumerism, participants relied on two main, income-related strategies: rationalizing first-hand purchases and privileging second-hand acquisitions.

While all respondents continued buying new things, higher-income respondents did so less apologetically. To reconcile first-hand consumption practices with their anti-consumerist values, these participants resorted to three main justification logics: intentionality, green-washing, and convenience. The intentionality argument consisted in discerning superfluous from need-based purchases, presenting the latter as morally acceptable, as in Jasper’s discourse, a 40+ years old business owner who prided himself on his recycling habits:

“I would say I try not to buy more than I need. I'm not an incredible consumerist person. I mean, like everyone else I think at this point, I buy stuff on Amazon all the time these days, but I try not to buy stuff I don't need.”

The conception of “need” as used by Jasper is highly subjective and decoupled from normative conceptions of essential goods—which are themselves contextual to every society. In Jasper’s sense, a need is something that will be put to “good” use, ideally “loved” and ultimately passed on. Like Jasper, what many higher-income participants were trying to reduce was the acquisition of items viewed as superfluous or unsustainable. They were less eager, however, to compromise on acquisitions that were central to their lifestyle or conveyed aesthetical preferences. Swathi for instance, a 31-year-old research manager, enjoyed browsing in thrift stores, but went to “regular” stores when she needed to buy something “specific,” like “a pair of jeans.” Likewise, Serena, a 32-year-old postdoctoral researcher, followed a hybridized consumption pattern. She privileged second-hand outlets to acquire items intended for temporary use, such as puzzles or clothes for her son, but preferred to purchase as new things to which she attached greater significance, like her wardrobe, or her toddler’s bed, which she purchased on a carefully chosen website:

“The only thing that… yeah, we just bought a bunk bed for my son's big boy room, but made a conscious effort to… it's not… it's all pinewood, it's from a company in New Zealand that's very sustainable. And most importantly, the upper bunk can handle 400 pounds so an adult can sleep on it without fear of falling. That's actually one of my bigger fears. I think I'd rather… like it's sturdy. But yeah, I think most of our furniture is just secondhand.”

Buying a high-quality bed for a toddler is not an imperative for individuals of all social classes. For Serena, who ranked in the first sample tier both in terms of cultural and economic capital, getting a sturdy “big boy” bed for her two-year-old was a strongly symbolic act of parental care. In this occasion, Serena’s aesthetic, economic and ethical dispositions diverged, and her aesthetic and safety exigencies took precedence over her anti-consumerist orientation. She still morally sanctioned her purchase by making what she perceived to be a sustainable choice (disregarding the fact that the bed had to be shipped from New Zealand).

Higher-income respondents were also more likely to use time and convenience as arguments for continuing to shop first-hand or at outlets that did not meet their ethical standards. Audrey, the previously quoted 38-year-old financial analyst, practically never shopped at regular physical stores and expressed a strong preference for second-hand shops. Yet, she still purchased from Amazon, because she had not found any other company that “delivered on the convenience.” Grauel (2016) finds that “ordinary” consumers, that is, “people who do not strongly identify with ethical consumption,” often provide practical reasons for not engaging more with ethical consumption. In my sample, most respondents actively tried to be conscious consumers, yet practical considerations still often hindered their efforts to consume less. This suggests that HCCs’ ethical disposition can be canceled out by their economic disposition. Maintaining control over her time and lifestyle mattered more to Audrey than consuming according to her moral beliefs. Audrey’s ethical disposition did influence her consumption choices—she was for instance delaying the purchase of a new sofa because she was not sure how to properly get rid of her used one—but only to the extent that it aligned with her aesthetic and economic preferences.

The second strategy used by participants to continue consuming without infringing on their anti-waste principles was second-hand consumption, which was morally valorized and practiced by all respondents. However, as seen in the cases of Swathi, Serena, or Audrey, expressing a preference for used goods did not systematically translate into establishing second-hand provisioning as a primary source of consumption. Convenience and aesthetic considerations often got in the way of moral intentions, and the relative importance of second-hand provisioning in participants’ overall consumption appeared income-related. Respondents who indicated that they very rarely purchased new items and principally relied on second-hand consumption (Kirsty, Mary, Nicole, Lucy, Andrew, Laura, Omar, Elizabeth, and Justine) were all situated in the lower income brackets. Reasons for primarily resorting to second-hand provisioning were mainly economic for Mary, Omar, and Elizabeth, but they were environmental for Kirsty, Nicole, Lucy, Andrew, Laura, and Justine, suggesting a chosen rather than economically imposed habit. Financially less-secure participants were also much more likely to rescue things from the curb, to receive more than they gave in gifting groups, and to have a lower acceptability bar as for what they were willing to accept from them. However, taking products viewed as basic necessities—open packets of food and meal leftovers, particularly—was commonly associated with situations of dire need. Even participants situated in the sample’s lowest-income bracket were inclined to “leave” those products to (imagined) members who, they believed, truly needed them. Participants who did occasionally take food items emphasized anti-waste or “fun” motivations, rather than economic reasons, thereby distinguishing themselves from the lowest socio-economic categories and destigmatizing their own acceptance of second-hand necessities.

Through second-hand consumption, control over personal acquisition levels was often relaxed. For Nicole, a 23-year-old solar project developer who experienced strong moral quandaries every time she had to buy something new, browsing her gifting group’s page was “like [her] online shopping.” Likewise, Judi, who had a “love-hate” relationship with regular shopping, admitted that thrift shopping and getting things from her gifting group allowed her to “satisfy [her] interest in shopping without contributing to consumerism.” Just like passing down no-longer-wanted possessions to interested others erased guilty feelings associated with excessive waste, getting previously owned goods tended to assuage guilty feelings associated with excessive production, while reinstating the pleasurable dimension of self-indulgent consumption. Parguel, Lunardo, and Benoit-Moreau make a similar observation in their study of second-hand peer-to-peer transactions (Parguel et al., 2017). However, in gifting groups, the ethical dimension of second-hand consumption is further reinforced by the idea that donated objects are surplus that people no longer want and would otherwise go to waste. Judi, for instance, had claimed plates from her group that she found “nice” but did not need, just because nobody else seemed interested in taking them. Getting things from online gifting groups was thus not just perceived as a morally neutralized form of consumption, but one with a positive, waste-reduction impact.

Thus reframed, second-hand consumption allowed conscious participants to loosen their ethical principles, and reproduce certain mainstream consumption logics—as in the case of Kristy, a 30-year-old doctoral student:

“So like, I've had this purse that I got for $2 in Pittsburgh when I was thrifting with a friend that I've gotten more compliments on than any other bag, but it also does the exact job I need it to.”

Kristy was an environmentalist with strong anti-consumerist views, yet, she valued second-hand articles that met mainstream consumption ideals beyond mere functionality, such as style and desirability. In the same vein, respondents regularly alluded to the projected monetary value of the objects offered in the groups. This aligns with Eden’s finding that freecycling economies are not pure alternative models, and that they blur the boundaries between mainstream and anti-conventional forms of consumption (Eden, 2017). It also demonstrates that consumption choices are multiscalar, resulting from a combinatory expression of individuals’ moral, aesthetic, economic, and social preferences.

Discussion

The role of class-based preferences in everyday discard practices remains underexplored in the consumption literature, perhaps for a reason: inconspicuous waste habits have little cultural meaning in mainstream culture. With the rise of environmental concern, however, modes of disposal are responsibilized and increasingly serve to express eco-mindedness. In this perspective, online gifting allows environmentally and socially concerned HCCs to expand their trash-avoiding practices, increase their sense of self-efficacy, display their moral inclination, and reap gratifying social rewards. In other words, donating through these groups reinforces HCCs’ cultural legitimacy, without challenging their often-comfortable economic status—quite the contrary: donating, especially high-value items, also signals economic affluence.

Acquisition choices, on the other hand, are much more symbolically charged in consumer society, constituting a system of signs akin to language (Baudrillard, 1968). Possessions, not dispossession, are important indicators of consumers’ status, and minimizing their volume leads to distinction strategies that are never entirely detached from the logics of mainstream consumption, or when they are, become socially stigmatizing (Isenhour, 2012). This study further lays out the strategies employed by HCCs to bypass the social and personal constraints associated with voluntary consumption reduction practices. That these vary based on respondents’ income levels demonstrates that HCCs’ “eco-habitus” is not solely shaped by their cultural concerns and preferences (which reflect the composition of their capital), but is also indexed on mainstream norms attached to their socio-economic status (which derives from the total volume of capital they possess).

Ethical consumption is a class-based construct whose forms vary based on individuals’ position within the broader field of consumption, itself a reflection of their socio-economic situation. Ethically legitimated practices such as second-hand consumption might seem transformative for HCCs with higher economic status, while already part of the lifestyle of those situated in lower income brackets. Ethical consumption should thus not be understood as a separate type of consumption, but one entrenched within the broader field of consumption, itself dominated by a deep-seated system of normed preferences that remain heavily indexed on cultural and economic distance to necessity. Displaying moral superiority through specific consumption choices is certainly not new. Charitable donations are a historical example of this. What makes today’s ethical consumption different is its pervasion in all forms of consumption including, the most mundane acquiring and discarding choices, which, through digital innovations like online gifting groups, are gaining visibility and, thus, signaling capacity.

As progressive moral discourses increasingly locate the cause of the planet’s most pressing issues in consumerism, conscious consumption emerges as a structuring pillar in a field of consumption still predominantly organized by previously established aesthetic and economic dispositions. Such emergence is visible in the reversal in HCCs taste binaries observed by Carfagna et al. (2014), as well as the relatively surprising embrace of thrift practices by privileged consumers revealed in my study. As global issues of sustainability and social justice worsen, ethical consumption will likely continue to evolve, diversify, and spread, transforming the dominant field of consumption in increasingly profound ways.

Conclusion

Thrift practices such as online gifting and receiving allow high cultural capital consumers to respond to and signal their concerns about the material and cultural consequences of consumerism, fundamentally altering neither their social status nor their participation in the dominant field of consumption. This suggests that, as long as HCCs’ social status is fundamentally attached to their economic position, the legitimized field of ethical consumption, which is largely shaped by this socio-economic group, will remain a heteronomous subfield of consumption subjected to the greater forces of the dominant market. However, precisely because of HCCs’ entrenchment in established market structures and their influence on dominant cultural trends, ethical consumption, as defined and legitimized by this group, is normalizing and consolidating as a pillar of conventional consumption. While limited to highly educated consumers in the Boston area, this study contributes to the understanding of the evolving subfield of ethical consumption and its impacts on the structuring principles of conventional consumption.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I thank all those, fellow graduate students and professors, who provided feedback on previous versions of this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers. I am especially grateful to Elise Largesse for her input in the early stages of the project; my advisor, Juliet Schor, for her support and invaluable feedback; and Julia Chuang for encouraging me to develop a more critical gaze.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Boston College (Graduate Research Expense Grant, Ivan Brown Graduate Research Grant, Summer Research Fellowship).

ORCID iD

Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues

Note

Appendix

Figure A1.

List of respondents and key characteristics.

Author Biography

Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Her research is situated within the field of consumption, with a particular interest in the cultural transformations caused by the intensification of socio-environmental issues. She is also a member of the research team for an NSF-funded, multidisciplinary research project on the effects of algorithmic management on platform-mediated work.

References

Amine

Gicquel

(2011) Rethinking resistance and anti‐consumption behaviours in the light of the concept of deviance. European Journal of Marketing 45(11/12): 1809–1819. DOI: 10.1108/03090561111167450

Aptekar

(2016) Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization of Freecycle Giving. Social Problems 63(2): 266–283. DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spw005

Ballantine

Arbouw

Ozanne

(2011) Learning to Resist: The Challenges Faced by Beginner Voluntary Simplifiers. Advances in Consumer Research 39: 404–408.

Barnard

(2016) Making the City “Second Nature”: Freegan “Dumpster Divers” and the Materiality of Morality. American Journal of Sociology 121(4): 1017–1050. DOI: 10.1086/683819

Baudrillard

(1968) Le Système Des Objets. Paris: Gallimard.

Baumann

Engman

Johnston

(2015) Political consumption, conventional politics, and high cultural capital: Shopping for change? International Journal of Consumer Studies 39(5): 413–421. DOI: 10.1111/ijcs.12223

Black

(2010) Sustainability through anti-consumption. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9(6): 403–411. DOI: 10.1002/cb.340

Boström

(2022) Lifestyle transformation and reduced consumption: a transformative learning process. Sozialpolitik.ch 1. doi: 10.18753/2297-8224-186.

Boucher

(2017) The logics of frugality: Reproducing tastes of necessity among affluent climate change activists. Energy Research & Social Science 31: 223–232. DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.001

10.

Bourdieu

(1984) Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

11.

Buy Nothing (2021a) About. Buy Nothing. Give Freely. Share Creatively. Available at: https://buynothingproject.org/about/(accessed 24 June 2021).

12.

Buy Nothing (2021b) Mission & Principles. Available at: https://buynothingproject.org/about/mission-and-principles/(accessed 24 June 2021).

13.

Buy Nothing (2021c) What We Learned After 8 Years In Facebook Groups. Available at: https://buynothingproject.org/2021/05/28/what-we-learned-after-8-years-in-facebook-groups/(accessed 24 June 2021).

14.

Carfagna

Dubois

Fitzmaurice

, et al. (2014) An emerging eco-habitus: The reconfiguration of high cultural capital practices among ethical consumers. Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2): 158–178. DOI: 10.1177/1469540514526227

15.

Csutora

(2012) One more awareness gap? the behaviour–impact gap problem. Journal of Consumer Policy 35(1): 145–163. DOI: 10.1007/s10603-012-9187-8

16.

Eden

(2017) Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle. Journal of Consumer Culture 17(2): 265–285. DOI: 10.1177/1469540515586871

17.

Fischer

(2018) JP ‘buy nothing’ facebook group revolts amid racial bias concerns | Jamaica Plain, MA Patch. Available at: https://patch.com/massachusetts/jamaicaplain/jamaica-plain-buy-nothing-facebook-group-revolts-splinters (accessed 24 June 2021).

18.

Grauel

(2016) Being authentic or being responsible? Food consumption, morality and the presentation of self. Journal of Consumer Culture 16(3): 852–869. DOI: 10.1177/1469540514541880

19.

Griskevicius

Tybur

Van den Bergh

(2010) Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98(3): 392–404. DOI: 10.1037/a0017346

20.

Holt

(1997) Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu’s theory of tastes from its critics. Poetics 25(2–3): 93–120. DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(97)00010-7

21.

Holt

(2014) Why the Sustainable Economy Movement Hasn’t Scaled: Toward a Strategy That Empowers Main Street. In: Schor

Thompson

(eds), Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press.

22.

Humphery

(2019) Affluence, Anti-Consumerism, and the Politics of Consumption. In: Wherry

Woodward

(eds), The Oxford Handbook of Consumption. Oxford University Press, pp. 559–576. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695583.013.33

23.

Isenhour

(2012) On the Challenges of Signalling Ethics without the Stuff: Tales of Conspicuous Green Anti-Consumption. In: Carrier

Luetchford

(eds), Social Value and Economic Practice. Berghahn Books, p. 18.

24.

Jackson

(2008) Live Better by Consuming Less? Is There a “Double Dividend” in Sustainable Consumption? Journal of Industrial Ecology 9(1–2): 19–36. DOI: 10.1162/1088198054084734

25.

Kennedy

Baumann

Johnston

(2019) Eating for Taste and Eating for Change: Ethical Consumption as a High-Status Practice. Social Forces 98(1): 381–402. DOI: 10.1093/sf/soy113

26.

Kennedy

Givens

(2019) Eco-habitus or Eco-powerlessness? Examining Environmental Concern across Social Class. Sociological Perspectives 62(5): 646–667. DOI: 10.1177/0731121419836966

27.

Khamis

(2019) The aestheticization of restraint: The popular appeal of de-cluttering after the global financial crisis. Journal of Consumer Culture 19(4): 513–531. DOI: 10.1177/1469540519872071

28.

Koskenniemi

(2019) Deviant consumption meets consumption-as-usual: The construction of deviance and normality within consumer research. Journal of Consumer Culture: 146954051987599. DOI: 10.1177/1469540519875997

29.

Kowitt

(2021) How the pandemic fueled the rise of the ‘Buy Nothing’ economy. Available at: https://fortune.com/2021/07/30/buy-nothing-facebook-group-pandemic-gift-economy-free-stuff/(accessed 1 August 2021).

30.

Kropfeld

Nepomuceno

Dantas

(2018) The Ecological Impact of Anticonsumption Lifestyles and Environmental Concern. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 37(2): 245–259. DOI: 10.1177/0743915618810448

31.

Lucy

(2022) Divestment as investment: ‘Kondo-Ing’ selves in the context of overaccumulation. Journal of Consumer Culture, Forthcoming, DOI: 10.1177/14695405221140545

32.

McGouran

Prothero

(2016) Enacted voluntary simplicity – exploring the consequences of requesting consumers to intentionally consume less. European Journal of Marketing 50(1/2): 189–212. DOI: 10.1108/EJM-09-2013-0521

33.

Nelson

Rademacher

Paek

H-J

(2007) Downshifting Consumer = Upshifting Citizen? An Examination of a Local Freecycle Community. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611(1): 141–156. DOI: 10.1177/0002716206298727

34.

Parguel

Lunardo

Benoit-Moreau

(2017) Sustainability of the sharing economy in question: When second-hand peer-to-peer platforms stimulate indulgent consumption. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 125: 48–57. DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2017.03.029

35.

Peters

(2020) Platform and Place: The Digitization of Gift Economies. MA Thesis. Virginia Commonwealth University. Available at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/6454

36.

Rufas

Hine

(2018) Everyday connections between online and offline: Imagining others and constructing community through local online initiatives. New Media & Society 20(10): 3879–3897. DOI: 10.1177/1461444818762364

37.

Schor

(2010) Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin Press.

38.

Shaw

Newholm

(2002) Voluntary simplicity and the ethics of consumption. Psychology and Marketing 19(2): 167–185. DOI: 10.1002/mar.10008

39.

Tavory

Timmermans

(2014) Abductive Analysis. Theorizing Qualitative Research. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

40.

The Freecycle Network (2021) Freecycle: About Freecycle. Available at: https://www.freecycle.org/pages/about (accessed 14 July 2021).

41.

Thøgersen

Crompton

(2009) Simple and Painless? The Limitations of Spillover in Environmental Campaigning. Journal of Consumer Policy 32(2): 141–163. DOI: 10.1007/s10603-009-9101-1

42.

Willis

Schor

(2012) Does Changing a Light Bulb Lead to Changing the World? Political Action and the Conscious Consumer. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644, 160–190.