Connecting Value Regimes: The Role of Brokers in the Transnational Used Clothing Economy

The ways organizations create and assign value have long been studied through the lens of global value chains. Drawing on this legacy, this paper examines the transnational circulation of used clothing in France, Chile, and Bolivia to analyze local-to-global processes of valuation and commodification. Ethnographic research in these three contexts provides the basis for analyzing the classification activities of brokers, with a particular emphasis on exporters in France and importers of used clothing in Chile and Bolivia. The materiality and value of this object are explored in various settings, from French collection bins and sorting warehouses to Chilean landfills and Bolivian street markets. This reconstitution of the social life of clothing enables the identification of intersections, frictions, and nodes of valuation across the Global North and South.

The paper demonstrates that brokers in the used clothing value chain translate and connect different value regimes – through sorting and grading – to seize trade opportunities. I argue that this entrepreneurial strategy for capital accumulation coexists with a new grammar of worth under the Anthropocene, wherein the concept of circular economy serves as an industrial imperative for value extension and extraction.

This contribution highlights the importance of considering the mobility and diversity of used clothing – from unsold items to gifts and waste – in understanding the coexistence of value regimes, the peripheries of valuation processes, the boundaries of capitalist value, and the standardization and disputes over value regimes in transnational contexts.