Between oceans of discarded stuff and the drive to ‘hustle,’ many have turned to reselling as a form of work in the US. Extending an established infrastructure of donation-powered charities and thrift stores, a growing number of online marketplaces have increasingly digitalized these transactions, bringing new players and dynamics to secondhand. We seek to understand and reimagine secondhand economies together with resellers and other participants in these ecosystems.
Our key research questions are:
Explore the theory that inspires our work below:
People behind the project
Sara Milkes Espinosa is a PhD Candidate at Georgia Tech studying secondhand economies from heterodox economics perspectives. She has participated in secondhand economies as a buyer and a seller, initially drawn to it by her obsession with the eclectic and dusty (USA-exported) discard she found every Sunday in San Felipe and Las Agues flea markets in Bogota.
Irawo Ajasin is a Masters student at New York University interested in using creative and participatory research approaches to explore cyberculture, speculative futures, and how to design software that centers curiosity and play.
Carl DiSalvo is a professor at Georgia Tech advising students in this project. His recent book Design as Democratic Inquiry explores how: "Through practices of collaborative imagination and making, or "doing design otherwise,” design experiments can contribute to keeping local democracies vibrant."
Acknowledgement
This work was supported in part by the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI (AIAI) Network, which made possible by the Mellon Foundation, and the Society-Centered AI program at Google Research.