Doctoral Dissertation Research: Explaining the valuation of non-standard goods in the global economy.

博士论文研究：解释全球经济中非标准商品的价值可持续生产和消费已成为决策的焦点，因为越来越多的科学证据表明，当前的经济实践可能正在大规模地耗尽宝贵的资源。回收和通过再利用防止废物是这些政策的关键方面，但人们对如何实施这些废物管理措施知之甚少，特别是在再利用货物从一个国家出口到另一个国家的情况下。本论文的重点是全球价值链的旧服装，以了解发生了什么事情，从废物转化和转移从垃圾填埋场被赋予价值的废弃物。本项目从经济社会学和废物研究的角度出发，试图对这些废物流的价值进行评估。本论文将发展一种估价理论，可以解释商品高度非标准化的情况。现有的社会学对价值评估的解释无法解释价值是如何沿着二手服装的全球价值链沿着创造的，在这个价值链中，商品是高度可变的，供应是不可预测的。了解废物是如何转化为商品的，对于寻求制定在国家和全球范围内有效和可持续的废物管理政策的国家十分重要。这项研究是一项多地点、混合方法的研究，追踪了从联合王国到波兰的旧服装价值链。核心的实证问题是，价值是如何沿着二手服装的全球价值链沿着创造的。本论文主要是通过对全球二手服装价值链上沿着不同位置的二手服装市场参与者如何做出价值和浪费决策的比较。数据将包括深入的，半结构化的采访参与收集，分类，加工，出口，进口，或在英国和波兰旧服装销售的演员。访谈将通过观察和参与者观察了解并补充英国和波兰之间旧服装价值链上沿着的六个阶段。现场记录、访谈记录和照片将进行定性编码。有关售出/丢弃的服装数量和百分比的定量数据将来自访谈的结构化部分，并由现有的行业数据补充。这些数据以及现有的商业登记数据将使用表格和多变量分析进行分析，以帮助解释定性数据中发现的差异，并评估定性结果的普遍性。这项研究有助于经济社会学和回收和废物政策。

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Explaining the Valuation of Non-Standard Goods in the Global EconomySustainable production and consumption have become a focus of policy-making as growing scientific evidence points to the possibility that current economic practices are depleting valuable resources on a broad scale. Recycling and prevention of waste through reuse are key aspects of these policies, yet little is known about how these waste management measures are practiced, especially as goods for reuse are exported from one country to another. This dissertation focuses on the global value chain for used clothing to understand what happens to discarded items that are transformed from waste and diverted from landfill by being given value. Drawing from economic sociology and waste studies, this project seeks to provide an account of valuation of these waste flows. This dissertation will develop a theory of valuation that can account for cases in which goods are highly unstandardized. Existing sociological explanations of valuation cannot account for how value is created along the global value chain of used clothing, where goods are highly variable and supply is unpredictable. Understanding how waste is transformed into a commodity is important to countries seeking to develop waste management policies that are nationally and globally effective and sustainable. This study is a multi-sited, mixed-methods study that traces the value chain of used clothing from the United Kingdom to Poland. The central empirical question asks how value is created along the global value chain of used clothing. This dissertation relies on a comparison of how used clothing market actors at different points along the global value chain of used clothing make decisions about value and waste. Data will include in-depth, semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the collection, sorting, processing, exporting, importing, or selling of used clothing in the UK and Poland. Interviews will be informed and supplemented by observation and participant observation in sites at each of six analytically-identified stages along the value chain of used clothing between the UK and Poland. Field notes, interview transcripts, and photographs will be qualitatively coded. Quantitative data regarding amounts and percentages of clothing sold/discarded will come from a structured component of interviews and supplemented by existing industry data. These data, as well as existing business register data, will be analyzed using tabular and multivariate analysis to help explain variations found in the qualitative data and to assess the generalizability of the qualitative findings. This research contributes both to economic sociology and to recycling and waste policy.