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政策制定的焦点，因为越来越多的科学证据表明，当前的经济实践可能正在广泛地耗尽宝贵的资源。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，特别是在供再利用的货物从一个国家出口到另一个国家的情况下。本论文关注全球二手衣物价值链，以了解从废物转化而来的废弃物品会发生什么，并通过赋予价值而从垃圾填埋场转移。这个项目借鉴了经济社会学和废物研究，试图提供对这些废物流动的估值。这篇论文将开发一种评估理论，可以解释商品高度不标准化的情况。现有的对估值的社会学解释无法解释价值是如何沿着全球二手服装价值链创造的，因为在全球价值链上，商品变化无常，供应不可预测。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有效和可持续的废物管理政策的国家来说很重要。这项研究是一项多地点、混合方法的研究，追踪从英国到波兰的旧衣服价值链。核心的经验主义问题是如何沿着二手服装的全球价值链创造价值的。本文通过比较全球二手服装价值链上不同环节的二手服装市场参与者如何做出价值和浪费的决策。数据将包括对参与英国和波兰旧衣服收集、分类、加工、出口、进口或销售的演员进行深入、半结构化的采访。访谈将通过在英国和波兰之间旧衣服价值链上分析确定的六个阶段的每个地点进行观察和参与者观察来提供信息和补充。实地考察笔记、面试记录和照片将进行定性编码。有关售出/丢弃衣物的数量和百分比的量化数据将来自访谈的结构化部分，并得到现有行业数据的补充。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，并评估定性结果的概括性。这项研究对经济社会学和回收利用和废物政策都有贡献。

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.