Ad hockery in secondhand markets, design and ethnomethodological studies

In this paper we are interested in reflecting on “the distinctive orderliness of ad hoc practices and to examine their constitutive relations to more stable and formal orders” (Lynch 2011: 836). We draw upon our current research project that has involved a design intervention in secondhand charity retail in Manchester. The design responds to shoppers’ ad hoc haggling, using eBay on their smartphones to dispute goods’ prices with shop staff. A ‘haggle-o-tron’, a ‘visibly made-up’ kettle, was installed in a branch of Oxfam to ‘surface’ haggling practices for secondhand goods, eliciting insight into ‘calculative practices’ (Callon 2005). The ad hoc in this project also relates, firstly, to the co-production of re-establishing the value of secondhand objects (Crewe and Gregson 1998) and, secondly, to questions that the playful subversion of accepted modes of consumption pose about charity shops’ more enduring roles in civic and civil life.