Paper short abstract:

This paper will report on research into community ‘gifting and sharing’ initiatives in the UK, involving food, clothing and household items. The ‘unwanted gift’ is focused on, as a way to trace a critical account of such practices, and the possibilities and limitations for solidarity that arise.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will report on research into new forms of community ‘gifting and sharing’ initiatives in three areas of the UK. Such projects focus on the provisioning of everyday items for those in need, such as food, clothing, hygiene products and baby equipment, using both digital and material spaces. The projects have arisen especially in contexts of austerity, poverty, the ‘cost-of-living’ crisis and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The rationalities and discourses surrounding the project vary, but they often involve emotional registers of kindness and compassion for those in need. However, ethnography of such spaces reveal often uneasy online and offline interactions, prompting a move away from a ‘magical’ account of kindness (Phillips and Adams 2009) to a more ‘troubling’ analysis (Lampinen 2021) involving asymmetries of power, needs and vulnerabilities. The paper focuses on the presence of the ‘unwanted gift’ in a number of community spaces, as a way to trace a more critical account of gifting and sharing practices, and the possibilities and limitations for solidarity within them.