Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the Social Wardrobe, a clothing bank in Northern Greece. I argue that despite its charitable nature, the Social Wardrobe hosts pseudo-market transactions that allow actors to engage performances of dignified consumption and thus partially circumvent stigma and shame

Paper long abstract:

The Social Wardrobe is a clothing bank in the Northern Greek town of Xanthi. It is run by a small group of middle-aged volunteering women who offer garments and other necessities free of charge. Despite its charitable nature, the Social Wardrobe has a peculiar affinity with the market. The transaction of clothes is often informed by the sensibilities that guide market exchanges, including those of self-reliance, autonomy of action, and freedom of choice. Expressions like ‘Welcome to our shop’, ‘What would you like to buy?’, and ‘That’s a good purchase!’, serve to mediate performative exchanges between store-clerks and customers. Courtesy of a process that I term ‘performative commodification’, the used and bestowed objects of the clothing bank transform into idiosyncratic commodities, which allow disenfranchised actors to engage performances of dignified consumption and thus circumvent stigma and shame. Yet, unfolding in the absence of money, this arrangement is bound to be fragile and incomplete. Entailing a ‘shop’ that belongs neither with the market, nor with anti-capitalist critique, the Social Wardrobe ‘sells clothes for free’.