IL CONSUMO DELL’USATO IN VENETO. Culture e pratiche di nuove modalità di scambio degli oggetti

Il presente lavoro intende esplorare il consumo dell'usato in Italia e in Veneto in particolare, con una ricerca empirica quali-quantitativa. L'approccio di analisi si basa sulla cultura materiale dell'usato e sul confronto con il consumo del nuovo quale modalità pervasiva di consumo. Attraverso una analisi della letteratura e la costruzione di un primo modello teorico di analisi si procederà a descrivere le principali dimensioni implicate nell'usato.

The aim of this research is to investigate the material culture of second-hand consumption in Italy. The recent growth of Second-hand consumption in Italy is almost due to financial and economic crisis. But consumers that deals with second-hand doesn’t think that the bargain is the principal motivation for buying used goods. To be more specific, the utilitarian cause is not sufficient to explore and understand second-hand consumption, especially for the consequences that second-hand consumption could have to the mass consumption of “new” commodities. As a consequence it can be said that second-hand consumption is a practice driven either by economical causes and cultural beliefs. Second-hand culture is characterized by a peculiar social meaning related to the cycle of goods and its system of relations between consumers, and it represents the history of products and people. Second-hand is the opposite of the “new”, which represents the rational choice of consumers who decide to purchase and consume products regardless of their physical wear and tear. While new goods guarantees a sort of “purity of consumption”, second-hand goods seems to be “dangerous”. Second-hand consumption brings commodities to an “impure” and relational way of consumption, not mediated by conventional market and industrial “clean” production. Exploring what other disciplines said about second-hand, and promoting a first theoretical view of the phenomenon, this work propose an explorative research based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, where we try to better describe and understand second-hand consumption in the Veneto area. The analysis of three form of second-hand consumption: barter (and swap party), second-hand shop and charity shop, through qualitative methods, driven by the theoretical assumptions described before, gives us a first framework of the phenomenon and a first