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Abstract Academic research on the Circular Economy has been proliferating at an unprecedented pace during the last decade. However, scholarly work on the topic is dominated by a focus on hard scientific, technical and corporate/business management approaches, leaving the social sciences underrepresented in the relevant literature. This review article covers the current Anglophone social scientific research on the circular economy with special attention to waste. A total of 161 works aligning with the scope of this article were examined. These works were analysed in light of two questions: the reviewed studies’ knowledge interest and the dimension(s) of the CE they gave emphasis to. In result, the articles were charted along two axes: Instrumental/Technical (Quadrant I), Analytical/Technical (Quadrant II), Instrumental/Social (Quadrant III), and Analytical/Social (Quadrant IV). The findings of this review article demonstrate a strong thematic interest related to the circular economy in global, major issues of governance; transition and implementation; consumption and consumer behaviour; as well as the associated logic, concepts and definitions. A weaker thematic interest appeared in relation to the cultural, political and ethical dimensions of the circular economy, while critical engagements with and contestations of the model remain fairly rare. Moreover, the analysis revealed the relative absence of detailed empirical scholarship on the more-than-human relations and the micro-level, local everyday practices through which the circular economy becomes actualised. This review calls for the proliferation of such works currently situated in the margins of the circular economy literature. However, as is finally proposed, a balanced mapping of a circular economy transition would require an approach that would problematise levels, scales and dichotomies like ‘global’ and ‘local’ as categorical givens.

In this article, we take the notion of ruination beyond crumbling built structures and use it to explore contemporary trashscapes. With the waste produced by humanity scaling up to encompass the entire planet, we examine life with and in the ruins of the Anthropocene, where there is no Away to which the rejectamenta could be expelled and thus set apart from humans. On the one hand, we scrutinise waste as matter in a ruined state, subject to and resulting from a process of ruination; waste is a trace of an anterior presence that remains and continues to haunt us. On the other hand, we argue that collective wastage is turning the natural environment itself into ruins and landscapes into trashscapes. Towards the end of the article, we also stress the disruptive qualities of ruination and decay and discuss the renewed sensibilities evoked by waste. A life with waste in a world of Anthropocenic ruination amounts to a life that is not in complete control of itself but rather is inextricably entangled with otherness.

The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an invitation for scholars to participate in specifying the key ideas and practices of the relational sociology movement. Thereby, instead of searching for cues where he would speak about hospitality, the text explores his thinking as hospitality. It examines how his writings performatively try out and expand the possibilities of creating hospitality within the relational sociology movement. The article suggests that the antinomy between what Jacques Derrida has called unconditional and conditional hospitality proves helpful when trying to explicate Dépelteau’s views on keeping relational sociology alive as a project or intellectual movement. The difficulty of the community building, it will be maintained, comes down to finding a balance between embracing difference and protecting identity.

In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argue that engaging with waste materials can thereby significantly contribute to the field of valuation studies. We lay special emphasis on the intertwined practices and processes of assembling and disassembling value and waste. Creating value is a process of joining together: classifying, grouping, combining, making, re-forming. Yet it is also a process where persons, things, parts of bodies, or landscapes are disentangled, abandoned, dismissed, or corrupted. The notion of disassembly attracts attention not only to the center of the action of valuation but also to its peripheries—to things and materials which are cast aside, to spaces which accommodate that which has been disassembled, and the ambiguities and potentialities opened up by processes of disassembly. Thinking with waste also pushes us to think about how various regimes of value are connected and how they coexist and/or compete. As such, waste is not a coherent thing, but rather one that gets displaced and transformed in valuing practices which coexist in various ways.

The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster diving as a practice of valuation. Its main questions are: How is voluntary dumpster diving intertwined with the question of value? And, conversely, what can dumpster diving teach us about practices of valuation more generally? The article proceeds via three steps. First, in order to emphasize the creative side of dumpster diving as a practice of valuation, we draw on Georg Simmel’s theory of value, supplementing it with the concepts of actuality and virtuality, as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze. Second, we look more closely into the practicalities of valuation evident in dumpster diving. It involves a particular orientation to the urban environment that we call the scavenger gaze. Third, the informants also value the practice itself in relation to its societal relevance. They think about dumpster diving as a way of doing good and as part of an ecologically sound form of life. All in all, as value does not reside inherently in waste or would simply be merely the product of subjective judgment, the analyst must attend to multiple modes of valuation evident in the practice, among which there is no self-evident hierarchy.

La introducció d’aquesta secció especial presenta diferents debats sobre la inseparabilitat de la ciència i la ficció. A partir de la idea que les afirmacions científiques es diferencien de la ficció només a posteriori, no a priori, l’article es pregunta com es pot fer servir la ficció com a recurs teòric en el pensament científic social. Podria informar, enriquir, estendre, intensificar i plantejar reptes a la imaginació sociològica? A més de refusar qualsevol separació entre la ciència social i les formes artístiques i de ficció, el text busca, sobretot, desmuntar la nostra incertesa sobre allò que es consideren “realitat” o “ficció”. També indica que examinar la relació de la sociologia amb les formes artístiques i de ficció ens ajuda a desmuntar les formes disciplinàries i institucionals d’ordenar el coneixement. A partir d’aquí, es pot descobrir una poètica o ficció en els estudis acadèmics sociològics, ja que la sociologia també és una forma de narració.

L’article examina La meva lluita, el cicle de sis novel·les autobiogràfiques de l’autor noruec contemporani Karl Ove Knausgaard com un cas de parresia, és a dir, d’explicar la veritat sobre un mateix. La novel·la planteja l’escriptura com un problema respecte la veritat. A l’explorar a La meva lluita les precondicions, conseqüències i la dificultat de dir la veritat i com aquesta pràctica pot contravenir les normes socials, l’article intenta veure quin paper tenen el secretisme i la sinceritat en les relacions socials. A l’exposar els seus pensaments, sentiments i desitjos més íntims, i descobrir secrets familiars perquè tothom els pugui veure i llegir, Knausgaard va sobrepassar les normes que regnen la sociabilitat i es va veure obligat a ser desconsiderat amb els altres, sobre els quals, no obstant això, sempre en depèn la pràctica de parresiastès. Finalment, la novel·la és un experiment de llibertat que fracassa i que transcendeix la frontera entre art i vida, literatura i allò que és social.

In this interview, the young Finn sociologist Olli Pyyhtinen, author of an important and recent book on Georg Simmel (Simmel and “the social”), explains what he believes to be central in Simmel’s sociology and thinking, as well as some of its limitations and challenges for contemporary sociology. His perspective highlights Simmel’s radical relationism. He also discusses the problem of the gift, as proposed by Mauss and others, and the dynamics that at the same time establishes and denies it. Finally, he indicates some elements of his current research on garbage as an index of abundance in contemporary society and its relation to the distribution of wealth in the world.

Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]