Presentation of Data Analysis & Findings

• An ethnographic accord of the social life of recycled wool

Marco invites me to the small company van after the initial meeting. We walk to the car, but he has trouble finding it in the winding streets of the old town of Prato, an industrial city in the vicinities of Florence. When we find the car, it turns out to be a small three-seater, where the middle seat is my seat apparently. We get into the car and head out to the first visit, a relatively large yarn spinner. The small car is hot, there are three of us in the car and I sit with my knee tightly squeezed against the gear stick. When Marco needs to shift gear, it is a bit tricky, and we laugh. We discuss my pilot study. Marco is very interested and ask me if I am interested in recycling or craftsmanship?

This is an excerpt of my field notes and describes my initial entry to the field. I had met Marco twice before, but only in his office and as potential business associate. This was the first time I entered the field in the role as a researcher and I took the opportunity to draw from the methodological concept of walking-with, a method in which the researcher participates in a specific activity or task alongside the participants (Lee & Ingold 2006, pp 67-86).

By doing this, I got the opportunity to engage in informal conversations with the participants and was able to connect through a mutual experience of the context.

Encouraged by the ideas of Kopytoff (1986 p. 89-90), my purpose was to follow the life cycle of the wool fiber in Prato so I could understand more about the social worlds of the participating people and what the interaction with fiber, as a commodity, brought to them in terms of meaning and value. To understand the role of the fiber in the process of wool recycling, I turned to Appadurai (1986, p. 5) who states that ”meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these trajectories that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things”. Ingold (2007, p. 9) also states that the property of things is relational and thus create different meaning during its journey, indicating that the meaning inscribed in the forms of the things also might change over time. This approach seemed highly relevant since the recycled wool fibers continuously changes form, from discarded rags, to clustered fiber, to a luxurious fashion garment and back again (see photographs 1,2, 3 and in appendix B). Finally, to understand how the process of wool fiber recycling affects the people involved, I leaned on Knappett (2008, p. 140-141) and his thoughts on what role the things and objects plays in the social network.

Transforming matters

By reading the literature as well as coding the data, it soon became clear to me that the recycled wool fiber needed to be treated as a transcending commodity that, in its regenerative fluxes affects the lifeworld’s in different ways. According to Ingold (2007, p. 9) and Appadurai (1986, p. 17), materials take part in the very process of the world’s ongoing generation and regeneration, constantly transforming over time, even though its material properties stay the same. As Ingold (2007, p. 9) puts it, its materiality – that what makes it “thingly” - changes depending on how it is constituted and presented. If one were to bring the wool fiber into the argument of Ingold, then we might consider things such as wool sweaters as impermanent by-products and that the fibers thus are” swallowed up by the very object to which they have given birth” (Ingold, 2007, p. 9). Finally, to understand how the transcending life of the fiber engage with its life worlds, it might be understood through the lens of Knappett (2008, p. 140-141) and how we should “think not of agents as entities, but of agency as a process”. In our case with the recycled wool fibers, the agency of the process that unfolds might thus be interpreted as a social phenomenon where fiber and humans engage in a reciprocal co-creation of the process. Enzo, a ”cenciaoli” and the manager of a wool shredding facility tell us how he experience his work with the fiber itself (see photographs 1,2 & 3 in appendix B):

Q: Your work is often described as "artisans", and "craftsmen", do you also see yourself as that?

A: Yes, we are artisans.

Q: So that important to you?

A: Yes, because you have two nice parts of being artisans...You can touch with your hand the result of your job. And...we are kind of proud, you know...to keep this figure alive, you know. But as I told you, we are almost obligated because there's...no other way to do this job. But when I prepare...an order of yarn and I start to cut every piece with my hand, I put it inside and then at the end of the process, I have a good result...so it gives you the satisfaction to go to work, you know...and at the end of all the handcraft process, when you have a good result… it gives you physically the satisfaction that you did a good job, you know. So, it's something like, I don't know...it's a kind of work like a chef...A chef, with their hands, a nice plate of...meat or pasta...And when the customer says that it's really good, so you ...are happy about that. So, it gives you the...energy to keep doing this job.

Q: So, you think it is the same kind of process, what happens in the factory and in the kitchen?

A: In our factory...and in our kitchen, for example, we present something that is made with our hands. Of course, we cannot produce clams...the chef...but you can perform a nice thing.

In this quotation, Enzo starts out by emphasizing how much the identity of the craftsmanship and the physical interaction with the fibers means to him. Drawing on the argument by Knappett above, one could argue that the fibers and Enzo co-creates the agency of the process, enabling him to express proudness, satisfaction and happiness. Further, Enzo compares the recycling of wool yarn with cooking pasta. We could take the investigation further and suggest that Enzo’s experience of working with the fibers aligns with the argument of Appadurai (1986, p. 17) that ”the commodity is not one kind of thing rather than another, but one phase in the life of some things”. The meat and pasta metaphor made by Enzo could be interpreted through the thoughts of Ingold (2007, p. 9) that amid the handcraft process the fiber shift state, transcending from rags, to fibers, to yarns. Even though the fibers are still there, they are temporally swallowed up by the object to which they have given birth, just like the wheat in the pasta. Further aligning with Appadurai (1986, p. 5), Enzo’s narration describes his affectionate feelings of his work, indicating the level of meaningfulness that the tactile crafting of fibers entails. Finally, if addressed through the overall perspective of ANT, Enzo’s reference to food might reflect how the agency of the fiber spills out across its ”widely distributed networks” (Knappett 2008, p. 140, 145-146) as a commodity in the intersection between artifacts and natural objects.

Spatiality

Knappett (2008, p. 140) argues that neither the agency of objects nor the agency of man has primacy over the other, but can rather be assumed to be mutually constituted and ”each being transformed by the other in their conjunction”. To understand how shared meaning is created in the fluid intersection of man and fiber, let us draw on Ingold’s (2007, p. 11) ideas on how things, as persons, can be bestowed with agency and therefor “act back”, inducing “people in their vicinity to do what they otherwise might not”. If we were to apply this theoretical approach to the data set, we would first note that not only did all three respondents express a deep affection of artisanry and recycle practices, but they also seemed to share this experience of affection and connect it to the identity of the region itself. Marco, the owner of the regenerative wool brand in Prato and tightly linked to the ”cenciaoli”, tell us how one becomes one:

Q:  okay. So, if we if we were to return to the craftsmen, the ragmen, can you tell me anything about them? What do you know about them?

A: What I know about them? Well, it's a process that has developed a long time ago. Today, there aren't so many as they were before...they work in the field. I mean normally then don't even have an education...so they learn by doing there isn´t a school and...it's mainly like knowing the fiber, the touch, the smell and recognizing the fibers. It takes like five years to be a ragman like a... performative one...it is unique, it is something you can find in Prato, especially for cashmere and wool, they are really good at it.

As stated above, Knappett (2008, p. 140) suggests that we should ”think not of agents as entities, but of agency as a process”, and if one were to adopt this line of thoughts to Marco’s story, then it might be interpreted that the social world of  the ” cenciaoli”, of Prato not just represent a local identity that goes beyond the factory floor, but also might symbolize a process that over the years has become embedded in the identity of the region. One could argue that this is further expressed by Marco when he expands on the meaning of the ”territory” in the context of wool regeneration practices:

A: I've grown up here and I want to defend my traditions, the knowledge, the competencies we have.

Q: Yeah, but why do you think the Prato region has this kind of tradition?

A: Well, I think that...I... feel like it's unique, and it's like heritage you need to store it. No? You have to pass it on…There aren't so many people interested so you need to work on that.

Q: Yeah, I mean if there's a little interest, why is it important to pass on?

A: Because it's unique and I feel like it's linked to my...well where I was born, and I feel like emotionally attached to it.

Q: When you say "it", what do you mean then?

A: "It" is...it's the tradition to the territory.

 Marco tells us that he is emotionally attached to the traditions and the knowledge of the “territory” and that he experiences a will to defend them. This might point to the analysis above that the agency of the wool fibers and the agency of the people co-constructs an identity that is reproduced throughout the years by the people of Prato. Marco’s emphasis on how much the ”territory”, the ”traditions” and the ”heritage” means to him can also be seen through the lens of ANT and signal the importance of regenerative practices when constructing meaning for him as a native Prato citizen (Knappett 2008, p. 140).

The value of things

 Norris, (2019, p. 890), states that the shredding, i.e. the recycling of the wool fibers from post-consumer waste was invented in Yorkshire 1813. The regenerated wool, also known as ”shoddy” was inferior to virgin wool and described by Friedrich Engels as the ” devil´s dust clothes, manufactured for sale and not for use” (Engels 1887, p. 67). This was due to its relative shortcomings in quality, but also since they mainly stemmed from old, smelly clothes that consumers associated with dirt and of being poor. Although attempts has been made during the 20^th century to re-frame recycled fibers as the ethical and clean choice for conscious consumers, the dichotomous materiality of regenerated wool has lingered on with the ”shoddy” clothes losing the race towards ”virgin” fibers (Norris 2019, p. 890-891). Leaning on the theoretical argument made by Appadurai and Simmel (1986, p. 4; Simmel, p. 80: emphasis by author) that economy ”consists not only in exchanging values but in the exchange of values”, then the value of things might also have a tendency to change. When telling us about ”Prato wool”, the local branding of recycled wool as ”virgin”,  Marco explains that something has happened:

Q: I read about the "Prato wool" concept, that they used regenerate wool but sold it as virgin fibers? Can you tell me about that?

A: They were doing that because they saw that there weas more advantages selling wool as a virgin fiber instead of a recycled one, but now the market change. But when I started all of them, they were selling it as virgin, because the market wanted virgin wool.

Q: Okay, and this was not long ago, right?

A: No. 2017.

 Marco’s experience seems to be that the collective belief and definition of quality might have changed during just a couple of years. One way of understanding this pivoted demand could be found in the materiality of the fiber and how it is perceived, but also what it represents on a global scale. It is nevertheless so, that a change in global perception of regenerated wool seems to play a part in the shared meaning embedded amongst the craftsmen in Prato. This is further expressed by Francesca, the owner of a spinning facility that buys recycled wool:

After COVID...before COVID....and after COVID more, there was an increase…in the more attention to the sustainable value.... And so we change the way to...produce it and to communicate it. In the past.... nobody would like to know if the fabric was made with recycled wool.... Because "Ahhh…it is recycled, I don't want to recycle things, I want new things!". Now...the customer has a new mentality, and they appreciate recycled materials.

Ingold (2007, p. 13) states that the ”properties of materials, in short, are not attributes but histories” and that they are not fixed but ”rather processual and relational”. He also reasons based on the arguments made by the theorist of Design David Pye (1968 in Ingold 2007, p. 13)  that the qualities we embed in the different formations, or different materialities of the fibers are ”all in our heads”. When Marco tells us that the experienced quality of the wool fiber has changed, it could be interpreted so that our collective experience of the materiality of the wool fiber is not only subjective but also transformative. The recycled fiber is the same, but the story is different. Therefore, it could be argued that recycled wool fibers might be seen as socially constructed entities (Berger & Luckman 1966:2022, p. 470) that are not necessarily linked to its current artifact formation. As Ingold (2007, p. 11) puts it, ”beneath the skin of the form, the substance remains alive”. When Francesca tells us about the consumer’s newfound appreciation of recycled materials, one might say that she refers to the materiality of the fiber. Following the argument of Pye above, we might therefore look upon the qualities we embed in the object formations as subjective, but also as temporal in its material agency. Drawing from Ingold (2007, p. 13), the” mentality” Francesca speaks of could thus be interpreted as symbolizing the volatile flux of wool fiber as ”neither objectively determined nor subjectively imagined but practically experienced”.