America materialis: Things and meaning in a donation warehouse

Abstract

How do things shift shape - both physically and metaphorically - as they transition across spaces and social contexts? Using ethnographic data gathered over ten weeks by volunteering at a donation warehouse for one of Syracuse, New York’s largest refugee resettlement agencies, I argue that the donations in question come to represent the peculiar moral economy of donation in America. In an economy that is fundamentally driven by capitalism, egregious consumption, wastefulness and inequality, donation represents an opportunity to reconcile American excess with the needs of the ‘vulnerable’. I leverage the concept of the ‘moral economy’ to articulate how donations take on new meanings as they transition across contexts, varyingly understood as personal artefacts, rubbish, material embodiments of generosity, and the building blocks of a refugee family’s future home. Although this logic is underwritten by the contradiction between excessive consumption and obvious need, I also reflect on my own assumptions concerning refugees, whom I had initially assumed would receive no succour from the purely material.