4. Craigslist, the Secondary Market, and Politics of Value

Abstract

This chapter focuses on craigslist's role as a secondary marketplace for used goods, meaning a market that operates outside of formal businesses and vendors. Drawing on interviews with users, the chapter describes motivations for using craigslist to buy and sell used goods. These reasons range from community building and limiting waste to economizing and entrepreneurialism. Interviews also revealed different ideas of value that emerge in secondary markets, meaning both the monetary value that has to be decided on when there is no vendor acting as a middleman, and the social value attached to pre-owned goods. The chapter then looks at the “mash-up catalogs” of craigslist, meaning the digital accounts dedicated to archiving craigslist exchanges. Using over one hundred accounts from Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, the chapter analyzes these efforts to document craigslist as an entry point for theorizing the social lives of craigslist's things. The politics of buying and selling incorporate a range of economic, environmental, and social motivations, with negotiations of value that can alternately re-create and critique mainstream markets.