Exchanges have always had more than economic significance: values circulate and encounters become institutionalized. This volume explores the changing meaning of the circulation of second-hand goods from the Renaissance to today, and thereby examines the blurring of boundaries between market, gifts, and charity. It describes the actors of the market - official entities such as corporations, recognized professions, and established markets but also the subterranean circulation that develops around the need for money. The complex layers that not only provide for numerous intermediaries but also include the many men and women who, as sellers or buyers, use these circulations on countless occasions are also examined.

Laurence Fontaine studied History and Sociology at Paris-Sorbonne University and was appointed by the C.N.R.S. in 1989. She was Professor in the History Department of the European University Institute, Florence, Italy from 1995 until 2003 and is currently Directrice de Recherche in the C.N.R.S., attached to the EHESS in Paris.

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Laurence Fontaine

Chapter 1. Second-hand Dealers in the Early Modern Low Countries: Institutions, Markets and Practices
Harald Deceulaer

Chapter 2. Using Things as Money: An Example from Late Renaissance Rome
Renata Ago

Chapter 3. Prostitution and the Circulation of Second-hand Goods in Early Modern Rome
Tessa Storey

Chapter 4. "The Magazine of All Their Pillaging": Armies as Sites of Second-hand Exchanges during the French Wars of Religion
Brian Sandberg

Chapter 5. The Exchange of Second-hand Goods between Survival Strategies and "Business" in Eighteenth-century Paris
Laurence Fontaine

Chapter 6. Uses of the Used: The Conventions of Renewing and Exchanging Goods in French Provincial Aristocracy
Valérie Pietri

Chapter 7. The Scope and Structure of the Nineteenth-century Second-hand Trade in the Parisian Clothes Market
Manuel Charpy

Chapter 8. "What Goes 'Round Comes 'Round": Second-hand Clothing, Furniture and Tools in Working-class Lives in the Interwar USA Susan
Porter Benson

Chapter 9. Moving On: Overlooked Aspects of Modern Collecting
Jackie Goode

Chapter 10. The Second-hand Car Market as a Form of Resistance
Bernard Jullien

Chapter 11. Utopia Postponed? The Rise and Fall of Barter Markets in Argentina, 1995-2004
Ruth Pearson

Chapter 12. Charity, Commerce, Consumption: The International Second-hand Clothing Trade at the Turn of the Millennium - Focus on Zambia
Karen Tranberg Hansen

Conclusion
Laurence Fontaine

Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index