ABSTRACT
Charity shops are now significant occupiers of the UK high street and are becoming familiar sights and sites of consumption in the USA, Australia, Canada and Ireland. They act as important fund-raisers for their parent charities, working internationally, nationally or locally, linking the localities where they are situated with national or even global charitable endeavours and chains of production and consumption. In common with many ‘phenomena’, charity shops have a longer history than is first apparent; this history and the growth of the sector in the UK is mapped out in brief below, to provide a context for the contemporary charity retailing sector.
