ABSTRACT

This chapter builds on an understanding of the circular economy as a policy in-the-making, unravels the different elements that are associated with circular economy policies by different actors and provides an analysis of the multiple meanings of “circularity”. In the previous chapter we noted that there can be no circular economy in the literal sense of closed loops of biophysical flows. To make sense of circularity and its current popularity, one accordingly has to ask for the cultural meanings that are attached to broadly shared ideas such as recycling, re-use, repair and quality of products. These culturally embedded meanings also entail ideas about desirable futures, ideas about which futures “we” want to make real and which ones to avoid. Such “sociotechnical imaginaries” guide policy-making, affect how people think about potential benefits risks, problems and solutions provided by novel technologies or scientific discoveries. Furthermore, they make visible the politics of innovation and the imagined roles (agency) of citizens in all of this. They are assembled and stabilised in material practices and become consequential in the “real world” as for example in the set-up of institutions and the development of particular networks and communities that stabilise these networks. By framing the cultural dimension of circular economy policy in terms of sociotechnical imaginaries this chapter provides insights into how these policies relate to broader cultural values and what potential challenges in a transition to a circular economy might be.