The notion of experience entered the field of consumption and marketing with Holbrook and Hirschman's pioneering article of 1982. Twenty years later, this notion has become a key element in understanding consumer behaviour, and, in some views, a foundation for the economy and marketing of the future. In our view, however, this development is not without its risks, as the concept of experience is still illdefined or, worse, defined in ideological terms. To this end, the present paper looks 1) to give an overview of the different meanings ascribed to the word `experience' in various scientific disciplines and to detail the different meanings ascribed to the notion of consumption experience; and 2) to highlight, using a deconstructive approach, that in the field of marketing we must use a typology of consumption experiences which goes beyond an ideological view that tends to consider every experience as extraordinary.

Revisiting Consumption Experience A More Humble but Complete View of the Concept

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational life, such as culture, power, networks, and the structure–agency relation. Second, we argue that this promising contribution cannot easily find traction in management studies until it becomes “materialized” in another sense: that is, accountable to the materiality evident in organizational objects, sites, and bodies. By synthesizing current moves in this direction, we establish the basis for sustained exchange between management studies and the communication‐as‐constitutive model. Third, we demonstrate how these conceptual developments can “materialize” ...

1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication

The past decade has seen a tremendous growth in the popularity of activities like skateboarding and snowboarding; sports that have been labelled as 'extreme' or 'lifestyle' and which embody 'alternative' sporting values such as anti-competitiveness, anti-regulation, high risk and personal freedom. The popularity of these activities goes beyond the teenage male youth that the media typify as their main consumers.
This book examines the popularity, significance and meaning of lifestyle sport, exploring the sociological significance of these activities, particularly as related to their consumption, and the expression of politics of identity and difference. This edited collection includes much unique ethnographic research work with skaters, surfers, windsurfers, climbers, adventure racers, and ultimate frisbee players. The central themes explored in Understanding Lifestyle Sport include:
- How might we describe lifestyle sports?
- What influence do commercial forces have on lifestyle sports?
- Do lifestyle sports challenge the hegemonic masculinities inherent in a traditional sport environment?

Understanding lifestyle sports: Consumption, identity and difference

In this paper I explore the notion that our movements in and through a place define our engagement with it and help to constitute it as a place. Concepts and concomitant interpretations of place as a ‘situated’ and contemplative experience have to date received much cultural geographical attention. In increasingly mobile societies, however, I argue that mobility should be central to the ways in which we conceptualise and understand the character and meanings of different spaces and places. Although geographical exploration has begun concerning the politics and power relations of the mobile subject, little attention has yet been paid to the experiences and spatialities generative of the body-subject in mobility. Whilst acknowledging the importance of representations in directing action, I strategically emphasise and explore the notion that we create meaning and belong in a place according to how we are in a place. Drawing upon ethnographic work with racing and touring cyclists in the United Kingdom and France, I consider how the conjoining of the person and bike and the resulting embodied rhythms and kinaesthetic sensations of the movement of cycling are constitutive of the character and meanings of particular places. Ultimately, in this paper I point to an understanding of the kinaesthetic and sensuous experiences of the hybrid subject – object (in this instance ‘the cyclist’) as fundamental in rethinking how people live, feel, and ultimately create meaningful spatial relations.

A place of sense: a kinaesthetic ethnography of cyclists on Mont Ventoux

Sur la base d'un materiel ethnographique recueilli chez les Wari' (Rondonia, Bresil), cet article remet en question quelques-uns des presupposes de la litterature anthropologique contemporaine concernant les conceptions indigenes du corps, en etudiant une composante essentielle de la corporalite des peuples amazoniens, peu evoquee dans les etudes ethnographiques de l'Amazonie: son caractere instable et transformationnel. Cette dimension n'apparait que lorsque l'analyse suppose un elargissement de la notion d'humanite (signalee pour la premiere fois a notre attention par Levy-Bruhl et Leenhardt, entre autres) qui inclurait non seulement les etres que nous considerons comme humains, mais aussi d'autres entites subjectives telles que les animaux et les esprits. L'elaboration de cette problematique est centree sur la discussion des relations entre le corps et l'âme, entre humanite et corporalite.

Chronically unstable bodies: reflections on amazonian corporalities

Une analyse des rapports de l'homme moderne avec son corps, signe de l'individu, de sa difference. Elle aborde l'anatomie, le corps vu comme une machine, les rituels, le vieillissement, le corps alter ego, la conception du corps dans la medecine, l'imagerie medicale du corps, etc. Le devenir du corps, lieu du bien-etre et du bien-paraitre, mais aussi structure encombrante, est interroge.

David Le Breton

Papers

Anthropologie du corps et modernité

Adeus ao corpo : antropologia e sociedade

A sociologia do corpo

L’interactionnisme symbolique

Passions du risque