Fiona Cheetham

Bio: Fiona Cheetham is an academic researcher from University of Huddersfield. The author has contributed to research in topics: Identity (social science) & Agency (philosophy). The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 14 publications receiving 88 citations. Previous affiliations of Fiona Cheetham include University of Salford.

A kaleidoscopic view of the territorialized consumption of place

Abstract: Drawing on Brighenti’s (2010, 2014) theoretical exposition of territorology, we extend current conceptualisations of place within the marketing literature by demonstrating that place is relationally constructed through territorialising consumption practices which continuously produce and sustain multifarious versions of place. In our fieldwork, we embrace a non-representational sensitivity and employ a multi-sensory ethnography, thus helping to illuminate the performative aspects of everyday life relating to people who use urban green spaces. Our analysis articulates three key facets relating to the process of territorialising consumption practices: (1) Tangible and intangible elements of boundary-making; (2) Synchronicity of activities; and (3) Sensual experiences. Taken together these facets advance a kaleidoscopic perspective in which spatial, temporal and affective dimensions of the micro-practices of consumption territories-in-the-making are brought into view. Moreover, our empirical research adds an affective dimension to Brighenti’s theoretical elucidation of the formation and dissolution of territories, thereby incorporating sensual imaginations and bodily experiences into the assemblages of heterogeneous materials that sustain territories.

Out of control? An ethnographic analysis of the disposal of collectable objects through auction

Abstract: This research contributes to our understanding of disposal by attempting to foreground the journey of the disposed object rather than examining disposal from the perspective of the seller as previous consumer researchers have done. Drawing on ideas taken from anthropological analyses of objects and markets the paper provides a glimpse of the cultural biographies of a number of collectable objects as they are disposed of through the public arena of auction. Analysing the disposal of meaningful possessions through auction provides a different context and associated dynamics to that studied in previous research on disposal. Ethnographic analysis indicates that in spite of the fact that the practices and rituals of auction facilitate a process of commoditisation which erases the cultural biography of objects, still traces of their previous cultural history transfer with these objects to their new owners. The objects themselves are implicated in this transfer of meaning indicating that objects do have some kind of social agency.

Extending Holt's consuming typology to encompass subject–subject relations in consumption: lessons from pet ownership

Abstract: This paper adapts Holt's typology of consumption practices to illuminate consumption practices within the context of British consumers and their household pets. The photo-elicitation technique, autodriving, is used to elicit stories from our participants concerning their cats and dogs. Holt's typology provides a strong foundation for illuminating the consumption practices described in these stories. However, in order to capture the cultural meanings and social dynamics that animate these consumption practices more fully, we propose extending Holt's framework so as to incorporate (1) the agency of the animal; (2) the incidence of literal play; and (3) the moral values underlying consuming as classification. This paper concludes with a discussion on the value of our proposed additions in relation to future cultural studies of human–animal relations and to future cultural studies of consumption in general.

A conception of moral sensitivity and everyday consumption practices: insights from the moralizing discourses of pet owners

Abstract: The marketing discipline is somewhat under-theorized regarding the moral meanings that both shape and are shaped by the everyday consumption practices of consumers. Therefore, using the context of pet ownership, this paper aims to develop a conceptual understanding of the moral aspects of consumption by examining the social construction of morality in consumers’ day-to-day lives. Using phenomenological interviews and autodriving techniques, the study identifies a number of underlying polemics, linked to the ontology of animals as pets, strands of which weave through participants’ moralizing discourses. The study draws attention to the nuances and contradictory processes within which the moral meanings allied to pet ownership and the pet marketplace are constituted and enacted within consumers’ day-to-day lives. The paper concludes with a discussion on the value of adopting a sociological perspective of consumption morality and its implications for future studies of consumption.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison:

Abstract: Contemporary Sociology 7(5) (September 1978):566—68. When the intellectual history of our times comes to be written, that peculiarly Left Bank mixture of Marxism and structuralism now in fashion will be among the most puzzlingofourideastoevaluate.Aliteral “archeology of knowledge” (the title of one of Foucault’s earlier books) will be required to sort out the valuable from the obvious rubbish. I suspect that in this exercise the iconographers of the present (like Barthes) will fare less well than those who have read the past. Of such “historians” (a description which does not really cover his method) Foucault is the most dazzlingly creative. Discipline and Punish (which, shamefully, has taken over two years to be translated into English) follows Madness and Civilization (1961) and The Birth of the Clinic (1971) as the next stage in Foucault’s massive project of tracing the genealogy of control institutions (asylums, teaching hospitals, prisons) and the human sciences symbiotically linked with them (psychiatry, clinical medicine, criminology, penology). His concern throughout is the relationship between power and knowledge, the articulation of each on the other. Here (as he makes explicit in an interview recently published in the English journal, Radical Philosophy) he opposes the humanist position that, once we gain power, we cease to know——it makes us blind—— and that only those who keep their distance from power, who are no way implicated in tyranny, can attain the truth. For Foucault, such forms of knowledge as psychiatry and criminology (with its “garrulous discourses” and “intermidable [sic] repetitions”) are directly related to the exercise of power. Power itself creates new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information. Thus to “liberate scientific research from the demands of monopoly capitalism” can only be a slogan. Placing such programmatic Big Issues on one side, though, a superficial first reading of the book mightstartatthelevelofitssubtitle, “The Birth of the Prison.” The key historical transition——at the end of the eighteenth century——is from punishment as torture, a public spectacle, to the more economically and politically discreet prison sentence. The body as the major target of penal repression disappears: within a few decades, the grisly spectacles of torture, dismemberment, exposure, amputation, and branding are over. Interest is transferred from the body to the mind; a coercive, solitary, and secret mode of punishment replaces one that was representative, scenic, and collective. Gone is the liturgy of torture and execution, where the triumph of the sovereign was symbolized in the processions, halts at crossroads, public readings of the sentence even after death, where the criminal’s corpse was exhibited or burnt. In its place comes a whole technology of subtle power. When punishment leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters into abstract consciousness, it does not become less effective. But its effectiveness arises from its inevitability not its horrific theatrical intensity. The new power is not to punish less but to In Retrospect: 1978 29

New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

Abstract: Neil Brenner has in the past few years made a major impact on the ways in which we understand the changing political geographies of the modern state Simultaneously analyzing the restructuring of urban governance and the transformation of national states under globalizing capitalism, 'New State Spaces' is a mature and sophisticated analysis of broad interdisciplinary interest, making this a highly significant contribution to the subject

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale (Reprint)

Abstract: This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.