Showing papers in "Journal of Consumer Culture in 2009"
TL;DR: The authors argue that the category of "emotion" can be a heuristic for a sociology of consumption, and that the sociology has long been dealing with emotions, albeit unknowingly.
Abstract: This article has three objectives. The first calls on vigorously injecting the notion of emotion in the sociology of consumption. In particular, I show that the former has much to contribute to the latter, especially when consumption is conceived as inherent in the process of identity building and maintaining. In this respect, and this is the second goal of this article, I argue not only that the category of ‘emotion’ can be heuristic for a sociology of consumption, but also that the sociology of consumption has long been, albeit unknowingly, dealing with emotions. Making explicit this analytical category helps strengthen, conceptually, much of the sociology of consumption. The third purpose of this article is to offer preliminary thoughts on the ways in which consumers’ volatile desires and emotions are mediated by culture. For the category of ‘emotion’ not to be psychological or individualistic, we need to understand just how it is infused by cultural meaning through and through. The conceptual link exp...
171 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a spectrum of practices of object maintenance is identified, ranging from routine cleaning, wiping and polishing, through quick-fix repair, to the more thorough-going restoration.
Abstract: This article examines the practices of object maintenance in the home. Drawing on depth ethnographic research with households in north-east England, the article uses three object stories to show that ordinary consumer objects are continually becoming in the course of their lives in the home and that practices of object maintenance are central to this becoming. Located in a field of action and practice, consumer objects are shown to display traces of their consumption.The practices of object maintenance are shown to attempt to arrest these traces, not always successfully. A spectrum of practices of object maintenance is identified, ranging from routine cleaning, wiping and polishing, through quick-fix repair, to the more thorough-going restoration.The object stories show how restorative acts generally rekindle consumer objects; how other forms of repair (the quick-fix mask) are socially problematic, signalling the devaluation of objects; and how the failure of object maintenance can connect to the sabotage of objects.The success or failure of object maintenance is shown to have profound consequences for the social lives of consumer objects. More broadly, the article highlights the importance of consumer competences (and incompetence) with respect to object maintenance, and argues that object maintenance works to integrate consumption, connecting home interiors with acts of acquisition, purchase and ridding.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that new forms of marketing in the age of increasingly integrated and networked customer databases can be found in the context of increasingly connected and connected customer databases.
Abstract: The fundamental question we pose in this article is how should we understand marketing in the age of increasingly integrated and networked customer databases? This article argues that new forms of ...
122 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that it is problematic to equate consumer culture with the 'age of affluence' after the Second World War and call on critics of consumerism to adopt a more realistic and historically sensitive approach that engages with the longer evolution of consumer culture and avoids idealized images of a recent pre-consumerist past.
Abstract: This article has two aims. First, it seeks to raise awareness about three competing frameworks that are currently dominating the debate about consumption and globalization: 18th-century global exchanges; Americanization; and consumerism. These have tended to operate in virtual isolation and ignorance from each other. Second, through a critical discussion of recent research, the article sets out to complicate conventional chronologies of tradition/modernity/late modernity that continue to underpin much research on consumer cultures. Instead of a linear progression from diversity to standardization, from gift-exchange to commodity-exchange, and from public engagement to privatized materialism, the article points to the dynamic interaction between these forms across time. An appreciation of these longer, deeper, and more variegated histories means that it is problematic to equate consumer culture with the 'age of affluence' after the Second World War. In turn, it calls on critics of consumerism to adopt a more realistic and historically sensitive approach that engages with the longer evolution of consumer culture and avoids idealized images of a recent pre-consumerist past.
74 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of emotion plays in consumer resistance social movements, especially those using the resistance tactic of culture jamming, and they present an emotion cycle of resistance associated with consumer resistance activism.
Abstract: Because emotion plays such a large part in the creation of the hegemony of consumerist ideology, we contend that any complete understanding of consumer resistance movements must also take into account the role of emotion in fighting against consumerist ideologies and global corporate control. In this article, we theorize about the role emotion plays in consumer resistance social movements — especially those using the resistance tactic of culture jamming. Drawing upon the frameworks of emotional hegemony and emotion management, we present an emotion cycle of resistance associated with consumer resistance activism. We illustrate the cycle by using examples from culture jamming enacted by groups such as Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.
65 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the ways in which masculinity is positioned and performed on the website of one of the world's largest sperm banks, Cryos International, which encourages prospective parents to not only consume sperm, but also vividly consume images of cute, active, intelligent Nordic children and successful (heterosexual) families.
Abstract: In postmodern culture, sperm banking is turned into a legitimate business. This article expands on consumer theory and feminist scholarship and analyses the ways in which masculinity is positioned and performed on the website of one of the world's largest sperm banks, Cryos International. Cryos International brands its product as uniquely Scandinavian while simultaneously engaging in the discourses of a multicultural society. Viking donors are not only white, athletic, fit and young, but also sensitive, witty and moral; intimately connecting images of the donors to images of a nurturing and progressive Scandinavia. The website encourages prospective parents to not only consume sperm, but to also vividly consume images of cute, active, intelligent Nordic children and successful (heterosexual) families.
53 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that fashion models promote consumption in far more complex ways than merely smiling for the camera, viewing models' self-commodification as forms of aesthetic, entrepreneurial, and immaterial labor.
Abstract: Fashion and branding have become powerful forces in the contemporary world. Fashion models, central players in these developments, are both lightning rods for controversy and objects of desire.To avoid the kinds of polarizing or sensationalist views of modeling that are common in academic and popular circles, this article focuses on modeling as work, to explore what models do when they fascinate or repel us via their engagement in commodification and branding processes that promote consumption. Using data from interviews with fashion models and those who work with them, the article argues that models promote consumption in far more complex ways than merely smiling for the camera.The article considers models as cultural intermediaries, discussing how they frame consumer experiences and encounters with commodities in the selection, styling and dissemination of images populated by models.Viewing models' self-commodification as forms of aesthetic, entrepreneurial, and immaterial labor, the article illustrates...
52 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between stratification and consumption has been studied in many capitalist economies as discussed by the authors, and it is important to understand the relationship between inequality and consumption especially at the turn of the 21st century.
Abstract: Rising inequalities and high levels of consumption in many capitalist economies make understanding the relationship between stratification and consumption especially important at the turn of the 21...
51 citations
TL;DR: The development of consumer subjectivity cannot be solely understood in terms of the intentions, strategies and discursive practices emanating from diverse power centres as discussed by the authors, which is not the case here.
Abstract: The development of consumer subjectivity cannot be solely understood in terms of the intentions, strategies and discursive practices emanating from diverse power centres. Following Elias, and using...
42 citations
TL;DR: In Inca Kola, the only national cola to outsell Coca-Cola in its own territory as mentioned in this paper, is the only cola that is successful in large part because it bridges the gap between the local and the global and the traditional and the modern through the construction of a Peruvian-global modernity.
Abstract: Inca Kola is the only national cola to outsell Coca-Cola in its own territory. This article situates the marketing and success of Inca Kola within broader theoretical debates on the relationship between the local and the global and underscores the usefulness of more nuanced understandings of the local by bringing to the forefront internal heterogeneity and local hegemonic discourses. I suggest that Inca Kola is successful in large part because it bridges the gap between the local and the global and the traditional and the modern by presenting an alternative to Coca-Cola's American-global modernity through the construction of a Peruvian-global modernity. I then complicate notions of the local by analyzing how the Peruvian-global modernity represented in Inca Kola's ads is internally hegemonic and suggest that Inca Kola's marketing is better understood in terms of its embeddedness in urban white-mestizo racial hierarchies.
30 citations
TL;DR: The nostalgic consumption of images, which only a few years ago was practised mainly by adults, has lately become prevalent among Israeli teenage girls as discussed by the authors, and the transformation of nostalgia is closely related to developments in technology (the camera-phone and the internet) and in the possession-patterns of devices.
Abstract: The nostalgic consumption of images, which only a few years ago was practised mainly by adults, has lately become prevalent among Israeli teenage girls. Girls often describe themselves as ‘nostalgic’ and nostalgia has become a desired emotion. Unlike the nostalgia of former generations, this nostalgia is cumulative and not necessarily based on a strong dichotomous contrast between past and present. The transformation of nostalgia is closely related to developments in technology (the camera-phone and the internet) and in the possession-patterns of devices. Personal mobile phones are used by teenagers for production, archiving and consumption of documentary images on a daily basis. These images, not unrelated to those of mass media, are consumed by teenagers in order to evoke nostalgia and other emotions, as a technology of self. This trend also contributes to blur the ontic distinction between events and their representations.
TL;DR: This paper explored the nexus of class, gender, and musical taste for the white middle-class family in the USA from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s and found that cultural intermediaries in the western co...
Abstract: This article explores the nexus of class, gender, and musical taste for the white middle-class family in the USA from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Cultural intermediaries in the western co...
TL;DR: This article analyzed the superlative rhetoric in contemporary televised and internet commercials, and suggested elective affinities between this rhetoric and the various trends characterizing the hyper-modern present.
Abstract: Recent French sociological scholarship suggests the notion of hypermodernity to characterize the contemporary moment. While the meanings of this concept vary, the idea of excess seems central. Informed by this new scholarship, this article analyzes the superlative rhetoric in contemporary televised and internet commercials, and suggests elective affinities between this rhetoric and the various trends characterizing the hypermodern present.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw together insights from the sociologies of childhood and consumer culture as well as recent research on sales-service work to argue the case for a ''paediocular'' approach to the study of consumer culture and service work.
Abstract: This article seeks to draw together insights from the sociologies of childhood and consumer culture as well as recent research on sales-service work to argue the case for a `paediocular' approach to the study of consumer culture and service work. Such an approach, it is argued here, would draw attention to the ways in which both the presence of children as consumers and dominant social constructions of childhood shape the configuration, management and experience of sales-service work. With reference to the findings of a series of interviews conducted with people in a range of sales-service environments, the analysis presented explores some of the ways in which sales-service providers working on the front line of the children's culture industries are required to socialize customers through the performance of aspirational and proprietary forms of aesthetic and emotional labour. The article also highlights some of the ways in which children's consumer culture involves the landscaping of sales-service environments and worker's bodies, as well as forms of interaction such as sales-service encounters, according to an aspirational and proprietary aesthetic that is designed to be simultaneously enchanting and instrumental.
TL;DR: Foster as discussed by the authors argues that a focus on ordinary consumption in precise locations whose rich histories and social networks are subjects to accurate documentation provides a privileged access to globalization, which fits nicely with post-structuralist views of culture in contemporary anthropology and sociology: culture being seen less as a stable, coherent whole and more as a repertoire in the making.
Abstract: While the geopolitics of global consumer culture is a crucial aspect of the study of consumption, most scholars of consumer practices have long been wary of providing a linear, American-driven picture of globalization. This is not only because the great powers to promote consumer democracies marshalled by the USA did not mean that national or local cultures of consumption were subsumed in the American way of life, but also because the rise of global consumer culture did not bring with itself universal concord about global commodities or the economic policies of their producers. The anthropology of consumption has underlined the determinant role of diverse local cultures in metabolizing mass-marketed consumer goods as much as it has documented the increased relevance of global commodity flows for the understanding of local cultures. This perspective fits nicely with post-structuralist views of culture in contemporary anthropology and sociology: culture being seen less as a stable, coherent whole and more as a repertoire in the making – or as in the case of the book here reviewed as connections and relationships. Robert J. Foster’s book indeed shows very well that a focus on ordinary consumption in precise locations whose rich histories and social networks are subjects to accurate documentation provides a privileged access to globalization. One that is neither apocalyptic, nor celebratory in its Journal of Consumer Culture
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a collection of items that hold the deepest meaning for participants in a new household, such as tattoos, pornography, illegal drugs, computer files, dancing Santas, ‘kitsch’ china figurines, sneakers, and wedding and funeral invitations.
Abstract: gifts, pets, children’s artworks, toys and heirlooms are frequently the possessions that hold the deepest meanings for participants. But there are also a number of more unique special objects including tattoos, pornography, illegal drugs, computer files, dancing Santas, ‘kitsch’ china figurines, sneakers, and wedding and funeral invitations. We can see links to children who have left home, through their possessions and even entire bedrooms retained as shrines. We also see several evidences that a failure to merge possessions when a new household is formed is a good indication that the lives of the couple will not be successfully combined either. In one of the most compelling portraits, ‘Marcia’ has an elaborate display of animated musical Christmas figures with no one to see them and a number of representations of telephones with no one to call her on them. For all the comfort that our possessions may provide us, they are seldom found to be adequate substitutes for interpersonal relationships, save for a couple of anthropomorphized pets. Nor are the ubiquitous photos in these homes substitutes for those portrayed. They are powerful mementos however. And they are prompts for the remarkable tragedies, comedies and heroic biographies elicited from the residents of Stuart Street.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the larger patterns and process of consumption that drives the economic system creates the foundation of their limitations and that crime becomes the process by which the criminals will achieve success.
Abstract: interviewed by the authors (pp. 191–5). Criminals and others alike fail to understand that the larger patterns and process of consumption that drives the economic system creates the foundation of their limitations. These problems and limitations create the identity-based need to avoid exclusion within the larger culture. Thus, crime becomes the process by which the criminals will achieve success. After reading this work, I strongly believe that it deserves to be widely read, understood and appreciated as contributing to both the literature on consumption of culture and how that process and experience shapes crime and criminality. However, more attention and explanation of the methodological issues would have greatly strengthened it (and one might argue that my American criminological training is showing). While the theoretical foundation is remarkable, the methodological enterprise is poorly elaborated. Also, more discussion of the intertwined issues of social location such as the interplay of race and gender should have been more thoroughly examined along with socioeconomic status (social class). While this book will be of interest to more advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and teachers with an interest in research on culture, consumption studies, symbolic culture, sociology, criminology and criminal justice, audiences will require a sophisticated understanding of economic structure and cultural identity. Even with those caveats, this work is highly recommended, especially for those in criminology and consumption studies.