Creating a Hyper-Place: How Refugee Helpers Create a Place for Their Values

Abstract

Abstract Purpose Research has shown that activist consumers create places that are imbued with idiosyncratic meanings, conventions, rules, and activities. However, research on why and how such places are created is scant. Methodology/approach This ethnography in the context of voluntary refugee helpers shows why and how a meaningful place is produced. Findings By drawing on spatial theory from human geography, I map out how activist consumers create a hyper-place: embedded in the dynamics of demarcating and linking, voluntary helpers set a place apart from the surrounding space and other places. This place allows for practices that combine materiality, activities, and meanings in new ways in comparison to practices in traditional places. This place allows for the enactment and the conveyance of values that are not accommodated in traditional marketplaces. Originality/value I contribute to literature on activist consumers and the role of place within consumer research.