Transcending paradigmatic schisms and building ontological bridges: How Russ Belk’s “extended self” became canonical consumer research

Abstract

This essay gives closer historical consideration to the unprecedented disciplinary impact of Belk’s (1988) conceptualization of the extended self. This canonical article initially appeared to be another flashpoint in the paradigmatic conflict between positivist and interpretivist consumer researchers. However, Belk’s portrayal of consumers as agentic actors who produce their own identities through a network of possessions and symbolic artefacts proved to be highly compatible with interdisciplinary trends toward a more holistic and socio-culturally situated understanding of consumer behavior. Accordingly, Belk’s “extended self” created an ontological bridge between interpretivist studies of consumers’ co-constituting relations to the socio-material world and consumer psychologists’ quest to expand their research interests beyond the study of rational decision making processes. While some marketing historians have suggested that the extended self’s seminal influence derives from its generative “vagueness,” I propose that its transformational effects on the broader field of consumer research trace to a genius of mythopoesis and a genius of timing. I then discuss how the logic of ontological reconfiguration, manifest in Belk’s conceptualization, can foster more synergistic and innovative inter-paradigmatic dialogues between consumer culture theory (CCT) and consumer psychology.