Pub Date : 2022-11-20DOI: 10.1177/14695405221140546
S. O'Donohoe, Malene Gram, C. Marchant
Since social displays of family life in advertising contribute to the doing and imagining of family, advertising representations of intergenerational relationships merit research attention. Focussing on the under-examined area of family interactions involving grandparents, this content and thematic analysis of 82 North American and European TV/video advertisements highlights how advertising both reproduces and challenges ideals of happy, harmonious families. Consistent with prior research in Western cultures, these ads privilege White, middle-class, heterosexual ways of doing family. Surprisingly, given critiques of advertising idealization, ads depicting intergenerational tension outnumbered those featuring exclusively harmonious relations. Tensions were linked to violations of generational norms, particularly by grandparents, and to conflicting norms confronting different generations. Although gender roles were sometimes blurred in both harmony and tension ads, they were not generally contested by other family members.
{"title":"Grandparenting relations in advertising’s ‘familial fictions’","authors":"S. O'Donohoe, Malene Gram, C. Marchant","doi":"10.1177/14695405221140546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221140546","url":null,"abstract":"Since social displays of family life in advertising contribute to the doing and imagining of family, advertising representations of intergenerational relationships merit research attention. Focussing on the under-examined area of family interactions involving grandparents, this content and thematic analysis of 82 North American and European TV/video advertisements highlights how advertising both reproduces and challenges ideals of happy, harmonious families. Consistent with prior research in Western cultures, these ads privilege White, middle-class, heterosexual ways of doing family. Surprisingly, given critiques of advertising idealization, ads depicting intergenerational tension outnumbered those featuring exclusively harmonious relations. Tensions were linked to violations of generational norms, particularly by grandparents, and to conflicting norms confronting different generations. Although gender roles were sometimes blurred in both harmony and tension ads, they were not generally contested by other family members.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43689928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-18DOI: 10.1177/14695405221140544
Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues
Practices and preferences of high cultural capital consumers are being reconfigured as a consequence of their incorporated ecological and social concerns. Yet, while their status and tastes are primarily influenced by their cultural position, their consumption logics also reflect their economic situation, which tends to be relatively secure and comfortable. As the limits of ethically-labeled substitution strategies are being exposed, high cultural capital consumers are forced to reconsider their living standards. In this context, the spread of online gifting communities in rather well-off and highly-educated neighborhoods suggests that thrift practices are popularizing, while being ethicized, among advantaged individuals. How does thrift fit into these consumers’ lifestyles? To what extent does it contribute to alleviate the tensions between their ethical principles and material standards? Through an analysis of thirty-five semi-structured interviews with participants in online gifting communities, this study finds that the adoption of thrift practices by high cultural capital consumers is indeed largely motivated by anti-consumerist concerns. Yet, the extent to which these consumers incorporate them in their everyday lives is conditioned by their position within the dominant consumption field, itself partially determined by their economic status. While trash-avoiding practices are highly consistent among respondents and align with their declared aversion to material waste, consumption reduction strategies vary by income level and are influenced by conventional logics of consumption. By adapting critically-motivated practices to their existing consumption patterns, these high cultural capital consumers redefine ethical consumption from within the broader field of consumption, not simply opposing it. At the same time, they legitimize its contesting dimension, revealing a dialectical relation between ethical and conventional consumption.
{"title":"Practices of thrift among high cultural capital consumers. When economic status gets in the way of ethics","authors":"Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues","doi":"10.1177/14695405221140544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221140544","url":null,"abstract":"Practices and preferences of high cultural capital consumers are being reconfigured as a consequence of their incorporated ecological and social concerns. Yet, while their status and tastes are primarily influenced by their cultural position, their consumption logics also reflect their economic situation, which tends to be relatively secure and comfortable. As the limits of ethically-labeled substitution strategies are being exposed, high cultural capital consumers are forced to reconsider their living standards. In this context, the spread of online gifting communities in rather well-off and highly-educated neighborhoods suggests that thrift practices are popularizing, while being ethicized, among advantaged individuals. How does thrift fit into these consumers’ lifestyles? To what extent does it contribute to alleviate the tensions between their ethical principles and material standards? Through an analysis of thirty-five semi-structured interviews with participants in online gifting communities, this study finds that the adoption of thrift practices by high cultural capital consumers is indeed largely motivated by anti-consumerist concerns. Yet, the extent to which these consumers incorporate them in their everyday lives is conditioned by their position within the dominant consumption field, itself partially determined by their economic status. While trash-avoiding practices are highly consistent among respondents and align with their declared aversion to material waste, consumption reduction strategies vary by income level and are influenced by conventional logics of consumption. By adapting critically-motivated practices to their existing consumption patterns, these high cultural capital consumers redefine ethical consumption from within the broader field of consumption, not simply opposing it. At the same time, they legitimize its contesting dimension, revealing a dialectical relation between ethical and conventional consumption.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"19 3","pages":"711 - 730"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41306418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-18DOI: 10.1177/14695405221140543
J. Södergren, J. Hietanen, Niklas Vallström
Representation is key in the politics of mass-mediated consumer society. Although previous research has noted that representation in advertising generates greater societal visibility for people with disabilities, focus has largely been on negative unintended consequences from a psychological or socio-cultural perspective. The purpose of this study is to explore the complexities involved in the making of a collective psyche related to disability, pointing instead to how the psychic and the social are mutually constitutive. By focusing on market-mediated representation in the form of advertising campaigns, we highlight both potentials and pitfalls of social transformation such as reducing stigma. We use, as revelatory cases, two relatively recent campaigns that sought to include people with disabilities on the Swedish market. We build upon Abraham and Torok’s psychoanalytic theorizing to offer a novel approach of studying market inclusion in the context of disability representation. By delineating the “social crypt,” we elucidate two processes by which stigmatized narratives enter the public consciousness: incorporation (i.e., a process by which stigma is reproduced in the collective unconscious) and introjection (i.e., a form of gradual awareness leading to destigmatization). We find that the inclusion of disability in advertising can potentially work to reduce stigma, but also to inadvertently serve as a subtler form of market exclusion by intensifying the cultural semiotics of capitalized ableism.
{"title":"Tales from the crypt: A psychoanalytic approach to disability representation in advertising","authors":"J. Södergren, J. Hietanen, Niklas Vallström","doi":"10.1177/14695405221140543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221140543","url":null,"abstract":"Representation is key in the politics of mass-mediated consumer society. Although previous research has noted that representation in advertising generates greater societal visibility for people with disabilities, focus has largely been on negative unintended consequences from a psychological or socio-cultural perspective. The purpose of this study is to explore the complexities involved in the making of a collective psyche related to disability, pointing instead to how the psychic and the social are mutually constitutive. By focusing on market-mediated representation in the form of advertising campaigns, we highlight both potentials and pitfalls of social transformation such as reducing stigma. We use, as revelatory cases, two relatively recent campaigns that sought to include people with disabilities on the Swedish market. We build upon Abraham and Torok’s psychoanalytic theorizing to offer a novel approach of studying market inclusion in the context of disability representation. By delineating the “social crypt,” we elucidate two processes by which stigmatized narratives enter the public consciousness: incorporation (i.e., a process by which stigma is reproduced in the collective unconscious) and introjection (i.e., a form of gradual awareness leading to destigmatization). We find that the inclusion of disability in advertising can potentially work to reduce stigma, but also to inadvertently serve as a subtler form of market exclusion by intensifying the cultural semiotics of capitalized ableism.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49633767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1177/14695405221140541
Guy Shani
The literature on residential and homebuying choices is still dominated by economic models of decision-making. Despite growing critique of these models, attempts to provide socially grounded accounts of homebuying have yet to investigate the social foundations of evaluative and choice-making practices at the intra-personal level. This study addressed the gaps in the literature theoretically and empirically by studying the processes and practices by which middle-class homebuyers search for and choose a place to live. It applied a modified Bourdieusian framework, underscoring the roles of the habitus and reflexivity in choice-making, to the study of middle-class homebuyers in two Israeli cities. The findings demonstrate that middle-class homebuyers’ “sense of place”—that is, the reactions of their habitus to the socio-physical environment—is at the heart of their residential choice-making. Interviewees centralized their experiences and sensations in their choice-making, actively using their sense of place to guide their mapping of urban space, evaluation of residential options, and their final decision. These evaluative and choice-making practices operated as a “social-sorting” mechanism, directing homebuyers to locations more aligned with their class habitus. The findings and analysis provide a sociological alternative to economic and behavioral models of residential choice-making, with lessons for those with wider scholarly interests in consumers’ choices in everyday life and their relationship with social patterns.
{"title":"Searching for the “right feeling”: Sense of place and the social architecture of middle-class homebuying choices","authors":"Guy Shani","doi":"10.1177/14695405221140541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221140541","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on residential and homebuying choices is still dominated by economic models of decision-making. Despite growing critique of these models, attempts to provide socially grounded accounts of homebuying have yet to investigate the social foundations of evaluative and choice-making practices at the intra-personal level. This study addressed the gaps in the literature theoretically and empirically by studying the processes and practices by which middle-class homebuyers search for and choose a place to live. It applied a modified Bourdieusian framework, underscoring the roles of the habitus and reflexivity in choice-making, to the study of middle-class homebuyers in two Israeli cities. The findings demonstrate that middle-class homebuyers’ “sense of place”—that is, the reactions of their habitus to the socio-physical environment—is at the heart of their residential choice-making. Interviewees centralized their experiences and sensations in their choice-making, actively using their sense of place to guide their mapping of urban space, evaluation of residential options, and their final decision. These evaluative and choice-making practices operated as a “social-sorting” mechanism, directing homebuyers to locations more aligned with their class habitus. The findings and analysis provide a sociological alternative to economic and behavioral models of residential choice-making, with lessons for those with wider scholarly interests in consumers’ choices in everyday life and their relationship with social patterns.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"692 - 710"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42588140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-07DOI: 10.1177/14695405221133269
Tal Feder
This paper develops the concept of access to arts consumption as a necessary link connecting cultural taste and actual consumption. I present a theoretical model that deconstructs access to arts consumption into four dimensions of access: rights, opportunity, participation, and reception. I operationalize and test the model in the context of access to physical cultural consumption using Eurobarometer data on barriers to such access from a sample of respondents from 27 European countries. Utilizing regression analyses, I examine how different types of access are socially distributed. The results reveal the individual and country-level variables that shape physical access to art. The findings highlight the importance of using a multi-dimensional concept of access in the study of arts consumption. They also have implications for planning arts policies designed to increase access to art, both physical and online, especially post-COVID-19.
{"title":"Access to arts consumption: The stratification of aesthetic life-chances","authors":"Tal Feder","doi":"10.1177/14695405221133269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221133269","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops the concept of access to arts consumption as a necessary link connecting cultural taste and actual consumption. I present a theoretical model that deconstructs access to arts consumption into four dimensions of access: rights, opportunity, participation, and reception. I operationalize and test the model in the context of access to physical cultural consumption using Eurobarometer data on barriers to such access from a sample of respondents from 27 European countries. Utilizing regression analyses, I examine how different types of access are socially distributed. The results reveal the individual and country-level variables that shape physical access to art. The findings highlight the importance of using a multi-dimensional concept of access in the study of arts consumption. They also have implications for planning arts policies designed to increase access to art, both physical and online, especially post-COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"672 - 691"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42174706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/14695405221136235
D. Philipsen
A rapidly growing body of research suggests that modern economies find themselves at existential crossroads: both prosperity and survival are a function of consumption-fueled economic growth. Prosperity seemingly depends on it; survival is made increasingly impossible by it. Economists measure economic growth by what is generally recognized as a deeply flawed yet still hegemonic economic performance indicator—GDP. This paper suggests that growth based in increased consumption is in need of reconceptualization no matter what the measure, and invites the research community of the Journal of Consumer Culture to investigate what such a research agenda might look like. Economic logic itself, this essay argues, needs to be re-embedded in science, rather than operate as a self-referential logic outside of natural boundaries. Biophysical limits force us to question economic growth as a goal. A wide range of social pathologies, furthermore, from inequality to stress to loneliness, raise deep questions about the desirability of growth. The essay is a self-conscious provocation to the discipline of economics: there is an emerging need to move beyond a conceptualization of the economy as a self-contained system of monetary market exchanges defining the relations between production, distribution, and consumption.
{"title":"What Counts—Why Growth Economics is Failing Us","authors":"D. Philipsen","doi":"10.1177/14695405221136235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221136235","url":null,"abstract":"A rapidly growing body of research suggests that modern economies find themselves at existential crossroads: both prosperity and survival are a function of consumption-fueled economic growth. Prosperity seemingly depends on it; survival is made increasingly impossible by it. Economists measure economic growth by what is generally recognized as a deeply flawed yet still hegemonic economic performance indicator—GDP. This paper suggests that growth based in increased consumption is in need of reconceptualization no matter what the measure, and invites the research community of the Journal of Consumer Culture to investigate what such a research agenda might look like. Economic logic itself, this essay argues, needs to be re-embedded in science, rather than operate as a self-referential logic outside of natural boundaries. Biophysical limits force us to question economic growth as a goal. A wide range of social pathologies, furthermore, from inequality to stress to loneliness, raise deep questions about the desirability of growth. The essay is a self-conscious provocation to the discipline of economics: there is an emerging need to move beyond a conceptualization of the economy as a self-contained system of monetary market exchanges defining the relations between production, distribution, and consumption.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"536 - 554"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44089962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-12DOI: 10.1177/14695405221133266
Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Samuel Coavoux, Jean-Baptiste Garrocq
YouTube is currently the most widely used platform for music streaming. Users listen to music videos rather than watch them. This is environmentally suboptimal since video data require more energy than audio data to be hosted and transmitted. Why are consumers using a video platform to stream music? In this paper, we sketch a framework for analyzing digital practices as consumption practices and their transformation in the context of the ecological transition. We interviewed 29 online music consumers from varied backgrounds. Drawing on practice theory, we conceptualize online music use as a combination of sociotechnical configurations articulating listening devices, types of attention to music, and the social contexts of daily life. We analyze how different platforms, especially YouTube, are embedded in specific configurations. We first establish that configurations in which videos are actually watched are rare. Though users are aware of the carbon footprint of streaming, this representation does not inform their listening configurations. We describe three types of online music practices according to the role YouTube plays in, that correlate with music passion: YouTube can be framed as a free and open listening platform (especially to casual listeners), as an efficient soundtracking device in many contexts, as a useful complementary listening and music sharing device. The paper extends the literature on green consumption to digital consumption, analyzing relations to infrastructures in a regime of abundance, and contributes to the sociology of online music consumption, showing how platform choices are linked with music passion and embedded in social contexts.
{"title":"Listening to music videos on YouTube. Digital consumption practices and the environmental impact of streaming","authors":"Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Samuel Coavoux, Jean-Baptiste Garrocq","doi":"10.1177/14695405221133266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221133266","url":null,"abstract":"YouTube is currently the most widely used platform for music streaming. Users listen to music videos rather than watch them. This is environmentally suboptimal since video data require more energy than audio data to be hosted and transmitted. Why are consumers using a video platform to stream music? In this paper, we sketch a framework for analyzing digital practices as consumption practices and their transformation in the context of the ecological transition. We interviewed 29 online music consumers from varied backgrounds. Drawing on practice theory, we conceptualize online music use as a combination of sociotechnical configurations articulating listening devices, types of attention to music, and the social contexts of daily life. We analyze how different platforms, especially YouTube, are embedded in specific configurations. We first establish that configurations in which videos are actually watched are rare. Though users are aware of the carbon footprint of streaming, this representation does not inform their listening configurations. We describe three types of online music practices according to the role YouTube plays in, that correlate with music passion: YouTube can be framed as a free and open listening platform (especially to casual listeners), as an efficient soundtracking device in many contexts, as a useful complementary listening and music sharing device. The paper extends the literature on green consumption to digital consumption, analyzing relations to infrastructures in a regime of abundance, and contributes to the sociology of online music consumption, showing how platform choices are linked with music passion and embedded in social contexts.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"654 - 671"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46612933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-12DOI: 10.1177/14695405221133270
Senida Poenariu
The main focus of this study develops around the symbolic potential of consumption as a social phenomenon and its multiple spheres of social manifestation. Given that the literature insists upon the implications of consumption upon individual and social identity construction, this analysis lays emphasis on the influences of a certain type of consumption, strictly determined by the political regime, in a given socio-political space and well-defined time-frame—communist Romania—on the citizens’ political, cultural, and even on literary identity. I have come to identify a type of “subversive consumption” which is shaped as a declaration of adhesion to the free Western world and, implicitly, as a rejection of state ideology. This strategy of revendicating another political, social and cultural descendance through consumption also manifests itself in the literary works of the poets of the so-called ‘80ist Literary Movement. Given communist poverty and all sorts of interdictions, certain imported goods, as well as certain cultural products, gained a deeply subversive value that was later taken up and transformed into “intentional communication” (Hebdige) and manifesto by the young poets.
{"title":"Longing for the West: The literary utopia of consumption in communist Romania","authors":"Senida Poenariu","doi":"10.1177/14695405221133270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221133270","url":null,"abstract":"The main focus of this study develops around the symbolic potential of consumption as a social phenomenon and its multiple spheres of social manifestation. Given that the literature insists upon the implications of consumption upon individual and social identity construction, this analysis lays emphasis on the influences of a certain type of consumption, strictly determined by the political regime, in a given socio-political space and well-defined time-frame—communist Romania—on the citizens’ political, cultural, and even on literary identity. I have come to identify a type of “subversive consumption” which is shaped as a declaration of adhesion to the free Western world and, implicitly, as a rejection of state ideology. This strategy of revendicating another political, social and cultural descendance through consumption also manifests itself in the literary works of the poets of the so-called ‘80ist Literary Movement. Given communist poverty and all sorts of interdictions, certain imported goods, as well as certain cultural products, gained a deeply subversive value that was later taken up and transformed into “intentional communication” (Hebdige) and manifesto by the young poets.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"13 1","pages":"637 - 653"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41288926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1177/14695405221129826
Julie E. Brice, H. Thorpe, B. Wheaton, R. Longhurst
Activewear (clothing designed specifically for fitness and functional movement) has become a hugely popular fashion style for women around the world. Scholars have critiqued the activewear industry for reproducing postfeminist and neoliberal discourses, with advertising and marketing primarily featuring heteronormative women’s bodies (thin, toned, white, young), with a strong emphasis on consumption and choice. In this article, we contribute to the literature on activewear and feminist consumption practices to examine how women consumers of activewear clothing understand and respond to postfeminist discourses inherent in the industry. In so doing, we speak to how the often-critiqued idealised femininity is ‘taken-up’ and interrogated by women activewear consumers. Specifically, we draw upon focus groups and interviews conducted with women from New Zealand, examining how some women are complicit in the production of particular femininities, while others are critical of the industry partaking in an array of everyday ‘acts of resistance’ against (and within) the industry. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the women-led changes occurring within the activewear market. Ultimately, this article highlights the complexities and attitudes of some women activewear consumers and their contribution (and challenges) to the production of femininity within society.
{"title":"Postfeminism, consumption and activewear: Examining women consumers’ relationship with the postfeminine ideal","authors":"Julie E. Brice, H. Thorpe, B. Wheaton, R. Longhurst","doi":"10.1177/14695405221129826","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221129826","url":null,"abstract":"Activewear (clothing designed specifically for fitness and functional movement) has become a hugely popular fashion style for women around the world. Scholars have critiqued the activewear industry for reproducing postfeminist and neoliberal discourses, with advertising and marketing primarily featuring heteronormative women’s bodies (thin, toned, white, young), with a strong emphasis on consumption and choice. In this article, we contribute to the literature on activewear and feminist consumption practices to examine how women consumers of activewear clothing understand and respond to postfeminist discourses inherent in the industry. In so doing, we speak to how the often-critiqued idealised femininity is ‘taken-up’ and interrogated by women activewear consumers. Specifically, we draw upon focus groups and interviews conducted with women from New Zealand, examining how some women are complicit in the production of particular femininities, while others are critical of the industry partaking in an array of everyday ‘acts of resistance’ against (and within) the industry. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the women-led changes occurring within the activewear market. Ultimately, this article highlights the complexities and attitudes of some women activewear consumers and their contribution (and challenges) to the production of femininity within society.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"617 - 636"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43600684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-16DOI: 10.1177/14695405221127348
Álison dL Macêdo, Flávia ZdN Costa, Bianca Gabriely F Silva, Marco Costa
Supported by non-representational theories (NRTs), we focus on the atmosphere of consumption and use a creative method to carry out this research. We consider the details of everyday life not represented, highlighting the roles of the elements in this fluid network. In order to understand how the atmosphere emerges, intensifies, and affects the behavior and modes of consumption, we ask ourselves: How does narrative/participant observation help us to develop interpretations about the way in which the affective bodies of consumers navigate and move around this experience? We seek, in the resource of biographical tradition, to collect a life story linked to the experiences of consumption enjoyed and meant in a commercial point over the years. Our corpus was based on narrative interviews, observation, and documents. From the nine critical incidents retrieved in the temporal experience of the narrative, the analysis revealed eight syntagms that, when encoded, pointed to six constituent meanings of this mode of experience-based consumption, which is driven by everyday situational factors but operate as signifying elements of the sales environment. The consumption experience was found to be a social and affective form of experience emerging in the respondent’s everyday life, whereas the actual consumption was solely a means for the social reaffirmation of the actor in question and the strengthening of her relationships.
{"title":"Alice in… buying: The consumption of experiences in the worldly experience and aspects of socialization","authors":"Álison dL Macêdo, Flávia ZdN Costa, Bianca Gabriely F Silva, Marco Costa","doi":"10.1177/14695405221127348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221127348","url":null,"abstract":"Supported by non-representational theories (NRTs), we focus on the atmosphere of consumption and use a creative method to carry out this research. We consider the details of everyday life not represented, highlighting the roles of the elements in this fluid network. In order to understand how the atmosphere emerges, intensifies, and affects the behavior and modes of consumption, we ask ourselves: How does narrative/participant observation help us to develop interpretations about the way in which the affective bodies of consumers navigate and move around this experience? We seek, in the resource of biographical tradition, to collect a life story linked to the experiences of consumption enjoyed and meant in a commercial point over the years. Our corpus was based on narrative interviews, observation, and documents. From the nine critical incidents retrieved in the temporal experience of the narrative, the analysis revealed eight syntagms that, when encoded, pointed to six constituent meanings of this mode of experience-based consumption, which is driven by everyday situational factors but operate as signifying elements of the sales environment. The consumption experience was found to be a social and affective form of experience emerging in the respondent’s everyday life, whereas the actual consumption was solely a means for the social reaffirmation of the actor in question and the strengthening of her relationships.","PeriodicalId":51461,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Culture","volume":"23 1","pages":"555 - 574"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46430357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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