Consuming identity : the case of Scotland

The paper examines national identity in Scotland. The research explores how consumers perceive the symbols used to represent Scotland, how these symbols relate to their perceptions of contemporary Scottish identity and their responses to the use of these symbols to promote Scotland and Scottishness. A series of in-depth interviews revealed that national identity in Scotland was seen to be multidimensional. Activities associated with art and culture, as opposed to business and industry, were identified as primary characteristics of contemporary Scotland. The traditional symbols of Scottish identity (e.g. tartan and whiskey) remain dominant signifiers, however, and the problems of this are discussed

Cultures of unruly bricolage : 'debadging' and the cultural logic of resistance

Arnould and Thompson note that the "marketplace has become a pre-eminent source of mythic and symbolic resources through which [people] construct narratives of identity' (2005: 871). Not only do consumers "actively rework and transform symbolic meanings" (ibid: 871), but in everyday practices they use "marketplace cultures [to] define their symbolic boundaries through an ongoing opposition to dominant lifestyle norms and mainstream consumer sensibilities" (ibid: 874). The paper examines identity work done with cherished possessions, in this case cars. By means of a netnography we focus on everyday practices where consumers rework brand identity towards their local identity projects

Talking together : consumer communities in healthcare

Consumer involvement in computer mediated communities (CMCs) is increasing particularly in high involvement services such as healthcare. This paper examines the role of CMCs as providers of patient information and support and the subsequent effect on the relationship between 'informed' consumers and health care providers. The evolving dialogue between consumers in virtual communities provides one key axis along which professional service consumption will evolve. The challenge for service consumers is to develop frameworks that facilitate robust dialogue and exchange of information and emotional support to complement their rising authority. The parallel challenge is for the established medical profession to recognise the consequences of this evolving dialogue and develop approaches to service delivery that effectively engage with consumers on the basis of this increasing authority

Synergistic literacies: Fostering critical and technological literacies in teaching legal research methods at the University of Waikato

Nowadays, new law courses are not approved unless both the "needs analysis" is convincing and the "consumer demand" is certain. Needs and demands today are driven by new pressures for technological literacy accelerated by globalisation and the current revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs). The popular logic is that new global "knowledge economies" need "knowledge workers" or "wired workers" to labour in the new e-markets for goods and services and to use the burgeoning number and high quality of electronic information databases now essential to legal research. Students are acutely aware of these developments as well as of the highly competitive nature of the contemporary labour market for law graduates. Consequently, students are demanding more "how to" research skills training. This article puts in context the reasons why, at the University of Waikato, we regard creating synergy between critical and technological literacy as essential for teaching and learning law-in-context research methods, and then describes the curriculum we designed for a legal research methods course in order to trial this approach. From the start we have been clear that the new course was not just to be a "how to" course, and that we would be concentrating on critical literacy as much as technological literacy. For us, critical literacy is fundamental because it relates to the way in which one analyses the world, a process described as "becoming aware of the underlying structure of conceptions".1 This awareness includes the politics in the architectures that constitute the Internet and the assembly of information accessible on it. We designed our curriculum for critical literacy around five types of analysis. Our shorthand for this is to call these "the five 'Cs'". Our five interrelated categories for analysis focus on: Change - in society, economy and culture Concepts - legal and sociological concepts and analytical frameworks Critique (and standpoint or perspective) Comparisons (and Contrasts) Contexts. We argue that, at a minimum, these are the conceptual tools necessary to critique and engage the operation of the law in the context of society, noting especially inequalities and injustices. Throughout the course students are encouraged to harness technological literacy to each dimension of their analysis. This article consists of two main parts. The first part ("Context and Assumptions") explores in some depth the reasons for the need to teach critical literacy alongside technological literacy. The second part ("The Legal Research Methods Course") describes our efforts to promote the synergy between critical and technological literacies in the context of a fourth year optional course, Legal Research Methods 2000, at the University of Waikato School of Law

Towards a better understanding of the low income consumer

Research on low-income or poorer consumers and the disadvantages that they encounter in the marketplace is the focus of this paper. A number of commonly held beliefs about low-income consumers need to be challenged but since these consumers are not high priority as target markets there is little investment in the market research that might go some way to dispel them. This paper aims to challenge some of these beliefs and to suggest how this research might be further developed by drawing together research and theories from a range of disciplines including consumer research, psychology and sociological constructs

Volumes of chain links

Agol has conjectured that minimally twisted n-chain links are the smallest volume hyperbolic manifolds with n cusps, for n at most 10. In his thesis, Venzke mentions that these cannot be smallest volume for n at least 11, but does not provide a proof. In this paper, we give a proof of Venzke's statement for a number of cases. For n at least 60 we use a formula from work of Futer, Kalfagianni, and Purcell to obtain a lower bound for volume. The proof for n between 12 and 25 inclusive uses a rigorous computer computation that follows methods of Moser and Milley. Finally, we prove that the n-chain link with 2m or 2m+1 half-twists cannot be the minimal volume hyperbolic manifold with n cusps, provided n is at least 60 or |m| is at least 8, and we give computational data indicating this remains true for smaller n and |m|.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables. Version 2: Minor changes to wording and organization, two remarks adde

Salsa magic: an exploratory netnographic analysis of the salsa experience

This is a paper about the promise of salsa dancing as unfolding social drama. We argue that a turn to dance offers much potential to reinvigorate ways of theorizing consumer culture, necessitating we take seriously talk around such experiences. Based on a netnographic analysis, which is inspired by the informative work of Kozinets (1997, 1998, 2001). We reveal how dance is a reflexive form of knowledge enacted in and through our bodies, where the settled and fixed becomes disturbed. Dance then makes possible shared passions, exhilarations and desires lacking from people's everyday lives granting them a space for expression