Negotiating Agency in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble

Over 18% of Americans over the age of 75 require assistance with daily consumption activities. Assistance is often provided by family, friends, and paid care providers in changing configurations over time. We refer to these people together with the elderly consumer as the elderly consumption ensemble. Through depth interviews with ensemble members, this research investigates how consumer agency operates within the ensemble, including how it is constrained, enhanced, contested, and shared by elderly consumers, family members, and market providers. Contributions include adding to our understanding of the nature of consumer agency and to the socially embedded nature of consumption

Living US Capitalism: The Normalization of Credit/Debt

This research develops a theoretical account of cultural meanings as integral mechanisms in the normalization of credit/debt. Analysis derives these meanings from the credit/debt discourses and practices of 27 white middle-class consumers in the United States and tracks their negotiation in patterns and trajectories in social and market domains. Discussion elaborates the ways informants normalize credit/debt in transposing their categories, in improvising meaning combinations, and in suturing the meaning patterns to particular subject positions in constituting themselves as consumers. Theoretical contributions (1) distinguish consumers’ collaborative production of cultural meanings with friends, family, and others in the social domain and with financial agents and institutions in the market domain and (2) document the productive capacities of these meanings in patterns and trajectories in configuring people as consuming subjects. Implications situate such cultural reproduction processes in the United States in discussing how the national legacy of abundance informs the normalization of credit/debt.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the University of Chicago Press and can be found at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/jcr.html

Who Are You Calling Old? Negotiating Old Age Identity in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble

As the elderly population increases, more family, friends, and paid service providers assist them with consumption activities in a group that the authors conceptualize as the elderly consumption ensemble (ECE). Interviews with members of eight ECEs demonstrate consumption in advanced age as a group phenomenon rather than an individual one, provide an account of how the practices and discourses of the ECE's division of consumption serve as a means of knowing someone is old and positioning him/her as an old subject, and detail strategies through which older consumers negotiate their age identity when it conflicts with this positioning. This research (1) illuminates ways in which consumer agency in identity construction is constrained in interpersonal interactions, (2) demonstrates old identity as implicated in consumption in relation to and distinction from physiological ability and old subject position, and (3) updates the final stages of the Family Life Cycle model.This article is published and copyrighted by University of Chicago Press. This copy of the article is currently under embargo and is due to be released Nov. 4, 2013

Prospectus, January 23, 2020

GOUGH NAMED HEAD COACH, Clean Energy Act Proposed, Why the Tension Between Iran and US?, Faculty Spare Time for Bowling, Meet the Staff: Scott Landells, Black Queens Rock Event Feb. 3, Parkland Basketball Crushes Malcom Xhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2020/1000/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, January 30, 2020

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT CANNABIS USE, Prospectus Welcomes Professor Watt, Parkland Theatre Brings Home Award, Meet the Staff: Michelle Barnhart, Black History Month Events Set for February, Perimeter Road to Release Fourth Singles Series Mid-Februaryhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2020/1001/thumbnail.jp

Curating a Consumption Ideology: Platformization and Gun Influencers on Instagram

This study explores how a platform enables social media influencers to promulgate a consumption ideology. We show how gun influencers, or “gunfluencers,” use Instagram to link products, activities, and meanings to Second Amendment ideology – a gun-centric belief system in the United States colloquially known as “2A ideology.” Through a qualitative study of 25 Instagram gunfluencers, we identify a process of curating a consumption ideology wherein social media influencers employ four curatorial tactics: glamourizing, demystifying, victimizing, and tribalizing. Findings suggest gunfluencers extend audiences and leverage algorithms to prescribe and model how supporters of 2A ideology should look, act, speak, feel, and consume. Our research contributes to understanding how consumption ideologies are promulgated in a digital, platformized world. In the context of U.S. gun culture, implications address the role of platformization in supporting gun companies’ promotional efforts, despite government- and platform-based restrictions, and the political dimensions of influencer and consumer cultures

Prospectus, February 13, 2020

THE SCIENCE OF LOVE; Love is in the air; Perimeter Road to host second annual music festival this May; Letter to the editor; Jacarra Lee receives Outstanding Black Student Award; Study abroad deadlines quickly approaching; Black History Month figure; Arthur Ashe; Support soars for Illini Basketballhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2020/1003/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, October 17, 2019

JESSICA GONDECK: ENTERPRISING MACHINGES AT GIERTZ GALLERY; Club Latino active on campus; The Parkland Library fosters anonymous discussion; Parkland partners with Public Health Flu Clinic; Black Student Success Project and Parkland Police hold event; COM teacher hosts Analog Hour on WPCDhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2019/1045/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, October 31, 2019

PARKLAND LAUNCHES WORKFORCE EQUITY PROGRAM; Local food pantries help feed families; Board of Trustees get updates on Carl D. Perkins Grant; Student leaders attend ICCSAA Conference; Traditions and superstitions through faculty eyes; New Actors’ Studio Series at Parkland; Prints, jackets, and more on fall fashion; Emma Fleming nominated for Lincoln Laureate Awardhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2019/1047/thumbnail.jp