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

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

Granny Would Be Proud: on Doing Vintage, Practices and Emergent Socialities

It is proposed that vintage consumption must be understood as an embodied practice. This paper seeks to initiate a Vintage Turn within consumer research, to consider vintage as a practice of transformation and togetherness in an alternative consumption space

Peeps, beemers and scooby-doos: exploring community value among Scottish cruisers

Using an ethnographic approach which combines impromptu interviews, participant observation and analysis of online computer mediated communication we explore the consumer culture which surrounds the Scottish cruiser community. The on-going study uses the conceptual framework of neo-tribal consumption, exploring forms of ephemeral and emotional communities which cohere around the car. Our analysis suggests that the cultural practices of customization and the performance of the cruise make explicit a shared sense of collective consciousness which expresses the construction of community value which emerges from such ephemeral gatherings

Introduction : practices

This volume provides the reader with an introduction to Theories of Practice and what we identify as the key studies in this domain. It is our belief that theories of practice offer consumer researchers ways to refresh and rethink their approaches, especially if we take seriously Warde’s suggestion that: “An individual’s pattern of consumption is the sum of the moments of consumption which occur in the totality of his or her practices. If the individual is merely the intersection point of many practices, and practices are the bedrock of consumption, then a new perspective on consumer behaviour emerges. New explanations of contemporary identities and the role of consumption in identity formation suggest themselves.” (2005, p. 144)

Introduction : politics

This volume establishes a link between politics and consumption. Understanding the multifaceted relationship between these two is becoming increasingly important in different areas of scholarship such as marketing and consumer research, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, political science, economics, and urban and environmental studies. One of the main reasons for such convergence amongst these disciplines is that in the age of neoliberal political economy, consumption, taken either literally or metaphorically (Askegaard, 2014), is generally seen as a prominent feature of modern society (McCracken, 1988; Gauthier and Martikainen, 2013). Once conceptualised as the ‘using up’ of material goods, and hence subordinated to production as a means of driving the economic engine of society (e.g., in the Marxist tradition), consumption is now broadly viewed as a cultural practice, a mode of being and an active process of creating meanings, self-images, self-identities, symbols, and values (Baudrillard, 1981; Firat and Venkatesh, 1995). It is not solely a private act; it is also a social activity in which consumer culture avails individuals with the means to actively articulate and negotiate their identities, values, meanings, and life goals with(in) their social settings (Featherstone, 1991; Murray, 2002; Arnould and Thompson, 2005; 2007)

Introduction : sharing

The articles in this volume speak to contemporary debates on the significance and increasing turn to practices such as sharing. We start with work on notions of sharing, especially Belk (2010), before addressing recent work on the shift to collaborative consumption. Consumer Culture Theory has foregrounded notions of community and we explore the links to this concept in section three, which also embraces the shift to Web 2.0 and its participatory and sharing imperatives. Sharing also brings in its wake tensions and contradictions and we attend to these in the final sections. We believe that the papers in this volume demonstrate the value of exploring sharing as a possible avenue to advance consumer research

Introduction : Spaces

Literature from various disciplinary perspectives acknowledges that people often develop rich and complex relationships to places that they perceive as important, thereby highlighting the need to understand spatial aspects of consumption. Since the publication of Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place (1977), the distinction between the more abstract nature of space and experienced nature of place has been understood. As Tuan (1977, p. 6) observed, “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.” A space therefore becomes a place when it is consumed (Sherry 1998), often involving a process of appropriation that leads to a sense of belonging and symbolic meaning (Visconti et al. 2010). As a result, places often become important parts of the extended self (Belk, 1998) to which we develop strong emotional attachments

Reimagining the terrain of liquid times : reflexive marketing and the sociological imagination

This paper has three objectives. The first is to deliver a critical review of the work of Zygmunt Bauman on Liquid Modernity and Liquid Times. I argue that Bauman’s work can provide a useful starting point for analysing the ‘unruly’ forces of contemporary society. Bauman’s work, as I have sought to reveal, takes us to the heart of liquid modern darkness. It forces us to take seriously the import of the sociological imagination and the insight that personal troubles are best understood as emerging public issues stemming from structural processes. The second objective, is to explore how consumer culture theorists have taken and in dialogue with these ideas sought to expand upon his initial ideas. Here I review the value of the concept of ‘liquid consumption’ and the ‘fresh start mindset’. The third and final objective, is to demonstrate how reflexive marketing practitioners are responding to such liquid times through rethinking their practice and thereby extending the terrain of marketing. Here I detail how the promise marketing imagination starts not with the darkness of liquid modern times but rather with a far more hope inspired tale to enchant new markets and new audiences on the possibilities and ‘solutions’ of being future oriented and technologically savvy. Finally, it argues that the task of reimagining appears essential given the current zeitgeist, where the climate of anxiety, fear and uncertainty whether it be political, economic, environmental or social threatens to engulf us