Corporate citizenship and its impact upon consumer moralisation, decision-making and choice

Businesses are increasingly embracing corporate citizenship strategies. However, the empirical literature surrounding consumer responses to such practices features many contradictions concerning their impact. As a result, many businesses are uncertain about the extent to which they should commit resources to these activities to influence a positive response from consumers. Therefore, this paper seeks to address this gap by exploring consumers’ awareness of varying levels of corporate citizenship activities and assessing their moral responses to such efforts. Using a combination of qualitative methods and projective techniques with a broad cross-section of 20 consumers, the results help to shed light on the impact of corporate citizenship activities upon moral recognition, consumer decision-making and choice

Driving Circularities in the Food Supply Chain: The Sustainable Role of Alternative Food Retail Enterprises (AFREs)

The concept of the ‘circular economy’ is mooted as a new approach which can help facilitate the successful transition to a sustainable future, but there exists very little academic debate around the concept either within the business or sustainability literature (see Andersen, 2007; Murray et al., 2017). Similarly, despite much attention given to the topic of sustainability throughout the marketing discipline (McDonagh and Prothero, 2014), academics and NGOs (e.g. WRAP) have only recently started to question the sustainability of the retail sector (Thornton et al., 2013; Manna et al., 2016). More recently, a range of alternative food enterprises have emerged more recently which challenge the dominant mode of food retailing (Manna et al., 2016; Holweg et al., 2010) by incorporating social, environmental and economic forms of capital. Therefore, in response to calls for research which explores how businesses are cultivating a more actionable agenda for sustainable growth (Prothero et al., 2011; Vicdan et al., 2016), this study explores how alternative food retail business models drive circularities to ensure the transition to a more sustainable food supply chain. As the concept of the circular economy is limited in its application of social and ethical dimensions (see Murray et al., 2017), this research also draws on the conceptual lens of the sustainability marketing model which emphasises the social and ethical (see Belz and Peattie, 2010; Lim, 2016). In so doing, this study contributes to the marketing literature by advancing an empirical-based conceptualisation of sustainability marketing to reveal the driving circularities of food by AFREs

Producing & Consuming Public Space: A ‘Rhythmanalysis’ of the Urban Park

Research suggests an opportunity to offer a more comprehensive analysis of temporal consumption experiences encountered by park users, and the subsequent contribution to a perceived ‘sense of place’. Using visual ethnography and rhythmanalysis, our study distances our analysis from textual accounts of park usage as well as provide policy recommendations

A kaleidoscopic view of the territorialized consumption of place

Drawing on Brighenti’s (2010, 2014) theoretical exposition of territorology, we extend current conceptualisations of place within the marketing literature by demonstrating that place is relationally constructed through territorialising consumption practices which continuously produce and sustain multifarious versions of place. In our fieldwork, we embrace a non-representational sensitivity and employ a multi-sensory ethnography, thus helping to illuminate the performative aspects of everyday life relating to people who use urban green spaces. Our analysis articulates three key facets relating to the process of territorialising consumption practices: (1) Tangible and intangible elements of boundary-making; (2) Synchronicity of activities; and (3) Sensual experiences. Taken together these facets advance a kaleidoscopic perspective in which spatial, temporal and affective dimensions of the micro-practices of consumption territories-in-the-making are brought into view. Moreover, our empirical research adds an affective dimension to Brighenti’s theoretical elucidation of the formation and dissolution of territories, thereby incorporating sensual imaginations and bodily experiences into the assemblages of heterogeneous materials that sustain territories

Urban poverty and the role of UK food aid organisations in enabling segregating and transitioning spaces of food access

This research examines the role of food aid providers, including their spatial engagement, in seeking to alleviate urban food poverty. Current levels of urban poverty across the UK have resulted in an unprecedented demand for food aid. Yet, urban poverty responsibility increasingly shifts away from policymakers to the third sector. Building on Castilhos and Dolbec’s (2018) notion of segregating space and original qualitative research with food aid organisations, we show how social supermarkets emerge as offering a type of transitional space between the segregating spaces of foodbanks and the market spaces of mainstream food retailers. This research contributes to existing literature by establishing the concept of transitional space, an additional type of space that facilitates movement between types of spaces and particularly transitions from the segregating spaces of emergency food aid to more secure spaces of food access. In so doing, this research extends Castilhos and Dolbec’s (2018) typology of spaces, enabling a more nuanced depiction of the spatiality of urban food poverty

Understanding Lived Experiences of Food Insecurity through a Paraliminality Lens

Moraes, C., McEachern, M. G., Gibbons, A. and Scullion, L. (2021). Understanding lived experiences of food poverty through a paraliminality lens. Sociology, 55(6), 1169-1190. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385211003450. Copyright © [2021] (Copyright Holder). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as a liminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfare reform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing on original qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional, oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, which are both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three original contributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empirical research by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared social processes and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructing people’s experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory by conceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generates a persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-term emergency food access measures

Austere Times: Male Experiences of Liminal Vulnerability

Drawing on anthropological and gender theories, we investigate the liminal nature of male vulnerability within the context of austerity. From depth interviews with 11 males from 5 European countries, we contribute to the vulnerability and gender literature by revealing the effects of liminal vulnerability on male identities and roles