Citizen-Consumers Wanted: Revitalizing the American Dream in the Face of Economic Recessions, 1981-2012

This article brings sociological theory of governmentality to bear on a longitudinal analysis of American presidential speeches to theorize the formation of the citizen-consumer subject. The 40-year historical analysis which expands through four economic recessions and the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama, illustrates the ways in which the national mythology of American Dream myth has been linked to the political ideology of the state to create the citizen-consumer subject in the United States. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data demonstrates first, the consistent emphasis on responsibility as a key moral value albeit meshed with ideals of liberalism and libertarianism at different presidential periods; second, the presidents iteratively link the neoliberal political ideology and the national myth of American dream through a sophisticated morality play myth, where they cast the citizen-consumer as a responsible moral hero on a journey to achieve American dream, and, third, the presidents use three main dispositives – disciplinary, legal and security - to craft the citizen-consumer subject in their response to the economic recessions. The findings extend prior consumer research on consumer subjectivity, consumer moralism, marketplace mythology and politics of consumption

The Status Costs Of Subordinate Cultural Capital: At-Home Fathers\u27 Collective Pursuit Of Cultural Legitimacy Through Capitalizing Consumption Practices

Consumer researchers have primarily conceptualized cultural capital either as an endowed stock of resources that tend to reproduce socioeconomic hierarchies among consumer collectivities or as constellations of knowledge and skill that consumers acquire by making identity investments in a given consumption field. These studies, however, have given scant attention to the theoretical distinction between dominant and subordinate forms of cultural capital, with the latter affording comparatively lower conversion rates for economic, social, and symbolic capital. To redress this oversight, this article presents a multimethod investigation of middle-class men who are performing the emergent gender role of at-home fatherhood. Our analysis profiles and theoretically elaborates upon a set of capitalizing consumption practices through which at-home fathers seek to enhance the conversion rates of their acquisitions of domesticated (and subordinate) cultural capital and to build greater cultural legitimacy for their marginalized gender identity

The stigma turbine:A theoretical framework for conceptualizing and contextualizing marketplace stigma

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and “tribal” associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963). Extant research emphasizes the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within the socio-commercial sphere create, perpetuate, or resist stigma remain overlooked. We introduce and define marketplace stigma as the labeling, stereotyping, and devaluation by and of commercial stakeholders (consumers, companies and their employees, stockholders, institutions) and their offerings (products, services, experiences). We offer the Stigma Turbine (ST) as a unifying conceptual framework that locates marketplace stigma within the broader sociocultural context, and illuminates its relationship to forces that exacerbate or blunt stigma. In unpacking the ST, we reveal the critical role market stakeholders can play in (de)stigmatization, explore implications for marketing practice and public policy, and offer a research agenda to further our understanding of marketplace stigma and stakeholder welfare

Isolation in Globalizing Academic Fields: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Early Career Researchers

This study examines academic isolation – an involuntary perceived separation from the academic field to which one aspires to belong, associated with a perceived lack of agency in terms of one’s engagement with the field – as a key challenge for researchers in increasingly globalized academic careers. While prior research describes early career researchers’ isolation in their institutions, we theorize early career researchers’ isolation in their academic fields and reveal how they attempt to mitigate isolation to improve their career prospects. Using a collaborative autoethnographic approach, we generate and analyze a dataset focused on the experiences of ten early career researchers in a globalizing business academic field known as Consumer Culture Theory. We identify bricolage practices, polycentric governance practices, and integration mechanisms that work to enhance early career researchers’ perceptions of agency and consequently mitigate their academic isolation. Our findings extend discussions on isolation and its role in new academic careers. Early career researchers, in particular, can benefit from a deeper understanding of practices that can enable them to mitigate isolation and reclaim agency as they engage with global academic fields

Power and Gender Dynamics in Contemporary Families

In his essay, Bourdieu (1996) defines the family as a set of individuals, living under the same roof, linked together by some affiliation such as marriage, or kinship. Bourdieu sees the family as an arena, where the \u27forces of fusion\u27 (that unite the interests of the individual with that of the collective), compete against the \u27forces of fission\u27 (the differing, sometimes competing \u27selfish\u27 interests of the various family members (Bourdieu 1996, p. 23). Hence, Bourdieu (1996) argues that it is futile to discuss the family (and we argue, family decision-making) without examining \u27the structure of power relations\u27 and \u27the effects of male domination.\u27 We agree, and in this chapter, we take a moment to reflect and discuss two underlying forces that have shaped, and continue to permeate, the rich body of family decision-making literature to date -- power and gender dynamics. Our review starts over 50 years ago, as we critically explore the manifestation, effects and implications of power and gender dynamics, from the earliest work in family decision-making (FDM) to more recent research on contemporary, non-traditional families.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/business_books/1009/thumbnail.jp

Countervailing Market Responses to Corporate Co-optation and the Ideological Recruitment of Consumption Communities

From a conventional theoretical standpoint, the corporatization of the organic food movement is an example of co-optation. Co-optation theory conceptualizes the commercial marketplace as an ideological force that assimilates the symbols and practices of a counterculture into dominant norms. Our alternative argument is that co-optation can generate a countervailing market response that actively promotes the oppositional aspects of a counterculture attenuated by the process of commercial mainstreaming. To develop this theoretical argument, we analyze community-supported agriculture, which has emerged in response to the corporate co-optation of the organic food movement. We conclude by discussing how tacit political ideologies structure consumption communities. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Challenges and Limitations in the Studies of Glycoproteins: A Computational Chemist\u27s Perspective

Experimenters face challenges and limitations while analyzing glycoproteins due to their high flexibility, stereochemistry, anisotropic effects, and hydration phenomena. Computational studies complement experiments and have been used in characterization of the structural properties of glycoproteins. However, recent investigations revealed that computational studies face significant challenges as well. Here, we introduce and discuss some of these challenges and weaknesses in the investigations of glycoproteins. We also present requirements of future developments in computational biochemistry and computational biology areas that could be necessary for providing more accurate structural property analyses of glycoproteins using computational tools. Further theoretical strategies that need to be and can be developed are discussed herein

Market system dynamics: the value of and the open questions associated with studying markets in consumer culture theory

No abstract available

Market System Dynamics: The Value of and the Open Questions Associated With Studying Markets in Consumer Culture Theory

A nascent body of literature that explores how markets are created and shaped captures the imagination of many researchers. This roundtable provides a first opportunity to discuss the nature of market system dynamics, its relation to other areas of study, and its future research agenda