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Theory on identity negotiations posits that a person's identity-construction project ceases upon death. We tested this proposition using death-ritual consumption experiences of consumers in Asante, Ghana, West Africa. We found that bereaved Asante consumers engage in conspicuous ritual consumption in pursuit of newer social identities for their deceased and themselves and that funerals involve a reciprocal and continuing relationship between the living and the dead. In addition, we found that terror-management theory is limited in its relevance for non-Western contexts. We also detected limits to the ability to transform global capital into local capital. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.

Purpose We introduce critical regionalities and the archipelago metaphor as an analytic lens for interrogating and redrawing regional borders while preserving the benefits of a regional approach. Methodology/approach Using secondary data from Latin America, we interrogate the mode by which regions are adopted in marketing and consumer research, raising a discussion of the analytical scales and boundaries of regional cultures, considering regional interdependencies and their common sociohistorical backgrounds. Findings We use the critical regionalities approach to examine the rise of gated-communities in Latin America and demonstrate how a regional approach can reveal connections between meso-level sociohistorical processes and cultural values. Research implications The critical regionalities approach transforms assumptions of national or global scales into tools of inquiry: both the nation and the globe become possible scales to contrast with regional archipelagos and enhance researchers’ reflexivity of the how’s and why’s of consumer phenomena. Social implications The method prompts cultural researchers to adopt scales of analysis that more closely reflect the social phenomena being studied, which is especially useful for understanding emerging markets and marginalized areas. We also emphasize the importance of attending to consumer cultural phenomena and processes in non-Western contexts. Originality/value The paper offers a solution for the conundrum of how to write about regions without essentializing them. Marketers and policy makers can use the concept of cultural archipelagos to define new segments and understand new markets, without the need to conform to preestablished geographic or political borders.

Purpose This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and Thompson (2005). Methodology/approach This paper takes a conceptual/historical orientation that is based upon the authors’ experiences over the course of the 10-year CCT initiative (including numerous conversations with fellow CCT colleagues). Findings The authors first discuss key benchmarks in the development of the CCT community as an organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research. Originality/value The paper by Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be influential in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also provided an important impetus for institution building. The 10-year anniversary of this article (and not incidentally the CCT conference from which the papers in this volume hail) provides a unique opportunity for the authors to comment upon the broader ramifications of their original proposals.

Purpose The purpose of the chapter is to engage with the relationship between the gift and the market in the context of philanthropic micro-lending. We seek to move beyond theorizing separate, ex-ante gift or market regimes and transactors who independently navigate between oppositional modes of transaction. Methodology/approach We turn to recent efforts of hybridizing charity and venture finance, exemplified by microfinance platforms such as Kiva.org. We combine data from an existing study of Kiva and its online community, with additional participant observation and third-party accounts detailing the evolution and workings of microfinance. Findings We illustrate how market-like elements are productively and problematically deployed in philanthropic giving and address the need to consider a broader range of socio-material relations involved in the framing of transactions. Research limitations/implications A complex network of actors and (trans)actions needs to be assembled for the philanthropic loan to be enacted. We touch upon the making and role of the socio-material devices that actively participate in such enactment only tangentially. Further research is needed to flesh out the respective transaction complex, taking additional note of the work of borrowers, local loan officers, and other less visible actors. Practical implications Organizations need to recognize and creatively address the complex interplay of gift and market elements. They need to pay attention and take advantage of the tensions and synergies emergent in hybrid gift-market contexts. Originality/value of chapter We engage with a complex, less studied transaction context. The chapter shows that philanthropic gift relations can be reproduced through market-like elements and arrangements. Such production entails complex socio-material networks mobilizing a broad array of human and nonhuman actors.

Purpose – A crucial discussion within the feminist discourse in consumption studies concerns the role of the marketplace in women's emancipation. While some theorists argue that women in contemporary society employ marketplace resources to construct individual, multiple identities, critics call attention to the fact that this argument may be applicable exclusively to Western, white, middle-class women, who possess sufficient capital to participate fully in the consumer culture. Our aim is to demonstrate that non-Western women with limited capital resources can benefit from the self-realizing modern woman discourse criticized by the second wave feminist research stream. Methodology/approach – In support of the above perspective, we analyze depth interviews with fourteen Romanian women, aged 23–51, who had been living in Italy for one to twelve years at the time of the interview. Findings – The internalization of the modern woman discourse featured in the marketplace is closely and interactively connected to the acquisition of cultural capital, leading eventually to the adoption of a self-reflexive cosmopolitan strategy that allows women to individuate and effectively resist the dominating discourses in the home and host societies. Originality/value of paper – Our chapter adds a global dimension to the second wave and postfeminism discussions of the role of the marketplace in women's gender role negotiation. We illustrate that the modern woman discourse featured in the marketplace may act as an emancipating force for women who originated in a patriarchal society. By doing so, we also offer an overlooked gendered perspective on the discourse of global consumer culture.