Search

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in physical distancing regulations, disrupting traditional practices of establishing and maintaining social relationships. We draw attention to digital nomadism as a mature case of navigating sociality in uncertainty to investigate how the linking value of materiality establishes social proximity without geographic contiguity through physical, virtual, and imagined practices. Using Miller's (1987) theory of materiality and triangulating data collected from in-depth interviews and netnography, this study details the material constitution of co-presence with others in physical distance. We propose that consumers oscillate between work—instrumental practices of signaling and curating—and play—emotional practices of belonging and indulging—to experience social linking across different spatial and temporal frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although consumers' temporal experiences in the performance of single practices of extraordinary nature have been well understood, there is not yet a clear understanding of how temporal experiences unfold from the recurrent performance of complexes of practices. Conversely, we delve into how the recurrent performance of quotidian complexes of practices affects consumers' temporal experiences. To do so, we adopt a Rhythmanalysis lens to study the recurrent performance of runners and swimmers. We contribute to the literature by proposing that global rhythms are enduring and encompassing temporal experiences unfolding from the recurrent performance of complexes of practices through a process involving the orchestration of complexes of practices, the embodied effects of its routinization, the integration of consumption habits, and social involvement with communities of practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research identifies the relationship between consumption practices and the construction of social identity among tweens in a Brazilian context. Using consumer culture theory and social identity theory, we employed 80 h of observation, 9 interviews, and projective techniques with fifteen girls. Three social identity groups were acknowledged: naive, connected, and counselors. These groups revealed different identity projects, such as the integration and maintenance within the social group of current belonging, the access to the social group with the greater distinctions, the generation of differentiable and positive distinctions (both intra- and intergroups), and the expression and consolidation of identity and its respective consumption practices. This research contributes to the consumption literature that relates to consumer identity projects. The findings reveal a current resignification of girlhood and exposes tweens' consumption practices as a direct mechanism of the expression and construction of their social identities. These are mechanisms of social identity construction as mediated by group relations through the processes of access, maintenance, integration, differentiation, and distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the methodological practice of Go-Alongs for exploring immigrant entrepreneurs' native customers, a barely developed subfield within immigrant business research. Through accompanying individuals on outings in their familiar environments, Go-Alongs as a qualitative data collection method are used to gain access to practices, experiences and interpretations of individuals in their everyday routines. Drawing on current qualitative research on native customers in immigrant grocery shops in Vienna, the article demonstrates how Go-Alongs can be used for exploring consumption practices and patterns of interethnic interaction in this specific setting. What becomes apparent is that Go-Alongs provide an opportunity to gain access to reflexive aspects of lived experience in situ, in the present case expressed by spontaneous and emotional comments when the shop, ethnic products or interethnic interactions are commented on and evaluated. Moreover, Go-Alongs allow insights into modes of self-expression. However, Go-Alongs have limitations as they cannot capture consumption practices beyond the limited time and space of shopping. Furthermore, they do not fully provide access to narratives and discourses; therefore, Go-Alongs are most useful in combination with in-depth interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The omnipresence of norms on the market requires us to question their influence on consumption practices, how to study them, design them and manage them. Drawing on the work of Foucault, this article sets out to test prior research on consumption against the norm, normality and deviance. Given the political nature of (ab)normalisation, three government modes and market topographies (anthropemous, anthropophagous and mutualist) can be identified based on the primary political models that shape them (conservatism, liberalism and communism). The author concludes by challenging the role of the researcher in the politicisation of practices and emphasises the risks of failing to consider the norm and (ab)normality in consumption research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is quickly becoming one of the most ageing populations in Asia. Ageing and the associated issue of health care are becoming two key concerns for the government, the market, individual senior citizens and medical and health professionals alike. However, although we have some knowledge about what issues and problems exist in the domain of health and ageing, we know little about how these issues and problems inform individuals’ consumption practices and ethical positions of how they should live their lives. This article explores a range of problematic and uncertain situations facing the ageing population in urban China. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than 20 senior citizens in a Chinese city, the article aims to understand the process by which new ethical ageing subjects come to be formed as individuals negotiate their positions vis-à-vis consumer advice from medical and health professionals, the government and the market. The article starts by identifying the most powerful forces shaping the health-keeping discourses and consumption practices adopted by senior citizens. It then provides an account of how ordinary retired citizens engage in health-keeping practices on a daily basis. Finally, the article outlines the host of feelings that motivate China’s senior citizens’ active participation in the regimes of healthy living, as well as a range of everyday ethical positions that emerge from their consumption practices. The article argues that as China has been transformed from a socialist state into a neoliberal regime, questions of how neoliberalism works as both a set of techniques of governing and a set of socio-economic policies in the Chinese context must be answered. In the same way that the biopower is a pertinent question to ask of any modern society, how a neoliberal governmentality and its biopolitics work in the Chinese context is both relevant and timely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses parents' and young people's accounts of family television viewing, produced as part of a research project into responses to sexual content in the media. The analysis identifies how practices of media consumption, such as parents 'discussing' social issues in drama with their children, are gendered and gendering. These in turn contribute to young people's understandings of gender and sexual identities. The article argues that familiar anecdotes, for example, about the 'embarrassment' of communally watching sexual images on television, can be an occasion for challenging or reinforcing family power relations and making identity claims, both at the time of viewing and of retelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]