The Oxford Handbook of Consumption (Oxford Handbooks)

The Oxford Handbook of Consumption consolidates the most innovative recent work conducted by social scientists in the field of consumption studies and identifies some of the most fruitful lines of inquiry for future research. It begins by embedding marketing in its global history, enmeshed in various political, economic, and social sites. From this embedded perspective, the book branches out to examine the rise of consumer culture theory among consumer researchers and parallel innovative developments in sociology and anthropology, with scholarship analyzing the roles that identity, social networks, organizational dynamics, institutions, market devices, materiality, and cultural meanings play across a wide variety of applications, including, but not limited to, brands and branding, the sharing economy, tastes and preferences, credit and credit scoring, consumer surveillance, race and ethnicity, status, family life, well-being, environmental sustainability, social movements, and social inequality. The volume is unique in the attention it gives to consumer research on inequality and the focus it has on consumer credit scores and consumer behaviors that shape life chances. The volume includes essays by many of the key researchers in the field, some of whom have only recently, if at all, crossed the disciplinary lines that this volume has enabled. The contributors have tried to address several key questions: What motivates consumption and what does it mean to be a consumer? What social, technical, and cultural systems integrate and give character to contemporary consumption? What actors, institutions, and understandings organize and govern consumption? And what are the social uses and effects of consumption? Cover The oxford handbook of CONSUMPTION Copyright Contents About the Editors About the Contributors Introduction: Situating Consumers and Consumption Materialities Tastes Accounting for Consumption Rituals, Ceremony, and Race Roadmap Part I: Key Contemporary Themes Part II: Organizing Consumption Part III: Consumer Transactions, Relations, and Devices Part IV: Inequality and Stratification Part V: Practices, Performances, and Identities Part VI: Reformulating Markets Conclusion References Part I: KEY CONTEMPORARY THEMES Chapter 1: The Social Embeddedness of Marketing Marketing and the “Consumer Revolutions” Interlude 1: The Stakeholder Perspective Interlude 2: The Globalization of Markets The Marketing Orientation: From the Nineteenth to Twentieth Century Interlude 3: Consumer Activism and Consumer Behavior Old Problems, New Vistas References Chapter 2: The Sharing Economy Definitions and Scope: What Is the Sharing Economy? Demographics Participants’ Experiences Inequality and the Sharing Economy: Race and Class Regulatory Contestation Conclusion Notes References Chapter 3: Prosumption: Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer Prosumer Capitalism Are Prosumers Really Exploited? The Nature of Capitalism Today A Glimpse into the Future Note References Chapter 4: Consumer Culture Theory A Short History of a Young Subdiscipline (or the Tale of the Rebellious Offspring) Consumer Identity Projects and the Turn to Identity Politics Marketplace Cultures (and the Cultural Drivers of Market Transformation and Emergence) Sociohistorical Patterning of Consumptionand the Turn to “Flat Ontologies” Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies and Consumers’ Interpretive Strategies (and the Social Media-ification of Consumer Culture) The Travails of Institutionalization and Chartering New Trajectories for Consumer Culture Theory References Chapter 5: A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands A Primer on the Politics of Trying to Do Branding Research in US Business Schools A History of the Brand and Brand Thought From Thing to Brand A Dangerous Big Blind Spot While Driving (Theory) The Biggest Problems with Extant Brand Models Not Only Memory Matters Lonely Fictive Dyad The First Generation of Socio-Cultural Models What to Do Now Discussion You Are Invited Acknowledgments References Chapter 6: Relational Work and Consumption Limited Relational Concerns in Consumption Research Relational Work Relational Earmarking and Paying (or Not) for Services Overcoming Uncertainty and Building Trust in Consumer Practices Negotiating Power and Inequality in Consumption Consumption of Taboo Products and Resistance to Commodification Conclusion References Chapter 7: Meaningful Objects and Consumption Defining Consumption and Material Culture Semiotic Approaches and Materiality Meaningful Objects and Objects That Have Meaning Meaningless Objects Conclusion References Chapter 8: Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption Bourdieu and Other Approaches to Aesthetic Consumption Bourdieu’s Model of the Education/Aesthetic Consumption Link Relative Weight of Domestic versus Scholastic Capital The Aesthetic Disposition as a (More or Less) Transposable Scheme Bourdieu’s Model of Aesthetic Consumption and “Omnivorousness” Broader Implications for Studies of Cultural Consumption Aestheticism in Everyday Consumption Choices References Part II: ORGANIZING CONSUMPTION Chapter 9: Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption Thinking through Metaphor A Bird’s Eye View of Legitimation The Gravitational Pull of Taste Conclusion Note References Chapter 10: Cultural Markets and Consecration Cultural Markets and Symbolic Inequalities Globalization Digitalization Conclusion Appendix: Data Sources Notes References Chapter 11: Emotions in Consumer Studies The Consumer: Both Rational and Emotional The Emotionalization of Consumers and Commodities Early Psychology of Advertising: “Esthetic Feeling” and Memory The Consumer and Emotions The Semiotics of Consumption Emotional Performativity Emodities: Emotions as Commodities Conclusion References Chapter 12: Young People and Consumption: The Changing Nature of Youth Consumption in an Era of Uncertainty and Digital Experience A Short History of Young People and Consumption Young People and Consumer Lifestyles Young People and Social Identity Young People as Digital Consumers Conclusion References Chapter 13: Consumption as Production: Data and the Reproduction of Capitalist Relations Anticipations A Route from Marx The Coloniality of Contemporary Consumption Conclusion Notes References Part III: CONSUMER TRANSACTIONS, RELATIONS, AND DEVICES Chapter 14: Household Finances and Credit Visibility The Core Propositions Social Networks and Consumer Behavior Taking on More Credit Card Debt Looking for Financial Services Asset-Building Capacity Cross-Household Insurance Relational Accounting and Rituals in the Life Course Consumer Credit Scores and Life Chances Conclusion Note References Chapter 15: The Cultivation of Market Behaviors and Economic Decisions: Calculation, Qualculation, and Calqulation Revisited Shaping Calculation: The Contribution of Price Tags Price Setting Price Hanging Price Mending Staging Qualculation: The Contribution of “Buridan-Like” Advertisements The Pervasiveness of the Buridan’s Donkey on Contemporary Markets The Economic Qualculation of the Consumer The Overlapping of Calculation and Qualculation Developing Calqulation: The Examples of Shopping Carts and (Smart)phones Shopping Trolley and Family Shopping Cell Phone Smartphone Conclusion Note References Chapter 16: Consumer Transactions: Consumer Banking Organizing Transactions Consumer Financial Needs Intermediation: Connecting or Transforming Needs Mediating Money Inequalities: Exclusions from and within Formal Banking The Financialization of Everyday Life Relational Work in Financing the One Percent: Long-Reaching Closed Circuits Disintermediation: Breaking Down Large Circuits Algorithmic Inequality: What Is New Forms of Money, Circuits of Commerce Private Money and Closed Circuits Payment Systems Conclusion References Chapter 17: Consumer Credit Surveillance The Rise of Consumer Surveillance Regulation in Credit Information Gathering Commensuration of Consumer Credit Histories and the Rise of Predictive Algorithms Expansion of the Use of Credit Scores as a Proxy for Character Expansion of Data That Go into the Score Social Consequences and New Governmentality China’s Emerging Social Credit System Conclusion Notes References Part IV: INEQUALITY AND STRATIFICATION Chapter 18: Omnivorousness, Distinction, or Both? Studies of Omnivorousness and Distinction: What We Know Gaps, Puzzles, and Questions How to “Measure” and Study Omnivorousness Should We Measure Taste, Knowledge, and/or Practices? Should the Measurement of Omnivorousness Focus on Genres or on Artists and Artworks? Should the Measurement of Omnivorousness Focus on Boundary Crossing (Highbrow versus Lowbrow) or the Number of Genres a Person Consumes? Should the Classification of Items Be Determined A Priori or Constructed from the Data? How Do Different Methods and Data Sources Privilege Different Kinds of Knowledge about Omnivorousness? Who Is an Omnivore, and Why Omnivorousness? Omnivorous Democratization and Cultural Appropriation Why Cultural Consumption Matters for Our Understandings of Inequality Note References Chapter 19: The Development of Ethnoracial Market Segments: Lessons from the US Latino Media Market Race and Racism in Ethnoracial Markets Phase One: The Early Development of Latino Broadcast Media Phase Two: Racial Politics, State Intervention, and Latino Media Development The Role of Activists: Data Lobbying State Intervention: Census Data Spinning Latino Data Continued Activist Pressure Phase 3: Expansion and Globalization Corporate Market Interest and Consolidation Conclusion Notes References Chapter 20: Race and Consumer Inequality Criminal Treatment: Dr. David Dao by United Airlines Overt Denial: Dyne Suh and Airbnb Overt Denial: The Sistahs of Reading Edge Book Club by the Napa Valley Wine Train Subtle Degradation Responding to Degradation, or Not Conclusion References Chapter 21: Fashion and Its Gendered Agendas The Historical Roots of Fashion as Frivolity Fashion as Process and Status Dynamic Fashion as Collective Decision Making Fashion as Cultural Production Fashion as Identity and Desire An Empirical Case: Working “Girls” in Fashion’s Front and Backstage References Chapter 22: Gentrification and Urban Inequality Gentrification’s New “Pioneers” “Food Mirages” Advanced Gentrification’s Mobility Conclusion References Chapter 23: Branding National Identity in an Unequal World Why Market Intermediaries? From the Information Economy to the Sociology of Worth The Uneven Geography of the Location Consulting Industry Evaluating the Transnational Promotional Class Networks Rankings Balancing Culture and Economy Conclusion Notes References Part V: PRACTICES, PERFORMANCES, AND IDENTITIES Chapter 24: Subcultures and Consumption Getting In: The Realities of Ethnographic Entry Taking It to the Streets: Ethnography of a Subculture in the Marketplace Consumer Subcultures and Markets Subcultures of Consumption and Their Macro-Cultural Contexts Conceptualizing Subcultures and Consumption Subculture Remains Relevant References Chapter 25: Taste, Sensation, and Skill in the Sociology of Consumption Taste and the Sociology of Consumption The Sense of Taste Skill: Putting Taste to the Test Conclusion Notes References Chapter 26: Food Tastes Variation in the Meaning and Experience of Food Habitus and Identity Making the Edible Methods Materiality Taste versus Consumption Beverages Get Off Your High Horse: Eliminating the False “We” from Writing about Taste Conclusion Notes References Chapter 27: Gender as a Critical Perspective in Marketing Practice Gender Fails Consumption Scholarship, Education, and Practice Consumer Behavior Curriculum: The Epicenter of the Problem Scholarship—Same Wolf, Different Clothing The Wheel of Marketing Knowledge Example from Management-Gender Gaps in the Workplace Jung as the Foundation of Stereotypes in Advertising Archetypes in Branding/Advertising Evolutionary Psychology in Consumer Research Translating Evolutionary Psychology into Consumer Behavior Textbooks “Consumer Behavior As I See It”—Lane Smith, PhD, Northern University Translating the Curriculuminto Practice Discussion How Do You Disrupt the Wheel? Disruption Point 1: Representation of Gender Knowledge in Key Journals Disruption Point 2: Learn from Practitioners Disruption Point 3: Updating Gender Scholarship in Textbooks Conclusion Note References Chapter 28: Consumer Cities, Scenes, and Ethnic Restaurants A Brief Introduction to the Scenes Perspective Ethnic Neighborhoods, Multicultural Cities, and Amenities Data and Methods Analysis Discussion and Conclusion Notes References Part VI: REFORMULATING MARKETS Chapter 29: Ethical Consumption Defining Ethical Consumption Theoretical Foundations and Major Trends in the Field Citizenship, Social Justice, and Consumption Environmental, Food, Health, and Animal Rights Issues Economic Issues and Labor Neo-liberalization and Market-based Thinking An Ethical Turn Three Emerging Issues in the Field of Ethical Consumption Markets Still Matter Follow the Supply Chains Forget the Facts and Find the Feelings (Emotions) Conclusion References Chapter 30: Affluence, Anti-Consumerism, and the Politics of Consumption The Millennial Contours of Anti-Consumerism A Politics of What? Conclusion References Chapter 31: Linking Environmental Sustainability and Consumption The Environmental and Environmental Justice Movements The Environmental Justice Movement Consumption, the Environment, and Civic Engagement Consumption in “the Resistance” Studying the March for Racial Justice Data and Methods Findings Conclusion References Index This book examines the most pressing questions addressed by consumption studies scholars today. The volume counteracts the tendency towards disciplinary myopia as it engages scholars from around the world drawing on sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, consumption studies, and marketing. The volume's thirty-one chapters are organized around six themes, facilitating cross-disciplinary exploration. The volume covers consumer transactions and credit scoring as important drivers of consumer behaviors, race and ethnicity and consumer inequality, brands and branding, the embeddedness of marketing, consumer culture theory, the sharing economy, ethical consumption, environmental sustainability, and variations in urban scenes where consumption thrives