The Oxford Handbook of Consumption 9780190695583, 0190695587

Citation preview

t h e ox f o r d h a n d b o o k o f

C ONSU M P T ION

the oxford handbook of

CONSUMPTION Edited by

FREDERICK F. WHERRY and

IAN WOODWARD

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wherry, Frederick F., editor. | Woodward, Ian (Sociologist), editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of consumption / edited by Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward. Description: New York, NY: Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019006872 | ISBN 9780190695583 (hardcover: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Consumption (Economics) | Consumers. | Consumer behavior. Classification: LCC HC79.C6 O938 2019 | DDC 339.4/7—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006872 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents

About the Editorsix About the Contributorsxi

Introduction: Situating Consumers and Consumption

1

Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward

PA RT I   K E Y C ON T E M P OR A RY T H E M E S 1. The Social Embeddedness of Marketing

27

Stefan Schwarzkopf

2. The Sharing Economy

51

Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy

3. Prosumption: Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer

75

George Ritzer

4. Consumer Culture Theory

95

Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson

5. A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands

127

Thomas Clayton Gibson O’Guinn, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr., and Erika L. Paulson

6. Relational Work and Consumption

151

Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson

7. Meaningful Objects and Consumption

167

Sophie Woodward

8. Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption Omar Lizardo

179

vi   contents

PA RT I I   ORG A N I Z I N G C ON SUM P T ION 9. Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption

197

Jennifer Smith Maguire

10. Cultural Markets and Consecration

215

Marc Verboord

11. Emotions in Consumer Studies

239

Yaara Benger Alaluf and Eva Illouz

12. Young People and Consumption: The Changing Nature of Youth Consumption in an Era of Uncertainty and Digital Experience

253

Konstantinos Theodoridis and Steven Miles

13. Consumption as Production: Data and the Reproduction of Capitalist Relations

269

Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry

PA RT I I I   C ON SUM E R T R A N S AC T ION S , R E L AT ION S , A N D DE V IC E S 14. Household Finances and Credit Visibility

283

Frederick F. Wherry

15. The Cultivation of Market Behaviors and Economic Decisions: Calculation, Qualculation, and Calqulation Revisited

301

Franck Cochoy

16. Consumer Transactions: Consumer Banking

321

Zsuzsanna Vargha

17. Consumer Credit Surveillance

343

Alya Guseva and Akos Rona-Tas

PA RT I V   I N E QUA L I T Y A N D S T R AT I F IC AT ION 18. Omnivorousness, Distinction, or Both?

361

Josée Johnston, Shyon Baumann, and Merin Oleschuk

19. The Development of Ethnoracial Market Segments: Lessons from the US Latino Media Market G. Cristina Mora

381

contents   vii

20. Race and Consumer Inequality

397

Geraldine Rosa Henderson and Kathy Zhang

21. Fashion and Its Gendered Agendas

413

Ashley Mears

22. Gentrification and Urban Inequality

427

Richard E. Ocejo

23. Branding National Identity in an Unequal World

439

Melissa Aronczyk

PA RT V   P R AC T IC E S , P E R F OR M A N C E S , A N D   I DE N T I T I E S 24. Subcultures and Consumption

457

John W. Schouten

25. Taste, Sensation, and Skill in the Sociology of Consumption

473

David Wright

26. Food Tastes

487

Jennifer A. Jordan

27. Gender as a Critical Perspective in Marketing Practice

501

Susan Dobscha and Gry Høngsmark Knudsen

28. Consumer Cities, Scenes, and Ethnic Restaurants

521

Daniel Silver and Terry Nichols Clark

PA RT V I   R E F OR M U L AT I N G M A R K E T S 29. Ethical Consumption

543

Keith R. Brown

30. Affluence, Anti-Consumerism, and the Politics of Consumption

561

Kim Humphery

31. Linking Environmental Sustainability and Consumption

577

Amanda M. Dewey and Dana R. Fisher

Index

593

About the Editors

Frederick F. Wherry is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and Director of the Dignity and Debt Network. He served as the 2018 President of the Social Science History Association and past Chair of both the Economic Sociology and the Consumers and Consumption Sections of the American Sociological Association. He is coauthor of Credit Where It’s Due: Rethinking Financial Citizenship, coeditor of Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works, editor of the four-volume SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society, and the author or editor of six other books or volumes. He has served in an advisory capacity to the Boston Federal Reserve and the Lloyds Banking Group Center for Responsible Business. Ian Woodward earned his PhD in sociology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is Professor in the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark. A cultural sociologist, he has written extensively about consumption and material cultures, and everyday cosmopolitan ethics. His authored and coauthored books include The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism (2009), Understanding Material Culture (2007), Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age (2015), and Labels: Making Independent Music (2019).

About the Contributors

Eric J. Arnould is Visiting Professor of Marketing at Aalto University Business School. He has pursued a career in applied social science since 1974. The University of Arizona awarded him a PhD in anthropology in 1982. Aalto awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2016. Eric’s research on consumer culture, cultural marketing strategy, qualitative research methods, services, and development appears in major social science and managerial periodicals and books. Melissa Aronczyk is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Branding the Nation: The Business of National Identity (2013) and the coeditor of Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture. Recent articles appear in New Media & Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Enterprise & Society. She is currently writing a critical history of the public relations industry. Nina Bandelj is Professor of Sociology, Equity Advisor to Dean in Social Sciences, and Co-Director of Center for Organizational Research at the University of California, Irvine. Her research on cultural, political, and emotional dimensions of economy, globalization, and postsocialism has been published in American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Social Forces, among others. She is the (co)author or (co)editor of six books, most recently of Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works (with Frederick Wherry and Viviana Zelizer, 2017). Bandelj serves as one of the editors of Socio-Economic Review, is past Chair of Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), and on Executive Councils of the ASA, Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics, and RC09 of the International Sociological Association. She received her PhD from Princeton University and was a Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and the European University Institute in Florence. Shyon Baumann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He specializes in the sociology of culture. He investigates the concepts of legitimation, evaluation, classification, framing, and distinction, and has empirically investigated these concepts in Hollywood cinema, advertising imagery and television commercials, gourmet food, and news media. With Josée Johnston, he is at work on a project on the meat industry, studying both consumers’ attitudes and practices regarding meat eating and how some small-scale meat producers work outside the conventional (industrial) meat industry. Yaara Benger Alaluf is a postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Her research focuses on the

xii   About the Contributors entanglement of emotional and economic discourses and practices from the nineteenth century onward and their moral implications. She is particularly interested in the sociology and history of expert knowledge systems of emotions and their role in shaping subjectivities and repertoires of self-monitoring and self-improvement. She has published on the evolution of the consumer as an emotional agent, the emotional economy of holidaymaking, and the relation between therapeutic culture and economic rationalization. Keith R. Brown is Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University. His research and teaching interests include fair trade, ethical consumption, globalization, culture, morality in markets, and ethnographic methods. He is the author of Buying into Fair Trade: Culture, Morality and Consumption (NYU Press, 2013). Mehmet Cansoy is Visiting Assistant Professor at Fairfield University and received his PhD Candidate in Sociology at Boston College. His research focuses on economic inequality and technological change, particularly the “sharing economy” and how existing inequalities are reproduced in novel contexts. Terry Nichols Clark is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, and he has taught at Columbia, H ­ arvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has published some forty books. He coordinates the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, surveying 1,200 cities in the United States and more in thirty-eight other countries. www.faui.org and the Scenes Project which is analyzing neighborhood cultural scenes as drivers of urban development. http://www.tnc-newsletter.blogspot.com/. The City as an Entertainment Machine presents several dozen propositions specifying distinct patterns of consumption. Franck Cochoy is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and a researcher at the LISST-CNRS. He works in the field of economic sociology, with a focus on the technical devices that frame or equip consumer behavior, such as packaging, self-service, shopping carts, price tags, and so on. His recent books include On the Origins of Self-Service (Routledge, 2015) and On Curiosity, the Art of Market Seduction (Mattering Press, 2016). He also recently published articles in Economy and Society, Organization, Mobilities, and Environment and Planning A. Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (with Ulises A. Mejias, Stanford, 2019), The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity, 2012), and Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism (SAGE, 2010). He was joint coordinating lead author of the chapter on media and communications in the report by the International Panel on Social Progress: https://www.ipsp.org. Amanda  M.  Dewey is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the ­University of Maryland and a Graduate Fellow in the Program for Society and the

About the Contributors   xiii ­ nvironment. Her research interests include environmental attitudes and values, identity, E and social movements. She has also worked as a member of the Climate Constituencies Project research team studying climate and clean energy policy networks. Susan Dobscha is Professor of Marketing at Bentley University. She employs a critical lens to illuminate the ways consumption impacts and reflects society. Her work appears in Harvard Business Review, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and Journal of Business Ethics. Recently, she edited a book on death and consumption and a handbook for gender in marketing. Dana R. Fisher is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland.  Her research focuses on environmental policy, civic participation, and activism more broadly. She has written extensively on climate politics, including in her first book: National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). In addition to six books, she has also published her work in numerous peer-reviewed journals.  Fisher is currently leading the Climate Constituencies Project, which ­studies ­climate and clean energy policy networks at the US federal and subnational levels and is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and she has written American Resistance (in press), which analyzes the movement to resist the Trump administration and its agenda. Christopher W. Gibson is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and holds an MA in Global Studies from the University of California–Santa Barbara. His current research is situated within economic sociology and environmental sociology, with a focus on water policy and public agencies. He is also interested in globalization and inequality, and has researched social change in the Middle East and North Africa. His dissertation, supported by UCI’s Center for Organizational Research, analyzes the market orientations of public municipal water districts in the arid American West, seeking to understand society’s complex relationship with the environment through institutional analysis. Alya Guseva is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University and has researched consumer finance, reproductive markets, and household economies. Her work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, Social Science Research, and Journal of Family Issues. She is the author and coauthor of two books on emerging credit card markets in the postcommunist region: Into the Red and Plastic Money (with Akos Rona-Tas), both with Stanford University Press. She is currently pursuing a project on markets for commercial surrogacy in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Geraldine Rosa Henderson is the author of Consumer Equality: Race and the American Marketplace. She is Professor of Marketing in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. She was previously the Chairperson and Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and the Associate Research Director for The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (CUEED) at the Rutgers Business

xiv   About the Contributors School Newark/New Brunswick at Rutgers University. Her primary areas of research include global marketplace diversity and inclusion, health disparities, public policy, consumption communities, and consumer networks (both cognitive and social). She has served on the Board of Directors for the American Marketing Association, the National Black MBA Association, and the National Society of Black Engineers. She also serves or has served in an editorial or leadership capacity for the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and the Journal of Advertising. She has published over eighty articles, books, or book chapters. She worked for several years in industry for IBM in relationship marketing (specializing in the health care, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries) and briefly in brand management at Kraft Foods. Gry Høngsmark Knudsen is Associate Professor of Digital Marketing and Consumer Culture in the Department of Marketing and Management and Member of the Central Equality Committee and the Social Science Equality Committee at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research centers on the interrelation between digitalization, marketing texts, and consumer identities. She is on the board of the Association of Danish Media Researchers. She previously served as Chair of the Association of Gender Research in Denmark. She is currently involved in a research project with LEGO, developing anonymization processes when analyzing digital data in order to protect consumers. Kim Humphery is Associate Professor of History and Social Theory in the School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne. Much of her research over the past two decades has focused on the history, theory, and politics of consumption and, more recently, on anti-consumerism, ethical consumption, and social enterprise. Her publications include Shelf Life: Supermarkets and the Changing Cultures of Consumption (Cambridge University Press, 1998, 2011) and Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West (Polity, 2010). Eva Illouz is Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Paris’s School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She served as President of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem from 2012 to 2015. Her research interests include the sociology of culture, sociology of emotions, and the sociology of capitalism. Illouz is the author of eighty articles and book chapters and ten books translated into seventeen languages, which have received international awards in sociology and philosophy. Her books include Emotions as Commodities: Capitalism, Consumption and Authenticity (ed.); Why Love Hurts; and Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Josée Johnston is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is the coauthor of Foodies (2nd ed., 2015) with Shyon Baumann, as well as Food and Femininity (2015) with Kate Cairns. She has published work in venues including Agriculture and Human Values, American Journal of Sociology, Food Culture and Society, Geoforum, Gender & Society, Signs, and Theory and Society. Her research uses food as a lens for investigating questions relating to consumer culture, ethical food consumption, gender

About the Contributors   xv politics, food sustainability, and inequality. Johnston’s most recent research investigates the cultural politics of meat consumption. Jennifer  A.  Jordan is Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2006), Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods  (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and a book in progress,  Before Craft Beer: Lost Landscapes of Forgotten Hops (University of Chicago Press). Omar Lizardo is Professor and LeRoy Neiman Term Chair in Sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles. He previously served on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame after completing his PhD at the University of Arizona. His research deals with various topics at the intersection of cultural sociology, stratification, social theory, and theory of action. He has published widely on the sociology of taste, cultural capital theory, and processes of distinction and symbolic exclusion. He is currently a member of the editorial advisory board of more than six journals and, with Rory McVeigh and Sarah Mustillo, coeditor of American Sociological Review. He was the recipient of the 2013 Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting from the American Sociological Association Section on Theory, and he was the winner of the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article from the American Sociological Association Section on Culture. Ashley Mears is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University. She researches and teaches courses on gender, culture, and economic life. She is the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (University of California Press, 2011).  Her forthcoming book (Princeton University Press) is an economic anthropology of consumption among the economic elite. Her articles appear in American Sociological Review, Poetics, and Sociological Theory, and she has written for The New York Times, ELLE, and The Week. She has held visiting scholar positions at the University of Amsterdam, Cambridge University, and Central European University, and she is the past-Chair of the Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological  Association. She  received her PhD from New York University.   Ulises A. Mejias is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Institute for Global Engagement at the State University of New York at Oswego. He is a media scholar whose work encompasses critical Internet studies, philosophy and sociology of technology, and political economy of digital media. He is the author of The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (with Nick Couldry, Stanford, 2019), Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and, with N. Vokuev, of “Disinformation and the Media: The Case of Russia and Ukraine” (Media, Culture and Society, 2017). He is also the principal investigator in the Algorithm Observatory project. Steven Miles is Professor of Sociology, Head of the Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Centre (PAHC), and former Head of the Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences

xvi   About the Contributors at the Manchester Metropolitan University. His work focuses on the impact of ­consumption on the everyday life of individuals. Steven is Editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture and author of Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World (2000), Social Theory in the Real World (2001), and Consumerism as a Way of Life (1998). G. Cristina Mora  is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies (by courtesy) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Making Hispanics (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and her articles have appeared in the American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Latino Studies, the Du Bois Review, and elsewhere. Albert M. Muñiz, Jr., is Professor of Marketing at DePaul University. He has researched and published on brands, branding, and consumption collectives for over two decades. His recent publications include “Marketing Artistic Careers: Pablo Picasso as Brand Manager,” with Toby Norris and Gary Alan Fine, in the European Journal of Marketing; “Coconstructing Institutions One Brick at a Time: Appropriation and Deliberation on LEGO Ideas,” with Marie Taillard, in The Routledge Companion to Consumer Behavior; and “The Cocreation of Brands,” with Hope Jensen Schau and Melissa Archpru Akaka, in the SAGE Handbook of Service-Dominant Logic. Professor Muñiz received his BS, MS, and PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Richard E. Ocejo is Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2017) and Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City (Princeton University Press, 2014). His work has appeared in such journals as City & Community, Poetics, and Ethnography. He is also the editor of Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge, 2012), and a co-Book Editor at City & Community. He is Chair-Elect of the Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological Association. Thomas Clayton Gibson O’Guinn is the Irwin Maier Distinguished Chair in Business, Department of Marketing Chair, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. He is the recipient of several research awards, and he is a consumer sociologist known for his work in the consumption patterns of immigrants, the massmediated construction of consumer reality, compulsive buying, brand community, social class in consumption contexts, political-business interaction, purchased community and neighborhood, and institutional influence in the social construction of brands. His work is not born of any particular methodology; he has sometimes worked the borders of sociology and social psychology. Recent publications of note have been published in the Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Consumer Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Merin Oleschuk is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. She studies how intersecting inequalities shape consumers’ food habits alongside how disparate

About the Contributors   xvii methodological tools can be applied to understand them. Her dissertation focuses on family meals and explores the relationship between values, meanings, and practices related to home cooking alongside their implications for the health behaviors of families. Erika L. Paulson received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin School of Business, where her research focused on the intersection of social class, social disruption, consumption, and marketing. George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he was named Distinguished-Scholar Teacher and received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University and the Robin William Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. He has chaired four sections of the American Sociological Association—Theoretical Sociology, Organizations and Occupations, Global and Transnational Sociology, and the History of Sociology. He has published many articles, but he is best known for his monographs dealing with sociological theory, consumption, and globalization. The McDonaldization of Society (9th ed., forthcoming, 2018) has been his most widely read and influential work. There are over a dozen translations of that book and overall his work has been translated into over twenty languages. Most of his writing over the last decade has been in the form of often-cited articles and essays on prosumption. Akos Rona-Tas is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is also founding faculty of the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. His books are The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: Demise of Communism and Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary (Michigan University Press) and Plastic Money: Constructing Markets for Credit Cards in Eight Postcommunist Countries, coauthored with Alya Guseva (Stanford University Press).  He has published articles on the postcommunist transition, on small entrepreneurs, consumer credit, and payment card markets in journals, including the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Socio-Economic Review, Social Science Research, Research on Sociology of Organizations, Journal of Comparative Economics, Research in the Sociology of Work, Historical Social Research, and various chapters in edited volumes. Juliet B. Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. She conducts research in the areas of consumption, economic sociology, and environmental sociology. She is the author of numerous books, including The Overworked American (Basic Books 1992), The Overspent American (Basic Books, 1997), and True Wealth (Penguin, 2011). She is currently working on a book about the “sharing economy.” John W. Schouten is Canada Research Chair in Social Enterprise at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research falls generally within the realm of consumer culture, with key contributions to theory on consumer identity projects, consumer collectives, market emergence and dynamics, and alternative methods of research. He has recently turned his efforts to understanding social enterprise and facilitating noncorporate solutions to economic resilience, community well-being, and environmental

xviii   About the Contributors sustainability. Thanks to Google Scholar™, he feels no need to say more about his research and wishes, instead, to invite you to seek out his poetry and fiction. Stefan Schwarzkopf is Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School and specializes in historical and sociological approaches to the study of the interactions between markets and organizations. He studied history, history of science, and anthropology and has a PhD in Modern History from Birkbeck College, University of London. Among his publications are an edited volume on postwar motivation research and the consumer researcher Ernest Dichter. His work has been published in Theory, Culture & Society, Marketing Theory, Organization, Management & Organizational History, BioSocieties, Journal of Macromarketing, and Business History. Daniel Silver is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His research areas are social theory, cities, culture, and cultural policy. He is co-editor of The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy and author of Scenescapes: how qualities of place shape social life. His current research examines the role of arts and culture in city politics, economics, and residential patterns; the enduring political orders of cities; the use of diagrams and figures in social theory; the evolution of urban forms; the meaning and reception of Georg Simmel’s ideas; and the definition and evolution of classics and canons in sociological theory. Additionally, he was editor and co-author of reports on the cultural sectors in Toronto and Chicago: From the Ground Up: Growing Toronto’s Creative Sector, Redefining Public Art in Toronto, and Chicago: Music City. Jennifer Smith Maguire is Professor of Cultural Production and Consumption in the Sheffield Business School at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research focuses on the construction of markets, tastes, and value, with special attention to the role of cultural intermediaries and representations in shaping notions of cultural legitimacy. She has published widely on the cultural field of fine wine, is the editor of Food Practices and Social Inequality (Routledge, 2018), and coeditor of The Cultural Intermediaries Reader (SAGE, 2014). Konstantinos Theodoridis is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research explores young people’s identities and the changing nature of consumption as a social and cultural phenomenon through the lens of digital space and social media. Craig J. Thompson is Churchill Professor of Marketing at the University of WisconsinMadison. Craig’s research addresses the socio-cultural shaping of consumption practices, the gendering of consumer culture, and the dynamics of power and resistance that are enacted through the marketplace. He is coauthor of The Phenomenology of Everyday Life and coeditor of Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude: Case Studies of the New Economy and Consumer Culture Theory. Craig is also a Fellow of the Association of Consumer Research. Zsuzsanna Vargha is Associate Professor in the Department of Management Control at ESCP Europe Business School in Paris. She was previously at the University of Leicester.

About the Contributors   xix She received her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University, and she completed postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, then as LSE Fellow in Accounting at the London School of Economics. Zsuzsanna was Editor of Economic Sociology: The European Electronic Newsletter (2015–2016). Zsuzsanna’s research interests are in the social studies of finance and accounting, and valuation studies, on topics of digital technologies in financial services, management control of selling and advice, mortgage crises and financial regulation, and personalization in consumer markets. Marc Verboord is Associate professor in the Department of Media & Communication in the Erasmus School of History, Culture, and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research is situated at the crossroads of cultural sociology, communication science, and media studies and addresses questions on cultural consumption, cultural globalization, and the impact of new media on cultural evaluation. He has published in leading sociological and communication journals, including American Sociological Review, Poetics, American Behavioral Scientist, European Sociological Review, Communication Research, and New Media & Society. Since January 2015, he is coeditor of Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, Media and the Arts. Sophie Woodward is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. She researches material culture, everyday lives, and consumption and is currently researching Dormant Things in domestic spaces. She is the author of four books, including Why Women Wear What They Wear and Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary (with D. Miller). She is currently working on a book on “Material Methods” for SAGE. David Wright is Associate Professor in the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. His research interests include taste, cultural policy, and popular culture. He is the author of Understanding Cultural Taste (Palgrave, 2015) and coauthor of Culture, Class Distinction (Routledge, 2009). Kathy Zhang is a recipient of the four-year Loyola Academic Scholarship and is also a member of Sigma Iota Rho Honor Society for International Studies. Kathy has been accepted into Loyola’s accelerated Masters of Public Health program, where she will be graduating with her Masters of Public Health: Health Policy in May 2020.

I n troduction Situating Consumers and Consumption Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward

When consumption began to be studied as a scientific enterprise about a century ago, scholars aimed to systematically understand its processes and outcomes in order to improve efficiency (lessening waste) and to promote moral uplift (catalyzing sobriety, discipline, and thrift). The social engineering of consumption was not merely in the ­service of selling more goods more efficiently, but it was also a way to address widespread social ills. In The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), Frederick Winslow Taylor explained that science could help discipline workers and equip employers in the pursuit of the moral good. The elimination of waste was a moral imperative as it involved the taming of the temptation to shirk one’s responsibility to an employer, to one’s family, to one’s local community, and to the national commons. There was too much at stake, Taylor (1911:5) argued, quoting President Theodore Roosevelt: “We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight.” With similar zeal, Seldon Martin published “The Scientific Study of Marketing” in 1915 in the Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science. Unlike Taylor, however, Martin focused his attention on legitimizing (as scientific) the study of marketing, realizing that the process of selling goods would not be as legible as that of production, where inputs and outputs could be tracked on a factory floor. To study marketing and consumption as a social process was to explore how and why variations exist when consumers encounter goods and services, how consumers engaged in and kept track of their purchases, and what role those purchases and their consumption played across the consumer’s social ties as well as outside of them. In more colloquial terms, Martin explained, “Greeting the customer, learning his wants, finding the shoe, fitting the shoe, closing the sale, starting the accounting on the sale, and the delivery of the goods are a whole series of operations more complex than skiving a shank or nailing a lift” (Martin 1915:80). Just as the Hawthorne factory studies would demonstrate how the intensity of light could affect worker productivity (Mayo 1933), similar questions

2   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward would be asked about the effects of light and color on consumer activities (William Leach 1984), but questions of consumption would have to go beyond these input-output models in order to encompass the dynamics of delivery, the constraints and opportunities generated from ongoing social interactions, and the stability of cultural meanings which shaped and gave force to consumption. The productivist mode of analysis had to give way, the historian Frank Trentmann argued, so that consumption could “step out of the shadow of production,” enabling “homo consumens [to] take the place of homo faber” (Trentmann 2012:4). Around the time of the fin-de-siècle, and after Marx’s treatise on capitalism that put the commodity at the center of processes of alienation and appropriation, important formative texts on culture and consumption—broadly conceived—came to prominence. Simmel’s classical essays on fashion, style, adornment, the metropolis, and a range of everyday settings and practices were published (Frisby 1985, 1992). Though perhaps not classifiable as consumption studies in the terms we know it today, Simmel’s contribution irrevocably placed the psychosocial elements of thingness, styles, and the social relations of consumption at the center of cultural approaches to the social. Later in 1899, Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1973) dissected the practices and norms of pecuniary value, waste, luxury, and status. Its success in the field was also something of a curse, as its suggestion that status and pecuniary value dominated the consumer mindset later became something of a default explanation for consumer society and consumerist outlooks. Commodities and things gave way to the psychological through the latter half of the twentieth century, in particular. According to Francesco Nicosia and Robert Mayer (1976), most of the articles published in such venues as The Journal of Consumer Research, the flagship journal of the Association of Consumer Research, focused on psychological approaches to consumption and consumer behavior, largely ignoring the social and organizational contexts in which they took place. Nicosia and Mayer argued that researchers should look for systematic variation in consumer behavior by virtue of the institutions shaping those behaviors. In short, the cultural values and taken-for-granted practices found in workplaces, schools, and religious institutions shaped norms and consumption activities. Moreover, consumption differed in households when compared with other contexts such as restaurants, department stores, and sports arenas. Consumption research, they argued, should extend to the social, asking three key questions: 1. What are the institutional arrangements—that is, the social organization—of ­consumption activities? 2. How do cultural values relate to the social organization of consumption activities? 3. How do changes in a society’s [or a group’s] consumption activities relate to broader social change in cultural values and nonconsumptional institutions, norms, and activities (Nicosia and Mayer 1976:69)? Arguably, the first two questions have taken most of the attention of consumption scholars working in or near the sociological tradition. By contrast, a number of social

Introduction   3 scientists studying institutions and norms see their contribution to studies of globalization or inequality rather than to consumption per se. They saw themselves as “behavioral scientists who just happen[ed] to be using a consumer context to investigate general principles of [group] behavior” (Folkes 2002:1). Consequently, the contributions that the wide range of consumption-related research make to the consumption literature are hard to frame, sometimes making it difficult to specify how new consumption-related research adds to existing knowledge (Campbell 2017). Since the Nicosia and Meyer critique, the field has widened its purview. What we call “consumption studies” is today distributed across the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, business and marketing studies, and geography. Within the last three decades, reflecting trends within social and cultural theory more broadly, consumption studies has been susceptible to the influence of a number of theoretical turns that are periodically established by researchers and their followers, as innovations in the field move researchers in one or other directions, for example, the “cultural turn,” “material turn,” and the “turn to practices.” This reflects the discipline’s inclination to draw from major new currents in social and cultural theory, and also the tendency of researchers within consumption studies to follow emergent or cutting-edge intellectual trends developed within cognate, innovative research fields. Interpreted positively, this reflects a process of maturation in the field and its growing capacity to accommodate a plurality of approaches and innovations. More critically, it means that the disciplinary core within some sub-fields of consumption studies is prone to periodic shifts as established theoretical approaches are revised and innovations adopted. Alan Warde argued that consumption studies originated in part due to the material successes of capitalist production, as “social scientists turned their attention to consumption in response to unprecedented material abundance during the Long Boom of the twentieth century” (Warde 2014:81). Part of their interest was directed to understanding the social and cultural conditions of consumption, and the effects of consumption on individuals and social relations. Consequently, in the sociological tradition and arguably also in the social and cultural sciences more broadly, research perspectives have often originated from a critical consideration of “consumerism” and “consumer culture”— rather than “consumption”—and have therefore been influenced by understandings that seek to position macro-level forces or the social construction of consumerism as the most persuasive arena of theoretical explanation. In part, this might reflect a failure to analytically distinguish between these related categories of consumption, infused as they are with moral overtones and differing analytic demands. As the “opposite of production” (Baudrillard 1975), consumption was framed through a generalizing lens that drew from existing economic and macro categories and models of society and social action (Warde 2014). Games of status played a significant role, and therefore consumption was predominantly equated either with the communication of social and elite status (Simmel 1957; Veblen 1973) or characterized as a practice of delusional self-alienation (Fromm 1955, 1976; Marcuse 1964). Seen in this context, influential twentieth-century studies in the critical tradition sit alongside the late twentieth-century postmodern account (Jameson 1991; Lyotard 1988) in emphasizing consumption using grand theories of large-scale social change. While we are clear that the two approaches are predicated on

4   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward divergent theories of consumption practice and its implications, in locating c­ onsumption through non–empirically based social theory rather than developing middle-range propositions about consumption through sociocultural practices and empirically validated contexts, they ultimately suggested a similarly one-dimensional view of consumer practice. The high-modern critique of consumerist ideology has its lineage in twentiethcentury varieties of critical thought derived from Marx, and it notably includes Horkheimer and Adorno, Lukács, and Marcuse. In general, such theoretical positions tended to view the consumer as “nothing but” exploited and alienated, stupefied by cultural objects, robbed of meaningful social relationships, and suffering from decay in human creativity and authenticity. In this account, consumption is not understood on its own terms, let alone contextualized within the sphere of culture outside of the totalizing category of ideology. This “nothing but” view, according to Viviana Zelizer, is misguided. It derived from an understanding of the marketplace as necessarily separate and hostile from authentic social engagement. These were “twin ideas” of spheres of activity that were and should remain separate from one another. Either people are engaged in meaningful sharing or consumers are duped into meaningless consumption. Zelizer characterized these perspectives as discernible in two groups of scholars but she adds a third to the mix. A first group, the most numerous, have long proposed the twin ideas of “separate spheres and hostile worlds”: distinct arenas for economic activity and intimate relations, with inevitable contamination and disorder resulting when the two spheres come into contact with each other. A second, smaller group has answered “nothingbut”: far from constituting an encounter between two contradictory principles, the mingling of economic activity and intimacy, properly seen, is nothing but another version of normal market activity, nothing but a form of cultural expression, or nothing but an exercise of power. A far smaller third cluster—to which I belong— has replied that both of the first two positions are wrong, that people who blend intimacy and economic activity are actively engaged in constructing and negotiating “Connected Lives.”  (Zelizer 2005b:20–21)

While Zelizer was theorizing consumption and a broad range of economic behaviors as dynamically motivated by ongoing social relations, her European colleagues, using the archetypal postmodern account of the 1980s, tended to theorize consumption as the play of a creative consumer bricoleur, or as an ironic challenge to dominant regimes of symbolic cultural authority. For example, the notion of lifestyle was a particularly central concept in Featherstone’s (1991) formulation of consumer culture, suggesting how people act as symbol processors through the coherent deployment of “economies” of commodity objects whereby “the new heroes of consumer culture make lifestyle a life project and display their individuality and sense of style in the particularity of the assemblage of goods, clothes, practices, experiences, appearance and bodily dispositions they design together into a lifestyle” (Featherstone 1991:86). Such an account, though a necessary intervention and critique in its own right, was sometimes mobilized

Introduction   5 by researchers as a grand theorization of the contemporary zeitgeist rather than an attempt to position consumption as a disaggregated and variegated activity worthy of study in its own right. From the middle of the 1990s, the key commentators on consumption began to argue for more sober, pragmatic research agendas in the field (Campbell 1995; Miller 1995; Warde 1996). In addition, promising actor-centered research began to emerge in sociology and cultural anthropology (Halle 1993; Miles 1996; Miller 1998), in social psychology (Dittmar 1992), and also cultural studies of markets and consumption originating in business faculties (e.g. Belk 1988; Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; Kleine and Kernan 1991; Wallendorf and Arnould 1988). This work was formative in the further development and dissemination of influential work arising in object studies and sociological studies of taste that developed the work of Bourdieu (1984). This reflected a desire on the part of new work in the field to understand consumption through a fresh lens and on its own terms, rather than economistic and psychological models inherited from long-­ standing traditions in social and economic thought. Development within the field of consumption studies can be partly evidenced by changing definitions of consumption itself. This involved moving from defining consumption as a particular moment of use to conceptualizing it as a socioculturally contextualized process of communication, for example, or as part of social rituals or status performances, and, more recently, as practices located within various types of technological networks and financial systems. A straightforward definition of consumption emphasizes the purchase and use of goods or services, noting that the point of expenditure on such items and the instant of their usage constitute the act of consumption as a discrete episode. This understanding of consumption reflects a narrowly utilitarian approach that might be seen as a concrete starting point and sometimes as a valid point of investigation in its own right. More critically, however, these utilitarian approaches rely on the analytic abstraction of consumption processes from their sociocultural and everyday contexts. A range of theoretical and empirical innovations within the field of consumption studies, which surfaced within sociology, as well as having disciplinary expressions within anthropology, history, geography, business, and marketing studies, has established an understanding of consumption as a more widespread process enmeshed in cultural systems of value and valuing. Colin Campbell (1995) added a number of other stages to this basic definition of consumption. Campbell explains that consumption involves not just purchasing or even “expending” a good or service but also selecting it, maintaining it, possibly repairing it, and ultimately, disposing of it in some way. Within each of these stages there are a number of complex subprocesses which consumption studies scholars, and also scholars within aligned multidisciplinary fields like environmental studies, resource studies, and waste and recycling studies, have increasingly paid attention to. Campbell’s definition usefully suggested how consumption is a process over time that fuses practical, emotional, material, and economic factors, rather than merely the moment when a person pays for something over the counter or when she uses it up. This agenda locates consumption

6   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward within both the realm of the imagination involving selection and choice; for example, the selection of goods is sometimes undertaken largely subconsciously or automatically but also based upon various social norms, cultural learning, emotional factors, prejudices, facets of identity, taste or style, and sometimes even irrationalities. Campbell’s definition also suggests a view of consumption as a process incorporating a variety of practices once considered to be outside the strict episode of use or consumption, such as repair or disposal (Gregson 2007). In the last few decades in addition to innovations which are drawn from cultural, affective, embodied, and material turns in the social sciences, researchers have increasingly situated practices of consumption and a consumerist ethic as central for understanding broader social and cultural change. This development has affected how researchers have conceptualized such diverse areas of social change as cultural and economic inequality, urban and spatial development, identity, and cultural belonging. Moreover, researchers embraced more anthropological and cultural approaches, adopting meaning-based and qualitative approaches that tracked not just the ambivalences and striations of consumer action but also the agency of objects and human-object relations. Thus, Daniel Miller’s (1987) definition of consumption centered on the labor of creating meaning from goods in industrial modernity, grounding the abstractions of production and exchange emphasized in structural accounts of consumption and replacing them with the consumer’s search for meaning and the work of making culture through consumptive and object relations: “Consumption as work may be defined as that which translates the object from an alienable to an inalienable condition; that is, from being a symbol of estrangement and price value to being an artefact invested with particular inseparable connotations” (Miller 1987:190). Since the crucial and important field innovations that largely were expressed within British and European social and sociological theory since the 1980s, we observe there has been a parallel, critical de-emphasizing of matters related to identity, lifestyle, and expressive consumption. Ironically, the topics that energized consumption studies in the 1980s and 1990s and provided critical impetus to look meaningfully into consumption practices now themselves became critically interrogated and often deemed lacking in advancing the field’s insights (Warde 2014; Woodward 2012): Was there too much description at the expense of explanation? The terms of such debates have often been expressed in the form of a return to matters of social constraint and socioeconomic distributions, rather than matters of freedom and expressivity (Warde 1994, 1997), and utilizing the theoretical vantage points of diverse key figures such as Jeffrey Alexander, Zygmunt Bauman, Pierre Bourdieu, Paul DiMaggio, Mary Douglas, Anthony Giddens, George Ritzer, Juliet Schor, Alan Warde, Viviana Zelizer, and Sharon Zukin. Finally, researchers have tended to de-emphasize individualist understandings of consumption, whether founded on accounts of social performances of aesthetic distinction or on psychosocial motives such as desire. Rather, drawing substantially from innovations in the work of Bourdieu (1984) around tastes, social reproduction, and cultural capital, researchers have preferred accounts that reveal consumption patterns and preferences to be socioeconomically distributed and striated by sociocultural capitals. Moreover,

Introduction   7 drawing from Zelizer (Zelizer 1989, 1994, 2005b), researchers have turned to the bundles of relationships implicated in consumption to better understand the meanings, motives, and constraints on consumption. Gift giving, Marcus Giesler (2006) reminds us, and other consumer transfers occur across formal rituals and informal acts of care, mixing commercial and noncommercial settings, legal and illegal transfers, and traditional solidarities with autonomously chosen assemblages of social relations. This introduction will offer a strategic rather than an exhaustive review of important clusters of research questions and approaches in studies of consumption. The review begins with materialities and tastes before turning to how consumers account for their consumption decisions and how ritual theory helps us analyze race and consumption. The introduction ends by offering a roadmap across the volume’s sections, explaining how the various chapters cohere.

Materialities Daniel Miller (1995) emphasized materiality to counter the reductionist myth that consumerism was either “good,” celebrating individuality, plurality, or choice; or “bad,” being alienating, exploitative, and relying on a false consciousness. In his anthropological contribution to studies of contemporary consumption, Miller (1987) held consumption to be a complex, multidimensional process that was culturally and socially situated and whose textures were constituted materially though myriad object engagements. Drawing from classical anthropological works, including the structuralist tradition, while also engaging Hegelian theory, Miller conceptualized consumption as involving semiotic, cultural, and material work dedicated to transforming the meaning of economic and commodity relationships. Building on key traditions in social anthropology, especially the work of Douglas and Isherwood (1979) and the structuralist tradition, he suggested a role for objects in generating cultural meanings, in doing social and cultural work through processes of differentiation, objectification, and integration. While Miller’s material culture approach retained some concern for consumer practice, imagination, and ideation—as the foundational studies of consumption had previously emphasized—it focused particular attention on the material component of consumption as “the visible part of culture” (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:44). In doing so, it consolidated a new approach to consumption studies that drew from classical works in anthropological structuralism (Douglas 2002; Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Lévi-Strauss 1963, 1966; Mauss 1990) and social theoretical literatures on commodification and objectification (Baudrillard 1981, 1996; Hegel 1977; Marx 1974) and engaged with the emergent anthropological tradition of object studies (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), paving the way for future research into the materialities of consumption. The field of material culture studies which Miller led in the 1980s and 1990s emphasized symbolism, ritual, and meaning as the basis for defining consumption as a type of materialized cultural interpretation (Woodward, I. 2011). It was also part of the intellectual

8   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward impetus for researchers to consider more diverse approaches to theorizing objects. As Warde (2005) argued, studies in this tradition have often inspired other methodologically reflexive, locally contextualized studies within small cultural groups and by individuals which have demonstrated agency, emotionality, and complexity. Yet a relative weakness in this tradition is that it does little to expose the sociocultural and economic structures that distribute and frame consumption practices or to enmesh them within financial institutions and infrastructures. Furthermore, in emphasizing relatively traditional consumption objects and settings, such as the home (Hurdley 2006; Money 2007; Woodward, I. 2001), or fashion and dress (Woodward, S. 2007; Woodward, S. and Miller 2011), it fell behind in dealing with the types of hybrid, digital objects that researchers in the field of science and technology studies began to study, including materials and surfaces (Drazin and Küchler 2015; de la Fuente 2019). Moreover, consumer researchers were missing an opportunity to engage global, nontraditional sites where public health marketing campaigns in Ghana, for example, depended not only on how HIV/AIDS campaigns were narrated and what symbols were assembled but also on the material qualities of these campaigns (subject to physical decay) and their capacity for what Terence McDonnell (2016) calls cultural entropy. For a decade or more, materiality studies, in various guises and forms, has become a large interdisciplinary field of innovation across the social sciences and humanities. Perhaps most notably within consumption studies the idea of objects and things as “actants,” inspired by ideas of relationality and pragmatics and blended with new ethnography in the work of Latour (2005), has been influential.

Tastes In sociologies of consumption, the fundamental concept which binds individual consumption choices and cultural practices of interpretation to their social uses and effects is that of taste. Taste has, largely since Bourdieu’s systematic theoretical and empirical statements, become the central concept in mainstream consumption studies research. In the early twentieth century, Georges Bataille (1985) wrote that the problem of abundance is crucial to an interpretation of capitalism. Abundance, understood as a profusion of consumer possibilities, styles, and object-signs, is a precondition for the study of consumption and especially studies of socioeconomic variations in consumption habits and portfolios. In an important sense, the sociology of taste owes its existence to this cultural logic of excess, the emphasis on visuality and embodied communication within cultures, and the associated problem of freedom and choice (Bauman 1988; Warde 1994). Abundance plays a role in generating the cultural possibility of deploying goods as signs of distinction or good taste, and as symbolic-material markers of something that is considered good or worthy. In this context, we can identify two interrelated conceptual innovations that have directed research in contemporary consumption studies, the notions of choice and freedom (Bauman 2007; Giddens 1991; Warde 1994, 1997). Both

Introduction   9 of these ideas are also important for understanding the concept of taste, implied as they are in the ideological notion of taste as a capacity for natural and free judgement of ­aesthetic value. Ideas about cultural reflexivity, self-identity, the extended-self, subjectification, and objectification have enabled generations of researchers to explore the individually expressive and socially productive aspects of consumer practices (Belk  1988; Featherstone 1987, 1991; MacCracken 2005; Miller 1987). At the same time, there has been a growing dissatisfaction around these emphases on apparent consumer freedoms and reflexivities at the expense of socioculturally contextualized consumption and the role of market system dynamics in assembling particular consumption possibilities (Peñaloza and Venkatesh 2006; Warde 2005, 2014). Within the sociological tradition, the dominance of the Bourdieusian conception of tastes as socioculturally structured patterns of consumption preferences underpinned by aesthetic perceptions and judgments has been the principal way of tempering the enthusiasms often endemic to the field by linking consumer choice to economic necessity, cultural learning, cultural legitimacy, field dynamics, and cultural capital. Such an approach is, of course, inspired principally by Bourdieu’s analyses of the distributions of cultural tastes (Bourdieu 1984). In quantitative studies of taste patterns, the figure of the cultural omnivore and its many empirical variations and local expressions have excited a few decades of sociological research into taste portfolios (Emmison 2003; Lena and Peterson 2008; Lizardo 2006a, 2006b; Peterson 1992; Peterson and Kern 1996; Sullivan and Katz-Gerro 2007; Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal 2007). The omnivore category referenced the empirical finding that tastes in some consumer and market segments had a surprising breadth that traversed traditional social categories such as class, gender, and age, and most crucially which crossed hierarchies of high and low genre outputs. Moreover, Jennifer Lena (2012) has advanced these studies of tastes by demonstrating that genres differed in their organizational and symbolic attributes, exhibited different trajectories of taste, and could be delineated based on latent characteristics that can be quantitatively assessed.

Accounting for Consumption How do consumers, then, account for their tastes? How do they make sense of their purchases? These questions emerged in the community studies conducted in sociology departments across the United States as the discipline was taking root, though they focused on the individuals in question as community members rather than consumers per se. Consider W. E. B. DuBois’s The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), where he recognized that black people with low incomes donated reliably to their houses of worship, but he argued that those donations could have been saved or more productively used. By contrast, Jane Addams (1897) observed social workers complaining that families living in tenement housing spent unnecessarily on “extravagant” funeral expenses. Addams understood these families to feel that their choices were not optional if they wanted

10   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward to  maintain their respectability in the community. Likewise, in The Polish Peasant, William I. Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, and Eli Zaretsky ([1918] 1996) observed families unwilling to touch the money set aside for their burial society and were willing to borrow money at high costs in order to avoid violating those earmarked funds. While these scholars studied consumption as a byproduct of their substantive interests, the behaviors of people in social groups were observed through consumption, even when immigrant assimilation, religious participation, school settings, and intrafamily dynamics were the substantive areas of interest. In 1989, Viviana Zelizer used the multiple and consequential meanings of money to carve out consumption as a core concern for the discipline of sociology. She chose money because of its ubiquity and its implications for economic transactions, and she contrasted her approach with that of Mary Douglas (1967) to demonstrate that marking modern money—giving it nicknames, distinguishing it unnecessarily on the basis of the identity of who earned it, how it would be used, and who would benefit from it—was not merely a premodern preoccupation. These practices extended into the modern economy where multiple monies and the consumer transactions they facilitated challenged conventional approaches to consumer decision-making. At the time, Zelizer wrote: Economic psychologists have recently challenged the purely rationalistic economic definition of modern money, particularly the idea of fungibility, by suggesting the concept of “mental accounting”: the ways individuals distinguish between kinds of money. For instance, they treat a windfall income much differently from a bonus or an inheritance, even when the sums involved are identical. . . . But mental accounting cannot be fully understood without a model of “sociological accounting.” Modern money is marked by more than individual whim or the different material forms of currency. (Zelizer 1989:350)

By 2005, Zelizer had contributed a chapter to the Handbook of Economic Sociology, not on consumption, but on culture and consumption. In the chapter itself, she remarked, “The Handbook’s editors assigned me the analysis of interactions between culture and consumption, not the treatment of consumption as a whole” (Zelizer 2005a:332). She warned that this “narrowing” of her focus ran the risk of treating as separate, rather than as interactive, the roles played by culture, social relations, and economic processes. She held out the promise of uniquely sociological concepts to provide alternative explanations for how and why consumers mark, prioritize, and track their spending and savings decisions, in ways that basic demographic variables missed. Zelizer later wrote about relational work as a qualitatively rich alternative to explain consumption. When people made consumption decisions, they were managing their meaningful relationships. When they evaluated the cost of money (interest rates), they were also weighing how their spending, borrowing, or savings behaviors would allow them to express care for loved ones, to assert moral principles, or to manage interpersonal relationships. Relational earmarking moves beyond the individual cognitive process by focusing on the social ties and dynamic interactions that shape how people make sense of

Introduction   11 money and spending. Earmarking is a practice of monetary differentiation by which people accomplish what we call relational work. What does that involve? It is a ­process by which people create, maintain, negotiate, or sometimes dissolve their socioeconomic relations by searching for appropriate matches among distinctive categories of social ties, economic transactions, and media of exchange (Bandelj 2012; Zelizer 2012). Relational work explanations thus attach multiple monies and monetary practices to social relations by arguing that people regularly differentiate (or earmark) forms of monetary transfers in correspondence with their definitions of the sort of relationship that exists between them. (Bandelj, Wherry, and Zelizer 2017:6)

Wherry (2017) later elaborated the notion of relational accounting, distinguishing it from relational work. Relational accounting provided a narrower understanding of the set of processes that roughly parallel those found in mental accounting that affect a consumer’s decisions, but that rely on collective responses to meaningful rituals as a way of marking spending priorities and as the basis for a mental account’s durability as well as the norms around how earmarked spending is handled. A similar individual with the same psychological disposition, the same physical traits, income, and education but who has different social ties will be more likely to have different consumption preferences. While the individual may have idiosyncrasies, she forms and affirms her preferences through the social relationships she manages day to day. Consider the experiment in which workers were randomly distributed envelopes that were labeled for savings. Having the labeled envelope made it more likely that the individual would save rather than spend her wages. However, having a photograph of one’s family members on the envelope increased the savings rate even more (Soman and Cheema  2011). As the economist Jonathan Morduch (2017:34) explains, “While behavioral economists highlight the way that the photo increases the salience of the need for saving, the manipulation also generates particular social meanings and reinforces the imperative to maintain the earmark on family spending.” It is the generation of preferences and their durability that lies squarely in the purview of sociologists and other social scientists concerned with how ongoing social relationships affect economic behavior (Granovetter 1985). To ensure that researchers do not conflate mental and relational accounts, Nina Bandelj, Frederick Wherry, and Viviana Zelizer explain how the temporal horizon for action and the enforcement mechanisms differ. They write: Marketing professors Dilip Soman and HeeKyung Ahn (2011:67) recount the dilemma one of their acquaintances, an economist faced with the option of borrowing money at a high rate of interest to pay for a home renovation or using money he already had saved in his three-year-old son’s low-interest rate education account. As a father, he simply could not go through with the more cost-effective option of “breaking into” his child’s education fund. Soman and Ahn focus on the consequential emotional content of this particular mental account . . . from a relational work perspective, people’s reluctance to spend the money saved into their children’s education funds transcends individual mental budgeting. These funds represent and reinforce meaningful family ties: the earmarking is relational. Suppose a mother

12   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward gambles away money from the child’s “college fund.” This is not only a breach of cognitive compartments but involves a relationally damaging violation. (Bandelj, Frederick, and Viviana 2017:7)

Most notably, the misspending will hurt her relationship to her child. But the mother’s egregious act is likely to also undermine the relationship to her spouse and even to family members or friends who might sanction harshly the mother’s misuse of money (see Zelizer 2012:162). These interpersonal dynamics thereby help explain why mental accounting and relational accounting sometimes involve similar discrete outcomes but often involve a more varied temporal landscape where time is amplified by ritual.

Rituals, Ceremony, and Race Although rituals undergird analyses of consumer experiences in the consumer culture theory tradition, they have not typically been used to address how historically disadvantaged groups experience consumption. Yet studies of ethnic minorities experiencing discrimination in the marketplace are often stories about informal rituals that are weaponized against the recognition of the individual’s right to be treated like other upstanding members of society. Degradation rituals involve ceremoniously disentangling individuals from symbols that affirm their dignity. Any sense of indeterminism, historical accident, or unpredictable variability has to be quashed so that the disentanglement stands without generating shame for its enforcers. The collective judgments of the object as repulsive (be it a person or thing) must be “salient and accessible to view” so that the evaluation of the person or thing as unworthy of praise is perceived as a judgment shared by the larger group rather than any single prejudicial assessment (Garfinkel 1956). People who enter prisons or asylums find themselves literally stripped of their former identities in a methodical way. Depending on the institutional categories imposed on them and the judgment of collective audiences about their status, these patients may have their prior social character stripped away. Even their bodies are modified (e.g., hair shaven) to represent this transition to the new self (Goffman 1970). What is the parallel for people who enter retail settings that are not total institutions, and what makes the experiences of degradation in retail settings rise to the level of public concern? If we were to develop the concept of degradation rituals to address how some racial and ethnic minorities experience consumption (see Henderson and Zhang, this volume), we might elaborate further David Crockett’s (2017) discussion of respectability politics and middle-class consumption among blacks in the United States (also see Pittman [2017] on “shopping while black”). And we might investigate the durability of the group boundaries generated by racial minorities when they engage in consumption (Lamont and Molnár 2001; Wherry 2008). What constitutes degradation and why? How do symbols become racially charged in the marketplace and how do previously uncharged symbols become enacted as degrading? The sociologists Terrence McDonnell, Chris Bail, and Iddo Tavory have argued that studying the resonance of symbols can put researchers

Introduction   13 into an unfortunate position: “[The researchers] identify a moment when cultural objects succeed and work backwards to the sources of its success (Benford 1997; Ferree 2003). Put differently, a cultural object ‘works’ because it resonates—but it also resonates because it works” (McDonnell, Bail, and Tavory 2017:2). Similarly, researchers studying race in the marketplace would do well to investigate what triggers race as a relevant category in some consumption settings but not others. Likewise, why do some degradation rituals rise to the level of public concern while others are snuffed out just as they are catching fire? The ritual framework would move researchers away from thinking about symbols as coming precharged and as only needing to have the right analyst who understands the meanings of those charges. In fact, when Pepsi and Starbucks find themselves in racial trouble as media commentators report on racial controversies in their marketing campaigns or in their customer interactions, they may need to move beyond the content of their messages in order to ask why a set of images or interactions resonated as racist. To our knowledge, we do not yet have a robust theory of degradation rituals in marketing that have been systematically applied to race. We do have, however, thorough investigations of degraded consumer experiences in the marketplace (e.g., Harris, Henderson, and Jerome 2005) based on court cases, audit studies, and interviews.

Roadmap The volume’s roadmap indicates the pathways of entry and the possibilities for exploration across the consumer behavior and consumption literature. The pathways encourage specialists in neighboring fields to look beyond work they know well so that they can reconsider future directions. Although the volume does not cover every topic of relevance to consumption and although the various methodological approaches are not given equal treatment, the thematic nature of the volume encourages intellectual links to authors and to research programs not considered herein. The volume’s themes are articulated in six parts: first, an overview of some of the key theoretical perspectives on consumption; second, perspectives on the organization and assemblages of consumption; third, work on consumer transactions and market devices; fourth, the maintenance of social stratification through consumption; fifth, how identities are performed through, and interactive with, consumption practices; and sixth, how the marketplace can be reshaped to address the moral concerns of consumers, the ethical standards of companies, and the environmental harms resulting from consumption practices (and politics).

Part I: Key Contemporary Themes Part I of the volume follows the guidance of the Introduction, bringing forth the core theoretical perspectives informing the study of consumers and consumption. Moreover, it introduces some of the most influential new ideas that are central to cutting edge

14   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward innovations in the field. To situate these perspectives in the history of marketing, Chapter 1, by Stefan Schwarzkopf, embeds marketing efforts in the ongoing relations among businesses, suppliers, distributors, employers, taste critics, lawmakers, and industry regulators. The chapter’s comparative historical cases offer a wide range across history, demonstrating how marketing occurred before the onset of capitalism. Similar to the industrial sociology that emerged to increase productivity, an industrial psychology arose to make distribution of goods more profitable. And, consumers along with their networks were brought into the production of consumer experience and into the work of marketing goods and services. Chapter 2, by Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy, examines the sharing economy, its structure, and ongoing concerns about its future. They show the ambivalences and contradictions at the heart of the recent trend toward collaboration. The idea of the sharing economy partly rests on a rejection of large corporate power and control, and an embrace of a moral and ethical habitus that includes care for the environment and a push toward greater equality in access and distribution. Yet participation in this dynamic sector is distributed along socioeconomic lines, and evidence shows that various types of exploitative logics still pervade the sector. Chapter 3, by George Ritzer, takes up his influential articulation of the concept of prosumption, identifying how consumers are enrolled in the production of the very experiences they pay to acquire. Prosumption challenges the distinctions between the traditionally opposed categories of production and consumption, showing how to some degree they are composed of the same stuff, and how each is systemically and practically entwined and enmeshed with the other. As Ritzer shows, they tend to interpenetrate. The chapter articulates the key definitional elements of presumption and clearly situates it within histories of consumption and production. With an emphasis on how consumers identify, establish, contest, or dissolve their social ties through consumption decisions, Chapter 4, by Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson, revisits consumer culture theory (CCT) and its future possibilities. CCT has been a particularly influential brand within a group of generally qualitative, interpretive, and broadly cultural approaches to the study of consumption contexts and practices, and more recently markets, within the field of marketing and business studies. Drawing from developments in the social sciences broadly, and identifying its own vernacular from the history of marketing, CCT represents a crucial and dynamic field within consumption studies which because of its institutionalized position necessarily draws from and reacts to developments in the field of marketing. In this chapter, Arnould and Thompson look to recent developments in the field and to how CCT is aligned with intellectual movements in related fields, such as cultural sociology. In Chapter 5, by Thomas C. O’Guinn, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr., and Erika L. Paulson, the authors challenge scholars to re-evaluate our understandings of brands and branding processes, beginning with a series of disagreements with scholars who work in consumption studies within sociology, business, and marketing schools. Reviewing and critiquing major approaches to branding, and situating these in their knowledgepower contexts, the chapter makes a case for studying brands as fully embedded in their social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts.

Introduction   15 The management of social relationships emerges as a prominent theme in Chapter 6, by Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson. They explain how consumption functions as relational work. Starting from a working position that accepts the broad premises of cultural approaches to consumption, the authors trace and elucidate the influential concept of relational work in the economy, and particularly show how it is central to the contours of consumption contexts. Bandelj and Gibson use four fields within consumption settings and practices to reveal how relational dynamics constitute consumption. These dynamic perspectives of the expressive worlds created by and depending on consumption continue in Chapter 7, by Sophie Woodward, as the anthropological analysis of the meaningful world of goods identifies the public definitions of culture and social identity that consumption makes possible. Sophie Woodward draws from the important field of material culture studies, and from the anthropological tradition more broadly, to reveal the co-agencies of people and things in consumption contexts. Her chapter shows how researchers can make the most of diverse new approaches to materiality, without sacrificing cultural and anthropological sensitivity. The final chapter in this section, Chapter 8, by Omar Lizardo, concludes with a reconsideration of Bourdieuian approaches to consumption, offering a careful reading of Distinction that suggests that current network analyses of consumption patterns have not taken full advantage of the conceptual apparatus that Bourdieu began to construct. The chapter situates this argument in the context of a discussion of the elemental language of contemporary consumption: taste, distinction, and aesthetic consumption.

Part II: Organizing Consumption Part II asks how consumption is organized, perhaps even “produced,” by combinations of actors, objects, and discourses as they are fused within fields of cultural production and consumption. Chapter 9, by Jennifer Smith Maguire, picks up directly on this theme and shows how certain types of consumption are enabled and energized by legitimation processes. Focusing particularly on taste and its organization, Smith Maguire works with ideas about gravitational pull—attraction, force, pull, gravity, and weight—in order to capture both the vibrancy of objects and the forces at play within the universe of evaluation, judgment, and worth. Chapter 10, by Marc Verboord, uses empirical data to explore processes of consecration within two domains that have are often argued to have undergone the most disruption: digitalization and globalization. Verboord traces theoretical positions regarding markets for cultural consumption goods, scrutinizing the arguments which suggest symbolic differences and hierarchies have less relevance for understanding consumption fields. He argues that symbolic differences and cultural boundaries still matter, proposing that researchers use pluriform and flexible methods that pay attention to transnational patterns and diverse field actors. The empirical data presented in the chapter allow readers to see how this might work. Chapter 11, by Eva

16   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward Illouz and Yaara Benger Alaluf, exposes the role of emotions in contemporary capitalist organization and commodification. The chapter draws upon and develops Illouz’s body of work on the incorporation of emotion into capitalism, markets, and consumption. In their view, consumer culture fuses consumer objects and experiences with emotional states, each constituting the other. The chapter sketches an historical overview of how emotions have been incorporated into markets. Their final category focuses on the market category of the “emodity,” a new concept which emphasizes the joining of emotions and emotional states with objects. In Chapter 12, Konstantinos Theodoridis and Steven Miles use the categories of youth and childhood to show how consumption is organized for life stages, and within the life cycle. Youth as a market category and consumption identity has been a particularly important, though contradictory, signifier in consumption studies. First, youth are presumed to be the age segment most motivated to be buyers of goods in markets like clothing, leisure, sportswear, and music. Though their incomes are dependent on parents, they can shape household spending patterns. Relatedly, as youth become more visible consumers with an independent status, the use of categories like “youth” or “teenager” reflected a social process of constructing and problematizing such categories. Theodoridis and Miles offer a review of key literatures and themes, and reflect on how youth consumption and the meaning of youth itself are changing in response to digitalization. Concluding the section, Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry (Chapter 13) analyze the production and consumption of digital data in our contemporary phase of capitalism, arguing that participation in the digital economy necessarily involves a form of commodified self-consumption. In the digital economy, consumption becomes a form of production, as “consumers” become the creators of content and its devourers.

Part III: Consumer Transactions, Relations, and Devices Part III examines consumer transactions and the roles played by ongoing social relationships and engagement with market devices. The section opens with Chapter 14, where Frederick F. Wherry outlines how consumers keep track of finances by virtue of the relationships and rituals they are managing (relational accounting) and how credit scores affect, and are affected by, those management efforts. In Chapter 15, Franck Cochoy takes up the theme of devices which organize consumption practices. He argues that we should shift from thinking about consumer cultures and move to thinking about consumer cultivation through devices, things, and different types of market-making object relations. Through the concepts of “calculation,” “qualculation,” and “calqulation,” he analyzes the technologies through which price is constructed and how consumer behaviour depends on these devices. In Chapter 16, Zsuzsanna Vargha takes readers

Introduction   17 into the world of consumer banking and consumer transactions, where the consumer banking experience is produced and governed. These constitute an important part of the backstage of consumption processes as well as the institutional and personal means through which cash and credit are allocated and managed. The section concludes with Chapter 17, where Alya Guseva and Akos Rona-Tas demonstrate how consumer transactions are now being tracked and how consumers themselves are surveilled, with important lessons from the social credit scoring program in China.

Part IV: Inequality and Stratification Part IV examines how inequality and status differences are maintained through consumption. The section begins by analyzing the tension between exclusive and democratically inclusive tastes. The literature on omnivores and distinction is reimagined as the chapter identifies the subtle mechanisms of stratification along with other potential sites for investigating similar stratification processes (Chapter 18 by Josée Johnston, Shyon Baumann, and Merin Oleschuk). The section then asks how class, race, ethnicity, and gender/sexuality structure and are structured by consumption. The discussion of race/ ethnicity is split between two chapters. In Chapter 19, G. Cristina Mora asks how institutions, activists, and state agencies come together to structure the identity of market segments, particularly those segments based on racial or ethnic identity. She explores what other ethnic markets may be on the rise. Chapter 20, by Geraldine Rosa Henderson and Kathy Zhang, examines the racialized experiences of consumers: shopping while black, social movements for fairness in retail, and other social movements that find parallels in the consumer experience. How do consumers experience inequality in their retail encounters? What are the causes and consequences of degraded consumption experiences based on race? In Chapter 21, Ashley Mears turns to gender, exploring the curious coincidence of fashion’s dual associations with frivolity and with its strong association with women consumers. Mears examines how a gendered lens helps us better understand how fashion can be analyzed as a social process that reflects collective decision making and that allows for societal-level contests over status. The chapter concludes with a case study of “working girls” in the front and backstage of the fashion industry. The last two chapters turn to the city and the nation. In Chapter 22, Richard E. Ocejo examines inequality in the city through the demand side: consumers move into neighborhoods as gentrifiers whose desire for amenities, whose tastes for food and drink, and whose publicly visible lifestyles change the feel of these neighborhoods and the opportunity structure for the neighborhood’s incumbents, sometimes pricing them out. The section concludes with Chapter 23, where Melissa Aroncyzk examines location

18   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward c­ onsultants, tourism promoters, and branding specialists who engaged in placed-based marketing and branding. How do these intermediaries mobilize symbolic resources, and how do existing symbolic and material inequalities constrain their efforts to present a territory or a place-based bundle of symbols as valuable?

Part V: Practices, Performances, and Identities Part V addresses identity and its performance through consumption. In the first chapter of this section, Chapter 24, John W. Schouten reprises for the final time his work on ­subcultures, taking the reader through a series of personal and disciplinary reflections about why the concept of subcultures was important, the challenges it faces, and where it might go from here. Schouten outlines a series of lessons from his fieldwork and ­provides a discussion of the theoretical bases researchers can use to think about subcultures. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why the concept of subcultures remains relevant to studies of consumption and markets. In Chapter 25, David Wright conceptualizes the role of tastes in shaping consumption patterns and styles. Acknowledging the irreducible component of taste to be boundary maintenance and social distinction, Wright explores recent literatures on taste that conceptualize it as a type of skill. Wright argues that the orthodoxy in studies of taste has obscured consideration of how tastes work via the senses, involving particular sets of embodied skills. He also suggests that tastes involve restraint as much as more celebratory aspects of choice and performance, and that researchers might benefit from paying attention to how tastes are acquired as types of skills. In Chapter 26, Jennifer  A.  Jordan discusses the social scientific approaches to the study of food, an elemental domain of personal and household consumption. She explains how studies of food have been approached in the social sciences, arguing that researchers need to study food holistically, accounting for the diverse social, embodied, and spatio-material dimensions of the food economy and food practices. Chapter 27, by Susan Dobscha and Gry Høngsmark-Knudsen, explores the way gendered conceptions of markets and consumption are imagined and practiced within the discipline of marketing and consumer behavior studies. The chapter critically assesses the research and the processes through which marketing knowledge is circulated and reproduced in textbooks. They make a number of suggestions as to how the gendered patterns and inequalities they find can be challenged. To conclude the section, Daniel Silver and Terry Nichols Clark analyze how food consumption and production affects spaces and urban places. Their argument in Chapter 28 demonstrates how urban development and food provision go hand in hand. They develop their idea of “scene­ scapes” to analyze these processes, showing how novel data analysis methodologies can be combined to understand the macro and micro processes by which food comes to do social and cultural work in cities.

Introduction   19

Part VI: Reformulating Markets Part VI closes the volume and is focused on the social and cultural mobilizations which constitute reactions to commodification and the proliferation of market values in social life. In Chapter 29, Keith R. Brown considers the importance of ethical motivations in mobilizing consumer practices. He demonstrates how consumers have surveilled the supply chain in order to identify the abuse of labor and of the environment and to provide incentives for their remedy. He warns that the facts on their own are not enough to motivate moral behavior; information relies on and evokes emotions and must, therefore, be taken into account. He concludes with recommendations for research and practice to advance the goals of ethical consumption. In Chapter 30, Kim Humphery asks how moral concerns have been translated into anti-consumerism versus a new politics of consumption. Humphery asks what it means to consume with care. In the final chapter, Chapter 31, Amanda M. Dewey and Dana R. Fisher explore consumption within networks of environmental activism, care, and stewardship. They show the links between the imperatives of consumer society and forms of mobilization which respond to its negative externalities.

Conclusion In sum, these thirty-one chapters aim to facilitate cross-disciplinary exploration as readers encounter this cosmopolitan set of scholars who have been leaders in their respective fields and in their respective countries or regions. Yet this handbook is not meant to serve as a static encyclopedia for such a variegated field and owes much to the collections that have appeared in the last two decades, such as the dueling Consumer Society Reader by Martyn Lee (2000) versus its differently structured counterpart by Juliet Schor and Douglas Holt (2000). Likewise, there have been more recent contributions such as Søren Askegaard and Benoît Heilbrun’s Canonical Authors in Consumption Theory (2017) that reinterprets the consumption classics and Joel Stillerman’s The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach (2015) that illustrates the cross-national differences in consumption practices and processes as well as the varieties of power and expression evident in consumer behavior. With the field of consumer research advancing so quickly, we dare not anticipate its future. Instead, we have identified some of the core questions and promising lines of inquiry to help shape its course.

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24   Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward Zelizer, Viviana A. 1989. “The Social Meaning of Money: ‘Special Monies.’ ” American Journal of Sociology 95: 342–377. Zelizer, Viviana A. 1994. The Social Meaning of Money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zelizer, Viviana A. 2005a. “Culture and Consumption.” pp. 331–354 in Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Zelizer, Viviana A. 2005b. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zelizer, Viviana A. 2012. “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean?” Politics & Society 40: 145–174.

Pa rt I

KEY C ON T E M P OR A RY THEMES

chapter 1

The Soci a l Em beddedn ess of M a r k eti ng Stefan Schwarzkopf

Consumption is embedded in complex cultural processes and networks of social ­relationships. Some of these processes and relationships are created and maintained by marketing, which in turn comprises the interactions of entrepreneurs and firms with competitors, suppliers, lobby groups, customers, and consumers, as well as their own employees. Marketing is much more than mere promotion: it is a conglomerate of all activities that help anticipate consumer demand, deliver desired products and services to a given market, create new demand and markets, but also help interact with consumers in such a way that they might play a more active role in the co-creation of value offerings. Consumption-oriented value creation and exchange processes existed before the emergence of industrial capitalism as well as outside the realm of modern capitalist systems. In other words, as an economic activity, marketing has varied over time by virtue of the contexts in which it was practiced. Historical research in marketing has not always put the social embeddedness of marketing activities at the center. Much scholarship tends to focus on the history of marketing schools of thought (Jones and Shaw 2002; Shaw and Jones 2005), the history of specific marketing concepts, for example segmentation or the life cycle concept (Bauer and Auer-Srnka 2012; Fullerton 2015a), the history of particular tools of marketing management, such as various retail formats (Mitchell 2010), and the history of trademarks and brands (Bastos and Levy 2012; Petty 2012). Working in parallel to historically oriented marketing scholars, business and economic historians have looked at marketing with a view toward clarifying the role it played in the making of the market- and competition-oriented enterprise (Fitzgerald 2007; Tedlow 1990; Wilkins 1992) and its role in the making of modern mass markets and consumer societies (Blaszczyk 2009; Scott 2008; Strasser, McGovern, and Judt 1998). Despite the increasing interest that has been shown in the historical development of marketing, the field suffers from a number of limitations and biases. First, the marketing

28   Stefan Schwarzkopf historical literature tends to be biased toward marketing in the United States and the United Kingdom. This limits our understanding of the origins of marketing practices and the different trajectories they have taken in comparative contexts. Marketing developments in major European economies such as France and Germany are rarely integrated into the English-speaking literature. In addition, very little is known about the rise of modern marketing in non-European economies such as Japan, China, India, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and various African nations before the 1980s (cf. Lluch, 2013; Tatsuki, 1995). Although there is a growing literature on marketing in non-European economies (i.e., examples of Western companies entering emerging markets), there are very few historical accounts of how marketing was employed by homegrown entrepreneurs themselves in such markets (cf. Karababa and Ger 2011; Usui 2014). Also missing from the Anglo-American centric literature is a more thorough understanding of marketing in the noncapitalist economies of Eastern Europe and under the conditions of fascist dictatorships (cf. Kravets and Sandikci 2013; Neuburger 2016; Patterson 2003; Swett 2013; Wiesen 2010). Second, the existing literature tends to work with a rather limited understanding of what marketing actually is. Most marketing historical research focuses heavily on products and services that are created by firms for exchange in a given market. Although a lot of marketing activity is precisely about such exchange processes, the discipline has undergone something of a revolution as regards its understanding of what marketing is all about. As defined earlier, marketing is far more than just the promotion and selling of products and services, but a form of value creation that includes activities such as the creation of corporate brands (corporate identity) and the interaction with a wide range of stakeholders, not only consumers. Marketing allows firms to interact with stakeholders such as employees (through internal marketing), local communities, regulators, and organized publics, such as pressure groups (through corporate public relations). In addition, marketing has acquired new roles by addressing wider social problems through what is commonly called social marketing and cause-related marketing. Although some research has been done on these perspectives (Anthony 2012), business history has yet to catch up with a changed understanding of marketing from the standpoint of value creation and stakeholder relations. This new perspective transcends a managerial definition of marketing. As of today, we have very few historical accounts of social marketing (cf. Krisjanous 2014), of internal marketing (cf. Heller 2008), or of how firms in the past have endeavored to co-create value with consumers. This also means that contemporary marketing historical research tends to be somewhat oblivious to the various roles that consumers play in economies, apart from their role as passive choosers and buyers of goods. Recently, historians have reminded us again that consumers often play a very active role in the market, ranging from political activism (Trentmann 2004) to the engagement in new forms of economic organizing through consumer cooperatives (Gurney  2012; Knupfer  2013; Wilson, Webster, and Vorberg-Rugh 2013). While it is difficult to cover all of these aspects in detail, this chapter nevertheless attempts to provide a springboard for a new generation

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   29 of comparative-historical sociologists who aim to overcome both the Anglo-American and the managerialist bias that still characterizes much of the research in this exciting field.

Marketing and the “Consumer Revolutions” The history of marketing stretches back to the origins of human civilization. There is, for example, archaeological evidence for the uses of trademarks in the form of product seals in ancient Mesopotamia, which signaled origin and authenticity, allowing consumers to judge product quality, all key functions of the modern brand (Hollander  1953; Wengrow 2008). There is also evidence for the uses of trademarks by craftsmen in the Greek city states and in the Roman Empire. During classical antiquity, packaging shapes like the amphorae and originary stamps on them served to identify and differentiate the products they carried (Twede 2002). Researchers have also shown how during the Song dynasty in China (960–1127 ad), trademarks not only existed but slowly began to evolve into brands that served symbolic roles in an emerging consumer culture system (Eckhardt and Bengtsson 2010; Moore and Reid 2008; Shao 2005). What then differentiates “modern” marketing from similar economic activities that took place in ancient times? The key term to understand the great divide that separated Europe and Asia in the early modern period is work. In Europe, emulative consumption became associated with hard work; and it became the work of ordinary people rather than of an elite group of conspicuous consumers. As an entrepreneurial activity and a sociocultural phenomenon, modern marketing is inadvertently related to two economic “revolutions” which profoundly changed Western societies. Although the middling sorts also took part in a consumer society in ancient and early-modern China, European societies with their unique form of decentralized, competitive urbanization offered mechanisms of vertical social mobility which people were able to attain through emulative consumption. To afford goods that projected social distinction in increasingly open societies, people had to work longer hours. As argued by Jan de Vries (1994, 2008), European societies witnessed both quantitative and qualitative shifts in the nature of work after 1600 or so: not only did European families work longer hours, they also shifted labor resources in such a way that work was prioritized over leisure, and women’s and children’s work was directed to maintaining the household so that men could specialize in producing goods for monetary remuneration rather than s­ ubsistence. Whereas Asian societies never knew the social aim of working longer hours as a social value for its own sake, this European “industrious revolution” brought about not only rising incomes but also rising demand for an increasing number of specialty goods. European household account books and probate inventories witness an explosion of consumer goods during the early modern period. And with each good came a host of complementary

30   Stefan Schwarzkopf goods that often followed fashion and thus had to be replaced more often: curtains needed curtain rings and curtain rods; pictures needed frames and wall hangings; tobacco needed tobacco boxes and pipes; watches and spectacles needed particular cases; tea needed porcelain, as did coffee and cocoa. The result of this “industrious revolution” in turn was the “consumer revolution” of the eighteenth century (McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982). Product-mediated upward social mobility required specialized workshops to which entrepreneurs dedicated more of their time and mental effort. At the same time, in order to serve the demand for increasingly specialized goods, distribution systems needed to change by replacing seasonal and informal markets with permanent shops that sold particular lines of products. Indeed, the concept of “shopping” and the term “to shop” emerged as part of the eighteenth-century consumer revolution (Beaujot 2011). Symbolic consumption practices that used to be associated with an aristocratic and ecclesiastical elite became the hallmark of a new middle class (Trentmann 2016:78–110). This effected widespread changes in the marketing environment. Shops became increasingly well lit, especially since the introduction of the more transparent polished plate glass, and they featured large counters and small exhibition areas where consumers could inspect wares. Shopkeepers slowly moved to a system of charging fixed prices, and advertising in the press became much more widespread, even in regional newspapers. Finally, attitudes toward luxury changed markedly during the eighteenth century. With the repeal of sumptuary laws, the concept of luxury lost its associations with excess and vice. Marketing benefitted tremendously from this newly developed association of industriousness and consumption with piety (Berg 2004; Schama 1988:289–397). The English pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood is often used as paradigmatic case to illustrate the marketing logic behind the consumer revolution. Wedgwood developed a skill for observing his customers’ changes in taste and demand, something today known as “fashion feedback” (Blaszczyk 2000:12). His semi-industrial production of vases, tea pots, cups, saucers, dishes, and tureens made Wedgwood products affordable to the upper middle classes. At the same time though, Wedgwood carefully connected his products with royalty, for example by naming a product line he developed for Queen Charlotte in 1765 “Queen’s Ware.” He strategically placed advertisements for his product lines in London newspapers, and he began to develop export markets for his goods in Europe and the British colonies. Wedgwood’s marketing model was based on forwardintegrating the retail side of operations: products were sold through wholly owned shops which exclusively carried Wedgwood-made items and the opening of which were accompanied by press advertising, too. These shops acted both as theatrical showrooms and as sales sites, very similar to the concept employed by Apple during the early twentyfirst century. Although Wedgwood products were affordable, there was nevertheless a carefully designed aura of exclusivity created around them in the retail environment: fixed prices signaled quality, as did the Wedgwood trademark imprinted on all items. Instead of flooding the market with mass-produced goods, Wedgwood often held back certain items in a product line so as to create a sense of (artificial) scarcity. At the same time, he went out of his way in servicing customers. He invested in and widely publicized

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   31 money-back guarantees, illustrated catalogues, mail-order systems and free delivery, and he employed clerks who were able to correspond with the company’s international customer base in many languages, including Dutch, French, Italian, and German. Like other porcelain manufacturers before him, such as the Meissen Porcelain company in Germany, Wedgwood worked with a sophisticated pricing system that included product-line pricing, prestige pricing, and promotional pricing such as occasional “buy-one-get-one-free” offers (Koehn 1995; McKendrick 1982; Monti 2011). It needs to be stressed again that aspects of the consumer revolution existed well before the late eighteenth century and can be traced back to at least the fifteenth century, such as the appearance of new types of luxury goods and an urban, nonaristocractic and nonecclesiastical elite, which used these goods to set up and affirm symbolic boundaries of social distinction (Britnell 2009:179–200; Dyer 1989; Kowaleski 2004; Martines 1998). As many authors have pointed out, however, there occurred a qualitative change in the nature of marketing throughout the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, mainly because of the gradual emergence of a marketing system based on nationally recognized and nationally distributed branded goods. Although premodern brands such as the “White Rabbit” sewing needles in Song-dynasty China encapsulated many of the features we would associate with modern brands, they served local markets (Eckhardt and Bengtsson 2010). The late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, by contrast, witnessed the gradual welding together of dispersed local markets into national markets. While many goods before the industrial age were distinguishable for consumers because of geographical origin effects (Chianti wine, China tea), mass-produced goods in the food and beverages sector in particular needed brands that promised quality and allowed consumers to identify their maker. British entrepreneurs were at the forefront of these developments, and it has been pointed out that the United Kingdom was probably the first nationally unified market that knew branded, nationally distributed, fastmoving consumer goods (Church 1999; Corley 1987; Goodall 1986; Jones and Morgan 1994; da Silva Lopes and Casson 2007; Wilson 1995:90–97). From 1826, for example, the entrepreneur John Horniman personally guaranteed the quality of the first packaged teas ever sold in England by printing his name on the tea packages after they were sealed (Rappaport 2006).

Interlude 1: The Stakeholder Perspective The stakeholder perspective in marketing theory proposes that marketing activities are not just aimed at mediating the relationship between firm and final consumer, but rather are embedded in the multitude of relationships that exist between a firm, its supply and distribution partners, its employees, its local social networks, opinion formers and gatekeepers (such as journalists), and finally lawmakers and industry regulators (Granovetter 1985; Heller 2016). Premodern brands did not serve to mediate the entire scope of these multiple relationships. Gradually, however, the national unification of markets, the increasing anonymity between buyers and sellers of nationally distributed goods, and

32   Stefan Schwarzkopf the rise of a labor union movement all required marketing to recognize the needs of an increasing number of social groups related through bonds of growing complexity. Nineteenth-century entrepreneurs recognized these challenges and began to develop branding, pricing, packaging, and retail practices that stressed reliability, fairness, honesty, and transparency (Church 2000; Laird 1998). A marketing practice that expressed this focus on stakeholder marketing is the rise of internal marketing—that is, communication activities directly aimed at a firm’s workforce. Especially large firms at the end of the nineteenth century began to invest in industrial welfare, such as building sports grounds, reading rooms, and small gardens on the grounds of their estate, and setting up workers’ accidents insurance schemes (Mandell 2002; Roy 1999:41–73, 197–201; Zunz 1990:76–102). These activities were then widely publicized outside these organizations in order to associate firms with family ­values and build corporate brands—as opposed to product brands—that instilled a sense of trust among politicians, journalists, and consumers (Heller 2010). A new medium—the company magazine or staff magazine—emerged to convey that message also inside the organization. Through these magazines, workers became the target of “a wider strategy of corporate welfare and propaganda in an effort to control employees and prevent collective organization” (Heller 2008; Heller and Rowlinson 2015:123). Another example of this emerging stakeholder perspective is the branding activities that nineteenth-century alcoholic beverages companies like Guinness engaged in. As shown by Paul Duguid, many alcoholic drinks brands did not so much emerge as competitive weapons employed by large, vertically integrated companies in pursuit of the same target market but served rather different aims. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the alcoholic beverages sector was made up of small firms connected through supply chains. Within these chains, firms like Guinness used brands in order to “discipline and subordinate other links in the chain over whom they had no direct control and with whom they had to cooperate” (Duguid 2003:405). In disaggregated supply chains, the firm that controlled a powerful brand was also likely to hold the highest bargaining power vis-à-vis suppliers, brokers, wholesalers, bottlers, pub landlords, and other distributors. As early as the 1840s, Guinness thus began to relentlessly pursue such distributors in courts for selling generic beer under the Guinness name but also engravers and printers who sold fake Guinness labels to unlicensed parties. The interpretation that Guinness developed and legally defended its brand mainly to discipline partners and competitors along the supply chain is borne out by the fact that the company did not start before 1928 to use press and poster advertising as a mass communication tool that targeted consumers directly (Brierley 1995:11).

Interlude 2: The Globalization of Markets Recently, the nineteenth century has come into focus again as a key period for the shaping of long-lasting relationships between consumption practices and global commodity chains, especially as regards branded goods (Bayly 2004; Osterhammel 2015; Rosenberg

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   33 2012; Topik and Wells 2012). What is interesting about the nineteenth century from a marketing historical perspective is that during that period, branded consumer goods became not just established and defended within the context of nationally unified markets, but increasingly in markets across the globe. This, in turn, required companies to engage in new forms of strategizing and organizational structure, for example by setting up export operations. During midcentury, a new professional class began to emerge that specialized in facilitating the marketing activities that were necessary to promote goods in foreign markets: the export agent, the sales agent, and the export advertising agent. Because of the growing focus on the nineteenth century as a key moment in the long history of globalization, we do have a number of coherent historical accounts of the development of export marketing and of the emergence of export houses and export sales agencies before the interwar period (Chapman 1979; Jones 2000; Llorca-Jana 2009; Weir 1990). Early nineteenth-century manufacturers who engaged in export marketing often relied on a network of merchant houses dotted all over major European, North American, and colonial cities. These houses provided credit (merchant financing) and bought goods from manufacturers to be shipped abroad (Haggerty 2006; Wilson 1995:52–60). By the end of the century, with competition in foreign markets such as South America increasing, European and North American manufacturers had managed to cut out wholesalers and merchant houses and often sold directly to retailers in these markets. To facilitate these operations and stimulate local demand, these manufacturers needed to advertise their branded goods in local catalogues, trade journals, and newspapers. It was at this moment that advertising agencies became more important than merchant houses in demand creation. Agencies specializing in export advertising existed since the 1860s. In 1867, Gordon & Gotch, a Melbourne-based news and advertising agency and distributor of magazines and newspapers, opened an office in London. Running similar operations, the French Havas agency set up an office in London in the 1870s. In 1892, the London advertising agency of Thomas Brooks Brown opened offices in Lower Manhattan and in Paris on the Rue du Louvre. Other London agencies, like Henry Sell’s, also opened offices in France, the United States, and Canada during the 1890s. In 1899, the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson followed this trend and became the first American agency to open a subsidiary office in London in order to place advertisements for its clients in British newspapers (Schwarzkopf 2015a).

The Marketing Orientation: From the Nineteenth to Twentieth Century Most scholars today see the nineteenth century as a watershed in the emergence of modern marketing systems. Formerly disjointed activities that used to be undertaken by selected entrepreneurs in specific, often localized markets were now undertaken at an

34   Stefan Schwarzkopf industrial scale in nationally unified markets. This qualitative change made itself felt in all elements of the marketing mix, especially in distribution and retail. During the nineteenth century, we begin to witness the emergence of and intensified competition between new distribution and retail formats, namely wholesaling, jobbing, the travelling salesman, department stores, the multiple stores, and consumer cooperatives. In the United States, wholesaling grew initially more rapidly than manufacturing and retailing, and it became more specialized as markets increased in their geographic extension and products themselves also became increasingly specialized. Hence, producers became more reliant on wholesalers who acted as powerful market integrators. In the second half of that century, the retail sector began to grow more rapidly—a development evidenced by the spread of chain stores. Retailers that sold large quantities of a single line began to buy directly from the manufacturer, thus cutting out the wholesaler as marketing intermediary (Barger  1955; Porter and Livesay  1989:5–21; Spellman 2016:143–158). An important innovation that changed the European and North American retail sector during the second half of the nineteenth century was the creation of the department store, also known as magasin de nouveautés, or novelty store, in France. Although the origins of the department store as retail format go back to at least the 1830s, it was not before the late nineteenth century that buildings in city centers were built for the purpose of housing a department store. The high fixed costs associated with running such a store resulted from the elaborate store design, which often included cafés and restaurants, from window-dressing, staff salary, elevators, and additional customer services, including credit and home-delivery facilities (Crossick and Jaumain  1999; Howard 2015; Laermans 1993). To recover these costs, store owners had to invest on a continuous basis in promotional activities to increase customer footfall, and in new kinds of pricing techniques, such as seasonal discounts (“sales”), in order to convert browsers into actual buyers. Hence, department stores became early drivers of a burgeoning advertising industry that fed on the large sums of money that department stores often spent on press advertising (Howard 2010; Scott and Walker 2010). Much marketing-historical research has focused on the rise and fall of the department store and the emergence of “multiples” and supermarket chains (Boothman 2016; Scott and Walker 2017; Shaw et al. 1998). This focus tends to crowd out alternative retail and distribution formats that were part and parcel of consumers’ everyday lives, such as home-order catalogues and the door-to-door salesman. Although Wedgwood had used illustrated catalogues, the vast majority of people in Europe and North America bought their goods at physical stores in their immediate locality. This had changed by the end of the nineteenth century, when sales of goods through mail order had become an established feature in Britain and perhaps even more so in the United States. The first mail-order business targeting consumers directly was set up in 1861 by a Welsh entrepreneur, Pryce Pryce-Jones. The business model of Pryce-Jones’ “Royal Welsh Warehouse” was copied by several North American entrepreneurs, among them Montgomery Ward and Richard Sears (Coopey, O’Connell, and Porter 2005; Emmet and Jeuck 1950). Shopping with mail-order catalogues afforded consumers convenience and privacy as well as lower prices since mail-order businesses bought from manufacturers directly

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   35 and reduced costs associated with physical stores, which made sense for so-called shopping goods (watches, household items, toys, clothing, etc.). Unsought goods, such as insurance and financial products, and goods that benefited from demonstration, such as vacuum cleaners, often came to consumers by virtue of the door-to-door salesman. The business-to-business equivalent to the door-to-door salesman was the commercial traveler (today known as “sales representative”), whose job it was to sell finished goods to retailers and other businesses. Travelling salesmen played an important part in the forging of national markets, and they afforded firms important insights into the sociographic structure of their markets and consumer behavior (Church 2008; French 2005; Friedman 2004; Rossfeld 2014). Indeed, one of the origins of market research can be found in the regular discussion of the reports that travelling salesmen sent to company boards about trends and structures in demand for the goods they sold (Fitzgerald 1995:80–85, 119–121, 343; Schwarzkopf 2016:72). The importance of creating knowledge about competitor activities and about shifts in demand points to a crucial trinity of concepts that marks the watershed between premodern and modern marketing activities: market segmentation, target marketing, and positioning (STP). At the turn of the last century, entrepreneurs and managerially led firms began to use marketing strategies that separated seemingly homogenous markets into smaller units with similar characteristics so as to better address customer needs. An  early paradigmatic example for the emergence of this marketing orientation is the book trade in Germany. Ronald Fullerton has argued that nineteenth-century German book publishers developed capabilities that allowed them to study how different audiences demanded different literature, exhibited variations in price discrimination, and preferred very different retail channels (Fullerton 2012). Robert Fitzgerald has shown how, despite the virtual cartelization of the British chocolate industry, manufacturers like Rowntree and Cadbury slowly began during the interwar period to internalize information about market demand and adjust product line management and marketing communications accordingly—rather than merely sell what the firm produced (Fitzgerald 1995, 2005). The rise of a marketing and customer orientation among large-scale firms during the Second Industrial Revolution is perhaps best exemplified by the rise and fall of Henry Ford and the famous “Model T” car. The Ford Motor Company emerged as the world’s largest producer of cars on the back of vertical integration as organizational form, mass production, product (model) standardization, and price-oriented market communications. During the 1920s, Ford’s competitor in charge of the General Motors Corporation, Alfred Sloan Jr., shifted company policy and introduced annual model changes and instalment buying. By virtue of a different organizational form, the multidivisional form, GM was able to offer customers different brands at different prices with different psychosocial meanings (Cadillac: the stylish car; Chevrolet: the reasonable car). Sloan thus took advantage of segmenting a mass market and positioning different brands within target markets that had distinct needs and desires, while Ford remained stuck in an era of mass production and mass marketing (McGraw and Tedlow 1997). What these three examples—the German book trade, the British chocolate market, and the American

36   Stefan Schwarzkopf Table 1.1.  Stage Model of Marketing Development Approximate Dates Phase

Characteristics

Automobiles

I: Fragmentation

High margins, low volume 1890s–1908 of unit sales Limited geographic market Commodity products

Approx. to 1880s

II: Unification

High volume, low margins per unit National mass market Branded products Standardization

1880s–1950s

III: Segmentation

Value-pricing 1920s–1990s Scale and scope economies Global markets Demographic and psychographic segments

1950s–1980s

IV: Hypersegmentation

Micro-marketing aimed at individual customers Cross-national/-cultural segments Mass customization Information technology Proliferation of choice

Since 1980s

1908–1920s

Since 1990s

Fast-Moving Consumer Goods

car market—typify in different ways is the slow evolution of marketing practices from fragmented marketing to unified mass marketing to segmented marketing (Tedlow 1990:8–12; 1993). These examples show that the unification of national markets and their subsequent separation into different segments were crucial stages in the rise of a modern marketing orientation. Early nineteenth-century entrepreneurs knew the nature of customer demand they faced and often intuitively adjusted to it, as could be seen in the case of Wedgwood. It was not before the last decades of that century that marketing became a managerial function, in other words, a job profile, and marketing became functionally integrated within firms. By 1900, large consumer good companies had sales managers, advertising managers, retail managers, and so on. That is, marketing activities had become functionalized through the development of new, specialized managerial roles (Chandler, 1977: 381–390, 464–468; Strasser, 2004: 193–228). Increasingly, the attention of these managers began to focus on brands as strategic objects that allowed controlling the engagement with target markets in addition to being publicity tools and legal tools that allowed defending the firm’s intellectual property. During the 1920s and 1930s, largely because of the competition with retailers’ brands (“middleman brands”) and generic, unbranded products, producers of manufacturer brands realized that their own brands had to be managed not only functionally but as

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   37 intangible assets that deserved long-term strategic focus and care. The first company which institutionalized what later became known as “brand management” was Procter & Gamble, which in May 1931 approved a plan that each P&G brand should have its own team of brand managers in charge of advertising, sales, and product development (Low and Fullerton 1994). The functional specialization of managerial roles that the new consumer brand system ushered in also further uplifted the importance of advertising and public relations agencies which specialized in building brand identities (Fox 1997; Lears 1994; Marchand 1985). Whereas beforehand marketing managers often saw the widest publicity for a brand name as sufficient to achieve strategic aims, the new generation of brand managers saw themselves as stewards who recognized that brands needed to be invested with a particular identity for particular target markets rather than just widely publicized (Schwarzkopf 2009, 2010). A larger sociopolitical outcome of these changes was that a marketing ideology began to emerge which assumed that its own logic could be spread beyond the realm of pro­ ducts and commercial services, and also include experiences and entire nations. During the interwar period, Hollywood studios began to realize that famous actors were like trust signals to consumers for whom movies were essentially experience goods, since the satisfaction a movie brought could not be ascertained before actually consuming it. Hollywood “stars” were therefore managed like brands that reassured moviegoers (Miskell 2016; Ohmer 2006). Churches began to adopt the gospel of branding more consciously and for the first time outsourced their marketing to professional agencies (Case 1921; Moore 1994:210–235; Twitchell 2004:56–70). These decades also witnessed the spread of enclosed theme parks that branded specific “happiness” experiences, such as “Disneyland,” which opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955 (Adams 1991; Cross and Walton 2005). Finally, entire nations were seen to fall within the purview of the branding logic. The first person to outline this idea coherently was Sir Stephen Tallents, a today little-known British civil servant, who after World War II became founder president of the Institute of Public Relations in London (Hansen 2010; Higgins and Mordhorst 2015; Tallents 1932).

Interlude 3: Consumer Activism and Consumer Behavior The early parts of the twentieth century also witnessed social disruptions which redefined what it meant to be a consumer and what it meant to understand consumers and interact with them. Since time immemorial, consumers complained, rioted, and rebelled, especially in cases of adulterated foods, price speculation, and during times of shortages. The modern period, however, saw for the first time the actual organization of the consumer interest in the form of civil society organizations, lobby groups, and consumer cooperatives. The idea of an organized consumer movement emerged in Victorian Britain (Mitchell 2015), and some of these organizations, such as the National Consumers’ League and the Consumers Union (both in the United States), succeeded in bringing about changes in consumer-related legislation. Early examples of such legislation are the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act in the United States and the Combines and

38   Stefan Schwarzkopf Fair Prices Act in Canada in 1919 (Chatriot, Chessel, and Hilton 2006; Cohen 2003; Glickman 2009; McGovern 2006; Storrs 2000; Hilton 2012). Although there is a growing literature on the history of national and international consumer movements, we know very little about how entrepreneurs and marketing managers within large firms attempted to influence and negotiate the increasing regulatory boundaries that consumer legislation built around them (cf. Trumbull 2006). Developing a functional specialization in marketing of course also meant that marketing managers had to know what pricing strategy was legal, what safety requirements a new packaging solution had to meet, what could be said about a product, and in what ways. One aspect of this shift in professional practices which is relatively well researched is the way the American and the British advertising industries responded to and tried to thwart statutory legislation that protected consumers from misleading product descriptions, deceptive labelling, and unfair instalment purchase terms (Corley 2005; Pease 1958; Schwarzkopf 2008:70–112; Stole 2006). Due to the rise of consumer protection legislation, marketers at times felt that they lost control over product management and marketing communications. This sense of loss was exacerbated by the discovery that consumers were an active component in the choice process. Before the 1930s, a lot of the professional marketing literature viewed consumers’ choices as something firms had control over: advertising campaigns could be made more efficient if psychological “laws” of stimulus and response were followed and if advertisements triggered well-defined instinctual behaviors in consumers (Fullerton 2015b; Kreshel 1993); and sales campaigns more effective through scrupulous personnel selection and meticulous training of salesmen in product knowledge and sales techniques, the “pitch” (French and Popp 2008; Friedman 2004:151–189; Powers 2016). In other words: “applying psychology” in marketing meant to apply it within the boundaries of the firm—a paradigm then known as “industrial psychology.” During the interwar period, this paradigm came under attack as a new generation of researchers entered the field. Leading that new generation was Paul F. Lazarsfeld, a Viennese social statistician who during the late 1920s and early 1930s conducted extensive research in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany on consumption habits for tea, shoes, and milk. He then joined the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, where he and Robert Merton developed focus group research and used the tools and concerns of sociologists and social demographers to study consumer behavior. Lazarsfeld discovered that consumers had no uniform reaction to a given marketing stimulus. Instead, their behaviors depended on previous knowledge of the product category and whether or not consumers perceived a purchase to be risky. In other words, firms could not hope to find the one perfect advertising “pitch” that maximized sales for a product, but they had to first understand consumers’ motivations for purchasing. Consumers who were otherwise similar as regards sociodemographic categories like gender, age, professional status, and income could make very different consumption choices for reasons that had to do with their own personal interests, anxieties, desires, and aims in life (Fullerton 1990, 1999). A pupil of Lazarsfeld, Ernest Dichter, developed this approach into an entirely new

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   39 c­ onsumer research paradigm called “motivation research” (Schwarzkopf and Gries 2010). Managers had now come to realize that marketing activities could only succeed if they were based on a thorough understanding of consumers as active components in the marketing process. This realization, in turn, expressed itself in new marketing research techniques, such as benefit segmentation, consumer profiling, and the focus group (Demby 1974; Haley 1968; Tadajewski 2016). Market and consumer research helped disembed and mobilize the consumer as a source of value creation in a new kind of symbolic economy that drove on the appropriation of cognitive, symbolic, and emotional surplus created by consumers themselves (Arvidsson 2008; Miller and Rose 1997; Schwarzkopf 2015c).

Old Problems, New Vistas What the account provided in this chapter reveals is that managerially oriented historical research is misguided in assuming that there is one dominating economic logic that explains the historical development of marketing and branding (Casson 1993). What matters is sociocultural context, and it is within these contexts that we need to understand how and why particular marketing-related practices and ways of thinking emerged, and when and why they came under pressure and disappeared. Researchers interested in these questions can find an abundance of handbook and companion chapters to guide them. Among them are the chapter on marketing and distribution by Robert Fitzgerald (2007) in the Oxford Handbook of Business History, Jones and Tadajewski’s Routledge Handbook of Marketing History (2016), Trentmann’s Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (2012), the chapters by Sidney Levy (2006) and by Terrence Witkowski and Brian Jones (2006) in Russell Belk’s Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, and an entire section on marketing history in the SAGE Handbook of Marketing Theory (Maclaran et al. 2009). In addition, there exist text collections published by Edward Elgar that are relevant for marketing historians, such as Mark Casson’s Markets and Market Institutions (2011) and Stanley Hollander and Kathleen Rassuli’s two-volume collection on marketing history (Hollander and Rassuli 1993). It is surprising, however, that there exists to this day no textbook-style, general introduction to the history of marketing (but see Blaszczyk 2009; Usui 2008). Historical research becomes transformed by the questions that new generations direct at the past. For example, there has been a marked increase in academic interest in international and cross-cultural marketing in recent years. Much more research is needed that transcends the boundaries of national markets to understand the full impact that marketing practices had on the shaping of a global economy (Bunker 2010; Doherty and Alexander 2014). Another alley for future research is the genealogy of the prosumer (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010), that is, the “working consumer” as a co-creator of value. Up until now, most historical research assumes a functional separation between firms or entrepreneurs on the one hand, and consumers on the other, with firms being seen as

40   Stefan Schwarzkopf creating value for consumers, the product as “value sink,” and the consumers as a passive recipient of the value proposition a firm or entrepreneur decided over. While the “user/ consumer as producer” perspective has only recently gained traction in management and marketing circles, there is evidence that the blurring of lines between firms and consumers as regards value creation began to emerge well before the term “prosumer” was popularized by Alvin Toffler in 1980 (Hamilton 2014; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). During the mid-twentieth century, firms like Avon and Tupper built their business model on the idea that consumers of their goods could also function as distributors and product promotors (Clarke 1999; Moura 2015). Kathleen Franz’s study Tinkering (2005) in turn showed how early American car consumers added value to their cars by constantly redesigning them, for example by adding trunks, luggage racks, and beds. The car industry later adopted some of these innovations, thus appropriating surplus value that had been created by consumers working outside the formal boundaries of the firm. This new historical perspective on the consumer as an active component in value creation, but also as a social element in the marketing environment that might facilitate or resist marketing activities, can be framed by a new historical paradigm, which I have elsewhere termed “marketing history from below.” This paradigm is directly set against a marketing history that is written as the development of (academic) marketing thought or written from a dominant managerial/entrepreneurial perspective (Schwarzkopf 2015b). Trying to overcome the firm-centeredness of much historical scholarship also means that historical sociologists need to pay more attention to the uses of marketing in the noncommercial contexts of state bureaucracy and political competition (Schwarzkopf 2012a; Wring 2005), as well as to the ideological underpinnings of consumer marketing (Pryluka  2015; Schwarzkopf  2012b). Other consumption problems that are underresearched are strategic attempts to reduce the consumption of particular goods (“demarketing”) and to extract value from elements of the value chain that follow after a consumer has used up the product. It is also surprising to note how little research has been conducted on the role of analog and digital data technology and information systems in the shaping of modern consumer and industrial marketing (Christ and Anderson 2011; Lauer 2012). Seeing marketing as embedded in socioeconomic networks and relationships also requires us to critically rethink the nature of “the social” and “the economic” per se. More recent performativity-oriented approaches to marketing and consumption practices argue that what we experience as the social is in fact performed with the help of market devices (Callon and Muniesa 2005). Instead of a market being “out there” and acted upon by managers and consumers, market devices such as observational research methods, credit facilities, and retail arrangements bring processes into existence that “perform” a market (see Cochoy in this volume). Historical research is well placed to provide rich evidence of such performative practices which help attach consumers to particular market arrangements (Cochoy, Deville, and McFall  2017). Liz McFall, for example, has shown how insurance companies developed marketing methods from as early as the late nineteenth century that helped reconnect buyers of policies to the company and motivated them to keep up with their weekly payments. To stabilize this

The Social Embeddedness of Marketing   41 particular market arrangement, insurance companies specified what attire and body language an ideal insurance sales person (“the Man from the Prudential”) had to exhibit on his weekly rounds to families (McFall 2014). An analysis of the social embeddedness of marketing would not be complete without raising the question of whether we can detect sociocultural “logics” that create discernible patterns for the interaction between marketing and consumption processes. The historical evidence shows that marketing activities can help disembed consumption behaviors from local and traditional institutions. This disembedding often led to an increased intrusion of commercial concerns into the private lives of citizens, a process highlighted in turn by a body of often highly publicized critical scholarship (Bartholomew 2017; Klein 2000; Packard 1957). Historical sociologists, however, will also find that new modes of persuasion often brought about unexpected forms of re-embedding consumers into socioeconomic relationships that are either symbolically conditioned (in the case of brands) or politically driven (as in the case of consumer movements). Although there might not exist a one-way street of cultural manipulation, the historical evidence nevertheless points at a trajectory of developments in the West which, following French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, can be summarized under the term grammatization (Stiegler 2014:49–58). Unlike the status-driven and hedonistic consumer cultures that emerged in non-Western contexts, nineteenth-century European marketing aimed at control and replication by formalizing continuous social processes into discrete units. What Max Weber described in the case of managerial accounting techniques and their influence on industrial organization moved to the heart of Western marketing, namely the attempt to rationalize the formation of consumers’ psychology for the sake of increasing economic efficiency (Carruthers and Espeland 1991). Following the Weberian path, it is also most relevant to rethink the role that religiosity played in bringing hedonism under the purview of “work” (Campbell  1987). These and other questions indicate a robust agenda for the study of consumption that identifies general trajectories, institutions, and roles that vary by place and time as well as particular, contingent events and relationships that are sometimes difficult to trace over time.

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chapter 2

The Sh a r i ng Econom y Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy

What came to be called the sharing economy emerged on the U.S.  scene in 2008. Originally termed “collaborative consumption” (Botsman and Rogers 2010), it was born out of technological possibility and economic necessity. Technological possibility came via platforms and apps1 that could provide real time information; use algorithms for complex scheduling, facilitate easy payment methods, and crowdsource ratings and reputational data from large numbers of users. Economic necessity was caused by a crippling recession, which hit young people especially hard. Collaborative consumption is based on the idea that there is considerable excess capacity in the assets held by ordinary households—rooms, cars, and durable goods such as tools or photography equipment. The idea was to create a new type of market that allows people to rent to or freely share those assets with others. While these kinds of transactions were not new, they had been mostly confined to known others or members of ongoing social networks and were mostly informal. They were also not highly monetized. The hope of platform founders and consultants was that they could transform these informal, thin markets into large and growing ones that are based not on existing social ties but on transactions among strangers. To do so, they touted not only the financial benefits of the monetized versions of collaborative consumption but a range of supposed social benefits. Sharing rooms on Airbnb was going to avoid the construction of new hotels, thereby reducing environmental impacts. Ridesharing allowed people to make new friends, thereby countering widespread social disconnection. The prevalence of these common-good claims helped fuel a robust public debate about the sector. Critics ridiculed the idea that renting rooms or driving for money had anything to do with sharing (Hill 2015; Reich 2015). Labor advocates derided platforms for exploiting the people doing the work (Scholz 2017). Housing activists responded to reductions in the supply of rental housing and the transformation of neighborhoods into Airbnb enclaves (Slee 2015). Consumer advocates worried about safety, discrimination, and accessibility. The business and popular press published numerous stories about the sector, from ebullient predictions that it would eventually “disrupt” everything, to lurid tales of exchanges gone wrong. Proponents and critics predicted pervasive

52   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy “Uberification.” Controversy continues, largely in the regulatory realm, as cities and states have begun to address lodging and transport issues. Labor groups and community activists have squared off against the companies and their enthusiastic users, resulting in ongoing contentious politics. Throughout these controversies, the role of consumers in the sharing economy has been far less fraught. They have mainly responded with enthusiasm and appreciation for these new services. While collaborative consumption (durable goods sharing) is the discursive core of the sector, the term “sharing economy” came to denote a larger set of activities, including goods exchange, labor services, and efforts to build social connection. Although the for-profit platforms have gotten the bulk of public attention, the Great Recession also spurred the creation of many not-for-profit, community-based economic initiatives that embraced the term “sharing economy.” These include neighborhood goods sharing platforms, gifting sites, makerspaces, food swaps, time banks, repair collectives, “freestores,” food waste apps, and many other innovations using technology for the common good. Of course, many of these initiatives predated the recession, but the term “sharing economy” came into use in its aftermath. Relatively quickly, the sharing economy became a global phenomenon. In part this was because the two biggest platforms—Airbnb and Uber—expanded internationally soon after they were founded. Competitors sprung up around the world, especially in the transportation sector. But globalization was not merely a big company phenomenon. The concept of sharing also sparked the imagination of city officials and planners, local entrepreneurs, and community activists. Seoul branded itself a “sharing city.” Amsterdam embraced sharing as well. The result has been that both global platforms and local variations are flourishing. In this chapter, we focus on the United States, as that is the location for our research. However, a number of the findings we report on with respect to consumers and providers are also relevant in other countries. Major areas of difference between the United States and other nations’ sharing sectors seem to be in regulation and government policy and the relative importance of non-profit, or “solidaristic” sharing, especially in Europe. For example, a recent study of commons and sharing initiatives in the Belgian city of Ghent (300,000 population) found 500 separate projects in operation (Bauwens and Onzia 2017). We have been studying the “sharing economy” since 2011, as part of a MacArthur Foundation project.2 Our research team is comprised of eight sociology PhD students or recent graduates. We have studied eleven sharing economy cases. We began with four non-profits—a timebank, a food swap, a makerspace, and open educational resources. In 2013, we turned to for-profit platforms, where our cases have been Airbnb, RelayRides (now rebranded as Turo), TaskRabbit, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and Favor. Our final case is Stocksy, a cooperative for stock photographers. Our research has largely been qualitative—in the non-profit cases, we did participant observation and in-depth interviews. In the for-profits, we did interviews; and in the case of Airbnb, we collected a database of hundreds of thousands of listings. We currently have more than 300 interviews with sharing economy participants, including members of sharing sites, consumers, and people who are earning on the platforms (i.e., providers). To obtain interviews, we

The Sharing Economy   53 used a variety of sampling approaches, attempting random recruitment whenever possible. In the pages to follow, references to “our research” will be this body of data. Because the sharing economy is a new and rapidly evolving sector, there is a limited body of literature to draw on. Furthermore, today’s findings may not be a good guide to the future. But there is enough work that has been done to report on various aspects of this new market. First, we turn to a discussion of definitions and terminology. We then discuss research on participants’ experiences in the sector, as well as critics’ views, and how both relate to larger trends in consumer culture. We then turn to research in a few specific areas: inequality and discrimination, as well as conflicts over regulation of the two biggest platforms, Airbnb and Uber. We conclude with some thoughts about the future of the sharing economy.

Definitions and Scope: What Is the Sharing Economy? The term “collaborative consumption” came into use via the efforts of a management consultant named Rachel Botsman. However, by 2010, the preferred term had become the “sharing economy.” While some contend its earliest use is unknown, others claim it originates from Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (Lessig 2008). This attribution suggests a connection to the history of collaborative online activity. Aspects of the sharing economy were already well established, such as crowdsourcing of ratings and reputational data on sites like eBay, Trip Advisor and Yelp, as well as sharing of files and other content. The phenomenon of “collaboration” had been thriving for some time in the open source software movement (Benkler 2006), citizen science, and distributed computing (Benkler 2004). We mention this because the connection to these earlier digital activities suggests a different history than popular origin stories, for example, the decision of Airbnb’s Brian Chesky to rent out his air mattress during a space crunch in San Francisco. Linking the sharing sector to earlier cyberutopian ideas and communities de-centers the role of venture capital and acknowledges the aspirational beginnings of some platforms, as well as the not-for-profit portion of the sector. Many participants in online peer-to-peer communities believed they would be democratizing, empowering, and perhaps even an alternative to market capitalism (Benkler 2006). Similar ideas have also animated many in the sharing sector. Many identify the core of the sharing economy as the use of idle assets (Frenken and Schor 2017). Airbnb is the classic example; but in the early days of UberX and Lyft, the idea was that people with a car and spare time could put those “idle” resources to use as well, and some research claims ride-hailing drivers are more efficient than conventional taxis (Cramer and Krueger 2016). There were also a number of platforms that promoted non-monetized exchanges, such as loaning and gifting. Prominent examples include Yerdle (goods loaning), Landshare (pairing would-be gardeners with landholders), and

54   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy Neighborgoods and ShareSomeSugar (neighborhood-based loaning sites). While Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft scaled rapidly, none of the four just mentioned are still operating. The sharing economy also came to cover platforms that specialized in “gig labor,” such as generalized task and errands sites (TaskRabbit, Zaarly, Takl), specialized task sites (DogVacay), and delivery services (Deliveroo, Favor, Postmates). Some observers also included sites that were attempting to establish second-hand markets as part of the sharing economy. This category, which in recent decades had been low-value, localized, and underdeveloped, was boosted by crowdsourced ratings and reputational data (eBay) and convenience (Craigslist). Here there were also for-profit and non-profit offerings, including freecycle, ThredUp (the Netflix of apparel, a for-profit), and Swapstyle (apparel exchange). In practice, the terminology has been analytically incoherent. One reason, pointed out by critics, is that many of these sites, such as ride-hailing or gig labor apps, developed in ways that left them with few or no true sharing features. Russell Belk (2014) has claimed that sharing cannot include exchange of money; however, this position has been persuasively criticized (Arnould and Rose 2015). The weaknesses of the “sharing cannot include money” perspective is also evident from work in economics and sociology, on the complexity of motives (Zelizer 1997). Belk and others reproduce popular tropes, adopting what Zelizer (2005) has termed the “hostile worlds” perspective. As John (2016) has noted, sharing is a polysemic term that covers multiple practices. We have found that participants on some platforms do use the terminology of sharing to describe their activities (Fitzmaurice et al. 2018); however Ravenelle (2017), who studied providers in New York City, finds that those who lack substantial assets, such as Uber drivers and TaskRabbits, reject that usage. She terms the sector “rational capitalism.” Another terminological issue is that very similar platforms are treated differently. Uber has never considered itself part of the “sharing economy” but Lyft, a nearly identical platform, has. Some gig labor platforms (TaskRabbit) are in; while Amazon’s MechanicalTurk is not. In large part, platforms have self-selected into or out of the “sharing” sector (Schor 2014). As Richardson (2015) has argued, the term has become performative. We use the term is to denote consumer-oriented, largely peer-to-peer organizations and platforms which typically has an offline dimension.

Demographics Who is active in the sharing economy? Overall, usage has been structured by age and cultural capital, as well as geography. The sharing economy began in cities and remains disproportionately urban. Furthermore, participants are young and highly educated. Although hard numbers are difficult to obtain because surveys have been sporadic and sample sizes small, there is widespread agreement that college students, recent graduates, and the under-35 age group made up the bulk of early participants. Even as the sector mainstreamed, its makeup remained disproportionately young and highly educated, on

The Sharing Economy   55 both the consumer and the provider sides. A 2016 national survey by the Pew organization found that are more likely to be consumers of ride hailing, clothing rental, and coworking spaces than older age groups. The 29–44 age group is more represented in lodging (likely because of cost). The youngest age group are also heavily represented as buyers of second-hand or handmade goods and consumers of gig labor for household tasks. Among, 15 percent had used ride-hailing services, 11 percent home sharing, 4 percent co-working and task labor, and 2 percent had rented clothing from platforms. Overall, usage begins to drop off significantly after age 45 (Pew Research Center 2016b). A 2015 survey found that 34 percent of U.S. residents between the ages of 16 and 34 said they belonged to a sharing service or expected to within the next year (Bloomberg Brief 2015). The provider side also skews toward youth, with Pew reporting that 18-29-year-olds were twice as likely to participate in gig work and task sites than the population as a whole (Pew Research Center 2016a). Sharing economy participants are highly educated. The Pew survey found that across many sites, the college educated were more likely to be using services, and nearly half of this group was already users. TaskRabbit reported that 70 percent of its providers had a college education or more (Newton 2013). Hall and Krueger (2016) report from a survey of 601 Uber drivers that 37 percent have a college degree, and 40 percent have either an Associate’s Degree or some college. In addition, 11 percent a have postgraduate degree. These education levels are far in excess of the population as a whole. In our research, we find almost no participants who have less than a high school diploma. Most are college graduates (or in college), and a significant fraction have graduate degrees. The high levels of education in our sample can be partially explained by the fact that most of our respondents were based in Boston, but high education levels are generally common on most platforms.

Participants’ Experiences Much of the public discourse on the sharing economy has focused on the experiences of workers, with widespread criticism of Uber and similar platforms for their low wages and poor treatment of drivers. There has been far less attention paid to the experiences of participants on other platforms, either as producers or consumers. In our research, we find that the sharing economy is a productive site for understanding consumer trends, as well as developing theoretical approaches to the sociology of consumption. Users are a high cultural capital (hereafter, HCC) group, with a distinctive, trendsetting habitus. Furthermore, because they are young, most have limited economic capital. This was especially true in the early years, during the Great Recession. Participants looked to platforms to save and earn money; and many of our respondents, especially on Airbnb, were both consumers and earners. Furthermore, a number of our non-profit cases require engagement on both sides of the exchange (e.g., food swap, timebank). Thus, the strict demarcation between consumer and producer is not always operative in this sector, although at the low wage end of the gig labor market there is less overlap.

56   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy While economic motives have been important in attracting users, participants also embraced the “sharing economy” because it offered a chance to enact moral projects and practice a distinctive eco-habitus that had already been emerging in urban areas. (Carfagna et al. 2014). This habitus is rooted in a shift of young HCC consumers toward a more bodily, material, and locally rooted set of practices. It is also highly structured through a particular moral orientation. A key part of this orientation is that across both for-profit platforms and non-profit community sites we have found that participants articulate critiques of corporate capitalism, often for reasons tied to consumption (Fitzmaurice et al. 2018). In some ways, this may not be surprising, as young adults’ attitudes toward capitalism have become rather negative. In 2011, more 18-29-year-olds in the United States had a negative view of “capitalism” than a positive one (47 percent to 46 percent; Pew Research Center 2011). Perhaps more surprisingly, this age group also held a more positive view of “socialism” than “capitalism” (49 percent to 46 percent, respectively). This shift occurred on the heels of the Great Recession, which represented a massive failure of economic opportunity and fairness, especially for young people. While our respondents do not understand the sharing economy as a “socialist” project, it represents an alternative to corporate capitalism and dominant cultures of consumption (Fitzmaurice et al. 2018). This is especially true for participants in the non-profits and the more remunerative platforms. (It is less true of the lowest-end gig work, such as ride hailing and food delivery).3 Respondents consistently disparage impersonal hotel chains, anonymous service encounters, and ecologically oblivious companies operating at transnational scale. Many shop at thrift stores and farmers’ markets. They prefer to avoid global supply chains, processed foods, and mass produced items. Some even attempt to de-link from commercial markets altogether, opting for lifestyles of bartering, DIY provisioning, and acquisition via gift or second-hand markets. They express relational goals for transactions, and believe that economic activity should foster well-being, via financial and personal autonomy, as well as social connectedness and meaning. They indict corporate life for failing on these terms. In many ways, sharing economy participants’ anti-corporate attitudes seem to align them with the critics of neo-liberalism. Indeed, neo-liberal capitalism is a trope they frequently reference as a foil. However, their views of the sharing economy differ from those of most critics of neo-liberalism. The latter see the sharing economy as the cutting edge of a rapacious system destroying yet another social realm. By commodifying everyday life, it turns people into neo-liberal subjects and crowds out altruistic sharing. Furthermore, the critics see platform sharing as a fraudulent concept because it involves the pursuit of economic gain, rather than genuine solidarity. Participants are merely “sharing the scraps,” with platforms appropriating the bulk of the value generated (Reich 2015). In the critics’ view, the platforms are creating an even more efficient, ruthless, and totalistic system of exploitation in which the ongoing risk shift onto workers is accelerated (Hill 2015; Scholz 2017; Slee 2015). As Evgeny Morozov (2013) has argued, “The sharing economy amplifies the worst excesses of the dominant economic model: it is neoliberalism on steroids.”

The Sharing Economy   57 Research with actual participants gives a mixed picture. Alexandrea Ravenelle (2016, 2017, 2019), who interviewed 78 providers on four platforms in New York, argues that they are unlikely to consider their activities sharing, and that they are critical of the platforms. By contrast, Germann Molz (2013) argues that Couchsurfing, a free hospitality platform, functions as a “moral economy” in which participants are highly invested in this ethical form of travel. Ikkala and Lampinen (2015) find that hospitality is an important motivator for Airbnb hosts. Ladegaard’s (2018) Airbnb hosts aim to meet and connect with exotic others, although they put limits on the extent of exoticism they desire—and aim for what he a terms a “comfortable” level of alterity. In our research, we find that respondents have social orientations to their sharing practices (Fitzmaurice et al. 2018). For them, the sector offers social connection, flexibility, autonomy, and novel means for entrepreneurship and money-making. They identify as actors in an innovative attempt to transform markets from the bottom up, to make them morally accountable, and forces for social good. So, for example, they experience their peer-to-peer exchanges as having higher levels of personal accountability and social interaction. They engage in face-to-face connection and distinguish exchanges from commodified transactions with impersonal corporations. This is one reason they like platform payment mechanisms (credit cards and electronic transfers) that operate “backstage” or out of view and allow them to avoid the awkwardness of discussing money in this personalized relationship. Ikkala and Lampinen (2015) find that hosts feel monetization frees them to engage in hospitality with a greater sense of ease and control. We also find that participants hold ideals of community, seeing trading partners as potential long-lasting connections. Rather than extending their critiques of the market to this sector, our participants see an opportunity to build an innovative kind of market. In an early paper (Schor 2015) on three for-profit platforms (Airbnb, RelayRides, and TaskRabbit) with a sample of 43 earners, we found strong social motives among three distinct economic models of behavior. Indeed, social orientation and interpersonal relations were key for a plurality of the group. While they do appreciate the ability to earn money, their orientation was relational. Some refrain from charging what the market will bear for ethical reasons. Some Airbnb hosts in this group offer their homes gratis on Couchsurfing, or claim that they would continue to host even if they had all the money they could want. They describe socializing with their guests and in some cases developing long-term friendships. TaskRabbits also frequently discuss the social dimensions of their work. By contrast, under one-third of the sample conform to the assumptions of the neo-liberal subject. These homo economici, who are more likely to be found on RelayRides and TaskRabbit than Airbnb, are income maximizers with limited social motivations. Among the third group, homo instrumentalis, platforms are just a way to earn the limited amounts of money they need to meet their expenses. They are not oriented to maximization and are motivated more by survival than wealth accumulation. They do not have the entrepreneurial, risk-taking attitude characteristic of neo-liberal subjectivity. However, it is also the case that not all socially oriented participants are satisfied. A number of these platforms fail to deliver durable social ties even for people who want

58   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy them. At the timebank, we found many participants were disappointed in the extent of social connection they developed (Dubois, Schor, and Carfagna 2014). At the food swap, some participants articulated regret that their socializing with fellow swappers never rose to the level of meeting outside the swap (Fitzmaurice and Schor 2018). In her study of carsharing, Fenton found that the two parties to the transaction often never met, on account of remote access technology (Fenton 2015). We also find this with some Airbnb users. Parigi and State (Parigi and State 2014) also found that over time, the ability of Couchsurfers to make durable ties declined. We found that most of our respondents have constructed an economic imaginary that is precapitalist, premodern, and rooted in a vision of the domestic sphere (Fitzmaurice et al. 2018). For many of them, such as Airbnb hosts and TaskRabbit providers, the market is literally enacted within the home. For others, communal sites such as makerspaces and food swaps reproduce domesticity via small-scale community and intimate relations. Among them all, we find a desire to build markets that foster and value artisanal, craft-like production, whether it is by offering prepared food at a swap, a personalized, cozy Airbnb bedroom, or literal craft production in a makerspace. Their vision of a “moral market” is rooted in the return of small-scale economic production within a domestic sphere. In these ways, participants reproduce the idealistic discourse of the early days of the sharing economy. If the profit motive has transformed these platforms from the feelgood, do-good hybrids of the early days to market-savvy growth maximizers, this shift is recognized unevenly by participants. This is one reason we argue that the neo-liberal critique is at best partial—or at worst reliant on an explanation in which participants must be seen as duped, unaware of their own interests and their role in a transformation that is undermining their own well-being and that of others. The moral orientation of sharing economy participants is not something that is segregated from their general consumer orientation. In contrast to the arguments of Lamont (1992) who argues that Bourdieu undertheorized morality, and that cultural capital and morality are largely independent, we find that moral considerations are at the heart of the emergent HCC habitus (Carfagna et al. 2014). They are not orthogonal to the basic binaries that structure HCC tastes and practices but underlie those foundational orientations. The “ecological” logic of the habitus is a moral stance toward nature, other species, and humans. We see this logic played out most clearly in the timebanks, food swaps, gift sites, repair collectives, and food-sharing apps. Reducing resource use, providing healthful, local food for people who need it, and giving free or low-cost access to goods and services are central to the motives of participants. They have an “eco-habitus,” not so much because it represents a low-impact lifestyle in environmental terms (although it can) but because its habitus is structured by calculations about, consideration of, and attention to an ecological sensibility. We have identified three dimensions of the eco-habitus. They are a preference for the local (over the global), the manual (over the mental), and the material (over the abstract). These are in contrast to the earlier findings of Bourdieu (1984) and Holt (1998), and represent a shift in how HCC consumers locate themselves with respect to longstanding

The Sharing Economy   59 binaries that shape the field of lifestyles (Bourdieu 1984; Carfagna et al. 2014; Fitzmaurice and Schor 2018). Participants enact these three dimensions in their sharing practices. The first is the most overtly articulated, in large part because it is so salient in the discourses of sharing sites. Food swaps, timebanks, tool libraries, and neighborhood goods-sharing platforms are all committed to building local economies of production and consumption. Consumers categorize these initiatives with other efforts to “Buy Local,” such as farmers’ markets and Community-Supported Agriculture. But the preference for the local is also present in large, for-profit platforms such as Airbnb. “Live like a local,” is not merely a branding slogan but a theme that comes up repeatedly in guests’ discussions of why they like the platform. Guests are appreciative of insider knowledge of restaurants, bars, and other consumer experiences. They enjoy living in “real” neighborhoods rather than being confined to tourist-filled city centers. Disdaining mass tourism, as they reject mass consumption more generally, Airbnb gives them an opportunity to live in the homes of locals and to experience local culture. Airbnb’s recently introduced “Experiences” market takes the local experience farther, offering not merely lodging and knowledge of retail, but the opportunity to spend time with local hosts and their friends—for a price, of course. (This new product gives additional fodder for critics’ view that the platforms are colonizing daily life). We note that there is a certain contradiction in this discourse—as guests often travel long distances, and even globally—to experience the local. Furthermore, we find that the “local” that is desired by HCC consumers is an upscale, cosmopolitan local, which is distinct from the “parochial” local that Holt’s lower cultural capital consumers preferred. The second and third dimensions of the eco-habitus, the manual and the material, are closely related. In the earlier postwar era analyzed by Bourdieu (1984) and Holt (1988), the HCC habitus was oriented toward the abstract and ideal, and away from the mundane and material, which was associated with the working class. In contrast, we find that sharing economy participants have an orientation toward doing things with their hands and being creative. “Hacking” everyday objects by working to transform them is a popular trend among young HCCs who exhibit the eco-habitus. As one participant noted, “what I know is that if I’m not creating, life is miserable.” The urge to create is almost axiomatic at the makerspace, but participants in other sites also engage in manual practices. At the food swap, offerings must be “homemade,” that is, made by hand. “Timebankers” use the network to learn manual skills, such as whittling. They also discuss their desire to escape from the “mental” orientation of day jobs such as coding to offer manual skills like home repair and gardening. Participants on for-profit platforms engage in and extol manual skills. Many TaskRabbits assemble Ikea furniture. One provider spent much of his interview bemoaning the loss of knowledge of plumbing and other home repair skills. TaskRabbit consumers discussed their attraction to manual tasks such as repurposing furniture. Some Airbnb guests discussed their preference for homes over hotels because they could engage in manual practices such as cooking or ritualized coffee preparation, without interruption (Fitzmaurice and Schor 2018). The turn toward manual labor, and away from the traditional HCC realms of the abstract, mental, and intellectual, is also connected to the importance of materiality

60   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy in the eco-habitus. Our respondents talk about the qualities of the foods they embrace and reject. They have a tactile orientation, especially to natural materials such as wood. They like to get their hands dirty with soil. They reject materials that are too closely connected with mass consumption, such as plastic. This is one reason many prefer the more personalized experiences they can construct on a platform like Airbnb or TaskRabbit. While the eco-habitus is not exclusive to the sharing economy, we do find that the moral aspirations of the HCC consumers we study mesh well with the common-good claims of the sharing economy. Personalized, small-scale exchange, creativity, and autonomy are central to the enactment of an eco-habitus. At a time when global capitalism is generating extreme inequality, climate derangement, and social disconnection, the consumers we study are looking for an alternative. Whether the sharing economy truly represents one, or is merely “neo-liberalism on steroids,” as its critics claim, our participants are optimistic about its potential.

Inequality and the Sharing Economy: Race and Class As noted earlier, the for-profit segment of the sharing economy has put forward commongood claims of efficiency, sociability, and environmental benefit. Companies also claim to increase equity. One argument is that sharing benefits disadvantaged groups via enhanced access to economic opportunity. However, independent empirical studies have consistently found that discrimination, based primarily on race, is widespread. Another claim is the sector provides income to struggling middle-class households. The evidence here is mixed, particularly if one also includes the losses of jobs and income associated with “disrupted” industries. We think the more likely effect is that platforms are increasing incomes for the better-off segments of the middle class at the expense of lower-educated workers. We start with the latter issue and then move on to discuss racial discrimination. The economic opportunities presented by the sharing economy are often discussed in terms of potential benefits to providers. Proponents focus on how the platforms eliminate formal, onerous, and expensive barriers to entry in the market for transportation (taxi medallions) or accommodations (licensing). This allows individuals who could not have cleared those barriers a chance to compete (Horton and Zeckhauser 2016; Zervas, Proserpio, and Byers 2015). A less remarked on but also relevant point is that some platforms do not discriminate against providers with criminal records, in contrast to most employers (Pager 2008), although over time pressure to exclude those with records has increased, especially on ride-hailing platforms. In any case, platforms have relatively low barriers to entry, in comparison to conventional employment. Signing up is often as easy as filling out some fields on an app and attending an orientation session, or listing a property. In theory, this should disproportionately benefit groups with fewer resources,

The Sharing Economy   61 such as youth, the poor, and racial minorities. While national surveys have not published data that would allow us to test this finding, in our limited, local sample, we find that earning on platforms is stratified by income and race, with the more lucrative sites having participants who are whiter, have a higher income, and are higher educated. Proponents of the “economic opportunity” argument also note that some platforms allow people to earn passive income by renting out capital goods they have access to (Fraiberger and Sundararajan 2015; Sperling 2015), or even tap into a higher rate of return on their capital goods than they otherwise would through conventional wage labor (Sundararajan 2016). It is also the case that especially when they were introduced, sharing economy platforms offered higher wages for lower-skilled labor than were generally available in local labor markets. However, the existence of the wage premium is now questioned in the case of ride hailing, as wages have fallen and wages net of expenses are complicated to estimate. Writing for Uber, Hall and Krueger (2016) have argued that the sharing economy is a flexible source of income to compensate for instability in conventional labor markets. Indeed, as the conventional labor market has improved, the growth rate of participation slowed markedly (Farrell and Greig 2016). Airbnb has argued that hosting “combats middle class income stagnation,” allowing people to remain in homes they could not otherwise afford or helping them weather job loss or other adverse events (Sperling 2015). The sector also offers consumers opportunities to purchase goods such as cars or lodging at cheaper prices (Horton and Zeckhauser 2016). On the other hand, there is growing evidence that Uber is using its market power and asymmetric access to information to extract value, compress wages, and control workers (Calo and Rosenblat 2017), and that these advantages to the platform are endemic to this sector. The “middle class income stagnation” argument suggests an equity effect that begs further study, which is that the sharing sector is benefitting middle class, highly educated people at the expense of the working class. People who are already privileged in the conventional economy may be taking jobs and income from less-privileged participants and creating more inequality within the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution (Schor 2017). In our qualitative data, two findings suggest this outcome. First, sharing platforms have led highly educated young people to take on work that has traditionally been done by those of lower educational attainment. Examples include driving (highereducated Uber drivers taking away work from taxi drivers), Airbnb hosts taking business from hotels (whose cleaning staff are immigrant women with lower educational attainment), and gig labor sites taking jobs from informal workers (such as domestic housecleaners, another low-educated, immigrant labor force). The platforms appear to have erased some of the stigma associated with these low-status jobs, perhaps because they are technologically novel and emerged with a hip, common-good discourse and youth “vibe.” The extent of this effect cannot not be determined without a comprehensive model of each local economy, in part because although platforms may reduce the demand for conventional labor, they may also increase total consumer demand for these services. However, the collapse of the taxi business and the movement of leisure travelers out of urban hotels suggests that for the two largest platforms (Uber and Airbnb), the effects may be significant. This type of effect is also typical of

62   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy recessionary times—more privileged workers move down the labor market ladder, pushing out those below them. A second effect is that most sharing economy earners have other sources of income. In our sample, only about 30 percent are “full-timers” who rely on the platform to pay their basic expenses (Schor et al. 2018). Many have full-time jobs and use the income for discretionary or even luxury spending. These supplementary earnings increase income for better-off workers, and to the extent that there is job loss in conventional employment also erode earnings at the bottom. This effect will make the income distribution from the upper middle to the bottom of the distribution more unequal. Platforms are also having impacts on racial inequality. Because they have been mostly unregulated, there has been little explicit policy outlawing discrimination. In the lodging sector, for example, public accommodation laws that prevent racial discrimination do not apply. And for the most part, platforms have taken a hands-off approach to discriminatory behavior by their users. All the studies we have identified have found the presence of racial discrimination, on one side of the market, the other, or both. We begin with studies that analyze discrimination against consumers. An audit study by Edelman, Luca, and Svirsky (2017:1) has found that guest accounts on Airbnb with “distinctively African-American names were 16% less likely to be accepted [for a reservation] than identical accounts with distinctively White names.” A similar audit study by Cui, Li, and Zhang (2016) found a similar sized effect for accounts associated with African American and white names on the platform. Another audit study, focusing on the transportation platforms Uber and Lyft, found that consumers with distinctively African American names faced higher waiting times and more frequent cancellations (Ge et al.  2016). A mixed-methods study of TaskRabbit producers found that they engaged in discriminatory behavior based on the geographic location of consumers, reporting an unwillingness to accept jobs in areas with higher proportions of minority or low-income residents (Thebault-Spieker, Terveen, and Hecht 2015). On the provider side of the market, Edelman and Luca (2014) found that hosts, who were identified as black based on their pictures, charged 12 percent less per night on Airbnb compared to similar listings with non-black hosts. Laouenan and Rathelot (2016) present similar results, with minority hosts4 charging about 3 percent less than non-minority hosts. A study on TaskRabbit and Fiverr found that producers who were identified as female or black received fewer reviews, indicating that they are hired less often (Hannak et al. 2017). A 2017 report about Airbnb found that even in black majority neighborhoods in New York City, the vast majority of hosts were white, suggesting that the platform’s economic opportunities are not equally distributed (Inside Airbnb 2017). In our work on racial discrimination at Airbnb, we found that in the 10 largest markets in the United States, areas with higher concentrations of residents of color, had fewer listings on Airbnb (Cansoy and Schor 2018). In these locales, Airbnb listings had lower prices and fewer bookings. A feature of the sector that is often touted as an important factor in reducing discrimination is the public reputation systems. Multiple studies have highlighted the potential of these systems to counteract interpersonal discrimination by providing producers and

The Sharing Economy   63 consumers with relevant and trustworthy information about their counterparts (Abrahao et al. 2017; Cui et al. 2016; Laouenan and Rathelot 2016). These systems have also played an important role in platforms’ responses to claims of discrimination, alongside the stronger regulation of user behavior, and an interactional design that downplays racial identifiers (Murphy 2016). However, it is unclear whether public reputation systems will be able to temper discriminatory behavior. One study has found that controlling for the information communicated through photos, the review scores of an Airbnb host had no effect on the listing’s price or the likelihood of a listing being booked (Ert, Fleischer, and Magen 2016). Our study of Airbnb (Cansoy and Schor 2018), as well as Hannak et al.’s work on TaskRabbit and Fiverr (2017) indicates that the reviews system itself is biased against areas with higher concentrations of minority residents and minority producers, respectively. Taken together, these findings suggest that market-based and technocratic fixes to discrimination highlighted by the proponents of the sharing economy have not been very effective to date. Perhaps more importantly, these approaches have restricted the debate about discrimination in the sector to instances of person-to-person discrimination. However, as we have argued for the case of Airbnb (Cansoy and Schor 2018), structural inequalities in access to housing assets is an ongoing, major source of inequality that cannot be addressed by the existence of a platform, even if its barriers to entry are low.

Regulatory Contestation The emergence of for-profit sharing economy platforms in urban areas has been the subject of significant public attention on account of their impact on housing, traffic, tax revenues, and the industries with which they compete. Some scholars have argued that the platforms should not be regulated by the state because they provide consumers with better access to information, empower them with reputational tools, and self-regulate (Koopman, Mitchell, and Thierer 2015). However, the overwhelming response by academics, policymakers, and activists has been in favor of greater oversight, especially of Uber and Airbnb. In the case of Airbnb, the primary focus has been on how the rise of short-term rentals affects the availability and price of long-term housing and the quality of neighborhoods and urban life. Local activists (Dougherty 2015), municipal and state authorities (Isaac 2015; O’Sullivan  2017), and researchers have voiced concerns that Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms are creating incentives for property owners to convert long-term rental properties to exclusively short-term use. This results in higher rental prices, potentially driving long-term residents out of urban centers and harming their communities. One analysis of third-party data on Airbnb activities (Stulberg 2016) has argued that the number of units converted to exclusive short-term rentals is too small to have a significant impact on the housing market. However, an increasing number of studies have

64   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy found that Airbnb listings are not equally distributed across the urban landscape; and in areas with high concentrations of listings, there can be a significant impact. Lee (2016) found that in 2014, almost half of all Airbnb listings in Los Angeles were concentrated in just seven neighborhoods. With Airbnb listings making up between 3 percent and 12.5 percent of the housing stock in these areas, he argues that the short-term rentals play an important role in the rapid rise of housing prices in these neighborhoods. Wachsmuth and Weisler (2018) have recently presented a similar analysis for New York in 2016, showing how the concentration of Airbnb listings in specific areas, coupled with high revenues for short-term rentals, created strong pressures on local housing markets. A study by Barron, Kung, and Proserpio (2017) reports a similar relationship across the United States, finding that higher numbers of Airbnb listings in an area are associated with higher rents and higher house prices, and that this association may be caused by property owners converting housing from long-term to short-term rental. While these concerns have resulted in local organizing, and action by municipal authorities, it is not yet clear how effective these attempts will be. Regulation has often taken the form of restricting the number of days a unit can be rented, or requiring property owners to obtain permits to engage in short-term rentals. However, authorities have faced significant hurdles in enforcing these regulations (Walters 2017). Over the last few years, the platforms have also begun to collect hotel taxes for municipal authorities, which reduces incentives to take firmer action against short-term rentals. A ballot ­measure aimed at strengthening short-term rental regulations in San Francisco in 2015 was defeated, with Airbnb in its opposition campaign highlighting the amount of taxes it collected on behalf of the city (Romney, Lien, and Hamilton 2015). However, in January 2018, stronger regulations did come into effect that halved the number of legal rentals. If the city is able to enforce these new regulations, many of the adverse effects that housing activists have identified will be mitigated (Dent 2018). Regulations have also been put into place in other areas. New York State passed a law in 2016 that made most Airbnb and other short-term rentals illegal unless the host is present. In 2018, Boston City Council passed a similar ordinance. In Los Angeles, short-term rentals are illegal; however, the regulation has not been enforced. In early 2018, the City Council was considering regulation that would legalize listings of primary homes only and for only 180 days per year. If these various regulatory efforts are successful, their bans on absent hosts will dramatically reduce the number of listings, exclude commercial operators from the market, and return lodging platforms to their origins as facilitators of “accommodating sharing.” However, so far illegal actors have found ways of returning to the platforms. Whether the latest round of regulations will be able to prevent that remains to be seen. One difference is that Airbnb finally appears to be cooperating with regulators and will likely be able to ban commercial operators if it wants to. In the case of Uber, the ongoing conflict over regulation has focused on two major areas—the company’s access to the urban transportation market alongside conventional taxis and the classification of drivers on the platform. Uber and other ridesharing apps have generally entered urban markets in the absence of regulatory approval and with considerable political clout. Indeed, it was revealed in early 2017 that in many

The Sharing Economy   65 municipalities Uber had been making use of software tools of questionable legality to avoid agents of regulatory bodies (Isaac 2017). Uber’s growth has resulted in significant upheaval within these markets because an Uber driver can operate without purchasing a taxi medallion, commercial insurance, or a vehicle that conforms to municipal regulations. While the first years of Uber’s market presence didn’t seem to have hurt medallion prices, medallion values in New York have fallen from an all-time high of 1.3 million dollars in 2014 to under $200,000 by late 2017 (Sernovitz 2017). Similar problems, at a smaller scale, plague conventional taxi industries in many cities. Taxi operators and medallion owners have frequently protested against authorities allowing Uber and other ride-hailing apps to operate without medallions. In response, regulators have announced changes to the medallion system to rescue medallion prices (Hu 2017) and refinance medallion-related debt (Gray  2017). However, regulatory action against ride-hailing apps or drivers has been infrequent and inconsistent. One meaningful instance of regulatory action was undertaken against the ride-hailing platforms by the city of Austin in 2015 when the city council passed regulations that mandated ride-hailing companies share some of the data they collected, as well as requiring their drivers to undergo a background check using their fingerprints (McPhate 2016). In response, both Uber and Lyft ended their operations in the city for a year until legislation at the state level ended the fingerprint requirement (Vertuno 2017). Despite the lack of meaningful regulation of ride hailing, Gabel (2016) has argued that the taxi industry is still able to hold onto some market power because they effectively monopolize curbside hailing, dedicated pickup spots in public spaces like airports, and segments of the population that do not use smartphones. It is unclear if these monopolies can be maintained and whether they will be enough to protect the existence of a highly regulated medallion taxi sector alongside a largely unregulated ride-hailing one. However, the bigger regulatory challenge for the sector today is about the classification of its drivers. Since their inception, the platforms have depended on classifying drivers as independent contractors, and using terms like “driver-partner” (Hall and Krueger 2016) to highlight the lack of an employment relationship. However, this classification has received significant pushback, both from drivers and local regulators that have been sympathetic to such demands. Perhaps the best known example of this struggle over classification is a class-action lawsuit filed in 2013 by a group of drivers in California (later joined by drivers from Massachusetts), which alleged that the drivers should be classified as employees and are owed back pay, benefits, and expense reimbursements (Isaac 2016). While this case, and the legal question of classification, has attracted significant public and scholarly attention (Acevedo  2016; Dubal  2017; Lobel  2017; Ross  2015), there has also been movement toward unionization among drivers. In Seattle, this movement was facilitated by a law that mandated ride-hailing companies to enter into collective bargaining agreements with a union representing drivers (Johnson 2017), however that law was recently struck down. In New York, Uber drivers are represented by a “guild” recognized by Uber. However, there are questions about the independence and the legality of this organization because it is funded by Uber itself (Scheiber  2017). Meanwhile the classification debate shows no signs of abating, and

66   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy multiple lawsuits, sometimes with contradictory outcomes, are making their way through the court systems in several jurisdictions. Harris and Krueger (2016) have argued against legal solutions and in favor of establishing a new regulatory category with limited benefits. However, others have criticized this approach by refocusing the classification debate on the control exerted by the platforms (Cunningham-Parmeter 2016; Prassl and Risak 2016). A new regulatory category represents a step backward for workers; and in any case, the creation of such a category is unlikely under the current Administration. Some long-term analysts of the ride for hire sector are pessimistic that significant progress to protect Uber workers will occur on any front. (Collier, Dubal, and Carter 2017). An optimistic view of regulation comes from Rauch and Schleicher (2015), who argue that there will be novel evolution as governments harness the platforms, or their technologies and business models, to deliver public services, enact economic redistribution, and generate enough surplus in the sectors platforms operate in to do away with the need for extensive regulation. We can see some movement in this direction. Some municipalities in the United States have experimented with limited subsidies to the ride-hailing apps to enhance their public transit systems (Dungca 2016). A few are subsidizing platforms to replace public transit services (Jenkins 2018). Revenues from taxes on ride hailing are being used to fund infrastructure. Airbnb has mobilized its hosts to house refugees in Europe and evacuees in the United States, proving to some the viability of its model for emergency management (Shen 2017). However, these developments do not reduce the urgent need for better and clear regulation of the for-profit sharing economy. We are more optimistic about the possibility of adequate regulation in Europe than the United States, where the political power of the big platforms remains formidable.

Conclusion We began this chapter by noting that the emergence of the “sharing economy” has engendered considerable debate. Critics have assailed platform companies for their treatment of labor, impacts on the supply and price of urban housing, and toleration of racial discrimination. Additional concerns center on how monetizing household assets may change the culture of everyday life, leading to a hyper-commodification of social relations. While the existing literature on these issues remains limited, we attempted to shed light on a number of these debates, with an emphasis on those most closely connected to consumption. A key finding in our research is that consumers and providers (especially outside of the ride-hailing segment), see their activities in this sector as contributing to a new type of economic exchange. They are engaged in moral projects that are based on personal relations, trust, and autonomy. They feel that even the big platforms are alternatives to global companies that lack accountability, transparency, and ethics. They part company with critics who see the platform economy as the latest leading edge of neo-liberalism. Yet there is mounting evidence that on a number of grounds— discrimination, exploitation of workers, housing supply—the critics have a point. Even

The Sharing Economy   67 as they are offering new, more personalized ways to make and save money, the platforms are also responsible for a variety of adverse effects. The non-profits, which rarely have negative impacts, have failed to scale. They remain small and generally unable to compete with the large commercial companies. At the moment, these debates are hard to resolve, in large part because the sector is quite dynamic. Platforms change policies frequently. In some cases, such as Uber and Lyft, policy change is near-continuous. In others, such as TaskRabbit, there have been numerous “pivots,” or reformulations of the business model and the basic operation of the site. For Airbnb, change has come from various quarters. In the early days, it consisted of social encounters via shared accommodation. Over time, hosts became more likely to vacate their premises, commercial operators flooded onto the site, and “entire home” listings came to dominate. As a result, political pushback in larger cities led to regulations that seem likely to exclude commercial operators and restrict absentee hosts. What looked like convergence to a business-as-usual lodging company may now be a case of returning to its more alternative roots. And yet it is premature to make firm conclusions. Another reason to expect continued change is that the current labor force is diverse, in terms of economic situations, motives, and needs. We have found that platforms that work well for supplementary earners (currently the majority) may be unable to provide decent work and income for full-timers (Schor et al. 2018). Will there be growing pressure for earners to put in longer hours? We know that ride-hailing companies are already doing quite a bit to induce more work from their drivers. Airbnb has also attempted to entice hosts to book more nights. If supplementary earners become less numerous, will labor conditions become more exploitative? Is Uber the “canary in the coal mine”? Or is it an outlier—a predatory company that will be brought to heel by regulation and competition? In some ways, debates about the sharing economy have been as much about the future as the present. Proponents envision a world in which traditional employment has been eliminated, workers have autonomy and flexibility, and efficiency reigns. Critics also see platforms taking over and developing unchecked market power over both workers and consumers. A decade in, it’s clear that there is not one path that all platforms follow. It’s also clear that trajectories are by no means linear. Perhaps even more importantly, the developing regulatory environment suggests that if consumers, providers, citizens, and policymakers weigh in forcefully, there is hope for aligning the sector to the common good claims with which it began.

Notes 1. We use the terms “platform” and “app” interchangeably. Companies that started with platforms, like Airbnb and TaskRabbit, now also have apps. Others, like Uber, were always app based. 2. Our project is called the “Connected Consumption and Connected Economy” project. Papers may be found on our website: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments /sociology/connected.html.

68   Juliet B. Schor and Mehmet Cansoy 3. This may be partly because Uber has always rejected the language of sharing and has never participated in the sharing community (unlike Lyft, e.g.,). In addition, wages can be quite low and desperation high for full time earners on these platforms (Schor et al. 2018). 4. Their data includes Airbnb markets in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Ethnic minority hosts are defined as black and/or Muslim identified based on their pictures and names, for the purposes of their study.

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chapter 3

Prosum ption Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer George Ritzer

This chapter deals with the process of prosumption as well as those—prosumers—who engage in it. Although we have always been prosumers, the main focus here will be on the “new” prosumer who has emerged, largely in the last three decades, at least in part as a result of technological changes, especially the ever-increasing importance of the ­digital world. While that technological change is crucial, it, like others, has mainly occurred in the context of, and been pushed by an array of, capitalist interests. Although this chapter will address how consumption can be seen as emancipatory (Dusi 2017), it will begin with the dominant pattern. Using and exploiting largely unpaid new prosumers (Terranova 2013; Zwick 2015), rather than (or in addition to) paid employees, is a way to reduce labor costs and thereby increase the profitability of capitalist firms. As a result, it is argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a new economic form—prosumer capitalism (O’Neil and Fraysee 2015; Ritzer 2015b). The nature of prosumer capitalism will be discussed, as will the reasons why we need yet another label for capitalism to supplement, or replace, such well-known modifiers as competitive (Marx 1932/1964) and monopoly (Baran and Sweezy 1966) capitalism, as well as those that reflect more recent developments such as digital (Fuchs and Mosco 2017; Wajcman 2014) and platform capitalism (Langley and Leyshon 2017; Srnicek 2016). While we lack space to discuss them, it is important to note the emergence in various fields of a spate of ideas and concepts similar in many ways to prosumption. They include the produser (Bruns 2008), co-creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004), service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch  2004), etc., amateur do-it-yourselfers (Fox  2014; Watson and Shove  2008), craft consumers (Campbell  2005), Pro-Ams (Leadbeter and Miller 2004), an active audience (Hall 1980; Jenkins 2013; Laestadius and

76   George Ritzer Wahl 2017; Smythe 1977), the creation of “factory without walls” (Hardt and Negri 2000; Lazzarato 1996; Negri 1989/2005), and brand creation (Arvidsson 2005). All of these ideas seek to overcome the modern tendency to think in binary terms, especially about the economy, and to offer new ideas that are more dialectical and more integrative (Humphreys and Grayson 2008; Ritzer 1981). Prosumption involves “the interrelationship of production and consumption where it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish one from the other” (Ritzer 2015a:413–414). While the conceptual binary of production and consumption has a long history, prosumption is a relatively new term, coined by Alvin Toffler (1980) less than four decades ago. However, the concept was largely ignored until the twenty-first century when interest in the idea and the process boomed (e.g., Rifkin 2015; Fox 2016, especially in recent handbook entries such as this one, as well as Bruns 2016; Gajjala, Dillon, and Anarbaeva 2017; and Ritzer 2017). The dramatic increase in interest in the concept is traceable to developments online (e.g., blogs, Amazon.com, etc.) as well as in the brickand-mortar world (e.g., the fast-food restaurant), which made it abundantly obvious that people are engaging in processes that integrated production and consumption. Within the scholarly world that revival in a wide range of fields (e.g., energy use; see Throndsen et al.  2017) is largely traceable to Ritzer and Jurgenson’s (2010; see also Humphreys and Grayson 2008) highly influential and heavily cited essay on prosumption, especially in the digital world. Unlike the inherently integrative nature of the concept of prosumption, production and consumption have generally been seen as concepts that deal with processes that are quite distinct from one another. However, that duality is one of the many unfortunate byproducts of the modern tendency to think in binary terms. From the vantage point of the growing literature on prosumption, it is clear that production and consumption should both be seen as specific forms of prosumption. What we have traditionally thought of as production requires at least some consumption (e.g., of raw materials and labor time). Similarly, consumption involves production of such things as needs and desires, as well as, increasingly, the work needed to be able to obtain goods and services in shopping venues as diverse as fast food restaurants and online shopping sites. Production always and in all settings involves consumption (Marx, among others, acknowledges this but does not emphasize it; see following); and, conversely, consumption always and in all settings involves production (this is particularly clear in various works on communication, media, and the key role played by the audience—including fans; Jenkins 2013), as well as in other areas such as the production of the meaning of brands by consumers. In other words, prosumption has always encompassed both production and consumption. There is no such thing as either pure production (without at least some consumption) or pure consumption (without at least some production); the two processes always interpenetrate. This is the case whichever one—production or consumption—seems to predominate in any particular setting and at any given point in history (e.g., production in the eighteenth century Industrial Revolution and consumption in the post-WWII Consumer Revolution; Cohen 2003). Although they did not have the concept until recently, sociologists, social theorists, and other students of

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   77 society and the media have always focused, albeit unknowingly, on prosumption. At best, production and consumption should have been treated as special limiting cases, as “ideal types,” that do not exist in the “real world” but may be useful in helping to analyze that world. However, even that accords too much importance to production and consumption since, from the point of view of this discussion, they are merely types, albeit extreme types, of prosumption. Had analysts operated with this perspective, they would have been able to develop a more sensitive indicator of the degree to which social processes, as well as entire societies, were (or were not) moving more toward either end of prosumption continuum (see following). Rather than thinking in terms of production and consumption, we should think—we should have always thought—in terms of prosumption, more specifically of “prosumption-as-production” (what we have traditionally thought of as production) and “prosumption-as-consumption” (traditionally thought of as consumption, or more recently as “consumer work”; Dujarier 2016; Rieder and Voss 2010). These concepts constitute the two ends of the prosumption continuum that lies at the base of this analysis (see Figure 3.1). The “middle” of that continuum is where “prosumption-as-production” and “prosumption-as-consumption” are more or less evenly weighted: where “balanced” forms of prosumption exist. An example of the latter would be placing (producing) an order on Amazon.com to buy and use (consume) a product (especially one that is digital such as an e-book or an Audible book). Such an orientation would have prevented social thinkers from erring wildly by, for example, thinking purely in terms of either production or consumption or in labeling epochs either producer or consumer eras. The fact is that all economic processes and epochs always involve a mix of production and consumption. In that sense, “pure” production and “pure” consumption are impossibilities. Given the argument for the concept of prosumption and its polar cases, we need to think in terms of differences in degree and types (Dusi 2017) of prosumption (see Figure 3.1). Prosumption-as-Production………… Balanced Prosumption…………….. Prosumption-as-Consumption

Figure 3.1  The Prosumption Continuum.

In general, the prosumption that takes place on digital, especially social media, sites lies toward the middle of this continuum; little that takes place there can be mistaken for anything approaching prosumption-as-production or prosumption-as-consumption. We are more likely to find behavior approaching these polar alternatives in the material, bricks-and-mortar, world we usually associate with consumption. Prosumption-asproduction predominates in, for example, organizations usually seen as focused on production and work (factories, offices), while prosumption-as-consumption continues to occur in organizations (malls, fast food restaurants) devoted to consumption. However, more balanced forms of prosumption are increasingly found in all organizations. An especially good example is IKEA where people are clearly engaged in a mix of consumption and production (e.g., purchasing a bookcase and putting it together at home).

78   George Ritzer Compare this typology of prosumption with that developed by Dusi (2017). He enumerates five types of prosumption, the first three of which tend to be exploitative and last two as more empowering: collaboration in product development, customer self-service, digital prosumption, bricolage (e.g., DIY, craft consumption), and collaborative peer-to-peer prosumption. This is a useful start, but more, especially more ­systematic, work on a typology of prosumption is needed. Most troubling is the fact that Dusi focuses almost exclusively on the prosumption-as-consumption end of the continuum; a full typology would need to deal with the whole continuum, especially types of prosumption-as-production as well the more balanced forms of prosumption. While it is a relatively new concept, prosumption is the most basic, primal, human condition. The importance of that process is increasingly clear today, but it should have been even clearer in the case of the earliest human beings for whom production and consumption were rarely, if ever, distinct processes. Rather, they almost always prosumed: that is, they produced as they consumed and they consumed as they produced, or the processes were at least closely associated in form and temporally. Making much the same argument, Bruns (2008:326), focusing on the media, argued that what he calls “produsage” and what this chapter deems prosumption is consistent with “the social processes of preindustrial communities.” In many ways, then, prosumption on social media sites (and elsewhere) can be seen as a return to a premodern state before modernists drew a clear distinction between production and consumption. Early on in the history of academic work on prosumption, limited awareness of the concept and the process of prosumption led to the unfortunate notion of a “prosumer movement” (Kotler 1986). It was never a movement because that would have required that those involved—the prosumers—have a sense of a common interest or cause. It probably would have been more accurate to describe it as a prosumer revolution. However, if it is a revolution, it is an odd sort of revolution since as a process, prosumption has always been with us. It is, as was pointed out previously, primal (Ritzer 2014). In reality, it is not prosumption that is revolutionary. Rather, it is the relatively recent creation of the new means of prosumption that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for people not to prosume. Another way to put this is the fact that the means of production (Marx 1867/1967), and especially the means of consumption (Ritzer 2010), have been transformed in such way that there are few, if any, “pure” means of production (or producers) and means of consumption (or consumers). Both types of settings are increasingly dominated by prosumers, and it is increasingly necessary for them to prosume, rather than to simply produce or consume, in them. Even if they do not want to prosume, they are forced to be “working consumers” (a type of prosumer, as is the “consuming worker”) by bricks-and-mortar sites such as supermarkets and fast-food restaurants and especially digital sites such as Amazon.com and ebay.com. An interesting new example of a means-of-prosumption is Amazon Go, a highly automated convenience store in Seattle, Washington. It makes great use of non-human technologies (Ritzer 2018) made necessary by the fact that few employees are likely to be present; there is not even a checkout counter, let alone employees to staff it. The prosumers’ smartphone apps allow them to gain entry into the store. Once in the

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   79 store, sensors keep track of them and their smartphone apps, as well as the products they take off the shelf and purchase. Automated technologies total the purchases and charge them to the consumer’s account. The prosumers and technologies—their own and Amazon Go’s—do all the work. The technologies are what I have called “prosuming machines” (Ritzer 2015a). Prosumers and these prosuming machines constitute a profound threat to, among others, the 3.5 million cashiers (workers, producers) in the United States. As is clear in the case of Amazon Go, being forced to be a new prosumer is especially true at the consumption end (p-a-c) of the production-consumption continuum. There was a time when p-a-cs could rely on workers (prosumers-as-producers; p-a-ps) to handle the work needed in the consumption process. Among many other examples, grocers, green grocers, butchers, and bakers retrieved our purchases for us. Instead, we now go to supermarkets and wander the aisles retrieving such goods ourselves. The situation is far more extreme on Internet consumption sites where p-a-cs are almost completely on their own; there are no p-a-ps, or at the minimum, they are difficult to find. Those who find themselves in modern bricks-and-mortar consumption sites, or those that exist online, can be considered the new prosumers (vs. the primal prosumers of early human history) who are literally forced to prosume (to be new prosumers) by the ways in which the new means of prosumption are structured. The new prosumer is characterized not only by this coercion but also by greatly increased and radically new forms of prosumption. Much of that change is attributable to the new means of prosumption. The idea of the new means of prosumption is derived from Marx’s famous concepts of the means of production, as well as the less well-known idea of the means of consumption. (Note that in separating them, and as we will see in discussing them, Marx, like many other social theorists, was drawing that unfortunate distinction between production and consumption). Interestingly, Marx’s definition of the means of production (really p-a-p)—“commodities that possess a form in which they . . . enter productive ­consumption”—makes it clear that he is aware of the consumption involved in the process of production; of the process of prosumption (Marx 1884/1981:471; see following). Productive consumption is obviously one way of thinking about prosumption, albeit one that, as is Marx’s wont (as well as that of most Marxists), prioritizes production over consumption. Among the means of production for Marx are labor time, tools, and machines; they are used and used up in the process of production. The means of production are, in Marx’s terms, “the means that make possible . . . the production of commodities” (Ritzer 2010:50). Marx also develops the idea of the means of consumption (really p-a-cs), but his definition does not follow from the way he defines the means of production: it is wildly off-base. The means of consumption play the same mediating role in consumption that the means of production play in Marx’s theory of production. Just as the means of production are those structures that allow the proletariat to produce, the means of consumption are the structures that make it possible for people to acquire goods and services. Thus, the means of consumption should be defined (assuming we are going to do something we no

80   George Ritzer longer should do and clearly differentiate between production and consumption), in parallel with the definition of the means of production, as “those means that make it possible for people to acquire goods and services” (Ritzer 2010:50). Since we are redefining production and consumption as forms of prosumption, it is clear that the means of production and the means of consumption should both be seen as means of prosumption. Means of prosumption are defined as those means that make it possible, necessary, for people to prosume. However, what is key to the discussion in this essay is the idea of the “new means of prosumption.” A variety of new means have been created, largely in the last century, that have radically expanded and altered the process of prosumption. Virtually all of these innovations have been at the prosumptionas-consumption end of the continuum. These include cafeterias (traceable to the late 1800s, prominent throughout the first half of the twentieth century, but largely disappeared today; Hardart and Diehl 2002), supermarkets (begun in the early twentieth century and increasingly predominant throughout the United States and the developed world; Ruhlman 2017), and the fast-food restaurant (early versions go back to the 1920s, but they have boomed in the United States and globally since the middle of the twentieth century; Ritzer 2019). (There were many predecessors, of course, in the last few centuries, especially in Paris, including the arcade, Benjamin  1999; the drugstore, Baudrillard 1970/1998; and the department store, Williams 1982). Although all of these are usually thought of, and are, means of consumption, they also need to be seen as means of prosumption because they represent, and are in forefront of, turning consumers into working consumers: prosumers. Thus, in cafeterias, supermarkets, and fast-food restaurants, consumers have been led (even forced) to do work for no pay formerly done by paid employees such as waiters and grocers. A more recent and even more revolutionary development is the three-dimensional (3-D) printer (more generally additive manufacturing), which will increasingly allow people to produce (largely for their own use) in their homes (among other settings) things that were formerly manufactured elsewhere and had to be consumed in a consumption setting (Anderson 2012). In contrast, there are fewer new means of prosumption at the prosumption-asproduction end the continuum. What we usually think of as means of prosumption (or production) are, for example, the factory (with roots in the early 1800s), the assembly line (early twentieth century), just-in-time manufacturing (late twentieth-century Japan), and the automated and increasingly robotized factory (late-twentieth century through the present day . . . and beyond to factories dominated by artificial intelligence [AI]). The prosumers-as-producers in all of these settings are also prosumers-as-consumers (e.g., of raw materials). While there are some recent innovations in these settings designed to make those who work in them more and/or better prosumers-as-producers, the main goal in settings as diverse as modern factories and convenience stores is to eliminate as many of them possible through advances in robotization and AI. As p-a-cs consume, they are simultaneously and unconsciously producing highly valuable information (especially “Big Data”; Cockayne  2016) about themselves as they are tracked while browsing and buying products on, for example, Amazon.com (Packer 2014). This is but a small part of what it, and many other entities, are doing in ushering

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   81 us into the computational culture’s (Boyd and Crawford 2012) era of “datafication” (McAfee and Brynjollfson 2012; Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier 2013). In this era, the goal is to turn as many things as possible, even the self through self-tracking devices such as Fitbit, into data; to replace subjectivity with objectivity (Lupton 2016). Digital sites lend themselves easily to the collection of massive amounts of data (Lazer and Radford 2017). These data are provided, usually free of charge and often unknowingly, by users and providers. The users provide that data (e.g., preferences for various products) every time they click, for example, on products available on Amazon.com. The latter then turns around and extracts and uses that data in various ways, most obviously in targeting users with ads for products related to their preferences. Google uses extracted search data to “sell targeted ad space to advertisers through an increasingly automated auction system” (Srnicek 2016:52). Such data are now the source of almost all Google’s and Facebook’s revenue. Remember that virtually all of these data come from users (prosumers) who receive no monetary compensation for their contributions. Amazon’s recent purchase of the Whole Foods chain of supermarkets reflects the growing importance of big data. Supermarket chains have not been able to create, or to have access to, the abundance of big data that will be available to Whole Foods when it is under the Amazon umbrella. The worry is that such data, along with other Amazon’s advantages, will allow Whole Foods to become a dominant player in the supermarket business, much bigger than it heretofore has been. Established supermarket chains will find it increasingly difficult to compete, and even survive, in this market. Furthermore, the addition of Whole Foods will enable Amazon to gather much more big data on food shopping. It can then use that not only to enhance Whole Foods’ position in the supermarket world but also to improve Amazon’s role in the online sale of food. These new forms of prosumption-as-consumption are especially important in the digital world, but they are, as is clear in Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, also occurring in the material world. While this involves a distinction between the material and the digital worlds, it is only for discussion purposes. As is clear in the new relationship between Amazon.com and Whole Foods, the bricks-and-mortar and  digital worlds increasingly interpenetrate; that is, they augment one another (Jurgenson 2012). While the relationship between these digital (and material) phenomena and prosumption has yet to be fully articulated (in large part because analysts have until recently lacked the concept of prosumption), a number of students of the Internet came close to understanding that relationship without having (or using) the concept. For example, Howe (2009:71) contended, “Once upon a time there were producers and consumers . . . the ‘consumer,’ as traditionally conceived, is becoming an antiquated concept.” Interestingly, undoubtedly because of a lingering productivist bias, Howe is unable to see that the concept of the producer has also become outdated. Similarly, Clay Shirky (2008) argues that “the consumer is the Internet’s most recent casualty” and that “we are all producers now.” Once again we see the productivist bias at work here because while Shirky is able dismiss the concept of consumption on the Internet, he remains in the thrall of the idea of production there (and presumably elsewhere).

82   George Ritzer Overall, the following characterize these and related developments: • People (as p-a-cs) are doing things that they rarely, if ever, did before. • Many people are no longer employed, or have different jobs, because of the many tasks they are now performing without pay as prosumers (Manika et al. 2017). • Companies are earning unprecedented profits because they are able to employ far fewer people, in part because of the fact that prosumers do the work without demanding, or even expecting, recompense. • People (as p-a-cs) get lots of things free of charge (news, information, social contacts, etc.), especially on the Internet, in part because of their free labor. • Many of these developments have been made possible by new technologies—the smartphone, computer, Internet, self-scanner, 3-D printer—and this is leading to still more technological change (e.g., AI) that will further expand the process of concern here. Given this discussion of prosumption, we turn now to a discussion of a new form of capitalism—prosumer capitalism—and a comparison to producer and consumer capitalism. Such a discussion is, needless to say, deeply indebted to the theorizing of Karl Marx.

Prosumer Capitalism To Marx (1867/1967), the major source of the economic “success” of producer capitalism, at least from the capitalist’s point of view, lies in the exploitation of the proletariat.1 That is, the proletariat is paid less, usually far less, than the profits to be earned by the capitalist from what the proletariat produces. While the worker continues to be exploited in consumer capitalism, it could be argued that the exploitation of the consumer is a progressively important source of capitalist success and profit in that economic system. The exploitation of consumers is very different from the exploitation of workers. While workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, consumers (at least collectively) pay more, often much more, for those products than they cost to produce. Producer capitalism is a largely singly exploitative economic system focused on the exploitation of the workers; consumer capitalism can be seen as a doubly exploitative economic system. In other words, in consumer capitalism, the capitalist earns significant profits through the exploitation of both workers and consumers. In prosumer capitalism, we have moved beyond the single and double exploitation of producer and consumer capitalism to synergistically double exploitation. The exploitation of the two types of prosumers used to take place largely in different settings. P-a-ps were exploited mainly in factories and offices, while p-a-cs were exploited primarily in shopping venues. In addition, the exploitation of p-a-cs and p-a-ps occurred at different

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   83 times. P-a-ps were exploited primarily during the work day, while p-a-cs were exploited largely after work and on weekends. Now, the exploitation of the prosumer (both as p-a-p and p-a-c) is increasingly likely to take place in the same setting (including online, at home amidst the family, as well as in other elements of the social factory) and often at about the same time. That is, the exploitation of p-a-p and p-a-c interpenetrate, creating a synergy that results in a new form, and an unprecedented level, of exploitation. Examples of the synergistic double exploitation of p-a-cs and p-a-ps are found in self-service gasoline stations, self-operating kiosks in fast-food restaurants, ATMs, selfcheckouts at supermarkets, self-check-ins and self-checkouts at hotels, and especially on online consumption sites such as Amazon.com. In all of these systems, work that was once done by paid employees is now performed by p-a-cs who do many of the same tasks, but they do them on an unpaid basis. In doing so, they are being exploited as producers, but this is occurring at the same time they are being exploited as consumers by, for example, overpaying for gasoline, bank services, groceries, airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, and the myriad goods and services for sale online. The counterargument to the idea that prosumers are exploited, if not doubly and synergistically exploited, is that their reward for their “work” is the lower prices offered to them (or rooted out by them because they are “educated consumers”) rather than a paycheck. That is, prosumers are simply being “paid,” or at least being rewarded, in a different way than producers (and consumers) in the past. They do the work associated with contemporary forms of prosumption because they believe that they are getting lower prices, and those savings are an adequate reward for the work involved. This is certainly a possibility, and it would be the argument that those who own today’s profitmaking organizations would make. However, the strongest and clearest evidence that prosumers do not ordinarily save money is to be found in the cases where new self-service systems coexist with older systems involving paid employees providing services to consumers. Typical is the case of the checkout lanes in supermarkets and in many other retail businesses. Those people who use self-checkout do unpaid work (e.g., scanning and bagging their purchases) that is done by paid cashiers on traditional lanes. However, those prosumers who use the self-checkout lanes pay the same amount for their purchases as those who use traditional lanes. More generally, supermarkets save money (and enhance their profitability) because of that free labor and the lower labor costs associated with the reduced need for paid employees. However, they do not pass the full savings directly on to the prosumers who are doing the work, who are providing the free labor. It is possible, however, that all shoppers (those who prosume and those who continue to consume in the traditional way with the help of paid employees) are offered lower prices because of the free labor done of prosumers. In that case, the prosumers are, in a way, subsidizing more traditional consumers (now “free-riders”), and there is no net gain to the owners of those supermarkets. It is safe to assume that the contemporary means of prosumption have been put in place by profit-making businesses in order to improve the bottom lines, the profits, of the companies involved. Prosumption can be seen as one of many devices (others

84   George Ritzer include a wide range of labor-saving technologies; in fact, prosumption itself can be seen as a paid-labor saving device) employed to reduce the cost of labor. Not only are prosumers being doubly and synergistically exploited, but they are to a large degree, if not totally, oblivious to the exploitation. This is due, in part, to the fact that the exploitation is concealed by capitalistic businesses. As a result, it is impossible for prosumers to know what, if anything, entrepreneurs gain economically and how much prosumers’ efforts contribute to increased profits. Yet, it still should be clear to prosumers that they are being exploited. After all, they know that they are not receiving a discount for doing self-checkout work (and similar tasks such as using ATMs). Nevertheless, many use, even prefer, self-checkout lanes (and ATMs). They do not do so to save money but for a variety of other reasons. The lanes may be shorter at selfcheckout, and they may move faster. People believe they can scan, pay for, and bag their purchases more quickly and efficiently than cashiers. Prosumers tend to like doing those tasks in much the same way they enjoy video games of various types. Indeed, shopping can come to be seen by them as a kind of a game or play (or “playbor”; Scholz 2013). How can prosumers do anything about this exploitation if they are unaware of the process in and through which it occurs and are often enjoying themselves? Even though they are usually seamlessly intertwined, we need to distinguish between the consumption and production phases of p-a-p and of p-a-c (see Figure 3.2). During p-a-p, those involved (typically workers) consume what is needed to produce as well as produce things (goods, services, etc.) with what they have consumed. In this, we are distinguishing between the time and the process during, and in which, p-a-ps consume and produce. Beyond that conceptual distinction, it is being argued that exploitation takes place in both of these phases of the p-a-p process. That is, workers are paid less than they should be for both the consumption of things such as raw materials and, of course, for the production of commodities from those materials. P-a-p: Production and Consumption Phases

Balanced Production and Consumption

P-a-c: Consumption and Production Phases

Figure 3.2  The Prosumption Continuum with Phases of Production and Consumption.

It takes p-a-ps time and energy both to produce and to consume during the prosumption process. For example, in supermarkets, those who stock shelves must retrieve the needed products from storage (consumption) and then actually put them in their proper spaces on shelves and cases in the store (production). This distinction seems trivial, but it is important to the general argument about prosumption and to the fact that exploitation takes place in both the production and consumption phases of p-a-p. The same distinction needs to made for p-a-cs; and in this case, it is of much greater consequence, especially in today’s world. While we rarely consider p-a-cs as being both consumers and producers, we almost never think of them as being exploited. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to think of p-a-cs as being exploited in the consumption phases of the prosumption process. For example, it is not hard to think of them as paying more than they should for what they consume (purchase). Indeed, the essence of consumer capitalism is

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   85 to get consumers to pay as much as possible for products and services in which the costs of production and sale have been reduced to the bare minimum. What is difficult is to think of is p-a-cs as producers, or, as mentioned earlier, “working customers,” and as being exploited in the production phase of the process. My earliest thinking on this issue was in my work on the McDonaldization of society (Ritzer  1983;  1993) in a discussion of the ways in which fast-food restaurants were “putting customers to work.” Of course, this process was not invented by the fast-food restaurant. Customers have always worked in restaurant settings (e.g., in the most traditional of restaurants by, for example, reading and ordering from a menu), but there has been a long tradition of refining and amplifying that process. For example, the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century cafeterias led consumers to perform a wide range of tasks on their own such as retrieving trays, utensils, and napkins; lining up and wending their way through a line where they obtained the food they desired; and then paying at the cash register at the end of the line (Hardart and Diehl 2002). It is important to remember that the customer in a traditional restaurant is required to perform none of these tasks. Instead, they are performed by paid employees such as waitpersons and bus persons. There are a series of broader senses in which p-a-cs are producers (or working ­customers). First, they are producing awareness of, and desire for, various products (e.g., a meal at a cafeteria; a Big Mac at McDonald’s) long before they ever enter a setting in which they are able to consume them. However the desire is produced (e.g., by word of mouth or advertising), p-a-cs then need to produce the actions required to get them to the bricks-and-mortar location (or the website) where the products are available for sale. Once there, the initial desire needs to be reproduced (or possibly altered) and translated into the steps needed to actually obtain and purchase the product. The preceding is little more than a brief sketch of the many acts that can be seen as the production phase of p-a-c. Given that, in what sense is there a consumption phase of p-a-c? In what senses are p-a-cs consumers? These are much easier questions to answer since p-a-cs are what we usually consider consumers, and it seems abundantly clear that they are engaged in the process of consumption. Among p-a-cs, the most obvious and material changes in contemporary capitalism have occurred in the (unpaid) production phase of their activities. This involves the work that p-a-cs do in material settings (e.g., in serving themselves at supermarkets and ATMs). Virtually every setting dealt with under the heading of the “cathedrals of consumption” (Ritzer 2010) has developed techniques to ratchet up the reliance on, and exploitation of, p-a-cs as producers. For example, cruise ships issue all-purpose cards to passengers that not only serve as keys to their staterooms but that also can be used to charge all sorts of goods and services on the ship. They are especially useful in allowing passengers to gamble effortlessly by, for example, inserting their cards into slot machines (where people prosume the gambling process rather than having it produced, at least in part, by paid employees such as dealers at the poker table—there are now even automated poker machines operated by the prosumers themselves to produce (and consume) the games rather than relying on dealers who are paid employees). The use of such cards,

86   George Ritzer rather than cash, makes expenditures seem less real and leads people to spend more, and in the case of gambling, to lose more. A similar example is the Disney smartband bracelet, which allows visitors (p-a-cs) to swipe their bracelets to enter their hotel rooms, purchase food, gain priority access to Disney’s attractions, and so forth. Fewer employees (p-a-ps) are needed to do this work. An added benefit is that because visitors can move through the park and its attractions faster, the park can accommodate many more people per day. That, of course, means increased revenue and profits. Prosumers (as p-a-cs) have also seen the consumption phase of the prosumption ­process speeded up and made more efficient. In other words, it has been rationalized to a high degree in recent decades (Ritzer 2018; Weber 1921/1968). To continue with the last example, those who gamble on slot machines on cruise ships no longer need to accumulate (consume) large numbers of coins (if they happen to win) that need to be brought to the cashier to be exchanged for bills. Instead, winnings are simply registered on one’s card and at the end of the trip winnings (or more likely losses) are accounted for on one’s final bill.

Are Prosumers Really Exploited? There are those who believe that material and digital systems are not exploitative of prosumers. The strongest argument is that those who created and run these systems deserve their great rewards because of their creative entrepreneurship (Schumpeter 1976). Prosumers do get lower prices in at least some material settings such as IKEA. Online, prosumers are not paid for the work they do and the information they provide, but they are rewarded with free access to systems such as Amazon.com and Facebook that are very costly to produce, monitor, maintain, constantly update and expand with ever-increasing numbers of users. Amazon.com (and many similar sites) offers the reward of not needing to leave one’s home and incurring the costs (of gasoline, parking, and bus fares) associated with traveling to various bricks-and-mortar sites, which may or may not have what one wants. Thus, from a rational choice perspective, it is rational for prosumers to use such material and immaterial sites because the rewards associated with them seem to outweigh the costs. Capitalists contend that it is they who created IKEA and Facebook and their basic systems, and they therefore deserve all the profits. They made huge investments, and continue to make them, in the ideas and infrastructure that make the systems the successes they are. People would not be able to prosume on Amazon.com were it not for their creations. Furthermore, capitalists would argue that prosumers get many other kinds of rewards from IKEA and Facebook (e.g., the ability to buy fashionable products at seemingly low prices; the ability to keep up with old friends and to make new ones), and there is therefore no need to offer them additional, or in most cases even any, economic rewards.

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   87 In fact, there seems to be little or no demand on the part of IKEA customers or Facebook users to share in the corporations’ great economic success. They seem quite satisfied with the mostly noneconomic rewards that they derive from these systems. However, this is to a large degree a function of the fact that they do not see themselves as prosumers at IKEA, Amazon.com, or of Facebook. Thus, they are unaware of the productive role they play as both p-a-ps and p-a-cs in these systems. If they saw themselves in this way, they might well see themselves as deserving of at least some of the economic gain that is being derived from their substantive contributions to them. Marx viewed capitalism as a kind of magical system where the seemingly insignificant underpaid work of the easily replaceable and substitutable proletariat is transformed into the enormous profits of the capitalist. Consumer capitalism can also be seen as magical in that consumers eagerly buy much more than they need and want and pay much more, at least collectively, for those goods and services than they need to and that they cost to produce, distribute, and market. However, prosumer capitalism is an infinitely more magical system than either producer or consumer capitalism. The capitalist usually pays nothing for the work of prosumers in, for example, fast-food restaurants, Amazon. com, or on Facebook. In fact, in many cases (e.g., ATMs) prosumers actually pay for the privilege of doing the work as well as for what they gain from it. Furthermore, there is no need to pay supervisors to watch over prosumers or to coerce prosumers into doing the work. They do it, usually enthusiastically, on their own. Prosumers meekly, if not eagerly, do what they are led—and are expected—to do. In the process, they increase the profits of the capitalists. Thus, the prosumer in prosumer capitalism is infinitely more magical—and an even greater source of surplus value and profit— than the worker in producer capitalism and the consumer in consumer capitalism. In the end, Marx’s theory applies even better to prosumers than producers: “The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor” (Marx 1867/1967:534). The amount of unpaid labor to be derived from workers is limited by their ability to work, the time they spend at work, and their lifespan. Capitalist systems tend to adversely affect the health and lifespan of workers. However, there is no such negative effect on prosumers who can prosume well into their declining years. The amount of a worker’s labor is also limited by the length of the work day and of the work week; but the prosumer’s unpaid labor (see Zwick  2015 for a ­contrary view), in the form of the work (production) involved in being both p-a-ps and p-a-cs, has only the absolute limit of twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Furthermore, laws limit workers’ time on the job, but there are no such restrictions on the time that prosumers put into their work. In fact, such restrictions would be unthinkable both from the point of view of the government and prosumers. This is true for various reasons (prosumers generally enjoy what they do and would resent restrictions on it), but most importantly because neither the government nor the prosumers themselves have any concept of the process of prosumption. But the magic does not stop with profit from unpaid labor. Unpaid p-a-ps offer the capitalist many other advantages in comparison to even poorly paid employees. For one

88   George Ritzer thing, while capitalists have many short-term and, although they are declining, long-term obligations to their workers (to pay them as long as they are employed; not to fire them without cause, etc.), there are few commitments to p-a-ps; and those that exist are almost all short-term, even immediate (e.g., that there be a place in the fast-food restaurant for the waste to be disposed of after the hamburgers are eaten; that a Facebook page pop up when a user signs in). In addition to paying workers a wage, the employer is also often responsible (although again to a declining degree) for such high-cost benefit programs as health insurance, retirement programs, and paid vacations. The capitalist, of course, has no such responsibilities to the unpaid p-a-p. Paid employees, at least historically and to a large degree even today, must be provided with the necessary and often costly “means of production” such as a place to work (an office, a factory, a superstore), tools, and machines (assembly lines, computers). In contrast, p-a-ps sometimes pay for, purchase, and pay the upkeep on their own means of production (the cars driven through those drive-through lanes; offices at home; 3-D printers, computers, and Internet services needed to prosume online; the cost of utilities associated with those offices, computers, etc.). P-a-ps can be seen as part of what Marx called the “reserve army.” Marx was primarily thinking of the unemployed who stood ready to replace members of the proletariat who were dissatisfied and/or proved to be unsatisfactory in any way. More recently, the underemployed, especially part-time workers, can be seen as part of that reserve army. P-a-ps are perhaps the most recent and innovative additions to that reserve army. For one thing, they represent potential replacements for paid employees. For example, fewer employees are needed in fast-food restaurants because of the work done by prosumers. Bloggers are costing many reporters their jobs as more and more readers turn to citizen journalists for their news. Some bloggers who are seen as successful at what they do are literally replacing reporters and taking their jobs, usually at far lower pay. For another, p-a-ps constitute a standing threat to paid employees who may need to work harder, or take cuts in pay, because of the knowledge that there exist p-a-ps (e.g., bloggers) who could easily replace them. What is most interesting about p-a-ps is that unlike most of Marx’s reserve army, they are likely to be employed and to earn a living doing some other kind of paid work. This puts them in a stronger position than, say, the unemployed. That is, they can afford to work for no pay as p-a- ps on their lunch hour and after their work day is over; they can even do much of it online while they are doing paid work. In addition, they are in a better position to be able to afford the time, and perhaps the expenses, associated with acquiring new skills (as bloggers, for example). With those skills, they become much more powerful competitors and even threats to paid employees. There are similar savings to the capitalist in the case of p-a-cs. Traditional consumers need to be provided with physical sites, even very costly “cathedrals of consumption,” in which to consume. Those traditional consumption sites need to have a wide variety of commodities in stock (at great cost in terms of storage) if and when consumers arrive (just in case they are desired), and paid personnel on hand just in case their services are needed. Today’s p-a-cs do more and more things themselves, with the result that they cost

Contemporary Capitalism and the “New” Prosumer   89 less to serve, especially since fewer paid personnel are needed in material consumption sites (e.g., department stores). There are even greater savings associated with consumption sites on the Internet (e.g., eBay, Expedia, etc.) where paid employees are totally absent, and the unpaid prosumers do virtually all of the work. Other savings are derived from the fact that products are either stored by prosumers (in the case of eBay) or the consumption sites (Amazon.com) and operate on more of a just-in-time than a just-in-case basis. Amazon.com does not warehouse the vast majority of the “long tail” of books (and many other products) it offers for sale (Anderson 2006) but rather obtains them, or passes them on from independent organizations and sellers, as they are ordered. These sellers may also handle storing and shipping themselves, further reducing the need for paid employees at Amazon.com. P-a-cs behave as expected in consuming what these sites have to offer, in part because the sites are structured to lead (“force”) them to do so. There is comparatively little need to spend large sums of money policing these sites in order to be sure that p-a-cs consume in expected ways. The preceding advantages and savings are irresistible attractions to capitalists who rightly (from their perspective) seek both a decrease in their responsibilities and, most importantly from the point of view of profits, a great reduction in their labor costs.

The Nature of Capitalism Today Karl Marx famously conceived of capitalism as a highly liquid modern system that is constantly in the process of being formed, reformed, and even transformed (Bauman 2000). The view presented here is that the form of capitalism predominant in Marx’s day—producer capitalism—has been, as Marx predicted, constantly transformed since that time. More dramatic, and unanticipated by Marx, is the decline of producer capitalism, at least in much of the developed world. The movement in the direction of the predominance of consumer capitalism, ongoing, at least in the developed world, since the mid-twentieth century, is itself giving way to prosumer capitalism. Thus, a new grand narrative (see Zwick 2015 for a critique of this) has been created here—producer > consumer > prosumer capitalism—that is unlike any other dealing with historical changes in the capitalist system and the economy more generally.

A Glimpse into the Future As the concept of prosumption (and related ideas) gains greater visibility and notoriety, many more capitalists will more consciously and explicitly move in the direction of modifying or creating enterprises that operate in accord with the emerging principles of prosumer capitalism. Thus, we are likely to see the spread of this model, as well as a growing realization of the fact that there are great profits to be earned from it.

90   George Ritzer This represents a great threat to prosumers, at least in the short run, because they are not going to be as quick to understand that they are prosumers, will increasingly be prosumers, and the implications of this, especially in terms of the new synergistically, doubly exploitative system under construction by capitalists. The situation facing prosumers is more fraught because of the fact that it is not clear— at least to them—that they are exploited by, and alienated from, this doubly exploitative system (Rey 2012). If they do not feel alienated from, and more extremely if they feel good about, the new system in which they are increasingly immersed, it is almost impossible to expect them to understand its underlying structure and character, let alone to question, or rebel against, it. While what is being presented here is a highly pessimistic view of the current state, and especially the future, of prosumers in prosumer capitalism, it is possible to offer a more optimistic scenario (Chen  2015) based especially on non-profit sites (e.g., Wikipedia, most blogs) on the Internet. Here are sites and enterprises controlled by prosumers that operate for their benefit rather than for the profitability of the capitalists. Prosumption can be empowering because people are in control of both what they produce and consume. They do so to benefit themselves and not the bottom line of capitalistic enterprises. More importantly, they do so—and without pay—for many other prosumers who can use the systems they help to create at little or no cost. Likewise, Rifkin (2015) argued that the collaboration that occurs on prosumption sites enables the offering of many things free of charge (or close to it) on the Internet of Things. Consequently, prosumption destabilizes traditional capitalism, bringing about its passing so that it can be replaced with a “collaborative commons.” Thus, prosumption is capable of challenging an old system or producing a new one that is empowering, democratic, and of benefit to all involved. While one would like to be more optimistic about this, the fact is that the rewards of maintaining and expanding control over this system are simply too great for capitalists to ignore. They will draw on their great resources to dominate this domain and in the process work hard to limit, if not scuttle, efforts to turn it into a more equal and democratic system oriented to the needs and interests of prosumers rather than to the profitability of capitalist enterprises.

Note 1. This section is based on Ritzer (2015a), as well as the following debate about prosumer capitalism in that issue of the Sociological Quarterly.

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chapter 4

Consum er Cu lt u r e Theory Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson

Any kind of new intellectual argument must be accompanied by some institutionalization process. —Jeffrey Alexander (2008:534)

Arnould and Thompson (2005) coined the intellectual moniker of consumer culture theory (CCT) to describe a burgeoning genre of consumer research that had been variously characterized, over the course of its development, as qualitative, postpositivist, interpretivist, humanistic, naturalistic, and postmodern. These prior classificatory terms were overly wedded to methodological-epistemological debates that glossed over the broader theoretical questions being pursued (i.e., qualitative, postpositivist, naturalistic); were overly restrictive in their ontological scope (humanistic); or invoked a range of irrelevant or misleading associations (postmodern). By proposing the academic brand “consumer culture theory” (a term not without its own need for qualification, contextualization, and clarification) (see Arnould and Thompson 2007; Askegaard and Scott 2013; Moisander, Penãloza, and Valtonen 2009), Arnould and Thompson (2005) sought to redress this paradigmatic ambiguity by profiling this subfield’s core interest in consumer culture (and more specifically the intersection of cultural systems and market logics); combatting misperceptions that such research was an inherently descriptive, atheoretical enterprise; and highlighting conceptual linkages to parallel conversations on the role of markets and consumption in everyday life that were unfolding in the fields of material culture studies (Miller 1995, 2001), anthropology (Miller 1995; Slater 1997; Wilk 1995), cultural studies (Jameson 1991; Jenkins 1992; Penley and Ross  1991; Shields  2003), sociology (Campbell  1989; Featherstone  1991; Schor 1998; Urry 1995), and history (Cohen 2003; Cross 2000; McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982).

96   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson In this chapter, we describe some of the disciplinary fault lines—to use Alexander and Smith (2001) metaphoric framing of disciplinary tensions within sociology—that have shaped the intellectual contours of CCT, profile the primary theoretical motifs that have defined this pluralistic research tradition, and discuss the intellectual trajectories that are being marked out by recent CCT research. We will conclude by reflecting on the dilemmas and opportunities posed by the fairly rapid institutionalization of CCT as well as the opportunities for engaging with culturally oriented studies of consumption and economic life.

A Short History of a Young Subdiscipline (or the Tale of the Rebellious Offspring) In 1959, Sid Levy wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review entitled “Symbols for Sale.” Levy’s argument was grounded in the theoretical vernacular of so-called motivation research that had become quite prominent in certain spheres of brand management and the advertising industry (Dichter 1960, 1964). Motivation research sought to uncover the deeper motivations underlying consumers’ rational explanations of their behaviors. Although this research approach has often been portrayed as a neo-Freudian enterprise, its leading practitioners drew from an eclectic blend of theoretical orientations in their quest to illuminate the unconscious, emotional, social, and cultural underpinnings of consumer behaviors (see Tadajewski 2006a). Similarly, Levy also discussed how brand symbols played consequential roles in defining lifestyle ideals, expressing distinctions between social class factions, and encoding culturally constructed gender differences. Levy’s ecumenical synthesis of ideas and analytic constructs hailing from humanistic psychology, sociology, history, and anthropology would later become a characteristic intellectual feature of CCT (Thompson, Arnould, and Giesler 2013). Though “Symbols for Sale” was a harbinger for the emergence of CCT, Levy’s project of expanding the marketing field’s paradigmatic horizons would be long delayed by potent countervailing currents. As Tadajewski (2006b) discusses, a confluence of cultural and ideological forces pushed mainstream social science, particularly in the American context, toward a logical empiricist epistemology, with its emphasis on ­rationality, quantification, methodological control, and the specification of causal relationships. Academic marketing, and its subdiscipline of consumer research, had long pursued an ideal of scientific legitimacy (Brown  1996) and readily embraced logical empiricism as its dominant paradigm, while casting aside all interests even remotely associated with the “unscientific” legacy of motivational research. By the late 1970s, an alien explorer perusing the leading marketing and consumer research journals would have concluded that “consumers” were a strange, asocial life form, peculiarly obsessed

Consumer Culture Theory   97 with rationally evaluating the functional attributes of toothpaste, soap, fountain pens, cameras, and sundry other commodities in the interest of maximizing their individuated utility functions. During the early 1980s, however, some key figures in the consumer research field took up common cause with the cultural (or interpretivist) turn that was sending shock waves throughout the social sciences and the disruptive currents of postmodernity that were reshaping consumer culture at large (see Sherry  1991). Elizabeth Hirschman, Morris Holbrook, Russell Belk, John Sherry, Melanie Wallendorf, Tom O’Guinn, Dennis Rook, and Eric Arnould, to name a few, began to challenge the field’s rationalistic and logical empiricist disciplinary norms and to argue (again) for the necessity of addressing the full range of consumption activities that had been elided by the prevailing view of consumers as rational purchasing agents. Although seen as revolutionary and controversial in their initial expressions, these clarion calls reproduced some key aspects of the dominant consumer research paradigm and its coupling of a logical empiricist epistemology and an individualistic-rationalistic ontology (see Askegaard and Linnet 2011). Though a few articles articulating more culturally oriented and methodologically daring perspectives periodically graced this transformative tide (Arnould 1989; Belk 1992; Levy 1981; McCracken 1986; Sherry 1983; Solomon 1983), the “alternative perspective” which initially had the most disciplinary impact ontologically aligned with a psychologically oriented, highly agentic model of the consumer—emphasizing the emotional, experiential, and hedonic aspects of consumption (Belk 1987; Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Rook 1987)— while also gravitating toward qualitative methods that were premised on analogs to positivistic research conventions (c.f., Belk 1991). Over time, however, this nascent interpretivist movement became increasingly pluralistic, drawing inspiration from structural semiotics (Mick 1986), Bourdieusian sociology (Holt 1998), Foucauldian views of the power– discourse relationships (Shankar, Cherrier, and Canniford  2006; Thompson and Hirschman 1995; Thompson 2004), Maussian and Turnerian anthropology (Arnould 1989; Arnould and Price 1993; Bradford and Sherry 2015; Dion, Sabri, and Guillard 2014; Giesler 2006; Marcoux 2009; Sherry 1983; Wallendorf and Arnould 1988, 1991; Wilk and Arnould 2016), different genres of critical theory (Earley 2014; Firat and Venkatesh 1995; Murray and Ozanne 1991; Tadajewski 2010), with a corresponding pivot toward a diversity of methodological orientations that were not wedded to logical empiricism (Arnold and Fischer 1994; Arnould and Wallendorf 1994; Brown 1995; Kozinets 2001; Sherry and Schouten 2002; Thompson 1997). This chapter offers a brief genealogy to highlight certain institutional characteristics that differentiate CCT from the strong program in cultural sociology (Alexander and Smith  2001; Alexander and Smith  2010) and cultural studies (Ross  1991; Hall  2016), which also deploy hybrid theoretical perspectives to analyze intersections of social experiences, cultural meaning, ideological figurations, and social structuration. The strong program in cultural sociology endorses an anthropologically inspired, “structural hermeneutic” view that “every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive, or coerced vis-a-vis its external environments is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and

98   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson meaning” (Alexander and Smith 2001:135). Cultural sociology is further premised on the axiom that cultural meaning systems exhibit an ontological autonomy from social structures. This analytic orientation significantly diverges from the historically more dominant sociology of culture approach—which treats cultural meanings as epiphenomena which are derived from structural forces such as class interests (see Alexander 2008; Alexander and Smith 2001; Alexander and Smith 2010). Cultural sociology developed alongside a culturally oriented economic sociology, led by Viviana Zelizer (Alexander 2011). Like CCT, these economic sociologists identified how objects such as money, gifts (Zelizer 2010), brands (Aronczyk 2013), and social traditions (Bandelj and Wherry 2011), among other things, were set apart as if sacred but marketable. These definitions of sacrality affected how people managed their definitions of the market situation, their interpersonal relationships (Bandelj  2012; Pugh  2009; Zelizer 1979, 2010, 2012), and by extension their monies (Bandelj, Wherry, and Zelizer 2017). This work largely remained within an empirical but interpretivist tradition, navigating a course between thickly described meanings and patterned cognition; relationship structures; and meaningful relationship dynamics. Its explicit engagement with positivistic frameworks emphasized how cultural meanings drive changing consumption preferences and economic behaviors more generally, but it did not insist on a new space to bracket out rationalistic accounts that challenged, and sometimes precluded, cultural work. By contrast, cultural studies took a more decisive interpretive turn. Nelson, Treichler, and Grossberg (1992:4) define the cultural studies approach “as an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and sometimes counter-disciplinary field that operates in the tension between its tendencies to embrace both a broad anthropological and a more narrowly humanistic conception of culture . . . and that argues that all forms of cultural production need to be studied in relation to other cultural practices and historical structures.” Cultural studies’ major fault lines concern the relationships among culture as a blueprint for action and culture as an aesthetic-textual production; textuality and the materiality of socioeconomic relations; hegemony versus the potential for subaltern resistance; and Marxian and post-Marxian politics (and where the multifaceted complexity of identity politics takes center stage) (also see Hall 2016). In contradistinction, the contours of CCT have been shaped by a fault line between a meaning-based approach to consumption, which argues that consumption practices and marketing relations are embedded in Weberian webs of meaning (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989), and rationalistic accounts of consumer action, which focused theoretical attention on the decision-making processes that preceded purchase choices, with postpurchase experiences being treated as a marginal concern (see Belk 1987; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982). In navigating this fault line, proto-CCT theorists had to carve out and legitimate a disciplinary space for theorizing consumer identities and consumption practices in ways that were not constrained by rationalizing, logical empiricist precepts. Over time, CCT researchers did begin to rearticulate debates emanating from cultural sociology and cultural studies, though with a distinguishing emphasis on the identity resources provided by the market and the co-creative actions of consumers. In

Consumer Culture Theory   99 particular, many CCT analyses cohered with salutary studies of fan culture (see Jenkins 1992; Radaway 1984) that challenged critical representations of consumers as passive recipients of an enervating capitalist ideology (e.g., Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 1990; O’Barr 1994; Postman 1985; Williamson 1987). Consumer culture theorists argue that consumers creatively and constructively rework mass media and advertising messages in ways that often run against the grain of their corporate encoded meanings (Kozinets 2001; McCracken 1986; Mick and Buhl 1992; Scott 1994; Thompson and Haytko 1997). Beyond the imagistic-discursive realm of mass media and advertising, consumer culture theorists also attend to the material and social aspects of consumption, arguing that the marketplace provides material and symbolic resources that enable consumers to proactively transform their identities and to constitute meaningful social bonds (Arnould and Price  1993; Muniz and O’Guinn  2001; Schau, Gilly, and Wolfinbarger  2009; Schouten 1991). Owing to this agentic view of the relationship between consumption and the marketplace, CCT research has been criticized for reproducing a neoliberal view that free market competition is the best means to maximize social well-being and human freedom (Fitchett, Patsiaouras, and Davies 2014). However, when placed in its intellectual and historical context, CCT’s emphasis on consumers’ creative uses of polysemic marketplace resources does not express an ideological commitment to neoliberal views. In general, CCT research does not argue that privatized and voluntary solutions to societal problems are normatively superior to those relying upon legal, political, and regulatory remedies; or that the market is the ultimate adjudicator of normative value (Hayek 1944); or that social actors should vest their identities in the goal of maximizing the market value of their human capital (Becker 1962). Rather, CCT offers a corrective to critical approaches that have often presumed a structural isomorphism between the ideological interpellations encoded in brands, advertisements, or corporate-controlled entertainment media and consumers’ reactions to those ideological interpellations (Goldman and Papson 1996). One of CCT’s meta-analytic themes is that cultural meanings are not directly encoded in brands or commercial media but emerge through the interactive process of interpretation and the contextually situated frames of references that consumers bring to bear (Brown, McDonagh, and Shultz 2013; McCracken 1986; Scott 1994) as well as the consumption/identity goals they are pursuing (Mick and Buhl 1992; Russell and Levy 2012; Russell and Schau 2014). Rather than a tacit endorsement of neoliberalism, CCT demonstrates that the processes of cultural production and cultural reception are dialectically linked and manifest a diversity of sociocultural interests and subject positions that are not reducible to visions of ideologically duped, one-dimensional consumers or the hegemonic operation of the culture industries (see Ritson and Elliott 1999; Scott 2006). Whereas sociology and anthropology had to diverge from their historically dominant ontological assumptions and interpretive norms to better address how agency can be exercised within fields of structural constraints and institutionalized cultural codes (Alexander and Smith 2010; Boltanski 2011; Foucault 2008; Hannerz 1992; Miller 2001), CCT’s intellectual project has taken a reverse path. Shifting from its initial emphasis on

100   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson the experiential and agentic aspects of consumption, a significant stream of CCT research began to address how processes of social structuration—gender and class-based socialization, collective social and cultural formations, naturalized cultural ideologies, and enduring inequities in the distribution of capital—shape and are reciprocally shaped by consumption practices and consumer individual and collective identity projects (Bernthal, Crockett, and Rose 2005; Bettany et al. 2010; Crockett and Wallendorf 2004; Hein and O’Donohoe 2014; Holt 1997a, 1998, 2002; Jafari and Goulding 2008; Peñaloza and Barnhart 2011; Üstüner and Holt 2007; Üstüner and Thompson 2012; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008). Given this historical backdrop, we will now discuss some contemporary developments in CCT research that more or less map onto the heuristic categories outlined by Arnould and Thompson (2005): (1) consumer identity projects; (2) marketplace ­cultures; (3) the sociohistoric patterning of consumption; and (4) mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies. Figure 4.1 provides a graphic representation of these four domains of theoretical interest and some of their key interrelationships. A key implication of this graphic representation is that a given CCT study will typically address interrelationships among these four heuristic domains, such as analyzing how the sociohistoric patterning of consumption (as manifested, for example, in the central-peripheral dynamics of globalization) organize the marketplace cultures in Consumer Resistance; Disruptive Assemblages of Cultural Meanings, Practices & Material Resources

The Socio-Historic Patterning of Consumption

Governmentality and Structure-Agency Tensions

Shaping of consumption by class, ethnicity, gender, and other oversocialized categories; consumption under conditions of attenuated cultural resources; the institutionalization and reproduction of socio-economic hierarchies; interplay of social, cultural and economic capital; ideological production of consumer subjectivities

Marketplace Cultures Social-cultural processes embedded in brand communities, consumption communities, microcultures, consumption subcultures, consumer tribes; marketplace as mediator of social linkages & social relationships

Consumer Identity Projects Identity goals and experimentation; negotiating body image issues; self-presentation and forging symbolic distinctions to others; extended self; experiential and hedonic dimensions of consumption

Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies and Consumers’ Interpretive Strategies Representations of consumer lifestyles and consumer culture ideals in media; consumers’ active uses of media and practices of co-production; intersections of global media influences and local cultures (glocalization) Consumer-Driven Market Emergence and Socially Embedded Consumption Practices

Ideological Shaping of Consumer Identity Goals and Desires

Figure 4.1  Consumer Culture Theory: Four (Heuristic) Domains of Theoretical Interest. Adapted from Arnould and Thompson (2007).

Consumer Culture Theory   101 which consumers constitute their collectively shared identity projects (e.g., Kjeldgaard and Askegaard 2006) or the ways in which the intersection of religious and consumerist ideologies shape consumers’ practices of resistance (Izberk-Bilgin 2012; McAlexander et al. 2014). While our ensuing discussion cannot do justice to the complex networks of relationships that characterize the constellation of studies we cite, we believe this review provides a reasonable distillation of their respective contributions to the CCT literature and the theoretical trajectories they present.

Consumer Identity Projects and the Turn to Identity Politics CCT studies focusing on consumer identity projects address the ways in which consumers utilize marketplace resources to enact particular identity positions and to integrate their heterogeneous identity practices into a coherent narrative of identity. Rather than resting content to show that consumers can agentically constitute their identities, these studies often highlight the challenges and complexities that emerge from the social interdependencies, material constraints, and ideological figurations that situate consumers’ deployment of marketplace resources. Accordingly, CCT researchers have addressed the ways in which consumers seek to accomplish identity goals in the aversive face of practical and cultural obstacles (Albinsson, Perera, and Shows  2017; Bardhi, Eckhardt, and Arnould 2012; Fischer, Otnes, and Tuncay 2007; Paramentier and Fischer 2011); to reconstruct their identities in ways that run against the grain of their oversocialized tendencies (and the normative expectations that guide the actions of those who inhabit particular social categories) (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013; Martin, Schouten, and McAlexander 2006; Moisio, Arnould, and Gentry 2013); and, finally, to negotiate tensions and conflicts that threaten the legitimacy, ideological coherence, or (perceived) authenticity of their identity projects (Barnhart and Peñaloza 2013; Fournier 1998; Holt and Thompson 2004; Tumbat and Belk 2011). Over the years, consumer culture theorists have not only become more concerned with collectively shared identity projects (AbiGhannam and Atkinson 2016; Arsel and Thompson  2011; Bardhi, Eckhardt, and Arnould  2012; Giesler  2008; McAlexander et al. 2014; Seregina and Weijo 2017); they have also increasingly drawn out linkages between consumption practices and the enactment of identity politics whereby particular sociocultural factions pursue political-ideological goals and/or express demands for recognition, respect, equality, and other fundamental rights (Barnhart and Peñaloza 2013; Crockett and Wallendorf  2004; Crockett  2017; Izberk-Bilgin  2012; Kates  2004; Luedicke  2015; Martin, Schouten, and McAlexander  2006; Sandıkcı and Ger  2010; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013; Thompson and Üstüner 2015; Visconti 2008). In this vein, Jafari and Goulding (2008) analyze the different meanings of consumption and corresponding practices of identity construction among young adult Iraqis in their home country and, subsequently, in their expatriate locales in the United Kingdom. In the former case, participants in their study described using consumption as means

102   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson to resist theocratic restrictions imposed on their identities, such that participation in Western consumer culture became a risk-laden expression of defiance and liberty. Once ensconced in the United Kingdom, however, these immigrant consumers struggled to address the overwhelming array of “free” market choices and the unnerving obligation to construct an “authentic” identity that often conflicted with their internalized Iranian moral codes. But they also used consumption to enact a visible degree of Westernization and thereby ease suspicions that they might be a threat to the civic order. In both settings, these consumers experienced themselves as the subjects of panoptic social surveillance, though taking different forms. Facing these contrasting and potentially disempowering conditions, their consumption practices sought freedom from theocratic restriction (which could afford a more expressive identity project) and, later, freedom to live in a state of civic anonymity, rather than as subjects of perpetual suspicion. Crockett (2017) historicizes the politics of respectability—which has been a prominent feature of middle-class African American culture since emancipation—and further analyzes the contemporary influences exerted by this multifaceted ideology. Through the politics of respectability, middle-class African American consumers make a claim to legitimate citizenship (and thereby seek to rebuke disparaging racial stereotypes). Their legitimating, destigmatizing orientation involved practices of racial uplift that draw from the Protestant work ethic, ideals of Christian piety, and ethos of self-­ discipline that emulates the principles of comportment and decorum characteristic of a professional class work milieu. Crockett further argues that this uplift strategy coheres with the twin practices of entrepreneurial self-development and oppositional respectability, whereby African Americans use the marketplace and conspicuous consumption practices to reclaim selected aspects of black culture from stigmatizing associations proffered by dominant institutional discourses. (For parallel discussions in cultural sociology and the sociology of consumption, see Wherry 2008 and Pittman 2017, respectively.)

Marketplace Cultures (and the Cultural Drivers of Market Transformation and Emergence) Marketplace cultures are typically grassroots cultural formations—though their constitution and diffusion may be assisted by various cultural intermediaries—that inscribe marketplace resources in organized networks of meanings, performative roles, social practices, and normative conventions. Brand communities—such as those famously associated with Apple and Harley Davidson—are perhaps the most widely studied form of marketplace culture (Belk and Tumbat  2005; Cova and Pace  2006; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; Schau, Muniz, and Arnould 2009; Schouten and McAlexander 1995). Brand communities bear many structural similarities to fan communities whereby the brand functions as the analog to the celebrity (Kozinets 2001). As with fan communities, members of brand communities cocreate meaning by reworking brand symbolism in relation to the collectively shared ideals and norms of the community—thereby treating

Consumer Culture Theory   103 the brand as a communal resource which can, in turn, create conflicts with the corporate agents who have fiduciary and strategic control over the brand (see Avery 2012; Fournier and Lee 2009; Maclaren and Brown 2005). Beyond brand communities, CCT research has documented how marketplace resources become central features of collectively shared, culturally embedded identifications, ranging from indie music consumers (Arsel and Thompson 2011); locavores (Press and Arnould 2011; Thompson and Arsel 2004; Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007); professional-class global nomads (Bardhi, Eckhardt, and Arnould  2012); avid distance runners (Thomas, Price, and Schau 2013); sky divers (Celsi, Rose, and Leigh 1993); surfers seeking to realize a romantic ideal of nature (Canniford and Shankar 2013); and tough mudders whose pain-laden competitions provide the basis for a shared sense of embodied community (Scott, Cayla, and Cova 2017). As with other cultural formations, marketplace cultures also present their own social hierarchies and aesthetic standards and ideals into which their members are socialized (Arsel and Bean 2013; Goulding et al. 2009; Maciel and Wallendorf 2017). Furthermore, consumers can mobilize around alternative market systems and consumption practices, which are venerated as means to claim autonomy from corporate power (Giesler 2008; Kozinets and Handelman 2004; Thompson and Arsel  2004; Varman and Belk  2009). However, these resistant actions paradoxically heighten the significance of commodities, market-mediated relations, and the marketized countercultural symbols in these collective quests for autonomy from the interpellations of the capitalist system (Holt 2002; Kozinets 2002; Schor et al. 2016). These studies have frequently demonstrated that marketplace resources contribute to the emergence of a collective system of meanings and rituals and experiences of social solidarity anchored in shared interests, experiences, and feelings of communitas. A noteworthy exception to this theoretical pattern is Tumbat and Belk (2011), who analyze the liminal space of guided expeditions to ascend Mt. Everest. Rather than a communal ethos, the market-mediated groups are characterized by an atomistic and highly competitive logic. These would-be summiteers become so focused on attaining this much coveted identity badge that the climbing expedition remains a collection of individuals—separated by distrust and suspicion—rather than coalescing as a communal entity (also see Bardhi and Eckhardt’s 2012 analysis of Zipcar’s strategic inability to create a spirit of community among the uses of their access-based service). CCT researchers have also cast an analytic spotlight on the ways in which consumers— embedded in cultural systems linked to their avocational interest or ideological affinities—become agents of market transformation and formation. In the avocational sphere, Martin and Schouten (2014) trace out the emergence of the market for minimotos (modified mini bikes), which have become an established niche in the motorcycle industry, without the aid of major motorcycle manufacturers and conventional advertising/promotional support. They describe how a market network emerged from a multifaceted process that began with adult consumers adapting kid bikes to the demands of dirt-bike racing as a means to rekindle childhood memories. These modifications necessitated that these consumers resolve the material discrepancies between

104   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson adult bodies and the diminutive scale of these bikes. Though grassroots publications and social media, these ludic experiences became a basis for shared identification and the sharing of knowledge and eventually led to the construction of an infrastructure of riding areas and supporting businesses that enabled a substantial minimoto community to emerge. Finally, entrepreneurial members of the community began to produce standardized minimoto bikes (which increased accessibility) and organizing consolidating media and events that further legitimated this formerly do-it-yourself market (see Seregina and Wiejo 2017, who describe a similar market emergence process in the cosplay sphere). In an ideological vein, Sandıkcı and Ger (2010) detail the emergence of the market for tesettür fashion, which manifests an intersection of political Islam, market legitimation, and the strategic utilization of economic and cultural capital. Tesettür began as an appropriation of a sartorial practice that had formerly been associated with the impoverished and less educated rural sector of Turkish society by metropolitan professional women. These formerly secular women embraced political Islam and sought to destigmatize veiling practices. Leveraging their economic capital and the cultural capital acquired through their middle-class upbringing, formal education, and, most of all, lifelong immersion in the sphere of secularized consumer culture, these women, assisted by profit-seeking market intermediaries, remade the once stodgy and unflattering tesettür into a more urbane, appealing, and hybridized fashion style. These aestheticizing transformations led to the emergence of an upscale tesettür market of designers, retailers, and middle-class clientele that not only legitimated this mode of public presentation but also further mainstreamed political Islam as a countervailing ideology to the secularizing Kemalist political legacy.

Sociohistorical Patterning of Consumption and the Turn to “Flat Ontologies” During its formative periods throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, CCT research was oriented toward phenomenological and anthropological modes of analysis (see Askegaard and Lineet 2011) with a corresponding focus on agentic identity projects, consumption symbolism (i.e., the so-called deep meanings of consumption), and the rituals and routines that immersed consumers in collectively shared meanings and sustained social solidarity (Arnould and Price 1993; Belk 1988; Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; Celsi, Rose, and Leigh 1993; Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989; Wallendorf and Arnould 1991). Some of this work drew from more critical currents in the anthropological sphere—such as Wallerstein’s (1976) world system theory or critical ethnography (Rosaldo 1989)—to explore how socioeconomic inequities are reproduced through global flows (Arnould  1989) or the contested relations of subordination and dominance produced through processes of immigrant acculturation (Peñaloza 1994). Such modes of analysis—with their emphasis on structural forces that shape consumer actions

Consumer Culture Theory   105 and identities—remained outliers, rather than the central tendency, in the broader CCT literature. However, this paradigmatic status quo began to change in the mid-1990s. Led by Doug Holt’s (1997a, 1997b, 1998) adaptation of Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of distinction to the more fluid and heterogeneous conditions of American consumer culture, CCT researchers began to attend to the sociohistoric and institutional structures that produced consumer subjectivities, naturalized particular taste and preferences within particular socioeconomic factions, and channeled agentic actions in particular ideological directions. Rather than an agentic ontology—where consumers used marketplace resources to accomplish identity goals and construct social/communal ties—these studies investigated the relations of power that structured consumer culture and the means through which social factions, and their competing sociocultural interests, vied for dominance or struggled against forces of subordination and marginalization through marketplace actions (Holt  2002; Humphreys  2010; Karababa and Ger  2011; Press et al. 2014; Thompson and Tian 2008; Varman and Belk 2009; Vikas, Varman, and Belk 2015). In this domain of theoretical interest, Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and fields loom large, as CCT researchers investigate the role consumption practices play in reproducing social distinctions and their underlying stratified distributions of resources (Allen 2002; Bernthal, Crockett, and Rose 2005; Carfagna et al. 2014; Cronin, McCarthy, and Collins 2014; Henry 2005; Saatcioglu and Ozanne 2013; Üstüner and Holt 2010); the ways in which stocks of cultural capital influence the capacities of consumers to attain identity goals, such as gaining acceptance in higher status social fields or reconfiguring habituated constraints formed through primary socialization (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013; Kravets and Sandikci 2014; Thompson and Üstüner 2015; Üstüner and Holt 2007; Üstüner and Thompson 2012; Weinberger, Zavisca, and Silva 2017); and the processes through which marketplace cultures and commercial intermediaries facilitate consumers’ acquisition of cultural capital and enjoin new forms of symbolic capital (Arsel and Bean 2013; Dolbec and Fischer 2015; Maciel and Wallendorf 2017; McQuarrie, Miller, and Phillips 2013). Many of these studies extend and modify the Bourdieusian framework to better account for field-dependent forms of cultural capital and heterodox systems of status (Arsel and Bean 2013; Carfagna et al. 2014; Seregina and Weijo 2017). Others present innovative theoretical hybrids, such as showing how cultural rituals are implicated in contestations over the distribution and valuation of different species of cultural capital (Weinberger and Wallendorf 2012; Weinberger 2015). Foucauldian and institutional perspectives have also been quite prominent among CCT studies exploring the power relations manifest in consumption and marketmediated relationships, such as the cultural discourses and systems of classification that normalize certain consumer identities and practices while casting others as problematic or deviant (Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Humphreys 2010; Kristensen, Boye, and Askegaard 2011; Zhao and Belk  2008). Several deploy the Foucauldian concept of neoliberal governmentality (Foucault  2008) to investigate the ways in which consumer culture inculcates particular modes of self-management, thereby allowing the ideological ethos

106   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson of the free agent, entrepreneurial economy to colonize consumers’ identities and ­personal lives (Beckett 2012; Bokek-Cohen 2016; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Goulding, Shankar, Elliott, and Canniford 2009; Yngfalk 2016; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008; Zwick and Ozalp 2011). These governmentality studies have been complemented by research addressing the complex patterns of resistance and asymmetrical interdependencies that arise within these networks of shifting power relations (Luedicke, Thompson, and Giesler  2010; Luedicke  2015; McAlexander et  al.  2014; Mikkonen, Vicdan, and Markkula 2014; Ulver-Sneistrup, Askegaard, and Kristensen 2011). CCT studies addressing the sociohistoric shaping of consumption have been further enriched by an expanding stream of research that draws from actor-network (Callon 1986; Latour 2005) and assemblage theory (Allen 2011; DeLanda 2006). As discussed by Bajde (2013), the embrace of this analytic orientation has had the effect of “flattening CCT,” as the flat ontology manifest in actor-network theory and assemblage theory portrays agency as a web of interdependencies and contingencies that are diffused (and enacted) across a network of actants that are assembled through processes of translation, enrollment, and mobilization, leading to (always tenuous) moments of stabilization (Callon 1986). CCT researchers deploying this flat ontology have analyzed the shifting sociomaterial arrangements and the repurposed elements/actants that are variously aligned within these heterogeneous networks, whether manifested in the context of family identities and their material constitution (Epp and Price 2010; Epp, Schau, and Price 2014), the outsourcing of parental responsibilities (Epp and Velagelati 2014), the transformation of elderly identities (Barnhart and Peñaloza 2013), consumption communities (Thomas, Price, and Schau  2013), the emergence of new consumer-driven markets (Martin and Schouten 2014; Sihvonen et al. 2016), advertising imagery (Bjerrisgaard, Kjeldgaard, and Bengtsson 2013), the evolution of brand meanings (Giesler 2012), sustainable consumption practices and attendant market transformations (D’Antone and Spencer 2015), the reconfiguration of fatherhood within technological networks (Bettany, Kerrane, and Hogg 2014), and human–pedigree pet relationships (Bettany and Daly 2008). Canniford and Shankar (2013) illustrate the analytic differences that have accrued from the “recruitment” of flat ontologies into CCT. These authors investigate how members of the big wave surfing community assemble a romantic experience of nature (oriented around ideals of the sublime, the pristine, the primitive, and the sacred) through complex and shifting alignments of discourses, technologies, geographies, and purifying practices. Imploding conventional ideals of nature as a pregiven entity, Canniford and Shankar (2013) reveal that, for these big wave surfers, their ideals of romantic nature are produced through assemblages of discourses, technologies, social practices, and material geographies that blur boundaries between the cultural, the material, and the natural. Each node in these assemblages is interdependent upon the other, and each presents a potential for “betrayals,” such as the petrochemical pollution emanating from surfing-related equipment that betrays ideals of protecting a pristine natural world or the increased accessibility provided by commercial outfitters that betrays ideals of rugged individualism and escape from the maddening crowd that animate their romantic ideals. Once rendered salient, these betrayals, in turn, require

Consumer Culture Theory   107 that surfers engage in a nexus of purifying practices to reestablish and restabilize the requisite symbolic boundaries and contingent ordering of actants in the assemblage. As a heteroglossic enterprise, the different theoretical vernaculars that gain currency in the CCT field do not always mesh in terms of their ontological orientations. In this regard, actor-network theory– and assemblage theory– oriented CCT studies emphasize the symmetrical relations among actants—that is, the idea that no one actant in the relational network inherently exerts more influence than others. This ontological orientation leads to extensive descriptions of interdependencies, shifting relations as new actants enter into the assemblage (perhaps displacing or replacing others), and various forms of translation and related processes that serve (or attempt) to stabilize the network. In so doing, these “flattened” CCT studies cast aside issues related to entrenched/institutionalized power relations that create enduring relations of subordination and domination among social factions, struggles over scarce social resources, and the reproduction of social hierarchies (and stratified distributions of life opportunities) that are fundamental to CCT studies premised on Bourdieusian, Foucauldian, Marxian, and other critically oriented frameworks. One genealogical reason for this disparity is that many of these studies reference the Deleuzian roots of assemblage theory but gloss over its implications for rethinking the nature of power relations and modes of resistance (Deleuze and Guattari  1987; Deleuze and Parnett 1987). Deluezian assemblages are rhizomatic structures which are infused by power relations that intersect and traverse each other rather than being imposed by top-down hierarchical orders. Such assemblages are not just contingent alignments of actants but ways of ordering social life along specific vectors of power that legitimate and normalize certain actions, identities, and practices, while blocking, prohibiting, stigmatizing, or pathologizing others. In the Deleuzean frame, assemblages provide both lines of stratification, which tend to perpetuate status quo relations of power, and lines of flight, which present opportunities for disrupting and reworking extant relations of power and affording practices of rhizomatic resistance that could contest dispersed (and disciplining) power relations (Allen  2011). Accordingly, CCT researchers could leverage the analytic benefits offered by flat ontologies but also sustain a critical perspective on the shifting relations of power and resistance by tracing out how assemblages produce lines of stratification and lines of flight through which power relations (and moments of resistance) coalesce (as in Kozinets Patterson, and Ashman 2017, discussed in the following section).

Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies and Consumers’ Interpretive Strategies (and the Social Media-ification of Consumer Culture) Given that entertainment and news media, advertising, and social media saturate everyday life, this domain of theoretical interest is quite obviously intertwined with the

108   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson production of consumer identities, marketplace cultures, and the sociohistoric shaping of consumption (via processes of mythologization, ideological hailing, the construction of public memory, and the social and ideological construction of risk) (Celsi, Rose, and Leigh 1993; Humphreys and Thompson 2014; Marcoux 2017; Press et al. 2014; Thompson 2005; Thompson and Tian 2008; Wong and King 2008). Seeking to sharpen the analytic clarity offered by their typology, Arnould and Thompson (2005) restricted this category to research that specifically focused on the ideological meanings conveyed through mass media texts and consumers’ interpretative uses of mass-mediated marketplace resources. With that caveat duly noted, we will continue to follow this classification heuristic in this review, though the dematerialized and despatialized nature of digitized consumption necessitates significant modifications in how relationships between media consumption and consumers’ individual and social identity practices, and collective affiliations are conceptualized (cf. Arvidsson and Caliandro 2016; Belk 2013; Denegri Knott and Molesworth 2010; Iquani and Schroeder 2016; Murray 2015). In contrast to the cultural studies tradition, which has tended to treat advertisements and mass media as constellations of semiotic and ideological codes that produce particular sociocultural effects (Douglas 2010; Lears 1994; Marchand 1985), CCT studies have been much more consumer-centric, focusing on the way in which consumers, inhabiting particular social positions, interpret these media text and integrate these co-created meanings into their lives (Dong and Tian 2009; Mick and Buhl 1992; Ritson and Elliott 1999). Through media-oriented consumption practices, consumers manage emotions and memories and cultivate shared experiences (Brown, McDonagh, and Shultz 2013), such as by reconsuming iconic films from their youth with their own children (Russell and Levy 2012). The highly interactive qualities of social media enable consumers not only to form spatially and temporally dispersed communities but to also create symbolic and economic value through a range of collaborative enterprises and alternative market systems (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Schor and Thompson 2014). However, the CCT canon does have its share of analyses that deconstruct the structural properties and relations encoded in ads and mass media exemplars (Ibroscheva 2013; Patterson and Elliott 2002; Schroeder and Zwick 2004). In this spirit, Bjerrisgaard, Kjeldgaard, and Bengtsson (2013) discuss the complex semiotic assemblages that are created when brand advertisers incorporate tattoo imagery into their ads. Zayer et al. (2012) detail how the consumption practices undertaken by characters on the iconic television shows Entourage and Sex and the City represent fluid gender identities and the reconfiguration the gender ideologies associated with domesticity and sexuality. Stevens, Cappellini, and Smith (2015) analyze the shifting relations between the ideological constructions of glamor, feminine identity, and the female body represented through media performances of the British celebrity and self-proclaimed “domestic goddess” Nigella Lawson. Dong and Tian (2009:518) argue that nation-state governing practices influence consumers’ interpretive relations to brands, though in ways that can run against the grain of the state’s ideological hailings. Their analysis shows that the ideological vision, endorsed by China’s political leadership, portrays the nation as being open to capitalist markets, encouraging conspicuous consumption, and promoting national unity through associating brands with revivified iconic images and social events from

Consumer Culture Theory   109 Chinese history. Chinese consumers, however, exercise autonomy by engaging national narratives to historicize Western brands. Through their use of diverse national narratives, consumers reinstate consumption categories that mark brands as Western versus those classified as being indigenous to Chinese society, reorganize their meanings in terms of present-­day local logics, and wield these categories as instruments for realizing visions of the future nation-state that differ from the official vision of China’s governmental authorities. Nonetheless, CCT research is most readily identified with a view of consumers as active, co-creative users of media in all its variegated forms (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Russell and Schau 2014). While consumer co-creation has long been a component of the contemporary mediascape (Jenkins 1992; Kozinets 2001), the digital revolution and the interweaving of social media into the practices of everyday life have fundamentally altered consumers’ interactions with advertising and entertainment media (see Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2013; Kozinets, Hemetsberger, and Schau 2008; Venkatesh and Akdevelioglu 2017). Whereas numerous studies have demonstrated that social media can help to organize and sustain brand and consumption communities (Cova and Pace 2006; Scaraboto 2015; Schau, Muniz, and Arnould 2009), Arvidsson and Caliandro (2016) argue that hashtags and other social media mediation technologies now afford the production of brand publics. In contradistinction to the brand community literature—which emphasizes the forms of interactions and social bonding that are anchored by shared affinities for a given brand—Arvidsson and Caliandro (2016) propose that brand publics are aggregations of individuals who are linked by an affective affiliation rather than ritualized social interactions and the sharing of experiences, knowledge, and communal identifications. Accordingly, members of brand publics draw value from their participation in social forums where they can engage in different modes of self-presentation (and self-promotion for their own hashtag) and gain enjoyment/value from these assemblages of information, aesthetic imagery, subversive representations, and other scopophilic pleasures, all without the invocation of shared community values or rituals. If social media can help to constitute brand communities and brand publics, they could also be implicated in the dissolution of such social formations. Parmentier and Fischer (2015) address this phenomenon by analyzing the processes through which the audience for a brand dissipates (in this case, the long-running reality television show America’s Next Top Model). They conceptualize the brand as a robust assemblage of diverse elements, including narratives, contestants, celebrity judges, audiences, social media, entertainment media, and corporate sponsors. Over time, different elements— new contestants, new judges, new narratives, new formats, and the changing popular culture meanings of the show host Tyra Banks—came into the ensemble while displacing others. Their analyses trace out how consumers gradually amplify discontinuities among these components, often expressing displeasure at the new configuration vis-à-vis prior ones, and ultimately reaching a tipping point where the brand assemblage is no longer able to organize a viable market. An even more disruptive account of social media(ted) assemblages and consumer experiences is developed by Kozinets, Patterson, and Ashman (2017). Their study

110   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson addresses the Deleuzian implications of assemblages by investigating the ways in which consumer desires are reconfigured and amplified through their distribution in social media networks. Countering the modernist view that technology exerts a rationalizing influence on social life, Kozinets et al. (2017) suggest that consumer desire is an energetic force that is produced through the rhizomatic assemblages of consumers, imagery, food, and social media technologies. Whereas prior research had further assumed that consumer desire represents an insatiable psychosocially induced lack that consumer culture profitably seeks to ameliorate (Belk, Ger, and Askegaard 2003), Kozinets et al. (2017) identify the new relations of power (and practices of resistance) that are created by these sensuous, technocapitalist arrangements.

The Travails of Institutionalization and Chartering New Trajectories for Consumer Culture Theory As noted on in our opening prologue, Arnould and Thompson’s (2005) CCT initiative was motivated by both academic and institution-building goals. Our preceding review has highlighted the major motifs and trajectories related to the academic project. In closing, we will discuss some issues related to the institutionalization process and some points of friction that it has created. Though not without some contention (see Askegaard and Scott 2013; Arnould and Thompson 2007 for further discussion), the community of scholars affiliated with this subdiscipline largely embraced CCT as a communal badge (or academic brand) and pushed the institutional agenda forward with remarkable speed, punctuated by the establishment of a formal organization (Consumer Culture Theory Consortium [CCTC]) with a growing memberships and an international board of scholars. The CCTC organizes an annual international conference that rotates between North American and European sites; a series of coordinated doctoral training seminars that are held in North America, Europe, South America, and the Pacific Rim; plus a host of smaller scaled seminars and symposiums. Most recently, the CCTC and the Consumers and Consumption section of the American Sociology Association have begun a joint biennial conference, with the first being hosted by this handbook’s editors at Yale University and organized by a collective of scholars within sociology, CCT, and marketing studies. Last but not least, an ever-expanding orbit of journals and edited volumes now regularly feature CCT-oriented studies, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Consumption, Markets, & Culture, the Journal of Consumer Culture, Marketing Theory, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, and Research in Consumer Behavior. Institutionalization also portends a shift from being a disruptive, revolutionary enterprise to a collective practice of normal science, where research is expected to contribute to an established corpus of theoretical conversations. Arnould and Thompson’s (2005)

Consumer Culture Theory   111 work was an impetus to this institutionalization process and, conversely, their framing of this research sphere has become the subject of critical reflection. One prominent concern is that CCT may now constitute a stifling orthodoxy that impedes innovation and imposes governmental constraints upon culturally oriented consumer researchers (Bode and Østergaard  2013; Firat  2012; Fitchett, Patsiaouras, and Davies  2014; Moisander, Peñaloza, and Valtonen  2009). In response, Thompson, Arnould, and Giesler (2013) suggest that a counterbalance to this threat of paradigmatic orthodoxy is the heteroglossic structure of CCT’s intellectual discourses. This diversity presents innumerable generative opportunities for cross-linkages, hybridization, and dynamic innovations, as evinced by the rapid infusion of flat ontologies into the CCT vernacular and the critical extensions and transformations of assemblage theory that have subsequently ensued (Kozinets, Patterson, and Ashman 2017). However, the constraints imposed by institutionalization extend beyond heuristic frameworks and theoretical conversations per se. They can also be naturalized in formal and informal journal conventions and evaluative standards that require the invocation of particular styles of analysis and representational strategies to be deemed as legitimate (Belk 2017; Brown 2017; Firat and Dholakia 2017; Holt 2017). Many of the criticisms that are directed at Arnould and Thompson’s heuristic mapping of CCT research often reference this broader network of conventions, many of which preceded Arnould and Thompson (2005), but that were perhaps further stabilized and normalized through their CCT enrollments. In this spirit, Firat and Dholakia (2017) argue that CCT remains wedded to logical empiricist conventions and, hence, betrays a limiting and inhibiting paradigmatic preference for analysis based on descriptive “data points” that are “conducive to verifying what facts and relationships exist—that is, what is” (200). According to these authors, this “what is” orientation naturalizes the status quo in ways that reinforce prevailing market structures and the ideological construction of consumer subjectivities. Reflecting on these concerns, we first note that CCT studies generally do more than describe “what is.” Rather, they profile the ideological, sociohistoric, and structural (such as class-stratified distributions of resources) conditions that shape consumption practices and consumer–marketplace relationships. However, Firat and Dholakia’s (2017) more fundamental (dis)contention is that CCT research fails to envision utopian worlds that exist beyond the interpellations of capitalism, or what they characterize as “grand theory” (201). While this criticism does fairly characterize much of the CCT work published in leading academic journals, it does not differentiate among the different kinds of language games that can be played in other forums, such as books (cf. Firat and Dholakia 1998; Scott 2006) and edited volumes (Sherry and Fischer 2017; Zwick and Cayla 2011) whose narrative conventions are often more philosophical, visionary, and poetic. On the whole, however, we see considerable value in Firat and Dholakia’s (2017) calls to transform academic journal conventions so that what is conventionally termed “conceptual articles” might also embrace visionary “worlds beyond capitalism” treatises—on the order of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) or the latter Baudrillard (1994, 1995)—with the

112   Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson caveat that these discursive limits are not restricted to CCT publications per se. As a relevant mea culpa, our present summarization of the CCT literature, much like prior renditions (Arnould and Thompson 2005, 2007; Thompson, Arnould, and Giesler 2013) has made little reference to the robust tradition of videography in the CCT community (Belk and Kozinets 2005a, 2005b) and or other representational modes, perhaps mostly notably poetic expression, which has gained considerable traction both as a mode of methodological self-reflection (Sherry and Schouten 2002) and as a means to transcend the discursive limits of conventional academic discourse (c.f., Stern, Zinkhan, and Sherry 1998; Wijland and Fell 2009). Holt (2017) addresses a related concern about the institutionalization of CCT in his proposals for a parallel stream of research that he anoints as “consumer culture strategy.” As Holt notes, the “high social theory” narrative conventions imposed in top-ranked journals direct research efforts away from substantive engagements with significant realworld problems—climate change, poverty, shortfalls in the distribution of health care services—in favor of abstracted theoretical arguments that can devolve into “even more nuanced tweaks of ever more esoteric and abstract concepts” (Holt 2017:216). Rather than treating these contextually embedded social problems as significant research problems to be studied and redressed in their own right, the high social theory approach frames them as little more than contextual fodder for theory-building exercises. In contrast, Holt’s consumer culture strategist would pursue his or her project by building expertise in the social problem domain; designing and conducting research that can address gaps in practice; and building problem-solving models that can redress those unrequited problems. For a CCS-oriented researcher, theory becomes a means to the larger end of combatting the larger social/policy problem rather than being an end in and of itself. Holt (2017) also recognizes that research following in a consumer culture strategy vein would need to be diffused through platforms other than conventional academic journals, such as books, blogs, think-tank white papers, and practitioner-oriented journals. Thus, we can see some convergence on a common institutional chasm that is being addressed in Holt’s (2017) and Firat and Dholakia’s (2017) respective commentaries. Holt’s consumer culture strategy approach would likely diverge from the “high theory” evaluative norms and standards that govern researchers situated in many conventional academic settings—institutional conditions that are particularly pressing upon assistant professors striving for tenure. A good example of this type of approach is that adopted by Linda Scott, a contributor to foundational feminist CCT scholarship (2006). In recent years she has devoted her efforts to promoting and publicizing what she calls the XX economy, a gynocentric vision of economic relations, with special focus on the developing world. Her website provides a blog on relevant current events, aggregates projects devoted to women’s empowerment, engages in advocacy directed to governmental and intergovernmental organizations, and develops teaching cases on women’s empowerment (see https://www.doublexeconomy.com). We concur that challenging restrictive institutional orthodoxies is a worthwhile and necessary endeavor because, among other reasons, consumption and marketplace

Consumer Culture Theory   113 logics are integral to many systemic global problems, be it the reproduction of social inequity, climate change, water shortages, and the destruction of the ecological commons. Toward this end, academic departments should give more weight and credence to research that actually makes tangible contributions to problem-solving practice, regardless of the forums through which it is disseminated; thus, one could build a tenurable record by cultivating expertise in the strategies and organizational practices that can aid firms in reducing their carbon footprints (e.g., Martin and Schouten 2009). Second, leading academic journals could also alter their narrative conventions in ways that are more conducive to problem-centered research. The CCT literature does harbor some discursive discontinuities that align with these calls for institutional transformation. For example, the Journal of Consumer Research (arguably the flagship journal for CCT research) has published methodological frameworks for undertaking “action-oriented” research (Ozanne and Saatcioglu 2008), and corresponding empirical demonstrations (Phipps and Ozanne 2017), that have axiological affinities with Holt’s call for CCS. Such praxis-oriented studies remain marginal to the major CCT-friendly journals’ institutionally dominant modes of “high social theory” analyses. Nonetheless, they constitute new paradigmatic fault lines that could exert a broader disruptive influence on the institutional orthodoxy. For these reverberations to coalesce as a transformative moment, interdisciplinary alliances among researchers investigating and theorizing the complex relationships between market and society will be needed, not only to affect a radical shift in academic priorities but also to collaboratively marshal the requisite intellectual resources for analyzing and resolving pandemic social problems. And to do so, the institutional fault lines that have arbitrarily, but ever so forcefully, divided academic disciplines will also need to be transcended.

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chapter 5

A Sociol ogica l Cr itiqu e a n d R efor m u l ation of Br a n ds Thomas CLAYTON Gibson O’Guinn, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr., and Erika L. Paulson

A Primer on the Politics of Trying to Do Branding Research in US Business Schools This is a relatively mild critique and quite likely futile plea from three extraordinarily frustrated and incredulous marketing academics and practioners, all with training and scholarship in sociology. The source of our frustration, you ask? The answer is, too many years of attempting to publish meaningful brand research in US business school journals. Why don’t we publish in an established fied, like sociology? We are now doing that, but when we all had to worry about getting tenure we succumbed to the ridiculous and rigid “three-marketing-journals model” of our institutions. To do otherwise would have been brave but foolish given institutionally prescribed expectations for tenure: most American business schools are widget factories where the widgets are “A”-level marketing journal articles. What defines “A”-level is essentially citation counts, not intellectual merit. American business schools are more Fordist than Ford. We should note that some of the very best business schools (five or so) are now as interested in contributions in base disciplines (though mostly psychology) as their own “Big Three” journals.” That’s a good first step, but most US marketing academics don’t know much about sociology, and most US sociologists are pretty naive about the consumer behavior field. So, now that we, advanced in our careers, don’t have to worry too much about the three-marketing-journals model, we want do something about this sad state of affairs.

128   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson We write this pulled-punch critique to both our sociological and marketing kin. Though we critique pretty much everyone, we aim our harshest language at those in business schools and particularly those who have horribly (mis)-managed our very few journals. The first author spends time in a major US sociology department and is sometimes asked why don’t marketing people pay any attention to US sociology? Another very good question, but a fairly rare one because people in Research 1 American sociology departments don’t really care about or know much about marketing and consumer behavior. Some have moral reservation about training marketers. We wish there was greater nuance in the criticism, at least acknowledging the field of consumer behavior in a mere benign, and sometimes beneficial inquiry into central aspects of contemporary society. In the following pages we offer our answer to this infrequently asked question. Through our brief exposition, we hope that something changes, even a little. It’s probably too late for us and our three careers, but maybe something will change, and sociology and US consumer behavior (mostly in business schools) schools will meaningfully interact. One consequential topic, among many, on which marketing and sociology could easily interact is brands. Brands are, more than anything else, sociological creations. There are many things one could, and maybe should, say about brands and branding, but one can no longer say, if one ever could, that either the practice or the consequences of branding are trivial, certainly not where society is concerned. Everything and everyone is now called a brand. This changed fairly quickly, and there is nothing to indicate that it will reverse course. To meaningfully address this social phenomenon, we have to first overcome some problems. We have to clear away some conceptual deadwood. The first of these is that the story and reality of branding and society is not simple at all. It is not a hero-villain cautionary tale. That mythic narrative is so  familiar that school children can properly recite it admonition for admonition: marketing and branding are bad; the marketplace is to be distrusted; materialism (whatever that is) is bad; “natural” (whatever that is) is good; anti-marketing criticism is enlightened (and never self-interested). Nothing is that simple, certainly nothing sociological. Is the societal centrality of branding necessarily a sign of cultural collapse or, alternatively, marketplace liberation? No and no. True, brand culture has thrived in modernity, but has it rendered all that was supposedly solid to ether (Berman  1982; Marx and Engles [1848] 1967)? No. It has not. However, equally false is the conflation of freedom to choose a Ford or a Chevy with choice as it pertains to voice, representation, and power (i.e., choice as it applies to life, death, human rights, and dignity). They are not the same; one trivializes the other. But here is the incredibly unfortunate rub: they are not entirely unrelated either. That admission, that difficult acknowledgment, is missing in scholarship on brands and beyond. Paradox should pummel polemic. Regrettably, there are many other large omissions, errors, and vanities in the bodies of work on brands. Neither psychological reductionism nor narrowly prescribed critical cultural theory abides the obvious messiness inherent in the study of brands.

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   129 It is a matter for others to fret about when the bountifully banal became the boundless behemoth, if it ever did (or if it ever was). Thomas Frank (1997) locates the critical moment in the 1960s countercultural revolution: a revolution after which nothing at all, not even anti-capitalist revolution, could ever again be entirely outside the brand(ing) concept. The moralistically seductive Paradise Lost myth endures (Delanty  2010; Field 2018; Miller 1991), but is finally losing resonance where things, their commercial marking and social nature are concerned. Particularly when applied to brands and consumption, this myth feels played out (Miller 1991; Quartz and Asp 2015; Schudson 1998). Few invoking it these days (Barber  2008; Lasn  1999) really have their heart in it (Jacoby 2007), excepting a few particularly puritanical and wrong-on-the-history ones This worn-out myth should return to the nineteenth century (Cowen 2000; Heath and Potter 2004) that never was (Delanty 2010; Lin 2003; Miller 1991). It’s time to think about brands differently and let puritanicalism, nostalgia, and free market fantasy give room to something more nuanced. Brands are portable containers of popular meaning used for promoting things, places, people and ideas. The sociology that surrounds them makes them both possible and powerful. To put a blunt edge on it: extant models of brands are sociologically naïve and omissive. A wide variety of actors, institutions, collectives, and social forces operate simultane­ously, but not always in concert, to produce brands. But in the American Marketing Assemblage (AMA) consumer-behavior first world, there is little room for the macro, institutional, and meaningfully social. For the longest time, there has only been not-very-social psychology. Now, oddly making things even more difficult for humanly recognizable conceptualizations of brands is the dominant mode of anything not very social psychology in AMA: Consumer Culture Theory (CCT; Arnould and Thompson 2005). These two traditions dominate the AMA and their dominance is hindering understanding brands. CCT is an odd salad of several varieties of critical research yanked without roots from their original terroir. With its emphasis on continental high critical theory (HCT), CCT is more like British cultural studies, media studies, and American Studies than mainstream empirical American sociology. In some top-flight American sociology departments talking too much about Foucault will get you directed toward the humanities building. More conservative than European sociology generally (Field 2018; Lamont 2000; Delanty 2010), American sociology has been more empirical, functional, and less circular in thought (Field 2018). But CCTs institutional gatekeepers have been fairly hostile to the American empirical sociological tradition. Further, given the widespread ignorance of mainstream American sociology in the AMA, sociology has come to be equated with CCT. This is very unfortunate. To be clear, CCT is not representative of the mainstream American sociological tradition. Asking these more traditional sociologists to sample our flagship journals comes to a typically bad. Marketing “A” journals make attracting mainstream American empirical sociologist a tough task. This doesn’t have to be. Brands can be easily theorized without the requisite HCT Silly-Putty-sledgehammer critique. Of course, critique is worthy and should be encouraged. Nuance and paradox

130   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson are even better. Essentialist thought is dreadful and boring and the can’t-be-pinned-downto-a-position-because-of-deliberate-obfuscation-and-contradiction-pollysllabic-aspic, the worst. Undisciplined thought and incomprehensible expression should not be the defining feature of a school of theory. As the first and second authors learned, one is no longer allowed as a Journal of Consumer Research/Journal of Marketing Editorial board reviewer to ask for much clarity where CCT papers are concerned. That would be too constricting, wrong, even a micro-aggression. Frustrating beyond measure is that something very similar happens when encountering researchers in the not-very-social psychology tradition. The first author once, as a JCR Editorial Board reviewer, asked a psychologist writing about social class and taste to at least cite some of the very long tradition of sociology on taste. Apparently, asking that was institutionally disallowed, not understanding of one’s place. How dare we? In American marketing journals, psychologists apparently do not have to know much, or even acknowledge anything, sociological. This has to change if an invitation to our colleagues in American sociology is to mean anything. These very real realities present almost insurmountable problems for anyone writing about brands outside these two institutionally protected traditions. It’s maddening. In all sincerity, hearts are broken, souls are jaded, and promising careers ended. Yes, ended. The point is that there are real human consequences to repressive journalistic orthodoxy. The psychologists want individual-level data and theory (i.e., what is processed in the individual mind) and the exhausting and often pointless elimination of all possible alternative explanations, to the exclusion of social and practical significance. Meanwhile, the CCT powers-that-be (and they be) want HCT-infused work and no deviation from their orthodoxy. In that way, the protection and projection of HCT are far more important than actual data and the stories data tell. More significantly, if you don’t explicitly choose one of these two paths, you don’t get published where it institutionally counts: a tiny (three–four) collection of US “A”-level marketing journals. Some of the better schools count base disciplinary work, but rarely sociology. They probably would if they knew much about sociology, but all they know, and don’t like, is CCT and think it is the sum total of sociology. This is so ironic given sociology’s economic lineage and citation patterns. This situation evidences widespread ignorance. As the push to quantify academic contributions continues, the anointment of some provincial journals at the expense of broader and more established others will most likely exacerbate this problem unless change is forced. We are asking you to help force change.

A History of the Brand and Brand Thought We want American sociologists to be interested in a clearly sociological construct: the brand. To maybe get you a little interested, here’s a bit of history that you may not know.

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   131

From Thing to Brand In the beginning, there was the thing, a material object, and it was good. Humans have always given objects meaning; some even claim that it is the other way around (Csikszentmihalyi 1993; Miller 2010). So marketers didn’t have to work very hard to get humans to believe objects have important meanings. Then came the word. Words about things: objects took on more meaning, soap became Ivory, beer became Budweiser. Then the image came along, and myths could be encapsulated in swooshes, apples, and targets. Things became brands. Encapsulated myths became iconic brands (Holt 2004). All of this was certainly not as simple as a marketer making it so, or consumers methodically processing information, or the force of inescapable and mind-mesmerizing capitalist hegemony. Society, in all its meandering messiness, produced this show. In 1870s America, there were few named and marked things for sale. Just prior to this moment you would have purchased flour from an unmarked sack, had soap cut from an unmarked cake, and had beer drawn from an unlabeled keg. You would have paid for these commodities by weight or volume. Then came the mark. Word and image transformed commodities into brands. Brands added meaning and price inelasticity. Pillsbury (1872), Ivory (1879), and Budweiser (1876) meant something more than their category names and commanded a higher price, often via their deliberate linkage to some social disruption, concern, or institution. In this important early brand era, it was often purity or the lack of it. Several convergent forces facilitated the development of brands and branding (Low and Fullerton 1994). Advances in manufacturing and packaging fostered efficient production and standardization, both necessary for product differentiation. Improvements in transportation made national distribution possible. Changes in trademark and patent laws allowed manufacturers the ability to protect their brands. A growing and increasingly urban and literate population created consumers who could understand the claims of different brands and adopt mass-produced canned goods and other store-bought things. National advertising media propagated brands. Modern brands were news. Modern advertising, using national advertising-supported media, allowed marketers an efficient way to reach the dispersed population in order to project their brands into the national consciousness. Dabbling with branding and advertising, then considered the most modern of professions, were none other than J. B. Watson, George Gallup, and F.  Scott Fitzgerald (Fox  1984; Marchand  1985). The transition to a branded world of ­consumer-citizens was commented upon by every significant writer of the day, including James Joyce and Henry Miller. At some point between the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the present, brands and branding went from a relatively straight-forward extension of market logic—that is, transforming commodities into things with meaning and thus less price elasticity—to being a, maybe the, significant manner, method, and mode of social ­organization, polity, social conception, and consequence. In just under 150 years, we’ve gone from societies with very few brands, mostly hard goods (Fox 1984), to ones where

132   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson almost everything is branded. What isn’t branded now? Êtes-vous une marque? Today, water and soil are branded. So, too, are universities, religious denominations, artists, nation-states, environmental organizations, social movements, candidates, ideologies, information, countercultures, and even terrorist organizations. Brands (and their logics and practices) are portable. Brands made modernity economically viable and symbolically material, but their ubiquity and high-polished surface prevented them from being taken seriously by many.

A Dangerous Big Blind Spot While Driving (Theory) Over forty years ago, marketing scholars Nicosia and Mayer (1976) touted the advantages of studying societal level production and consumption. Their proposed “sociology of consumption” was to include “consumption activities, cultural values and social institutions.” Nicosia and Mayer (1976:66) said we should study institutions and not just individual consumers to truly understand consumption. They also noted that consumption was creeping into historically noncommercial spaces. Sadly, few followed up on, or indeed even acknowledged, their modest proposal. Traditional American sociology is not without responsibility here. At first, and for a very long time, it refused to seriously look at marketplace phenomena without anything other than disdain and essentialist critique, a critique that overlaps with the Paradise Lost myth referenced earlier. The short version: commerce had bulldozed The Garden, a time and place that never was, where primitive and pristine communities lived, loved, and consumed all-natural everything without greed, stratification, or conflict. Fortunately, this silly myth is beginning to lose credulity. Apparently, the tenets of the so-called thesis of the consumption economy (often juxtaposed with the notion of an individual production orientation and conjoined with the notion of the desiring subject) don’t hold up well to close intellectual scrutiny or the historical facts (Delanty 2010; Field  2018; Martin  1999; Miller  2010; Schudson  1998). The formation of an American Sociological Association section on Consumers and Consumption suggests that American sociology is finally directing some attention to consumers and brands. Still, we doubt most AMA scholars could find the sociology department on their own campus. And don’t ask most psychologists for help; they won’t know because they believe they don’t need to know. We have to look elsewhere to credit scholars for taking brands and branding seriously. Cambridge scholar Daniel Miller (1987, 2010) has, in our view, been the unquestionable leader in this, and he has produced a sophisticated and nuanced view of commercial ­culture and branded objects. He, like us and others (Boorstin 1962; Schudson 1986), rejects the very idea of materialism as simplistic and ahistorical. The late University of Chicago historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin (1962, 1969) saw brands in a Warholian way (Warhol  1975), problematic, but also meaningfully connecting Americans. He thought the idea of materialism was poorly informed.

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   133 To speak of American “materialism” is both an understatement and a misstatement. The material goods that historically have been the symbols which elsewhere separated men from one another have become, under American conditions, symbols which brought men together. From the moment of our rising in the morning, the breakfast food we eat, the coffee we drink, the automobile we drive—all these, and nearly all the things we consume become thin, but not negligible bonds with thousands of other Americans. (Boorstin 1969:37)

In American sociology, it was Erving Goffman (1956, 1963, 1974) who did the same and was followed by Michael Schudson (1986 1998). Goffman crossed disciplinary boundaries and wrote at a time when social psychology was actually social, and the two fields were much closer. His application to consumer research is insanely overdue, but it has begun to appear (O’Guinn, Tanner, and Maeng 2015). So a full half-century before the Journal of Consumer Research existed (it’s an “A” journal in marketing; ASA is one of its twelve sponsors), very sophisticated consumer thought, particularly on brands, was available. Partially due to AMA scholarship, we’ve gone backward. We doubt one in a thousand American ACR members today knows who these important scholars are or what ideas they advanced. One of the most famous American sociologists of all time, Erving Goffman, and his thoughts on brands are barely known today. In AMA land, if a psychologist, an economist, or, failing that, a Continental High Theorist didn’t do it, it didn’t happen. That’s both shameful and ridiculous, and editors at the field’s major “A” (whatever that is) journals (JCR, JM, JMR) are culpable. Little wonder that American marketing and branding are looked upon so unfavorably in the wider academic milieu. Since sociologists still hold, understandably, most marketing scholarship in such nonregard, American sociology most frequently cites economists and pretty much ignores psychology/ marketing and vice-versa. But we live in a what? A consumer society. The current reality is that the number of traditional, classical, and/or more scientifically conservative AMA sociological contributors is pretty small. We are lonely; please come join us, the exiles. A stubborn few in the American marketing sphere have recognized the need for more complete models of brands but have stopped short of incorporating much in the way of American sociology. To his considerable credit, Keller (2003) concludes his essay on the multidimensionality of brand knowledge by noting: “the challenge and opportunity for consumer research . . . is fully appreciating the broad scope and complexity involved” (599). Keller is to be singled out for his sincere invitation and a scholarly spirit. He wisely acknowledges what he doesn’t know and what is left undone. Likewise, Allen, Fournier, and Miller (2008) wrote: “today’s challenge is to understand more deeply the multiple sources and dynamic nature of that (brand) meaning” (782). Allen et al. (2008) assert that “currently our theories are incomplete and misaligned with the revealed realities of the brand as experienced in today’s consumer, corporate, and cultural worlds” (782). More provocatively, Gyrd-Jones and Kornum (2013) assert that a new collaborative logic for branding is needed. “The model to inform this new logic would need to point to a

134   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson wider socio-cultural system than just dyadic stakeholder relationships” (Gyrd-Jones and Kornum, 2013:1484). European scholars have long recognized this simple truth. When it comes to brands in the AMA consumer behavior world, it has generally been the CCT Club doing anything sociological. Yet, while generally appreciative, we assert that much, but not all, of CCT’s published work is marginal by mainstream and more conservative American sociological standards and tastes. More directly, we assert that CCT-branded research (Arnould and Thompson 2005) has actually diminished sociology’s impact on the American marketing field. CCT has made it harder to practice sociology in AMA land. It has also made it safer for more and incremental consumer psychology. Perhaps the intentions were good, but it’s that road-to-hell thing again. Yes, the tabloids were right; it was suicide, a self-inflicted wound that made getting jobs in Research 1 AMA institutions harder, not easier. True, CCTs impact has been much greater outside the United States and that is both significant and undeniable. Maybe some in Europe have it right, and mainstream empirical US sociologists wrong, but all should have a voice.

The Biggest Problems with Extant Brand Models Extant brand models have so many limitations, it’s hard to know where to begin. Three are particularly noteworthy. A  too-tight focus on memory and a reliance on the ­marketer–consumer dyad have not only characterized and limited efforts; they have also persisted as vestigial conceptual artifacts in the first generation of more socially inclusive models. More disturbingly, the more socially inclusive models still have an institutional blind spot where midlevel (i.e., all group, not individual and cultural) entities and processes manifest.

Not Only Memory Matters It is no surprise that psychologists like to study memory. As a result, it is probably not surprising that most AMA conceptions of brands are narrowly cast on memory. Memory research on nonsense syllables and forgetting functions has been around since the early twentieth century (Ebbinghaus, 1902). In the context of mind-share brands, this focus makes sense, as far as it goes. It yields a very sparse representation of brand meaning. Sure, many brands, particularly those that are low-priced, highly substitutable, and present little risk to the consumer require little beyond semantic memory, habit, and automaticity. Studying aspects of accessibility has been the work of many a cognitiveconsumer psychologist. But when it comes to meaning (what brands are), they have produced next to nothing. An exception is framing, but the idea of framing has existed in rhetorical theory and practice for a few centuries. When it comes to brands, AMA research has not moved far from moribund attitude theory (e.g., Aaker 2009; Wegenger, Sawicki, and Petty 2009), an aspect of psychology

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   135 that saw its heyday over three decades ago. Brand attitude work emerged just after World War II and was grounded in post–World War II social psychology and related propaganda research. The promises of early attitude theorists now seem ridiculous. For example, social psychologists Cooper and Jahoda (1947) describe social psychology’s downright giddy plan to rid the world of racial bigotry once and for all. In the halcyon days of exuberant psychological essentialism, attitude theorists also planned to make short work of human–brand relationships (Martineau 1958). Just as with racism, this proved a bit peskier problem than the nascent consumer psychologists imagined. Undaunted by the snub of reality, psychological brand researchers soon turned to Fishbein-type models (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). When criticized for their very limited predictive ability, attitude-theory believers assert that closer one got to actual observation of behavior, their models improved (Fishbein and Azjen 1975). Let that sink in for a moment . . . so the ultimate recommendation for achieving better behavioral prediction from attitudes was measurement in highly contextualized situations that were proximate to behavior? This poses an obvious question: why not just observe actual behavior? Sunk cost fallacy and a near-lethal dose of male-white-lab-coat-big-science envy is our best guess. After considerable pessimism (Fishbein and Azjen 1975), an extra head was added for good measure. The elaboration-likelihood model (ELM; Petty and Caccippo  1986) divided responses to brand-related information into two routes. For a good while, ELMlike dual processing models factored prominently into AMA brand research; one route was supposedly more affective and immediate, and the other more deliberative and reasoned. This conception too has diminished in popularity and relevance, certainly where meaning is the subject of study. The ELM faded, while work on habit and automaticity resurged (Drolet et al. 2017), work that is undeniably significant and does what psychologists do best. Many, if not most, brand practitioners have abandoned reliance on attitudes in favor of more socio-cultural and ethnographic approaches. Rita Clifton, who long served as head of the world’s foremost brand consultancy, Interbrand, warns specifically against reliance on attitudes as they relate to brands (Clifton 2009); they simply don’t work. To sociologists, anthropologists, and many more, all things carry meaning—even the ones grossly mislabeled “utilitarian” (Goody 1993; Miller 1991; Sahlins 1972; Schudson 1986). Goods have always had social meaning (Douglas and Isherwood 1979), even when that meaning is mundane, common, or boring (to you). The same holds true for places, personae, ideas, and services.

Lonely Fictive Dyad All fields have conceits; some are just bigger and more imponderable than others. Yes, we mean imponderable. At the heart of most all psychological constructions is the marketer–consumer dyad. Of all things that could be chosen, brands are particularly poorly suited to such an asocial conceptualization. Brands are, in reality, created by interactions of multiple institutions, publics, consumers, and social processes. We cannot even imagine brands ever meaningfully considered outside social contexts. In a

136   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson social-mediated world this reality is even more practically obvious and theoretically relevant (Fournier and Avery 2011). A field that is barely social is limited in what it can reveal. As Allen, Fournier, and Miller (2008) charitably put it: It is understandable that scholars trained in experimental design and theory falsification would not develop a natural appreciation for sociological and cultural matters such as these, but there can be no doubt that these disciplines are essential for developing a deep understanding of brands as symbolic creatures. (788)

We appreciate their thought, but to us: no, it is not fully understandable. That lets the ignorant and comfortably arrogant off too easily. Incomprehensible to us, not as sociologists, but as humans, is how psychologists’ own experiences support their thinking. What and who could produce such sterile beliefs about the social world? Coca-Cola does not equal a summation of attitudes; that’s absurd. It is much, much more, and the folks at Coca-Cola will tell you just that (Pendergrast 2000). Coca-Cola has always had a socio-cultural strategy. The most significant psychological contribution did not come from attitude or memory researchers but those studying the production of enduring decision distortions created through building a relationship with the brand through the presence of a strong emotional signal (Shiv et al. 2005). Shiv et al.’s (2005) explanation is more brain than mind and is very valuable in understanding brands. Their work shows that strong emotional signals lead to predecisional distortion (Shiv et. al. 2005), where the emotionally “enriched” option is favored by subjects over the emotionally “un-enriched” option. Apparently, habit (think typical consumer package goods purchase) and emotion occur in two different brain structures, operate differently, and yield completely different practical recommendations (Shiv and Beccra 2010; Tam, Wood, and Ji 2009). Here, we truly value what psychology is contributing to brand research. These neuropsychologists bring affect induced predecision distortion to the consumer brand party; and that affectled decision-distortion can be realized through relationships with brands. The Shiv et al. (2005) connection to Fournier’s (1998) work on brand relationships is significant and promising, as is the anthropromorphic brand work of Aggarwal and McGill (2011). Apparently living things, however fictive, are liked more than the nonliving, and bias decisions via emotion (Aggarwal and McGill 2007). Relationships between humans and even animated trade characters make for better brands. In this way, these psychologists make a legitimate contribution to understanding the nature of, and benefit of, human connections to brands. It is, in our thinking, the most valuable piece of psychology to involve brands; it gives a brain/mind-based link to the idea of brand meaning. The chief limitation is not a fault, just an expected limitation: how the brand itself is socially created, reproduced, and maintained is outside the bounds and aim of Shiv’s et al.’s (2005) and Aggarwal and McGill’s (2011) work. Also, having your brand seen as a human analog comes with an assumed reciprocity, and business–consumer relationship are inherently asymmetric. As they say, your dry

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   137 cleaner doesn’t really love you the way your mother does (Barro 2015). Treating brands like human analogs carries some real risk. Anyone sociologists would know that.

The First Generation of Socio-Cultural Models Socio-cultural brand models emerged as the extent of consumer brand activities became apparent (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). For example, Diamond and colleagues (2009) studied the American Girl brand of books, dolls, and retail. They developed the notion of the brand gestalt to capture the way in which that brand was enacted by multigenerational family units interfacing with a multifaceted marketer who used books, dolls, retail, movies, and Broadway-style plays to create meaning. This called attention to the polyvocal/multivocal/multiple-stakeholder process of brand meaning creation and reproduction. Their paper posed a total system approach and validated what came before, still focusing on multiple components, including some broadly sociological. While offering an advance in the idea of the multiparty marketers interacting to create brand meaning, it focuses on these few players while missing others. Fournier, Solomon, and Englis (2008) offer the concept of brand resonance. They propose that brands maintain significance when their meanings resonate at one of three levels: personal, cultural, and organizational. Personal resonance is “the goodness-of-fit between a brand’s architecture of claimed meanings and the meanings the consumer seeks in his/her personal life,” while cultural resonance “reflects the degree to which claimed brand meanings reflect, reinforce and shape meanings from the collective social space that links consumers to others in a shared language and interpretation of experience” (40). Organizational resonance is the goodness-of-fit between claimed meanings and “the internal structure and processes of the firm” (40). A brand resonates at the cultural level when its meanings are in tune with the larger culture in which it is embedded. These meanings can either support or oppose one of two sets of cultural values. Cultural bedrock values refer to durable cultural meanings, such as American notions of individuality, while currency value refers to transitory ­cultural meanings, such as those associated with fads or fashions. This is an obvious application of legacy distinctions in human values (Kluckhohn 1951; Schwartz 1999), with some intermingling of personal values and temporal stability. Through this Parsonian (Parsons 1964) distinction, some brands are in tune with their cultural moment, while others can sound a note of rebellious dissonance. The authors, channeling Holt (2004), note that Mountain Dew achieved pitch-perfect dissonance when it used the slacker mentality of the 1990s to oppose the “goal-driven, free agent ethos that was popular during this time” (Fournier, Solomon, and Englis 2008:45). This model more thoroughly delineates organizational stakeholders. Gyrd-Jones and Kornum (2013) introduce the concept of complementarities to explore how firms and stakeholders “engage with one another to create successful multiple stakeholder, co-created outcomes” (1484). They assert that co-creation (and the dialogic relationship between the firm and its customers) changes everything and that “our

138   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson understanding of the consequences for the application of the concept to the branding literature is at an early stage” (Gyrd-Jones and Kornum 2013:1484). They are seeking a new logic for brand management that can accommodate new stakeholders into the brand creation process. Their concept acknowledges the wider socio-cultural system beyond standard dyadic stakeholder relationships: “This we call the stakeholder ecosystem, encapsulating both the network nature of these relationships and the complex set of subcultures that make up the ecosystem” (Gyrd-Jones and Kornum 2013:1484). Cova and Cova (2014) have argued that the problem is now one of overtheorization of the creative individual consumer and his or her agency, presumably because it obscures many other players and enormous inequalities of voice and power. We agree, at least to insisting on an understanding of how socio-cultural entities can make, define, and legitimize markets for different services (Humphreys 2010), orchestrate consumption practices (Arsel and Bean 2012), and affect inequality of voice and representation. To its credit, CCT work has produced a much fuller list of the many and varied social entities and cultural agents that contribute to the production of brands: anti-brand and anti-consumerist activists and bloggers, (Giesler  2012; Thompson, Rindfleisch, and Arsel  2006), communities of devoted fans (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Kozinets 2001; Muñiz and Schau 2005; O’Guinn 1991), filmmakers (Holt 2004), and journalists (Holt 2004; Holt and Cameron 2010). While providing valuable insights, these works have treated things in a piecemeal fashion, and not all are even brand related.

What to Do Now Brands are portable vessels of popular meaning used for promoting people, places, things, and ideas. They are the product of sociological processes that make them possible and sometimes powerful. Scholarship on the sociology of brands, particularly in AMA, has been limited. Under the prevailing frameworks, there is little room for the macro, institutional, and meaningfully social. In the following, we’re going to highlight the need for a sociological conception of brands. To do so, we’re going to look to both the (very limited) academic work and beyond to sketch out what such a conception might entail. Marketing, advertising, and consumers are the usual suspects when analyzing brands, and there is still much to be unpacked there. Marketers launch the brand and try to vest it with intended meanings in an attempt to bring about a desired consumer response, but they neither own nor control the brand. Brands are created by the interactions of institutions, agents, consumers, and social forces. The marketer is but one actor, and an increasingly impotent one. Marketers are themselves products of social (re)-production. Tide is manufactured by Procter and Gamble. Procter and Gamble is itself socially formed by various stakeholders, partners, biases, traditions, cultures,

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   139 social memory, laws, customs, and real and imagined competitors (Dyer, Dalzell, and Olegario 2004). Then there are consumers. Scholars in the AMA have recognized the role of consumers, alone and in various collectives, to add meaning to brands. Consumer collectives are purposeful and semiorganized consumer groups. They might be face to face (e.g., local car clubs, bowling leagues, user groups) or mediated (online communities). They might be enduring or ephemeral. They may be imagined collectives (Anderson 2006) with belonging not requiring any specific action or prescribed behavior, merely a feeling being a part of a group of like-minded and feeling others. Brand communities (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001) are but one example of consumer collectives. Consumption micro-cultures (Thompson and Troester  2002), consumer tribes (Cova and Cova  2002), cultures of consumption (Kozinets 2001), subcultural communities (Kates 2004), and subcultures of consumption (Kates 2002; Schouten and McAlexander 1995) are other examples in which “the link is more important than the thing,” service, entity, or event (Cova 1997:301). Muñiz and Schau (2005,  2007) and others (Cova and Pace  2006; Cova, Pace, and Park 2007; Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009) have extended, refined, and better specified brand community. These researchers have noted specific dynamics within the brand community and the use of specialized forms of brand creation, such as community activism and consumer-generated media content (Etgar 2008; Muñiz and Schau 2007). While there has been much knowledge created in this area, there is much more to be done. For example, extant conceptualizations of consumer collectives focus on cohesive groups at the expense of the thinner bonds and their attendant sociological processes. Attention needs to be directed to other powerful and pervasive institutions frequently underconsidered, such as governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Institutions such as media, retailers, equity markets, governments, NGOs, and special interest groups all help create, influence, and contribute aspects of brand meaning, sometimes quite powerfully. This was true before Nicosia and Meyer (1976) first suggested it, and it is true today. Consider the powerful role of journalists in creating brand meaning. Holt (2004) and Holt and Cameron (2010) details how journalists created powerful brand mythologies for Jack Daniels. Humphreys (2010) examines legitimation in the casino industry. She found that increasing legalization and regulation occurred alongside shifts in the way journalists discussed gambling. The public discourse, which was once centered on images of filth and vice, moved to more mundane discussions about taxation as casinos were built, regulated, and relationships established between casinos and surrounding communities. There are many other actors, institutions, and collectives needing exploration in the construction of brands. Scott (1995) says that institutions rest on three pillars. The cultural-cognitive pillar is where the shared conceptions of reality and symbolic representations give order and meaning. It is under this pillar that most work in marketing has occurred. This includes research on brand semiotics, textual treatments, industry expectations, and assumptions about consumers and markets. The regulative pillar includes formal laws and sanctions. In branding, this would be governmental bodies (e.g., USDA, FTC, FDA), formal laws,

140   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson policies, and regulations. Actions made by government agencies such as the FDA or the advertising industry’s self-regulating body, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, set precedent for a variety of product claims and may significantly restrict what a brand can say, how they can say it, and in turn what a brand can mean. The 90 percent compliance rate suggests that there are strong incentives for firms to comply with the NAD’s decision. Precedent set by the NAD and FTC lead to widely adopted industry policies about advertising. The condom category is illustrative. During the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the Reagan administration brought to bear considerable regulatory pressure as to just when, where, where not, and how condoms could be advertised. Here, the government played a role in meaning negotiation by delimiting potential ad space. Certainly, these actions made the product taboo in some ways. Reacting, actions by manufacturers further constrained potential ad space and contributed to meaning. Some condom brands allegedly had policies to not buy ads in any gay periodicals for fear of becoming the “gay condom.” Here, manufacturers were aware of the meaning particular publications would foster via their association with a brand. Similarly, the Universal Tobacco Settlement in the United States specifies no imagery in tobacco ads in media vehicles that have over 20 percent reach to those under 18. Thus are the Marlboro Man and his friends evicted from Sports Illustrated. NGOs exert additional force, significantly affecting brand meaning. Activists have attached political messages to popular lifestyle brands to help publicize social and political causes. Bennett and Logos (2007) describe how “hard-to-sell messages about labor conditions in foreign factories become easier to deliver when simplified and paired with a brand that already travels far and wide” (197) such as pairing the activist term sweatshop with the Nike brand name. Brands can also seek out NGOs to help establish social responsibility credentials (Menon and Kahn 2003;) or help reestablish trust after a crisis (Heinze, Uhlmann, and Diermeier 2014). Just as institutions help shape what brand meaning exists, institutions also actively tailor and limit brand meaning by defining what is not possible, what advertisers aren’t allowed to say, and where they aren’t allowed to say it. Scott’s (1995) normative pillar is made up of softer expectations in the form of norms, social obligations, and reliance on ideas of appropriate behavior. This is where lots of assumptions about practice reside and reproduce, where practices with consequential outcomes are followed, but not always understood. For example, since the Vietnam era, patriotic images in ads actually decline during wars, although no one can locate a formal dictate or policy motivating it (Paulson and O’Guinn 2018), which is a sort of institutional automaticity. There have never been women in Marlboro Country, and until very recently women could desire, but not actually eat food in ads (Bordo 1993). These systematic biases in practice and social representation occur over and over. But there is no formal rule, and most often no one is sure about why. This institutional aspect is all but unacknowledged and unexplored in AMA marketing. The normative pillar is quite powerful here, but its mechanisms are not well illuminated. Strategy

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   141 scholars in marketing have long been aware of this (Heide and John 1992), but not so much in AMA consumer behavior. There also exists a need for understanding the many social processes surrounding brands. For example, the meaning of a brand is always in flux. It is always being negotiated. Marketers negotiate constantly through advertising and other forms of promotion, but as you can see, regulators, policy makers, social movements, and consumer collectives play important roles in the negotiation of brand meaning, too. The struggle for brand ownership has become even more contested in the contemporary world with consumer-generated content and computer-mediated environments (Fournier and Avery  2011b). Consumers frequently ascribe desired meanings and understandings into consumption experiences and brands. Here, rumors play an important role in the social construction of the brand as rumors allow the community to express properties of the brand that might not be true but reflect what the community wants to be true (Muñiz, O’Guinn, and Fine 2005). This likely holds true even in the absence of a cohesive community. The brand world is inherently self-reflexive and rumors matter. Brands and politics were never strangers. In the United States, brands have an entanglement with politics that goes to our very founding (Axtell 1999). As several historians have noted, this merging of brand and polity has only accelerated, particularly since the end of World War II (Cohen 2003). It hit its stride in the cultural revolution of the 1960s, a revolution which was very much about the “establishment,” material existence, and stuff, including brands. It is here as Frank (1997) and others have noted that the revolution paradoxically became about what (brands) you bought, not whether or not you bought brands. In other words, the nature of making a political statement via consumption choices shifted from not consuming (boycotting) to carefully discriminating among brands and the politics they evinced. Today, it is easy to point to a slew of brands that have been overtly politicized (Crockett and Wallendorf 2004). Revolutionaries now strike blows against the capitalist empire by buying things (Adams and Raisborough 2008; Frank 1997; Heath and Potter 2004; Mainwaring 2013; O’Guinn and Muñiz 2005). Consumers from both sides of the spectrum are increasingly marking politics with many types of brands. Muñiz (2017) noted that even fast food (Chinni 2015) and consumer packaged goods (Andrews and Schwartz  2014) have become freighted with political meanings and highlighted consumers actively and strategically using LEGO (Abrams 2014) and Starbucks (Pulkkinen 2016) to express politics and pursue political agendas. This intermingling is unlikely to abate any time soon. In fact, it is more likely that consumers will increasingly mark politics through their consumption choices. If you think the politics of brands are complicated now, just wait until every brand purchase comes bundled with full information about its production history and environmental externalities (Newman and Newman 2018). Some brands provide meaning that particularly resonates during times of great change in a society’s circumstance, economics, demography, or other social cultural dimension. There is much to be illuminated here, too. Virginia Slims came to much of its

142   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson meaning by the marketers’ efforts along with all the other interested parties’ and publics’ resonance with the Second Wave of American feminism. The brand’s social construction was part Philip Morris’s and part cultural resonance. Other times, a brand came to its meaning through a largely consumer-oriented response, which in turn, was then appropriated by the marketer. Such was the case with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (Walker 2008). A nearly dead and largely marketer-abandoned brand was reanimated via adoption by cynical consumers in the late 1990s (Wipperfurth 2005). One promising theoretical development is the notion of structuration. At its most basic, this notion posits that structure and individual agency are simultaneously implicated in the production and reproduction of institutions (Giddens 1984). Structuration focuses attention on how decisions are made, the normative expectations of the actor, the interpretive schemes employed, and the power actors have. This allows for actors not only to follow the rules of an institution but also to alter them, making room for creativity, improvisation, innovation, and rebellion. While institutions are often examined from the outside, the theoretical underpinning of structuration allows an intense examination of the processes at work within an institution that give rise to meaning. For example, Vallaster and de Chernatony (2006) examine brand building within a corporation through the lens of structuration. Deighton (2002) describes how the quirky, amateurish Snapple brand lost $1.4 billion under Quaker’s ownership because the way Quaker envisioned and enacted the brand differed significantly from that of the brand founders and original marketers. There is also a lot more to be done here.

Discussion Brands are portable vessels of popular meaning used for promoting people, places, things, and ideas. They are the product of sociological processes that make them possible and sometimes powerful. Between 1870 and 1900, thousands of branded products replaced unbranded commodities. All across the spectrum of goods and services, existing commodities became brands, as did the flood of new things designed for the modern marketplace of 1900. Over the next century or so, the branding tide rose to cover just about everything: artists, candidates, countercultures, environmental organizations, ideologies, information, museums, nation-states, religious denominations, social movements, terrorist organizations, and universities. The practice or the consequences of branding are not trivial, certainly not where society is concerned, but their ubiquity and high-polished surface unjustly prevent them from being taken seriously. It’s best to think of brands as oddly and problematically inevitable, democratic, populist (in the larger sense of the word) vessels of popular meaning. Scholarship on the sociology of brands, particularly in the American Marketing Assemblage, has been limited. This needs to change. We are hoping to inspire researchers to study brands without psychological reductionism or essentialist CCT critique. We are not overly optimistic. Power, privilege, and structure in the field make this unlikely.

A Sociological Critique and Reformulation of Brands   143 Psychology is well ensconced in the AMA and operates from a position of considerable power and privilege. Across the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Marketing Research, traditional sociologists are required to speak psychology and cite the social psychological work (but not the strictly sociological work) produced on any particular topic. By contrast, social psychologists are free to ignore major theoretical streams in sociology with impunity. The second author is well familiar with this state of affairs. Going on the job market with the then unproven but sociologically influenced concept of brand communities, most universities went with safer choices. Few thought the research on brand communities mattered and would result in journal hits. Of course, as the work on brand communities racked up several thousands citations and multiple awards and the topic’s risk was reduced, those who then refused to originally acknowledge the work acted like they had supported it all along. “Isn’t it amazing that the same day you got a pool is the same day we realized we liked you? The timing worked out great, don’t you think?” (Groening 1994). Should you believe that we too are biased, let us remind you that prejudice’s consequences are asymmetric with power. Things aren’t much better in the land of CCT. What feel like ideological purity tests and rigid, unyielding critical orthodoxy mean that too little attention is paid to the general social processes involved in consumption. It also means that the generative critiques of existing theories under its umbrella are not embraced as a means to advance our understanding of consumption, brands, or branding. Finally, the level of abstraction for work in CCT™ is sometimes so high as to be vacuous, making it difficult to move past an overdetermined outcome, where “it all depends” on a wide range of situational contingencies and where neo-liberalism and hegemony received too much causal credit.

You Are Invited We are hoping to inspire researchers to study brands without psychological reductionism or essentialist CCT critique. Mainstream sociology could add so much, if we just gave it a place in the conversation. We must rethink brands. Well, more precisely, you need to  rethink brands. Contemporary society floats on a sea change in mediated human communication that makes it easier for consumers to exchange information and organize socially. Brands are social creations, and this reality has never been more important. Brands are not just names of things, or silly summated attitude models, any more than your children are, but an important part of the social fabric. Brands are made by society. Brands very well may be the significant manner, mode, and method of social organization, polity, social conception, and consequence. Your thinking and our practice need to catch up with reality. We’re pretty sure we’ve made a lot of you uncomfortable, but that’s ok with us. We know we won’t even get the Inane Journal-Paper-as-Widget Counted Toward Tenure Fordist AMA Business School model to even pause for a second, but wouldn’t it be nice if it did?

144   0’Guinn, Muniz, and Paulson

Acknowledgments The authors wish to express thanks for comments on previous versions of this manuscript to James Bettman, Marilyn Boland, Kent Grayson, Jan Heide, Kevin Lane Keller, Deborah MacInnis, Ann McGill, Page Moreau, Bruce Newman, Evan Polman, Hope Jensen Schau, and Baba Shiv.

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chapter 6

R el ationa l Wor k a n d Consumption Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson

Empirical research on consumption, which emerged in the 1980s, evolved predominantly with the cultural turn (Warde 2015). Cultural studies, with roots in British social science, provided a counter-narrative to challenge dominant economistic understandings, which saw consumption only as a byproduct of production and the consumer as a passive dupe. Grounding in the cultural turn emphasized consumer agency and positioned consumption as a central aspect of contemporary social order. Scholars turned to examining consumption’s place in identity construction and symbolic boundary making. In this chapter, we advocate for a “relational turn” in consumption studies that takes into account how, as Viviana Zelizer (2005a:336) asserted, “in all areas of economic life people are creating, maintaining, symbolizing, and transforming meaningful social relations.” Specifically, we present a set of conceptual tools that inform this relational analysis, namely, a focus on relational work (Bandelj 2012, 2016; Zelizer 2005a, 2012). This focus, and relational turn, is compatible with relational sociology, more broadly (Emirbayer 1997; Mische 2011), and with relational approaches to economic inequality (Avent-Holt and Tomaskovic-Devey  2014; Roscigno  2011; Tilly  1998; Vallas and Cummins 2014). It is also compatible with the analysis of macroeconomic organization of capitalism and its transformations because both rest on the assumption of the fundamentally intertwined nature of economy, polity, and society (Bandelj 2008; Davis 2009; Krippner 2001; Somers and Block 2005). We proceed to review to what extent, and in what ways, contemporary studies of ­consumption have addressed how people create, maintain, and transform meaningful social relations as they engage in consumption. We then present the origins and definitions of the relational work concept. After that, we show how scholars, working within but also outside of the sociology of consumption, have used these conceptual tools to understand consumption practices and identify four streams of research where attention to relational work can help advance our understanding of consumption.

152   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson

Limited Relational Concerns in Consumption Research Zukin and Maguire (2004) proposed that consumption be understood as an “institutional field” that brings together studies of the economy and cultural sociology. They point out the divide between social scientists interested in consumption as a social phenomenon and marketing professionals who study consumption while viewing consumers as simple versions of “economic man.” In this intellectual space, cultural studies provided tools to contest economistic explanations that viewed consumption subordinate to production, but they also provided tools to contest critiques of consumerism. As Warde (2015:120) put it: In its [cultural studies] hands, consumption was transformed from an epiphenom­ enon of capitalist production, wherein the consumer was if not a dupe at least passive, to a central principle of social order and a realm for individual agency and choice. Consumption became the raison d’etre rather than a means to survival. Consumption was understood not simply as instrumental; nonrational elements, emotions, and desires were fully recognized. All aspects of life could then be viewed through, tinged by, and connected with consumption.

Indeed, studies of consumption have flourished in the past decades (for review, see Stillerman 2015). Still, when scanning articles published in consumer research and marketing journals, we find that attention to social relationships is largely peripheral to this research (with the notable exception of consumer culture theory, discussed later in this section). Much of the research in consumer and marketing journals examines the characteristics and orientations that motivate consumption, or analyzes positions among producers that entice consumption, like the effects of corporate social responsibility, or treats consumption as a marker of identity work. We found only a few recent studies in this vast literature that touched on relational concerns. For instance, Bastos and Brucks (2017) did experiments to disentangle why consumers experience more happiness from experiential consumption, such as viewing a movie or theatre performance, compared to material consumption, such as purchasing items like electronic devices or home décor. They found that conversing about experiences motivates experiential consumption over material objects consumption, and that when there is no motivation to build relationships with conversation partners, the preference to talk about experiences also goes away. They argue that purchases contain a “conversational value,” and that consumers are motivated by underlying social goals like “self-disclosing, projecting a positive social image to others, and communicating unique information” (2017:599). While this research does not unpack how social ties are formed, maintained, or aligned with consumption behaviors, it does underscore the importance of social interactions and relationships to understanding consumer choices.

Relational Work and Consumption    153 There is also a strain of literature in consumer marketing research focused on support groups that form in pursuit of shared individual goals, related to consumption, such as dieting and weight loss support groups. These are all group activities where attention to relationships may be important. Indeed, as Huang et al. (2015) found, how support group members see others in the group influences their interaction, including sharing of helpful tips and information. In the three experiments that the authors conducted, support group members initially thought of others in the group as “friends,” that is, as people from whom to seek support and help to deal with uncertainties. However, in the advanced stages, the individual goals took precedence, and the interpersonal closeness of group members diminished. Participants were less willing to share information and behaved more as if this group activity was a zero-sum competitive game, which it wasn’t (e.g., everyone in the Weight Watchers group could lose a certain number of pounds). The authors state that it is often assumed that the social interactions that come with shared goal pursuit facilitate goal attainment and serve positive purposes for marketing, but this may not necessarily be the case; and explicit attention is needed to what role group relationships play in consumer experiences. While marketing research pays little attention to the role of relations in consumption— likely because it starts from an economistic premise of individuals making choices— consumer culture theory (CCT) research is more attuned to the role of meaningful social relations. CCT explicitly puts people’s meaningful experience with consumer culture at the center of its analysis and explores how this experience is shaped by social context. Arnould and Thompson (2005:868; cf. Arnould and Thompson 2007), two central figures of CCT, in a review of the field, stated that a central concern of CCT is to address “dynamic relationships between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings.” This means that the importance of the social context of consumption is continually recognized in CCT. For example, studies show that consumers create collective identifications and other forms of solidarity based on interests and avocations, which gives scholars an opportunity to study the role of relationships among consumers as well as between consumers and producers. As such, this literature has examined, among others, how (a) relationships between customers and clients directly impact the consumption experience; (b) relationships that consumers have with others influence their consumption choices; and (c) broader group relations in the community/society, such as race relations or relations between immigrants and natives, manifest themselves in consumption behavior. In one study that focuses on the relationships between customers and service providers, Price and Arnould (1999) examined friendships that emerge between hairstylists and their clients. They unpacked the different meanings of “friendship” used by clients and providers. Clients view their friendships with providers as based on care, mutual assistance, and reciprocity, whereas providers view loyalty as a key feature of their friendships with clients. In a direct dialogue with this study, a later one by Üstüner and Thompson (2012) also focuses on hairdresser and client relationships, this time in Turkey. In this case, however, these client–provider relationships are very unequal because they occur between affluent consumers and service workers who come from

154   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson impoverished neighborhoods; are poorly educated relative to the clients; and tend to come from more traditional, rural backgrounds. The authors describe different status games that manifest themselves in these circumstances. On one hand, the rich clients expect to have every need waited on and be treated something like royalty. The providers, on the other hand, have a rigid hierarchy in which status is attained through learning and conforming to the middle-/upper-class norms and meeting the expectations of the dominant social class. Another way in which CCT has incorporated attention to relations is by uncovering how consumption practices themselves are shaped by relations that consumers have with others. In this vein, Thompson (1996) studied the lives of busy working mothers who occupy conflicting roles and observed how they negotiate compromises and deal with interpersonal conflicts like arguing about going shopping and taking the kids to the mall. Thompson argues that consumption choices are symbols of maternal devotion, which is not only about values but also morals that expresses themselves through relationships these moms have with their children. Mothers are “holding it all together,” as Thompson suggests, have intense feelings of responsibility for the family, and this shapes their consumption practices. Other research, which concerns itself with relationships, indirectly, includes studies of consumption communities. As an example, Chalmers, Price, and Schau (2013) studied a community of distance runners in North America that has experienced a change from a more homogenous group to a more heterogeneous composition, including a higher representation of female runners, and runners with different motives for joining the group. The authors found that tensions arising due to heterogeneity are softened because individuals depend on each other for social and economic resources and derive mutual benefits from membership. While the authors do not make this explicit, at the center of their research are concerns with the ties between diverse actors who mutually engage in common consumer practices. A third concern with relationships is broadly linked to relations between different groups in society and how these manifest themselves in consumption practices. For instance, Crockett and Wallendorf (2004) asked how political ideology matters in consumer behavior. They developed a typology of the political ideologies of black residents as Black Liberal or Black Nationalist, and found that each ideology was associated with particular consumer habits. For example, Black Liberal Ideology rationalized outmigration and outshopping as a matter of free choice, while Black Nationalist Ideology problematized these behaviors and focused on gathering resources and improving black communities. The authors conducted ethnographic observations and interviews with respondents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the late 1990s. On the whole, the authors “highlight[ed] this process of rearticulating market relations back into organic expressions of social relations,” (p. 525) suggesting that a study of consumption practices can be a site to examine race relations. In a similar vein, Luedicke (2015) examined how Austrian citizens, in a rural town, interpreted and responded to immigrant, mainly Turkish, consumer acculturation practices. The author finds that not only do immigrants adjust their consumption habits but also natives “interpret and adjust to these

Relational Work and Consumption    155 practices, thereby shaping the paths of possibility for mutual adaptation” (p. 109). Ultimately, these observations suggest that the morality that gets negotiated in consumer and store owner relations may be a microcosm of broader social issues that relates to natives versus immigrants positioning. Also attuned to how consumption serves as a site of negotiation between insiders and outsiders, Weinberger (2015) looked at how non-celebrants of Christmas negotiate their ideological identities and the hyperinclusivity of Christmas in the United States. There is a tension between the desire to reinforce relationships with the celebrants and not compromise their identity by participating in their ritual practices. The article proposes four inductively derived strategies that non-celebrants use. The first strategy is labeled “engaging” and refers to making strategic concessions and engaging in parts of the collective consumption activity. The second strategy is called “disengaging” and captures how participants do things specifically to reinforce their identity as a non-participant. The third strategy is “appropriating,” which is finding, creatively, ways to both reinforce identity and construct symbolic boundaries around the non-celebrant group (i.e., Jewish dance parties on Christmas Eve, first snow celebration, Muslim Christmas event, or Chinese restaurant traditions). The fourth strategy is called “traversing,” which describes when non-participants reinforce their identity while attempting relationship work with celebrant group members. Without referencing work in economic sociology, Weinberger (2015) actually uses the phrase “relational work” to describe the effort given to erecting symbolic boundaries around a particular group either through cultural ritual practices or consumption activities, so “relational” here refers to negotiating relations between groups. We now turn to presenting the genealogy of the concept of relational work as applied in economic sociology, with a goal to showcasing its utility for consumption studies.

Relational Work The concept of relational work was coined by Viviana Zelizer in her book The Purchase of Intimacy (2005b), an authoritative account about how people negotiate the interplay of intimacy and economy. Some scholars fear that any intersection of economic exchange with intimate relations will corrupt such relations, in this way treating economy and intimacy as hostile worlds. In contrast, Zelizer argues that intimate and economic spheres are connected and always coexist. This coexistence and negotiation is possible because of “[r]elational work [which] includes the establishment of differentiated social ties, their maintenance, their reshaping, their distinction from other relations, and sometimes their termination” (Zelizer 2005b:35). Zelizer developed her concept of relational work in conversations with Charles Tilly (2006), who elaborates on it in his book Why? Here, Tilly writes about four different kinds of relational work: “creation of new relations, confirmation of existing relations, negotiating shared definitions of the relations at hand, and repairing damaged relations”

156   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson (Tilly 2006:50). Tilly found the notion of relational work useful in understanding the answers people give when asked a why question, and the reasons they give “for the things they do, that others do, that happen to them, or that happen to other people” (Tilly 2006:9). Additionally, in later work, Tilly (2010) defines specific modes of communication that express different kinds of relational work. For instance, conventions function smoothly when interactions confirm established social relations rather than creating new relations, contesting existing ones, terminating relations, or transforming them. In circumstances that challenge the established character of social relations, offers Tilly, participants tend to rely on codes, technical accounts, or stories while pushing conventions aside. From both Zelizer’s and Tilly’s early formulations, it seems that relational work is mostly a byproduct of sociality that may—or may not—happen in the economic sphere. To stake a firmer claim of the relevance of the concept for economic process, Bandelj (2012) argues that relational work has a clear economic intent. For Bandelj, relational work is an interactional, dynamic effort to form, negotiate, repair, or dissolve economic relations: be it those involved in production, consumption, distribution, or exchange of goods, services, or money. The process involves meaning-work, but it is not just the infusion of structural relations with culture, as some interpreters familiar with Zelizer’s work, on the social meaning of money (1994), the changing the value of children (1985), or the rise of life insurance (1979), may be quick to assume. Importantly, in Bandelj’s (2012) extension, any kind of negotiation of economic relations also (a) makes explicit potential asymmetries in power and inequalities; (b) highlights the relevance of emotions in economic action; and (c) occurs in organizational and institutional contexts (with their attendant technologies) and is, therefore, shaped by them. In a later formulation, Bandelj (2016) distinguishes between more or less scripted relational work, that is, relational work that is more or less routinized, and requires more or less explicit negotiation. The factors that influence whether relational work is more or less scripted include, “uncertainty of situations; ambiguity in expectations about how an economic transaction could/should be accomplished; misunderstanding of appropriate media of exchange for the specific relation/transaction at hand; challenges to power position among participants; variable goals among parties to relational work; and considerations of, or interventions by, third-parties, broader sets of relations, or institutions in which partners to an exchange are situated” (p. 236). Most recently, Bandelj, Wherry, and Zelizer (2017:6) discuss relational earmarking as a subset of relational work, which pertains to how people think about and use money. According to these authors Relational earmarking moves beyond the individual cognitive process by focusing on the social ties and dynamic interactions that shape how people make sense of money and spending. Earmarking is a practice of monetary differentiation by which people accomplish what we call relational work. What does that involve? It is a ­process by which people create, maintain, negotiate, or sometimes dissolve their socioeconomic relations by searching for appropriate matches among distinctive

Relational Work and Consumption    157 categories of social ties, economic transactions, and media of exchange (Zelizer 2012; Bandelj 2016). Relational work explanations thus attach multiple monies and monetary practices to social relations by arguing that people regularly differentiate (or earmark) forms of monetary transfers in correspondence with their definitions of the sort of relationship that exists between them.

Here, emphasis of relational work is placed on finding “appropriate matches” among social relations, economic transactions, and forms of payments/media (Biscotti et al. 2012; Block 2013; García 2014; Haylett 2012). Given that spending money is a central conduit of consumption practices, studies could benefit from a more explicit focus on relational earmarking, as we elaborate in the next section. Moreover, Bandelj (2016) argues that relational work matters for three other reasons that all implicate consumption practices. One of these reasons is that relational work can help to establish trust or repair broken trust in economic exchanges, which is the second area that we highlight in the next section as a productive venue for consumption scholars. Another reason is that relational work can help overcome power asymmetries or reveal why some parties to the exchange manipulate or exploit others, which we consider as the third area of future research. The final reason for Bandelj is that relational work is a way to negotiate in taboo exchanges, that is, circumstances when something considered morally off limits to markets is nevertheless negotiated to be bought or sold (Rossman 2014). We take each of these four relational work sites in turn, to show their relevance for studies of consumption.

Relational Earmarking and Paying (or Not) for Services That people earmark money means that different monetary practices correspond with different social relations and that people actively differentiate (or earmark) multiple monies in correspondence with their understandings of the meaning of these different relationships. Sometimes the issue is whether one should receive payment at all. For instance, in case of lactation consultants, doulas, and their clients, Torres (2015) found that these “care workers” often expressed tension regarding collecting pay for their services. They feel they need to amplify their role as an objective expert outside the family, countering the gendered assumption that care work is unskilled and should be given freely. Still, these women nevertheless succumbed to ideas of separate spheres of money and intimacy themselves by feeling uncomfortable collecting money for care work. At other times, the issue is how much of a payment is deserved. Degenshein (2017) used ethnographic data from inside a Chicago pawnshop to examine how clients and the pawnshop brokers determined the price of an item brought into the shop, showing how price is constructed through social negotiations between clients and brokers. These negotiations included attention to the material attributes of the items, the biographical histories of items, and the financial need and status of the client. In a different study of brokers, Julie Kim’s (2018) showcases the dynamic relational work of women who marry South Korean men in transnational brokered marriages. She shows that as transnational

158   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson brides cum wives reconfigure their relations with husbands and family, this, in turn, reformulates their monetary practices. For instance, as brides settle into their marriages, money they have control over goes less frequently in remittances back to family in their home countries, but they spend it more on consumption for their children and the home in the destination country. If initially considered as an obligation, money sent back to family in their home country is later considered more as a gift. While many studies of earmarking show that different payments are served to mark boundaries between different kind of relations, Cederholm and Åkerström (2016) argue that payments and gifts that economic actors exchange can serve to intentionally blur these boundaries. They observed horse-related leisure enterprises to illuminate how lifestyle entrepreneurs forge relationships with their clients, friends, voluntary workers, and employees that strive to “stay betwixt and between, reinforced by hybrid forms of social interaction on a continuum between work-oriented friendship and friendly work-relations” (2016:749). For instance, girls taking lessons will “hang out” in the stables tending to the horses, and their parents (paying for services) often help with tasks after their children finish lessons (2016:755). Considering that many horse farmers also live at their farms, the lines demarcating home from work and client from friend are opaque at best in many of these interactions. This is evidence that friendship reciprocity, gift exchanges, and a market economy are intertwined; and the lines between consumption, work, friendship, leisure, and economic exchange are perpetually blurred. In contrast to studies that show how consumers are careful to match the right payment with the right relation, Mears (2015) points to the symbolic meaning of not paying for work. She uses ethnographic observations from several cities and 84 interviews with club party organizers and the guests they bring along to encourage customers of clubs to pay for bottle service. Mears shows how relational work between party promoters and women who show up to entertain customers of clubs is a vital component that perpetuates their free participation in events that bring large profits to clubs and promoters. This case demonstrates how labor processes are deeply embedded in relational infrastructure. Furthermore, Mears suggests that a kind of relational matching that involves not paying wages for the women’s presence is essential to convincing women to do this work because they tend to experience the time as leisure and not as paid labor and that the relational work of promoters legitimizes their participation as guests, distinguishing it from sex work. Identifying a kin to the relational earmarking concept, Wherry (2017:59) characterizes relational accounting as “the sociological counterpoint to mental accounting in that it uses cultural, moral, and relational processes to develop an interpretive social science of choice and decision making.” He provides a dramaturgical account of social performance rather than focus on the negotiation of interpersonal relations that distinguishes Zelizer’s (2012) account. Wherry (2016) is concerned with why some money decisions have priority over others for people who have limited resources. For instance, parents and grandparents earmark money to save for a child’s graduation. But graduation is a public transition to young adulthood witnessed by local communities, not only an interpersonal matter between a child and caretaker. As such, “moral concerns and

Relational Work and Consumption    159 shared cultural codes inform, energize, and constrain actors’ attempts to earmark money, and these meanings act as prisms through which relationship types and relational obligations are refracted” (Wherry 2016:134). By paying close attention to earmarking, consumption analysts can observe and reveal social performances. (For an overview of relational work and social performances in consumption, see Wherry 2019).

Overcoming Uncertainty and Building Trust in Consumer Practices Whereas economists portray economic exchange as impersonal utility maximizing transactions with strangers, sociologists are eager to provide a counterpoint by emphasizing social relations in consumption. In their study of consumer transactions from nationally representative survey data, DiMaggio and Louch (1998) found that Americans often rely on “within-network exchanges” for making large purchases that come with financial risk, like cars, homes, and major services. More specifically, these results apply primarily to single transactions with high uncertainty rather than reoccurring transactions with more predictable outcomes. This provides compelling insight into how preexisting relationships are a source of trust and how they help reduce uncertainty and facilitate exchange. In a different realm of interorganizational relational work between manufacturing suppliers and producers, Whitford (2012) found that managers deal with uncertainty and trust/mistrust by engaging in a “waltz” wherein representatives of firms coordinate their roles, “dancing” or working collaboratively on one hand and disengaging for a new dance partner on the other hand. They do so, Whitford claims, because they cannot uniformly characterize the nature of relationships they have with suppliers. For Whitford, these supplier relations, which have one party play a role of a customer and the other the role of the seller, are neither based on pure economic, arm’s length logic, nor embeddedness (partnership) logic; but they represent “contradictory collaboration,” that is, “collaboration in relationships that had long been marked by distrust” (p. 249). While relational work helps managers deal with their suppliers, missteps in “the waltz,” like stepping on someone’s toes, can lead to breakdowns in the relationship. If relational work is useful for building trust, psychologists find that empathy has been shown to lead to higher levels of trust (Ickes 1993). Bandelj (2016) builds on this to shine a spotlight on emotions in relational work and argues that trust is entwined with emotions and that “as relations are ongoing and negotiated, sympathy and cultural matching between exchange parties can build positive emotional energy, and . . . interruptions to the taken-for-granted nature of economic interactions, likely produce negative emotional reactions, such as shame, guilt, anger, or fear.” In a study of interactions between real estate agents and homebuyers, including observations over 27 months and interviews with agents and buyers in New York City, Besbris (2016) uncovered these emotional dimensions of relational work. He demonstrates how market intermediaries (the real estate agents in this case) evoke emotions in buyers through individualized matching,

160   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson sequencing, and highlighting market scarcity. Essentially, market intermediaries induce emotions, which alters or produces preferences in buyers. As Besbris (2016:468) writes, “the work of market intermediaries is not simply to bring a buyer to a product; it is also to create arousal in the buyer by highlighting how a product matches them in some way.” The author argues that economic actors are often unequal in terms of power, knowledge, or efficacy and that, in this case, the market intermediaries are engaged in shaping the consumers’ emotions and experiences. This introduces the notion of power in consumption processes, a topic we turn to next.

Negotiating Power and Inequality in Consumption While an integral part of relational work is to gather information, respond to affective impulses, and forge trust (or not), throughout the process actors are also “negotiating definitions of their equality or inequality” (Tilly 2006:25). Several studies of consumption have uncovered relational concerns, which are deeply steeped in dimensions of social inequality. In one such study, Elizabeth Chin (2001) positions her analysis of black children’s consumption in the shadow of broader social and economic inequalities stemming from historic and present-day racism and socioeconomic marginalization (cf. Nightingale  1993). Popular debates present oversimplified judgments that see black kids as either brand-obsessed, willing to kill over the latest fashions, or as severely deprived altogether. Chin finds that even children as young as 10 years old make consumption decisions that are informed by understandings of poverty, racial and class distinctions, and concern for other people. She implies that not all children display such sophisticated considerations because some children can afford to not think about these concerns. Still, others, for instance, forgo purchases of desired items for more practical choices that will help the family. Chin’s research underscores that relationships at home, at school, and also with shopkeepers and employees at the point of sale have important roles in driving consumption behaviors. Similarly, Pugh’s Longing and Belonging (2009) questions popular narratives about “good” and “bad” consumption and zeros in on the relational context of consumption, as children’s consumption desires are often driven by the desire to affirm their membership in peer groups and to participate in social conversations. Hence, families with fewer resources negotiate their class position in relational work with their children by engaging in “symbolic luxury” where the parents buy their children a new video game system or brand-name sneakers, despite huge income limitations. Alternatively, wealthier families engage in “symbolic deprivation” when parents opt against consumption despite having the material means to do so. Pugh’s categories are helpful to understand how consumers navigate the constraints of relative economic deprivation and also why others, not constrained by financial resources, choose not to consume. Also focused on relational work within the family, DeVault’s (1994) study exposes the social side of the highly gendered act of feeding the family. Using interview data with adults from thirty families of diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in

Relational Work and Consumption    161 Chicago, she identifies processes that make women’s family care work like shopping for food and preparing meals, although rewarding at times, largely oppressive. The work of planning, shopping, provisioning, and preparing food is uncounted and unpaid and also requires the constant negotiation of social relationships within the family. The negotiable factors include family members’ responsibilities outside of the house like jobs and school, individual tastes and preferences, and roles and duties within the household. DeVault’s findings suggest that feeding work in large part constructs and defines the family and reifies the gendered division of labor in the house and in society more broadly. As an alternative to gendered home making of meals, Warde and Martens (2000) examined food consumption in English restaurants and argue that eating out is more conducive to social engagement, and more pleasant, than eating at home. This increased sociability during dining experiences is due to the fact that eating out places the whole family together in more equal positions around the table because at home, women typically perform most of the meal preparation and housework (as DeVault 1994 portrayed). Warde and Martens (2000) conclude that food consumption is not merely an instrumental choice made according to taste preferences; rather, eating out and dining in at home contain different sets of symbolic meaning and relational experiences and expectations. They have important repercussions for negotiating equality or inequality of relations between family members.

Consumption of Taboo Products and Resistance to Commodification Economic theory would lead us to believe that everything can be reduced to evaluation on a single metric of utility maximization, including sex, marriage, divorce, or discrimination (Becker 1996; Posner 1992). At the same time, psychologists show that people are very resistant to certain types of exchanges, which are perceived to be taboo (Fiske and Tetlock  1997). Economic sociologists are well-positioned to examine how relational work helps to overcome resistance in marketization and dilemmas of consuming morally controversial items. One such controversial subject was buying life insurance in China in the beginning of the 1980s, as studied by Cheris Chan (2012). Talk of sudden or unexpected death is taboo in Chinese society, pitting cultural values against the new market for life insurance. Chan used interviews and ethnographic observations to understand how markets are constructed in unlikely cultural settings. Beginning from the perspective that markets are socially constructed, she examined dynamics among producers, distributors, and consumers that comprise the market. The consumers played a vital role in Chan’s framework because producers were forced to react and adapt to the sociocultural conditions established by consumers. Chan describes the multiple motives that Chinese consumers have for buying life insurance. For instance, she quotes a respondent who bought life insurance simply

162   Nina Bandelj and Christopher W. Gibson because he wanted to help the sales agent who was a long-time friend. The respondent even stated, “I didn’t care what I bought, and I actually didn’t know what I bought” (p. 145). Another respondent was more instrumental about the purchase, stating, “the return rate offered by the insurance companies was higher than the interest rate offered by banks . . . So I took half of my money from the bank and invested it in insurance” (p. 148). Although the reasons were varied, they rarely include a concern for unexpected death or a desire for untimely death payouts for surviving loved ones, the professed main purpose of life insurance. Chan argues that this is because the Chinese cultural logics surrounding life and death created resistance to this type of risk management but were compatible with alternative frames for life insurance focused on money management and investing. A sense of taboo exchanges also emerges when activities traditionally associated with intimate relations, such as parenthood, are outsourced through commercial services. As Epp and Velagaleti (2014) show, in this process, certain tensions emerge, and the authors identify strategies used to minimize such tensions and to justify using paid care to assist with parenting. A relational work approach could contribute effectively to this study by examining the content of social ties between care providers and families. For instance, illuminating how care providers perceive intimacy/market tensions and the relational work they conduct to help alleviate the tensions of families would shed light on interesting market behaviors and processes of marketing through emotions. Another area to apply relational work is to consumption in moral markets (Fourcade and Healy 2007), that is, for goods that incite moral trepidations. Why, for instance, are consumers concerned about whether eggs are produced in “animal-friendly” circumstances? Answering this question, Balsiger (2016) affirms that, even for basic commodities, morals cannot be shrugged off as an afterthought of markets. In his case of “free-range eggs” from Switzerland, he finds the animal activists and the farmers in a moral fight, with both sides appealing to “unbiased” scientific expertise to make their claims. These debates are multifaceted. For instance, after first rejecting the moral claims of activists, farmers eventually came to embrace the changes as a new market opportunity. The debate also entered into the political realm because it resulted in new discussions and changes regarding agricultural policy more broadly. Markets, then, are morally and politically embedded, but producers and consumers are continually observing each other and striving to find, or not, appropriate matches between moral goods, social relations, and payments.

Conclusion In her statement on culture and consumption, Zelizer (2005a) argued that economic sociologists can make crucial interventions if they don’t merely expand or complement the economists’ approach but provide an alternative that emphasizes how “in all areas

Relational Work and Consumption    163 of  economic life people are creating, maintaining, symbolizing, and transforming meaningful social relations” (2005a:336). This alternative approach, Zelizer argues, allows more attention to consumption, even if such attention has not been paid consistently or comprehensively, mainly because consumption has been considered inferior to production. But the production versus consumption dichotomy, mapped on a dualism of more versus less consequential economic activities, is, of course, artificial. Indeed, uncovering relational concerns dismisses trivialization of consumption and allows us to productively focus on pressing concerns about inequality and social justice, and ethical consumption and political engagement, as top concerns for sociology of consumption identified by Warde (2015). Instead of having to choose to privilege either cultural identities or social context, a focus on relational work allows for a fruitful synthesis of both. Scrutinizing the role of meaningful social-economic relations, their emotional undercurrents and implications for power, provides a strong theoretical footing that generates crisper focus within the generic box of “social context,” all the while it capitalizes on theoretical connection to culture. In a broad stroke, studies of consumption vary by their starting point, either ­taking the consumer, or the process of consumption, as a point of departure. If the starting point is the process of consumption, this is a less circumscribed target of study. It  includes consumer behavior, a bread-and-butter of consumption studies, but also the intriguing worlds in which commodities are experienced, which “requires attention to a wider range of social relations, interactions, and processes” and “how  people accomplish the tasks and practices that compose their daily lives” (Warde 2015:118). Considering that daily lives of people are inherently social and rely on shared experiences, we hope that future research will find relational work as a vital theoretical tool for explaining how consumers earmark their money, how they build trust or repair mistrust in exchanges, how they negotiate power and inequality through consumption practices, and how they walk the terrain of morally tinged commodification.

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chapter 7

M ea n i ngfu l Obj ects a n d Consumption Sophie Woodward

Consumption is explored here as a set of material practices that take place within the specific context of mass produced goods (variably termed the “consumer society”; see Lury 2011). The practices that constitute consumption include the acquisition, use, appropriation, display, storage, and disposal of objects. Rather than being a separate sphere of activities and goods, consumption is thus an embedded part of everyday life as the wearing of clothes, the eating of food and the organizing of CD collections are the medium through which we organize our social worlds, relationships to others and develop a sense of self-identity. The point of departure for much of the literature on consumption and material culture has been the challenge of how mass-produced and potentially alienable goods can be utilized by people to develop personal and social meanings (from Miller 1987). The processes through which things are given meaning are multiple: goods may come with existing connotations through production and advertising, but these are renegotiated or made irrelevant through what people do with them (personalizing, using, and displaying), how they talk about them (I. Woodward 2001; Rowsell 2011), and how objects move through different contexts (Kopytoff 1986). At the heart of these processes are the objects themselves as, through their particular material propensities, they enable and limit the kinds of personal and cultural meanings produced. Through sensuous practical engagements with things (Dant  2010), they become part of our personal and social worlds, as they extend (and limit) the capabilities of our bodies and how they move. There is no static “meaningful object”; but rather, through different relationships with people, between people, between different objects, and within particular contexts, these meanings emerge, are reinforced, and may change. An emphasis on how consumers are active in producing meanings is in part a response to the Marxist inspired approaches that looked at how advertising and mass production alienated people from the products of their labor as well as imparted “false values” in goods. A material culture perspective explores how the active process of consumption arises from both the agency of people and the agency of things (see Gell 1998),

168   Sophie Woodward as people have intentions and desires in relationship to objects that have particular propensities and material possibilities. This chapter will outline how objects can be understood as meaningful within the context of consumption through three theoretical approaches: objectification and its application developed by Miller (1987), a semiotic approach developed by Keane (2005) that is grounded in the material possibilities of objects as signs, and assemblage theory (Bennett 2009). The chapter will explore how the practices of consumption give objects meaning and how, in this process, objects give meaning to consumption practices. By grounding this discussion in an understanding of how people interact with material objects, the chapter will end by proposing that a focus on “meaningful objects” can be limiting. The ordinary, forgotten about objects of consumption may not be immediately evocative, cherished, or understood by people themselves as “meaningful”; they are nonetheless significant and have meanings for the academic study of consumption. Meaningful objects need to be understood in relationship to objects that acquire meaning through daily practices as well as seemingly “meaningless objects” exemplified by domestic clutter. The chapter concludes by suggesting that an approach that explores material relationalities is most productive in understanding the shifting relationships between objects and meanings.

Defining Consumption and Material Culture This section will start by defining consumption as a meaning-making activity building on anthropological work in particular, which allows us to understand the processes through which meanings are created. I will then consider how, as objects are central to this process, we can understand the material agency and potentials of these objects. A good starting point for defining consumption comes from Douglas and Isherwood’s seminal discussion of consumption and the “world of goods” (1979) where consumption is seen as a meaning-making process. Slater extends this to see it as part of the process of “making social sense” (1997:172). Through giving meaning to objects through consumption (I. Woodward 2007), these objects are giving meaning to our lives. As we use, store, buy, cherish, and dispose of objects, these objects help to co-create our social lives; as they move through different domains and regimes of values (Appadurai 1986), tracing the particular object’s social life or biography (Kopytoff 1986) enables us to see context-specific meanings emerging. Whilst Koyptoff ’s approach has been criticized for failing to attend sufficiently to the materiality of things in permitting different cultural meanings and relationships, it is useful in highlighting how the meanings of things are not fixed but change depending on cultural contexts. An aspect of the commodity’s biography that Kopytoff outlines is the movement between the commoditized state (where things are reduced to their exchange value) and the individualized state, wherein objects are singularized through personal meanings or marked with cultural significances.

Meaningful Objects and Consumption    169 Consumption that occurs in a context of mass-produced goods is a process that involves encountering and interacting with goods that we did not make but that capitalist structures of production and advertising produce and attempt to impart meanings onto them. Consumption involves the use of things in production (so consumption is not just in opposition to production) but also the processes of acquisition, use, storing, display, disuse, repair and disposal. Although coming from very different perspectives to Kopytoff, this interplay between an object whose meanings are defined by its commodity status and an object whose meanings are rooted in people’s social worlds is at the heart of many theories of consumption. For instance, Simmel (1950) discusses this interplay in terms of the relationship between objective and subjective culture; Miller’s theory of objectification (1987) explores it in terms of the movement between alienable and inalienable goods. In all of these different variants, objects can shift between being alienated, commoditized, or subsumed within objective culture and being a personalized, inalienable part of subjective culture. Consumption thus understood is a struggle to make objects a meaningful part of our personal and social relations and is a way of negating the potentially negative and alienating facets of contemporary society (Miller 1997). This struggle to make objects meaningful is at the heart of Miller’s theory of objectification (1987) and is worth visiting in more depth here—not only due to its significant influence on the field of material culture and consumption studies but also as it allows a theoretical understanding of how people can, in his terms, “appropriate” the products of mass consumption. This is central to the development of the self as well as forming the foundations for the constitution of social relations. In Miller’s sense, consumption is a process of “becoming” (1987:33) that begins with products that we have not created, and entails a dynamic relationship between subject and object. Drawing from Hegel, Miller’s theory of objectification positions the objects of mass consumption as a central part of the development of the self. It is a dual process wherein the subject externalizes itself (such as when we see ourselves in material objects), which is then re-appropriated as the self is subsequently changed. A dynamic relationship between a person and the objects of mass consumption occurs, where the alienable goods are a medium through which the self is developed, and therein the objects become inalienable. An intrinsic part of this dynamic is that the subject is continually externalized and then appropriated as part of the progressive development of the subject. “Consumption as work may be defined as that which translates the object from an alienable to an inalienable condition; that is, from being a symbol of estrangement and price value to being an artefact invested with particular inseparable connotations” (Miller  1987:190). Miller uses the word “work” here to mean what people and groups do with objects, relating to time of possession, context of presentation, where objects are placed and how they are used. And so, although Miller’s theory is useful in understanding the ways in which significant relationships between individuals and objects can develop, this always occurs within wider cultural norms and expectations over what you do with certain objects in particular contexts. The creation of inalienable culture is central to how social relations can be constituted.

170   Sophie Woodward Douglas and Isherwood (1979) suggested that goods make “visible and stable the categories of culture” (1979:59). The ordering, use, and positioning of goods is also the mapping of our social worlds as hierarchies and power relations are made visible. The consumption of objects is a medium for performing and affirming social relations; as an embedded cultural practice, discriminating between objects is a process of drawing distinctions between people and a way of marking aspects of the self. Consumption is a process of cultural reproduction (Slater 1997) as, for example, we eat certain foods using particular conventions and competences that reproduces culturally specific ways of consumption as well as our position within that culture. One of the most influential discussions of how social classifications are made visible through consumption can be found in Bourdieu (1984), as well as the prolific work inspired by his development of a theory of practice where taste is socially structured and a means through which the social order is reproduced. Objects are markers of cultural value and a visible marker of difference, as the distinctions between things are also the ways in which social distinctions and inequalities are reproduced. Shared meanings are reiterated when we consume, and yet this is also a moment for potential subversion or changes. These shared meanings exist at a number of levels: that of a particular national culture, specific groups within this, and even more specifically familial traditions and rituals around consumption practices. Inasmuch as the distinction between objects that people want or need has been challenged, so too a distinction between meaningful goods and goods that are “useful” or needed (Slater  1997) is problematic. There are still cultural codes around things that are needed, such as what food is considered edible and the rituals around how it is consumed. Function or need cannot be separated out from practices of consumption which are always meaningful in terms of being carried out in culturally specific ways. Within the approaches discussed so far, objects are in integral part of consumption, and so, it is important to think concretely about how objects can be understood in the process of meaning making. They are not just inert vessels into which we can pour personal and cultural meanings as they enable particular interactions, meanings, and relationships. It is not just people who have agency; as objects bring about effects, they too can be understood to be co-agentic (Gell 1998). The material ways in which objects do this have been variably understood as having “affordances” (from Gibson 1979) or propensities, as material attributes like color, texture, weight, and design all impact upon how things might lend themselves to different cultural meanings. A grandmother’s old ring can be passed down, as it becomes a lasting connection between generations, whereas an old perfume bottle that contains the last drops of perfume may be a more transient way through which a person is remembered. Objects can be unpredictable, as we may like an object because it is red, but this attribute is always “bundled” (Keane 2005) with other attributes like shininess or lightness. Objects also have “relational capacities” (Lury 2011:57) in terms of the relationships to people they open up, allow, and limit. Objects are also relational in terms of how they exist in connections to other objects. So, for example, an item of clothing relates to all the other clothing already owned within the wardrobe. These material relationships

Meaningful Objects and Consumption    171 produce meanings for individual items, as a new smart jacket can render other ones scruffy. S. Woodward and Greasley (2015) have developed an approach to consumption that situates an understanding of how people relate to different types of material goods (such as clothing or music) within the “collection” as a whole, such as a CD collection or a wardrobe. The collections can be theoretically reframed as “assemblages” to allow an understanding of the materiality of the collection as a whole, as this connects to the material practices of wearing, listening, storing, displaying, or disposing. Drawing from Bennett (2009), assemblages are made up of the relationships between diverse, materially vibrant elements (including, e.g., clothing, people, dust). Its “uneven topographies” (Bennett 2009:24) mean that different groupings of things can have more power over us at different times, as the collection as a whole shifts in the meanings it has. Also, the meanings of individual objects impact upon, as well as draw from the collection as a whole. The materiality of things centers then on the properties of things as these change, the relationship between things within specific contexts. People are part of these material relationships, and the ways in which an object is used in turn impacts on how objects relate to each other. I will return to this approach to explore the relationships between meaningful and meaningless objects.

Semiotic Approaches and Materiality Material culture approaches to consumption are often framed as a direct critique of semiotic approaches through their failure to attend to the materiality of objects in the processes of meaning making within consumption. Certainly, the dominant ways in which semiotic approaches to consumption have been developed derive from the linguist de Saussure’s position which sees components of culture as if they were elements of language that can be interpreted like a text. As a consequence, anthropological and material culture accounts are positioned as critiques of semiotic approaches. However, although these critiques matter, I have chosen to place semiotics in this section to both build on the ideas of relationality already discussed and also to explore the potentials for a semiotic approach that is sensitive to materiality. I will outline this approach to an understanding of how objects become meaningful and then explore an alternative semiotic approach that places the materiality of things at the heart of their ability to signify. One of the most prominent developments of semiotic approaches to consumption is Baudrillard’s development of the theory of signification wherein object-signs are ­organized in a system from which individual objects derive their meaning. Objects are signs that refer to something other than themselves, such as identity or status. In Baudrillard’s formulation, objects have symbolic value in relationship to each other; as sign-value is always relational, the differences between object-signs is where their meanings arise. Consumption not as an autonomous arena but where cultural divisions are played out as, for example, objects may be symbolic markers of class status and prestige. Baudrillard’s definition of consumption is thus that it is “an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs” (1996:200).

172   Sophie Woodward These perspectives center up on how things acquire meanings, and the particular strengths of these approaches include how they consider the ways in which meaning is produced relationally. However, they have rightly been criticized for failing to attend to the ways in which meanings may be created through social practices that consumers engage with and that emerge through a material interaction between person and object. What may appear to be the natural qualities of things are the product of mythologies (Barthes 1967) where what is signified may have no inherent connection to the object itself. Objects cannot be understood as a text, and their materiality impacts on how they are able to produce meanings, as moreover, consumers may read objects in multiple ways through their situated knowledges and competences (Campbell 1997). Even the understanding of how meanings are imparted on objects is problematic, as meaning and cultural systems are seen to precede objects, which then become passive vessels in which meaning is placed. As part of this, an object’s function is seen as separate to the meanings that are imparted on it—a position which is problematic when we consider Keane’s understanding of objects as the “bundling” of attributes. However, rather than casting semiotic perspectives aside, Keane (2005) has explored the possibility of a semiotic approach that interrogates the materiality of the objects as signs. Objects are no longer a passive medium to communicate something else; but, drawing from Peirce (1955, cited in Keane, 2005), signs are located in a “material world of consequences” (2005:186). Keane identifies three possible relationships among signs, interpretations, and objects: resemblance (iconicity), connection (indexicality), or rule (symbolism). He focuses in particular on iconicity, which points to the similarities between the form of the sign and its meaning rather than the relationship between an object and what it signifies being arbitrary. There is a connection between the material form and what it signifies, as objects have material potentialities as signs. Keane suggests that the ways in which objects signify is complex and often unpredictable. A material quality such as “lightness” can be abstracted as we understand what this quality is, and yet when it is embodied in a particular object, it cannot be separated from the other material qualities it is bundled with—so, for example, a red shoe is also a particular sheen and weight. These other attributes have effects on the objects social life and the meanings it is able to produce. So too the social values that an object may signify are embodied in particular objects that bring together a number of attributes and qualities. Iconicity can be “open” (Keane 2005), as the meanings of things and what people do with them are not determined but open to be interpreted, such as when colonial subjects turned Western shirts upside down and wore them as pants (Keane 2005). This “potential” of objects is not just a product of the object’s material qualities, as they are part of a semiotic ideology, that is, culturally specific assumptions about what signs are and how they function. In different contexts, this ideology can be more or less restrictive depending on how the material qualities are read. The material qualities may make things possible and inhibit others, and yet they do not determine. Keane suggests then that it is not enough to see what things mean to people, as we also need to understand how they are regimented within semiotic ideologies that bring things into relation with each other. These semiotic ideologies are not fixed; they are vulnerable by being

Meaningful Objects and Consumption    173 materialized in objects, which through the bundling of attributes as well as the openness to how things may be used means that what is signified may change. This dovetails with wider discussions over the relationship between agency and constraint in how objects are used in processes of making and contesting meanings. From a very different perspective, Willis (1990) argues that things are polysemic, and there are struggles over meaning as people engage in “symbolic work” with goods they buy (Willis cited in Slater 1997:168). As Miller (1987) makes clear, not all consumer objects are equally polysemic, as seen in examples of the built environment such as council flats, there is much less space for customization. We are more able to subvert and re-appropriate some objects (Miller 1987). Constraints come from the objects themselves, social norms, existing power relations, and the social relations within which consumption occurs. The seemingly contradictory tendencies of constraint and freedom to create meanings co-exist within contemporary consumption practices. Objects lend themselves to articulating contradictions as they are not verbalized (Miller 1987).

Meaningful Objects and Objects That Have Meaning This chapter has so far engaged with the approaches that help to best understand how objects have meanings. However, there is a distinction between objects having meaning and being a “meaningful object.” The term “meaningful object” suggests that an object has personal and cultural meanings of which people are aware and are able to articulate. This is not the same as an object being analyzed by academics as having meaning (I. Woodward 2001 has noted that there is a potential discrepancy between how people see objects themselves and how the analyst might). Woodward goes on to suggest that once we listen to what people say, then multiple interpretations/meanings/practices come into play. Although it is certainly true that generating people’s accounts helps us to  understand meanings they have for people, and talking about things is also how ­people are able to give them meaning (Hurdley  2006), this act of getting peoples’ ­stories can also be one of academics turning it into a “meaningful object.” For example, when I piloted my Dormant Things project—which looks at objects within the home that are currently not being used—on my own home, I used the example of a table we have in the kitchen. It belonged to my husband’s grandmother and was passed down when she downsized to a flat; for the pilot, I interviewed my husband about where the table was from, when he remembered his grandmother using it. I was left with rich narratives of the table as it came to appear as an object laden with personal and relational meanings. And yet as I reflected on this, it bore little relationship to the actual practices of the table in our lives. It was a functional kitchen table, usually covered by a table cloth and a mass of household clutter. It is not an object that is ever reflected on, nor is it one that I had ever been aware of the history of. And so, through the interview, I turned the

174   Sophie Woodward table that was part of everyday domestic life and routines into a “meaningful object.” When faced with narratives replete with meanings, it is very difficult not to place these at the heart of out interpretation. Meaningful objects are also a product of methods that prioritize words to understand objects that often, by their material nature, are not verbalized. This is not to suggest that they cannot be verbalized in ways through we can attune ourselves to the material (see S. Woodward 2015b), but it does raise issues about how we understand the particularities of material culture that we come to know through material practices. Dant (2010), citing the example of car repair, suggests that we understand objects by engaging with them through the senses. So, for example, how mechanics interact with cars is through sensual knowledge, not just sight but also touch. In order to understand and explore these material interactions, Dant employs visual methods (such as video stills) as well as wider observations. For Miller (1987), albeit from a very different theoretical perspective, we experience objects through culturally specific contexts, as the material properties of things need to be understood in particular contexts as “the physicality of the object lends itself to the work of praxis—that is, cultural construction through action rather than just conceptualization” (Miller 1987:129) or symbolism. Context-specific understanding of how people interact with objects is explored through ethnographic observations (Miller 1997). Focusing on objects as “meaningful” may now allow these elements of non-verbalized practice that may often be routine, material practices (Reckwitz 2002), which are at the heart of consumption (Warde 2015), where objects are understood in terms of their place in collective meaning structures to be interpreted, rather than as agentic.

Meaningless Objects Understanding of material culture and consumption needs to incorporate both meaningful objects that have significant subjective investment in them, and also things that matter through routine interactions with them. An interview may be an occasion for reflecting as participants become aware of the object and the central role it may have in their daily lives. These objects matter in relationship to the processes and practices through which they come to have meaning in the organization of daily life and enacting personal and social relationships. There is a distinction then between meaningful objects, where meaning derives from a strong personal investment, and objects that acquire meaning though everyday practices and interactions, even if participants are less conscious of this. Objects may have meaning to participants that operate at the level of the unconscious (Miller 1987); such objects are often those of most interest (and having the most meaning for) academics interested in the routine material practices that constitute consumption. In addition to this are objects that might be understood as “meaningless” by participants, and I will close the article with highlighting how these can widen out the remit of understanding the relationships between consumption, objects, and meanings.

Meaningful Objects and Consumption    175 One framework for thinking about meaningful and meaningless goods is through the opposing and yet coexisting relationships that Miller (from Hegel) identifies between alienable and inalienable (Miller 1987) objects. As the process of self-alienation is an inevitable part of the process of objectification that the subject tries to overcome, this speaks to the wider coexistence of the negative and positive elements of consumer culture more widely and the contradictions between objects that become a part of our self-identity and those we encounter as alien goods. Simmel (1950) suggests that in a context of the rise in the quantity of consumer goods then we are less able to recognize ourselves in the expanded objective culture or that we are overextended in more superficial relations with things. Thus, different contradictory relationships between people and things coexist within contemporary consumer societies. In order to understand people’s relationship with everyday objects, it therefore matters to position meaningful goods in relationship to those with less or no subjective investment in. This is not just an intellectual conceit if we consider the range of objects within people’s homes; within my current research into dormant things in the home, I have looked at the all of the things that people keep but are not currently using (see S. Woodward 2015a for an outline). These objects include cherished items that remind the owner of a time in their life (and thus former self) or of someone else (and thus it externalizes relationships to other people) as well as objects that people do not even know the provenance or those that are understood as meaningless clutter. These could be understood within the framework of both Miller (1987) and Simmel (1950) as being both the inalienable and alienable, those that people have a significant relationship with and those that they do not. However, not only is clutter instructive in helping us to understand how everyday life in the home is ­organized, how gender relations are enacted, among other things; reducing it to things that people have failed to “appropriate” is insufficient. The second framework that is useful here is an approach that considers “the lives of things”; for instance, within the dormant things fieldwork, there were many examples of people who kept an object simply because they have had it in their possession for a long time. Because the object has resided in their homes for a lengthy period of time, people feel they are unable to get rid of it. This dovetails with Gregson’s ethnographic research (2007) where she explored how things come to be discarded from the home in the context of wider domestic practices with things such as sorting and tidying. She highlighted both endurance and transience as being key temporalities in relationship to objects within the home, which may be more important than whether objects are meaningful. So, for example, one of her participants has a microwave they have kept for 14 years, which may have been there for a long time, but not through any capacity for people to narrate their lives with. Some objects may not be heavily invested with meaning, even if they remain in the home for a long period of time after the object has ceased its useful life. The third framework is one that draws from previous discussions of semiotics and assemblage theories to develop an understanding of the relationship between things, which would include the relationship between meaningful objects and clutter, as this shifts or is sedimented through everyday practices. One of the strengths of semiotic approaches to consumption is the emphases on the relations between object signs in the production of meanings. A more useful approach to thinking about the relations

176   Sophie Woodward between material things and the meanings they might have or the uses to which things are put can be found within assemblage theory. As discussed earlier, Jane Bennett’s formulation of assemblage theory (2009) is where assemblages consist of multiple material components that are vibrant, and thus relationships between these elements change. When applied to everyday assemblages of objects within the home (see S. Woodward and Greasley, 2015), we can use this approach to understand how collections of objects such as a CD collection, or a drawer of clutter, has a power over us and helps create the meanings of individual items. An object placed in the clutter drawer may be rendered meaningless, but on a sort out, it may be reframed as cherished and thus meaningful and put in a memory box in an attic. Where things are placed, and how they relate to other objects, helps create the meanings they have. These relations are not just between “objects” but materially diverse elements, such as dust, and so an object covered in dust may create its meanings as old, or unwanted. This thinking can be extended even further is we draw from Keane (2005) and his suggestion that we need to think about the relationship between material qualities within an object to see how meanings are ­created. These material relationalities operate on many different levels: between objects, between objects and people, objects and spaces, and between material attributes. This approach allows us to think about how things change meaning and how meanings are acquired.

Conclusion A key feature within the proliferation of literature on consumption since the late 1980s has been to explore the ways in which consumption is a meaningful process. Some of these have been explicitly engaging with meaning making from a perspective that critiques semiotics approaches where the meanings of goods are imparted through the wider cultural system of signification, instead exploring ways in which everyday practices can help create personal, cultural, and relational meaning for people. In particular, material culture approaches attest to the agency of things and the capacities of objects to allow people in particular contexts with social norms to create meanings. This chapter has suggested that while these approaches to understand how objects may become meaningful are instructive, it is important to see meaningful objects in relationship to objects that have meaning through everyday practices, but may not be explicitly reflected on by participants, and meaningless objects. Thinking about everyday objects in these three categories is a device to widen out our understandings of everyday consumption practices and indeed reflect on the methodologies through which we think about the meanings of things. While the academic may find meaning in all three types of object, it is only meaningful objects that people are consciously aware of their personal and social significance. These categorizations moreover shift, as no object is always, for example, a meaningless object—as on occasion of a sort out, it may be re-categorized as meaningful. Equally, objects that are a key part of the organization of

Meaningful Objects and Consumption    177 everyday life and relationships may be reflected on the occasion of a sort out, or a reorganization of the home, and in this process become imbued with meanings. Three frameworks for understanding these three types of objects have been suggested, and these all engage with thinking about the relationships between different kinds of things. First, the contradictions between alienable and inalienable goods that are inherent to a mass consumer society were extended to meaningful and meaningless objects and as open to change, as objects can shift in their meanings. Second, an approach that explored the lives of things through notions of endurance and transience was introduced to suggest that the relative persistence of things in our lives may not just be reduced to the meanings they have. Finally, assemblage theory (in particular Bennett’s 2009 version) proves a useful approach to think about assemblages of goods within different spaces in the home, whether these are in a clutter drawer or categorized through material similarity (such as kitchen implements). This framework is one that pays heed to the material capacities of different objects and elements, as these relate to each other, and as materially dynamic as, again, things can shift in meanings. This chapter points toward the need to widen the study of consumption and material culture to incorporate the meaningful and the meaningless within a relational framework in order to understand the vibrancy and diversity of how things acquire, maintain, and lose meanings.

References Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arnould, Eric, and Craig Thompson. 2005. “Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research.” Journal of Consumer Research 31(4):868–882. doi: 10.1086/426626. Barthes, Roland. 1967. The Fashion System. New York: Hill and Wang. Baudrillard, Jean. 1996. The System of Objects. London: Verso. Bennett, Jane. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge. Campbell, Colin. 1997. “When the Meaning Is Not a Message; A Critique of the Consumption as Communication Thesis.” pp. 340–351 in Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption, edited by M.  Nava, A.  Black, I.  MacRory, and B.  Richards. London: Routledge. Dant, Tim. 2010. “The Work of Repair: Gesture, Emotion and Sensual Knowledge.” Sociological Research Online 15(3), 7. Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood. 1979. The World of Goods. London: Allen Lane. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency. Oxford: Clarenden Press. Gibson, James. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gregson, Nicky. 2007. Living with Things: Ridding, Accommodation, Dwelling. Wantage, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing. Hurdley, Rachel. 2006. “Dismantling Mantelpieces: Narrating Identities and Materialising Culture in the Home.” Sociology 40(4):717–733.

178   Sophie Woodward Keane, Webb. 2005. “Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things.” pp. 182–205 in Materiality, edited by D. Miller. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” pp. 64–94 in The Social Life of Things, edited by A. Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lury, Celia. 2011. Consumer Culture. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity. Miller, Daniel. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell. Miller, Daniel. 1997. “Consumption and Its Consequences.” pp. 13–65 in Consumption and Everyday Life, edited by H. Mackay. London: SAGE. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2002. “The Status of the ‘Material’ in Theories of Culture: From ‘Social Structure’ to ‘Artifacts’.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32(2):195–211. Rowsell, Jennifer. 2011. “Carrying My Family with Me: Artefacts as Emic Perspectives.” Qualitative Research 11(3):331–346. Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of George Simmel, edited by K. Wulf. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Slater, Don. 1997. Consumer Culture and Modernity. London: Polity. Warde, Alan. 2015. “The Sociology of Consumption: Its Recent Development.” Annual Review of Sociology 41(1):117–134. Willis, Paul. 1990. Common Culture. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Woodward, Ian. 2001. “Domestic Objects and the Taste Epiphany. A Resource for Consumption Methodology.” Journal of Material Culture 6(2):115–136. Woodward, Ian. 2007. Understanding Material Culture. London: SAGE. Woodward, Sophie. 2015a. “The Hidden Lives of Domestic Things: Accumulations in Cupboards, Lofts, and Shelves.” pp. 216–231 in Intimacies, Critical Consumption and Diverse Economies, edited by E.  Casey and Y.  Taylor. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Woodward, Sophie. 2015b. “Object Interviews, Material Imaginings and ‘Unsettling’ Methods: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Materials and Material Culture.” Qualitative Research 16(4): 358–374. Woodward, Sophie and Alinka Greasley. 2015. “Personal Collections as Material Assemblages: A Comparison of Wardrobes and Music Collections.” Journal of Consumer Culture 17(3): 659–676.

chapter 8

Bou r dieu, Disti nction, a n d A esth etic Consumption Omar Lizardo

That persons of high education are also the most avid consumers of the arts—especially those accorded the elevated status of being classified as “fine arts” or “legitimate culture”— is one of the most robust and consistent findings in the sociology of consumption (Bourdieu 1984; DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004; Holbrook, Weiss, and Habich 2002). In most empirical studies, education emerges as one of the best predictors of aesthetic consumption even after controlling for other socio-demographics characteristics including age, income, or occupational status (Chan and Goldthorpe  2007; Ganzeboom  1982). Recent evidence even suggests that the importance of education in shaping aesthetic consumption patterns has increased in more recent cohorts (van Eijck and Bargeman 2004). There is no questions that the positive association between higher levels of education and increasing rates of aesthetic consumption has the status as a well-established empirical generalization. The theoretical importance of this empirical finding for the explanatory role of status-based stratification in late modern societies was first emphasized in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984). For Bourdieu, schools—working in tandem with and adding to the primary effects of the specific material conditions provided by the middle-class household—functioned as the main site where the “aesthetic disposition” necessary for the appreciation and appropriation of legitimate cultural works was first honed and developed. For Bourdieu, aesthetic objects are, per se, not necessarily scarce or rare. Instead, the propensity to consume them is what is actually in relatively low supply (Turner 2001:19). The “need” to engage in aesthetic consumption by cultivated strata can be thought of as being “the result of education.” This means that “. . . inequalities with regard to cultural works are [therefore] only one aspect of inequalities in school[ing]” (Bourdieu and Darbel 1991:37). This is the reason most surveys show a close link between “all cultural practices” such as “museum visits, concert-going, reading, etc.” and years of schooling

180   Omar Lizardo (Bourdieu 1984:1): “the higher one rises in the social hierarchy, the more one’s tastes are shaped by the organization and operation of the educational system, which inculcates the “programme” (syllabus and intellectual schemes) which governs ‘cultivated minds’ ” (Bourdieu 1984:67). In this chapter, I argue that even though the work of Bourdieu—especially as laid out in his classic Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste—has served as the primary inspiration in providing a theoretical rationale for the empirical link between education and aesthetic consumption, one of the main propositions that Bourdieu introduced in that work has received little conceptual attention by researchers in the sociology of the consumption. Most analysts interpret the Bourdieu model of the linkage between schooling and aesthetic consumption as a “status-seeking” model (Ganzeboom 1982) in which arts consumption is a “status-pursuit” of the most culturally privileged segments. According to this perspective, showing that there exist direct effects of educational attainment or indirect effects of parental education on arts consumption supports the hypothesis that aesthetic consumption is a marker of social status. In what follows, I show that this was not Bourdieu’s primary empirical expectation. Instead, I argue that Bourdieu’s model (see 1984:88, Figure 3) is concerned with the relative weight that should be given to the two components of what he referred to as total cultural capital (indicated by parent’s education in relation to the individual’s own education) in the production of aesthetic choices. This model allows us not only to predict that we should observe a relatively higher likelihood by the educated to consume those aesthetic goods that have received legitimate “consecration” on the parts of established cultural authorities but also to delineate the conditions under which individuals will deviate from this pattern. These deviations take the form of the consumption of aesthetic goods that have not yet received this institutional legitimation. According to the model, the key axis of differentiation among educated strata (producing variation in relative patterns of conformity and deviance) is the “trajectory” individuals have followed into that stratum. These divergent pathways separate the “stayers”—that is, those individuals whose parents are also highly educated—from two types of “movers”: (1) the newcomers, that is, recent entrants into the ranks of the formally educated coming from less educated backgrounds; and (2) those who have “exited” the rank of the formally educated by accumulating less educational qualifications than their parents. These different strata among the educated classes should show different rates of consumption of more traditionally consecrated cultural goods, depending on whether they have experienced direct transmission of cultural capital in the household or have acquired most of their cultural capital in the school system. Addressing the relative neglect of this last facet of Bourdieu’s model has important implications for recent debates in the sociology of consumption. This is because a proper interpretation of Bourdieu’s model of the connection between education and aesthetic consumption obviates the primary “weakness” that many analysts perceive in Bourdieu’s formulation: its apparent inability to account for the fact that in late modern societies, the highly educated are as likely to incorporate not yet legitimated aesthetic cultural goods (e.g., popular and folk genres) into their consumption repertoire as they are to

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   181 engage the institutionally consecrated fine arts (Holbrook, Weiss, and Habich  2002; Peterson 1992). We will see that Bourdieu’s model allows one to specify which fractions of the formally (and informally) educated class is more likely to engage in this “deviation” from the expected pattern and which fraction is less likely to do so.

Bourdieu and Other Approaches to Aesthetic Consumption I begin by noting that Bourdieu did much more than note the commonplace finding that education is the primary predictor of aesthetic consumption. He also proposed some theoretical explanations for this phenomenon. One important aspect of Bourdieu’s theoretical model is that it is not easily classified according to Ganzeboom’s (1982) distinction—recently revived in a rather uncritical manner by Chan and Goldthorpe (2007)—between “status-seeking” versus “information” effects of socio-demographic variables on aesthetic consumption. In my exposition of Bourdieu’s formulation, I will not try to force Bourdieu’s more nuanced and complex account into this somewhat procrustean framework. I will, however, attempt to point out along the way which facets of Bourdieu’s framework could be thought of as leading to empirical implications similar to those entailed by the “information” or “status-seeking” theories. My aim is to show that Bourdieu’s model of the education/aesthetic consumption link goes beyond the limitation of either a “pure” information or a “pure” status-seeking model. It does this because it not only accounts for the empirical phenomena that these models explain, but it also goes beyond these models in accounting for an entirely new range of phenomena that neither the statusseeking or information model can handle on their own. The main thing to notice here is that, in contrast to some interpretations of his work, Bourdieu is very clear in noting that social origin (e.g., parental education) is only secondarily related to aesthetic consumption. In terms of path-analysis, what Bourdieu is saying is that he believes that the direct effect of a respondent’s own education is larger than the direct effect of their parent’s education, or that a lot of the effect of parent’s education on arts consumption is mediated by the respondent’s education. This is like what is found in most of the research that looks at the joint effect of the respondent’s and parent’s education on arts participation (Ganzeboom 1982). Bourdieu’s “reproduction” hypothesis is not that “parental education should trump respondent’s education” in determining aesthetic consumption. This last hypothesis is usually thought of as an implication of an “information” model and as disconfirmation of the status-seeking model (Ganzeboom 1982). Thus, finding that those who are “mobile” in terms of education are also avid consumers of the arts is  not a disconfirmation of Bourdieu’s model. Bourdieu acknowledges that different paths to the accumulation of scholastic capital will cause the same overall effect: greater

182   Omar Lizardo levels of participation in the arts. However, “stayers” in the educated class will have a very different approach to the consumption of cultural goods than those who are movers (or newcomers) into the high-education stratum (Bourdieu 1984:13). Bourdieu’s model is therefore as much concerned with ascertaining the difference in the consumption styles between these two different fractions of the educated class as it is with noting the relative aesthetic consumption advantage of the educated in relation to the less educated (Bourdieu 1984:13, 66–70). It is possible to conclude that Bourdieu subscribed to some tenets of an “informationbased” model of arts consumption (see the discussion of codes and competence in Bourdieu 1984:2–4), whereby “the arts lover’s pleasure, presupposes an act of cognition, a decoding operation, which implies the implementation of a cognitive acquirement, a cultural code” (1984:3). As Bourdieu and Darbel (1991:38–39) noted, Each individual possesses a defined and limited capacity for apprehending the “information” proposed by the work, this capacity being a function of his or her overall knowledge (itself a function of education and background) of the generic code of the type of message under consideration, be it painting whole, or the paintings of a certain period, school or painter. . . . When the message exceeds the limits of the observer’s apprehension he or she does not grasp the “intention” and loses interest in what he or she sees as a riot of colors without rhyme or reason, a play to useless patches of color. In other words, faced with a message which is too rich, or as information theory says, “overwhelming”, the visitor feels “drowned” and does not linger.

However, Bourdieu’s model is still a status-based model of arts consumption precisely because he emphasizes that the material conditions for the production of this codelinked competence to be unequally distributed across status groups (Holt 1998). While Bourdieu is not a status-seeking theorist (if seeking is interpreted in the traditional Thorstein Veblen manner as implying a conscious attempt at “distinction”), his theory is  one that attempts to connect the basic tenets of the status-based model (centered on  stratification of arts audiences) with the emphasis on the production of schemes of  perception and appreciation necessary to decode complex cultural works of the information model.

Bourdieu’s Model of the Education/ Aesthetic Consumption Link What is Bourdieu’s model of the education/aesthetic consumption linkage? Like “cultural information” and “status-seeking theories” of aesthetic consumption (Ganzeboom 1982), Bourdieu’s model departs from the often noted correlation between education and the intensity and extensiveness of consumption of aesthetic goods associated with the fine

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   183 arts. Before I get into the details of Bourdieu’s theoretical account, I think it is instructive to start with Bourdieu’s own summary of the two main findings regarding arts consumption that he reports in the first chapter of Distinction: Two basic facts were thus established: on the one hand, the very close relationship linking cultural practices (or the corresponding opinions) to educational capital (measured by qualifications) and, secondarily, to social origin (measured by father’s occupation); and, on the other hand, the fact that, at equivalent levels of educational capital, the weight of social origin in the practice and preference-explaining system increases as one moves away from the most legitimate areas of culture.”  (13, emphasis added)

Notice that Bourdieu’s report of his main findings regarding aesthetic consumption in Distinction are incongruous with subsequent interpretations of his work. First, Bourdieu’ thinks there are two primary findings, not just the one that is usually emphasized by most researchers in the sociology of consumption (e.g., that there are education-related differences in cultural competence that translate into education-related differences in engagement in the arts). In a certain sense, and despite the centrality of this proposition in empirical studies of artistic consumption, showing that aesthetic consumption increases with education is actually somewhat secondary to the overall theoretical project of Distinction. The reason for this is that this first “basic fact” that Bourdieu sees as having been established in his study is a replication of what Bourdieu and Darbel (1991) had already found in their earlier study of museums, and what Bourdieu had already argued and provided empirical evidence for in his previous study on photography.

Relative Weight of Domestic versus Scholastic Capital The second basic fact that Bourdieu sees as having been established by his investigation is related to how “the weight of social origin in the practice and preference-explaining system increases as one moves away from the most legitimate areas of culture.” I argue that this, and not the positive correlation between educational capital and aesthetic consumption, is the key to understanding overall Bourdieu’s theoretical model and its relevance for present work in consumption studies. It is also a proposition that has received virtually no theoretical or empirical attention by researchers in the sociology of consumption to date, despite its obvious relevance to key debates in the field especially regarding the question of “omnivore” consumption (Lizardo and Skiles 2012). Notice in particular that this second proposition is not about the “effect” of or the correlation between the different components of what Bourdieu referred to as (total) educational capital on the expected levels of aesthetic consumption but of the relative weight of the two different components of this overall scholastic capital (respondent’s and parent’s education) in producing different patterns of cultural choice.

184   Omar Lizardo Maybe one reason this key proposition has been ignored so far is that its main thrust goes against the grain of the usual interpretations of Bourdieu’s theory of taste prevalent in the literature. Contrary to suggesting that those raised in high cultural capital backgrounds will have more “conservative” taste for the most legitimate culture (Bennett et al. 2009; van Eijck 1999), Bourdieu instead notes that the weight of parent’s education (i.e., social background) will increase for predicting the consumption of those cultural goods that are more removed from traditional institutional sources of consecration (e.g., less legitimate forms). The weight of respondent’s own formal education in contrast should be highest for those symbolic goods that have received more institutional legitimation. Following this line of reasoning, Bourdieu suggests that “[t]he differences linked to social origin tend to increase as one moves away from the academic curriculum.” What is the direction of these differences? As Bourdieu notes, “[t]hose who have acquired the bulk of their cultural capital in and for school have more ‘classical’, safer cultural investments than those who have received a large cultural inheritance” (1984:65). Thus, those whose overall educational endowment is primarily due to formal educational instruction (e.g., children of low-education parents who achieve high educational status) are more likely to invest in the most academically consecrated forms of aesthetic consumption, such as the most explicitly legitimated arts (e.g., painting, classical music, canonical literature). Conversely, those whose total educational endowment either combines explicit formal instruction with exposure to the educated habitus at home (educated children of educated parents) or for whom the bulk of their educational capital is composed of this parental inheritance (relatively less-educated children of educated parents) are expected to be less likely to make these types of “safe” cultural investment and to extend their aesthetic disposition toward relatively less legitimate and less consecrated cultural pursuits (i.e., relatively “riskier” cultural investments). Bourdieu thus concludes by arguing that While variations in educational capital are always very closely related to variations in competence, even in areas, like cinema or jazz, which are neither taught nor directly assessed by the educational system, the fact remains that, at equivalent levels of educational capital, differences in social origin (whose effects are already expressed in differences in educational capital) are associated with important differences in competence. These differences become all the more striking . . . firstly, then one appeals less to a strict, and strictly assessable competence and more to a sort of familiarity with culture; and secondly, as one moves from the most “scholastic” and “classical” areas of culture to less legitimate and more “outlandish” areas of the “extra-curricular” culture, which is not taught in schools but is valued in the academic market and can often yield high symbolic profit.  (1984:63, emphasis added)

Given this, Bourdieu’s conception of the link between education and aesthetic consumption is not a “more-more” model (e.g., the more educational capital, the more aesthetic consumption) and not only a “who-what” model that ignores the “how” (e.g., the

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   185 educated are more likely to select prestigious aesthetic goods) of consumption, although it incorporates aspects of both types of formulation. Bourdieu accepts the basic postulate of the more-more model but also develops a more nuanced understanding of the how of consumption precisely by focusing on the interplay between the two components of the total scholastic endowment of individuals: that which comes from having been raised by educated parents (domestic capital) and that which comes from having succeeded in the formal educational system (scholastic capital). For Bourdieu, looking at the differences in consumption patterns for individuals in the different “quadrants” of the space (1984:88, Figure 3) produced by a cross-classification of these two dimensions of educational capital allows the analyst to indirectly get at the “how” of consumption: Hidden behind the statistical relationships between educational capital and social origin and this or that type of knowledge or way of applying it, there are relationships between groups maintaining different, and even antagonistic relationships to culture depending on the conditions in which they acquired their cultural capital and the markets in which they can derive most profit from it.  (Bourdieu 1984:12)

In sum, Bourdieu’s account of the linkage between education and cultural practice is more nuanced than has so far been acknowledged. Besides positing the now well-­ established association between increasing educational attainment and increasing levels of aesthetic consumption (an expectation shared by information and status-seeking models), Bourdieu also connects different pathways via which the educated come to be educated to the cultural investments they make and to the relative intensity they will engage cultural products that have achieved legitimation and those that have yet to receive full legitimation. This hypothesis thus concerns the weight of parental education compared to respondent’s own education in inducing attraction to aesthetically defined cultural works. Thus, the key empirical implication of Bourdieu’s model can be summarized: Proposition 1:  The weight of the parent’s (respondent’s) education in predicting aesthetic consumption is larger for less (more) legitimate cultural forms. This empirical expectation of Bourdieu’s model is critical, since it helps us gain theoret­ ical leverage on empirically ascertainable differences in the probability of the educated to “extend” their aesthetic disposition to objects not yet considered by those in positions of cultural authority to be “legitimate art.” This is important, since it is the observation that some segments of the educated class—which Richard Peterson (1992) refers to as “omnivores”—do routinely consume cultural forms not yet thought of as legitimate art that has been taken as a “refutation” of or a key limitation of Bourdieu’s model (Lizardo and Skiles 2015). If Bourdieu’s theoretical formulation is correct, however, this propensity is not a surprise but in fact a direct inference from the model proposed in Distinction (Holt 1998). Bourdieu’s analysis allows us to specify which segments of the educated

186   Omar Lizardo class will be more likely to engage in this “omnivorous” consumption. I will revisit this theme in the last section.

The Aesthetic Disposition as a (More or Less) Transposable Scheme What is the theoretical justification for Bourdieu’s expectation that educational capital gained from the family of origin would have a greater share of explanatory power in predicting the consumption of cultural goods that have been accorded less legitimation? I believe this is where the piecemeal interpretation of Bourdieu’s framework has done the most to prevent a proper understanding of the model laid out in Distinction. Thus, clarifying the theoretical justification for this hypothesis also requires laying bare the socio-cognitive roots of Bourdieu’s model of aesthetic appreciation. According to Bourdieu, aesthetic experiences are practical and emotive (Lizardo 2014); they are not analytical or theoretical in the “scholastic” sense suggested by traditional aesthetic theory (with the work of philosopher John Dewey [1934] and the pragmatists being a key exception). The perception of cultural works can best be thought of as “a practical execution of quasi-corporeal schemata that operate beneath the level of the concept” (Bourdieu 1992:160). It is precisely because the appreciation of cultural works require the deployment of schemes of perception and appreciation, whose conditions of acquisition are marked by class and status-group differences, that we are able to observe “direct” effects of education on aesthetic consumption and the “net-effects” of parental background after controlling for education (Mohr and DiMaggio 1995). However, for Bourdieu, the extension of this scheme toward cultural works that have yet to gain collective definition as “fine arts” require what he refers to as a transposition of this set of schemes to new objects (Bourdieu 1984:29). This transposition explains why it is that we can observe a “more-more” effect of education on arts consumption that cannot be explained by simple “status-seeking” theories. This is because these theories presume that only those forms of aesthetic consumption publicly defined as ­prestigious, such as opera and classical music performances, but not solitary reading, will be more likely to be engaged in by the educated (Ganzeboom 1982). However, the evidence shows that the educated are more likely to engage in all forms of cultural practice, whether or not publicly defined as prestigious, and regardless of how “conspicuous” their consumption is. That aesthetic competence appears to be a fairly generalized capacity also explains why there is little segmentation in arts consumption across the different fine art domains (e.g., lovers of the plastic arts also engage with literature and music, etc.) as was initially noted by DiMaggio and Useem (1978). For Bourdieu, both effects appear because aesthetic consumption is made possible by a specific form of socio-cognitive competence. This set of competences (which he referred to as “the aesthetic disposition”) is produced and enhanced through

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   187 the unintentional learning made possible by a disposition gained through domestic or scholastic inculcation of legitimate culture. This transposable disposition, armed with a set of perceptual and evaluative schemes available for general application, inclines its owner towards other cultural experiences and enables him to perceive, classify and memorize them differently.  (1984:28, italics added)

For Bourdieu, this implies that earlier familiarity with this scheme facilitates a more thorough mastery of it (Lizardo and Skiles 2012). This more supple command in its turn allows for a more generalized capacity to transpose this scheme to “non-standard” art objects. Thus, it is precisely because of the “head start” that is acquired by those who are raised by educated parents we should find that parental background matters more for explaining the effects of education for the consumption of cultural goods not yet fully legitimated. This is also the reason Bourdieu uses the same framework to explain why parental education should be more important in explaining the production of art compared to the consumption of art: [D]ifference[s] linked to social origin are no doubt most marked in personal production of visual art or the playing of a musical instrument, aptitudes, which both in their acquisition and in their performance, presuppose . . . dispositions associated with long establishment in the world of art. . . . At equal educational levels they vary strongly by social origin.  (1984:75, italics added)

This is an important prediction of the model since it is an indirect test of Bourdieu’s proposition that the parental component of total educational capital matters more for those competences that are acquired in the family environment. Thus, if we find the same asymmetry in the weight of the parental component when looking at the difference between arts consumption and arts production, this would bolster our confidence in the suggestion that the same mechanism that explains this variation in the relative weight of the effect of parental education also accounts for the same effect in the case of the consumption of genres less likely to be classified as “art” versus those that are routinely classified as such. This is because the ability to extend the aesthetic disposition to less legitimate genres—Bourdieu’s schema transposition mechanism—is analogous to the embodied skills necessary for the production of art (since both are more likely to be gained in the family environment). If it is the case that early immersion in a high cultural capital environment is the reason parental cultural capital matters more in explaining the consumption of less legitimate cultural forms, then we should find that a similar effect emerges when predicting aesthetic production in relation to consumption. The reason for this is that the production of cultural works is assumed to be more likely to rely on embodied schemes that cannot be easily acquired in an exclusive scholastic environment but that require at least some exposure to the informal pedagogy of the middle-class home: Proposition 2:  The weight of the parent’s education in relation to the respondent’s edu­cation is larger in predicting artistic performance compared to predicting arts con­sumption or the direct acquisition of art objects.

188   Omar Lizardo

Bourdieu’s Model of Aesthetic Consumption and “Omnivorousness” In this chapter, I have argued that the scholarly appropriation of Bourdieu’s theory of the connection between education and aesthetic consumption has only focused on one half of his model (the “more-more” part). While analysts have been keen to establish the strong connection that exists between increasing levels of objectified cultural capital and increasing levels of aesthetic consumption, they have failed to address the other— and arguably more important and inherently counter-intuitive—aspect of Bourdieu’s account: his contention that the relative weight of each of the two different components of an individual’s total cultural capital endowment (the achieved and the inherited) would result in systematically different patterns of aesthetic choices. Contemporary research in the sociology of consumption has also ignored his prediction that certain forms of cultural activity (e.g., the direct production of cultural works) are relatively likely to be impacted by parental cultural inheritance than other forms (e.g., indirect consumption of artistic works or direct appropriation through purchase). The relative neglect of Bourdieu’s thesis is an important oversight, since Bourdieu’s primary argument is that members of the educated class do not form a monolithic block but are instead composed of competing fractions (1984:87–89). For Bourdieu, educated strata are best conceptualized as being partitioned between “stayers” and “movers.” That is, those who are educated and come from educated backgrounds are likely to engage in different patterns of cultural choice compared to those who are newly arrived to the educated stratum (Coulangeon 2015). In a similar way, members of less-educated strata are composed of two antithetical populations: the uneducated that come from uneducated backgrounds (“stayers” in the low education stratum) and the non-negligible minority of the “uneducated” who enjoy a substantial “cultural inheritance” because their parents are educated (“movers” into low-education strata). For Bourdieu, these four different groups are expected to have very different orientations to the consumption of legitimate cultural works and cultural works that have yet to achieve cultural legitimacy (1984:88). Bourdieu’s model of the relative increase in importance of parental education in the making “risky” cultural choices in comparison with making “safer” choices has important implications in bringing some theoretical substance to the debate surrounding the empirical generalization of “omnivorous” patterns of cultural taste among educated elites (Peterson 2005). If Bourdieu is correct, omnivorousness among the most educated stratum is not produced because the less educated bring with them a taste for less legitimate cultural goods into the educated class, as is suggested by standard “cultural socialization” models. For instance van Eijck (1999:313) has previously argued that “socially mobile individuals do display a somewhat more varied pattern of cultural consumption than those who have not experienced mobility.” For van Eijck, social mobility increases the

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   189 cultural heterogeneity of elite strata because having experienced early socialization into low-status culture, “upwardly mobile individuals carry popular culture upwards along the social ladder” (1999:326). Yet, if the Bourdieuian account is correct, we should expect to observe a very different pattern of cultural choices among mobile and non-mobile members of different educational groups. In contrast to the “cultural socialization” thesis, for Bourdieu (1984:88), “movers” into the educated stratum from lower educated groups should be more likely to display a more “conservative” predilection for traditionally legitimated culture and not the “omnivorous” mixing of elite and non-elite forms. It is rather those who have gained scholastic capital through direct exposure in the family environment who should be more likely to “transpose” their aesthetic disposition toward cultural goods that have yet to gain full artistic legitimacy (because they have a better established command of this practical scheme). This means that if we were to divide the population into four groups—(1) stayers in the high education stratum, (2) movers from the high education stratum to the less educated stratum, (3) movers into the high education stratum from the low education stratum, and (4) stayers in the low education stratum—we should find that it is those who have had the experience of having been raised by high-education parents that should be the most “omnivorous.” Those who have acquired the bulk of their total educational capital through the formal educational system (e.g., sons and daughters of low-education parents who have achieved high levels of education), should be more omnivorous than those who have little educational capital, but they should be less omnivorous than groups who may have less formal education but were raised by high-education parents: these are the groups for whom the bulk of their total educational capital comes from the family environment and not the formal educational system. In this respect, the argument presented here has important implications for our understanding of the phenomenon of cultural omnivorousness by the educated elite. Contrary to the unqualified conclusions drawn from the zero-order correlation between education and cultural omnivorousness (or multivariate models in which parental education is omitted from the specification), the relative likelihood of the “educated” to consume non-elite cultural forms is restricted to those respondents who have “inherited” cultural capital directly by virtue of having been raised by high-education parents. In the same way, cultural omnivorousness among the less-educated strata appears to  be restricted to that minority of respondents that experiences intergenerational downward mobility from relatively high-education to less-educated strata. The “type” of omnivorousness displayed by these two groups is qualitatively different, however. While “stayers” in high-education strata are likely to command both legitimate and yet to be legitimated cultural forms, “déclassé” movers into low-education strata are more likely to display a “popular culture” omnivorousness that attempts to “recuperate” low-status cultures by endowing them with the trappings of artistically legitimate forms. This would be consistent with Bourdieu’s claim that “[t]hose who have acquired the bulk of their cultural capital in and for school have more ‘classical’, safer cultural investments than

190   Omar Lizardo those who have received a large cultural inheritance,” than those “déclassé” respondents who have experienced downward educational mobility. This last group (along with those stayers in the high educational stratum) should be more likely to make riskier cultural investments, by, for instance, being drawn to less-legitimate cultural forms. Instead of leading to “cultural heterogeneity” for those who experience “upward” mobility, scholastic capital gained in the more formal environment provided by institutions of higher education seems to partially move individuals away from investments in non-elite cultural forms and toward investment in those aesthetic pursuits that have already acquired substantial levels of artistic legitimacy. Thus, omnivorousness does not appear to be only a product of “education” but is better thought of as being an effect of having been raised by an educated parent. Because there is a strong intergenerational transmission of educational status (Roksa and Potter 2011), it is not surprising that the empirical association between schooling and omnivore taste has been attributed to a “direct” effect of formal instruction, when it is best thought of as an “indirect” effect of parental education. Taste for legitimate cultural goods appears to be a direct effect of experience in the formal educational system.

Broader Implications for Studies of Cultural Consumption In terms of broader theoretical implications, the results reported in this essay show that Bourdieu’s socio-cognitive theory of aesthetic engagement rests on theoretical foundations distinct from traditional understandings of the process of cultural socialization (e.g., Mohr and DiMaggio 1995; van Eijck 1999) and from standard “statusseeking” models of cultural engagement. The cultural socialization model cannot accommodate what is for Bourdieu the key mechanism that accounts for different ­patterns of cultural choice among movers and stayers into different elite and non-elite strata: the notion that the extension of the “taste-repertoire” of educated individuals can only occur through a process of schematic transposition. This transposition is more likely to be accomplished by those individuals who are directly exposed to the educated habitus in the family environment. This is why the parental education component carries more weight in predicting aesthetic consumption of non-elite genres, and why individuals who have been raised by high-education parents appear to be more omnivorous than individuals with higher levels of education but who have been raised by low-education parents. As I have argued, Bourdieu (1984) offers at least two heretofore ignored suggestions as to the socio-cognitive origins of the propensity to extend the original aestheticizing scheme developed in the high cultural capital domestic environment from its original “source domain” in the legitimate arts to new “target domains” in the less legitimate

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   191 (e.g., popular and folk) arts. Bourdieu’s first model of how less-legitimate forms of art come to be incorporated into the artistic schema is an accumulated cultural capital model in which he suggests that the timing and length of exposure to a culturally privileged environment increases the individual’s habitualized familiarity with the aestheticizing scheme and thus the likelihood that this disposition will be extended to less-legitimate symbolic goods. Bourdieu thus hypothesizes that those who are exposed to this disposition early in life (e.g., by being raised by high-education parents) will be more likely to exhibit a greater likelihood of extending the aestheticizing scheme toward symbolic goods not traditionally defined as art than those who gain the disposition late—for example, by being exposed to it mainly in the school system but not at home (1984:65). This is why he reports—as noted previously—that one of the two main findings in the study is precisely that “the weight of social origin in the practice and preference-explaining system increases as one moves away from the most legitimate areas of culture” (1984:13). Second, Bourdieu proposes that an extension of the aesthetic disposition to less legitimate culture can be explained by a conflict model between two modes of aesthetic appropriation. He suggests that the inability to translate embodied schemes of perception and appreciation for traditional cultural works into the direct acquisition of such works (a situation to which those class fractions whose endowment of cultural capital exceeds their endowment of economic capital are chronically exposed) serves as a “socio-logical” impetus to extend this embodied scheme to objects that have yet to be defined as “artistic” by the relevant cultural authorities in the more legitimate art worlds, and which thus do not require extensive economic capital to appropriate. This is why he notes that, in “ . . . the absence of the conditions of material possession, the pursuit of exclusiveness has to be content with developing a unique mode of appropriation” (1984:282). What are the characteristics of this unique mode of appropriation? It consists precisely of the aforementioned extension of the aesthetic scheme toward non-standard art objects that is the basis of omnivore tastes. This involves “[l]iking the same things differently, [or] liking different things, less obviously marked out for admiration” (1984). The reason for this is that this last form of (indirect or embodied) appropriation highlights the how of aesthetic consumption over the presumed qualities of the object that is appropriated (Holt 1998). This allows those who cannot afford to acquire traditionally defined aesthetic objects directly to derive “profit” from their specific form of embodied expertise. This implies at least two empirically verifiable hypotheses: (1) cultural omnivorousness should be most likely observed among those class fractions that are the most “cultured” in the traditional sense but who are least able to translate this aesthetic disposition into the direct acquisition of institutionally consecrated aesthetic objects; and (2) compared with these cultural specialists, we should be less likely to observe such recuperation of non-traditional aesthetic goods among class fractions who can directly translate their cultural expertise into direct acquisitions of institutionally defined artworks.

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Aestheticism in Everyday Consumption Choices It is argued that the framework outlined previously can help us gain a better foothold on the phenomenon of cultural omnivorousness by allowing us to characterize it in a more explicit and sharper way. It can do this by helping us to differentiate it from other cognate phenomena that are generated by similar underlying mechanisms. In this respect, it is important to note that there are in fact two empirical phenomena that Bourdieu sees as being generated by the same socio-cognitive mechanism. First, those with a greater command of the aesthetic disposition have a higher likelihood of extending toward aesthetic objects and performances produced in not yet legitimized fields of production (e.g., music produced in “urban” culture worlds) the same modes of appreciation and classification that were initially developed with the aesthetic goods produced in traditionally “consecrated” types of culture production fields in mind. This has received the bulk of the attention in the sociological literature on taste and arts consumption under the heading of “omnivorousness.” Second, the aestheticizing scheme can be extended to everyday consumption choices in clothing, interior decoration, and the purchase of household items (Bourdieu 1984). In contrast to omnivorousness, this last phenomenon has been regularly studied in marketing and consumption studies (Szmigin 2006), but seldom linked to class-based socialization and the study of the consumption of aesthetic goods and experiences typical of sociological studies (Bennett et al. 2009; Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal 2008). One reason for this is that sociology of consumption has been less likely to pay attention to the consumption of material culture rather than the consumption of aesthetic goods, a focus that is more prevalent in the anthropology of consumption and consumer culture studies (Hurdley 2006; e.g., Woodward 2007; Woodward and Greasley 2017). This research suggests that the deployment of aesthetic considerations during everyday consumption choices—for example, judging consumer goods, appliances, furniture, domestic interiors, and so forth to be more appealing when they satisfy both aesthetic and functional criteria—is a pervasive but so far understudied phenomenon (Charters 2006). This research also suggests that, as Bourdieu (1984) would predict, early experience with the arts (e.g., visiting museums with parents, playing a musical instrument) increases the chances that, as adults, individuals will rank aesthetic criteria high on their list of considerations when engaging in material consumption (Venkatesh and Meamber 2008). The framework outlined here suggests new ways in which aesthetic and material goods consumption can be theoretically linked.

References Bennett, Tony, Mike Savage, Elizabeth B. Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal, and David Wright. 2009. Culture, Class, Distinction. London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption   193 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. “Commentary on the Commentaries.” Contemporary Sociology 21(2):158–161. Bourdieu, Pierre and Alain Darbel. 1991. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chan, Tak Wing and John  H.  Goldthorpe. 2007. “Social Stratification and Cultural Consumption: Music in England.” European Sociological Review 23(1):1–19. Charters, Steve. 2006. “Aesthetic Products and Aesthetic Consumption: A Review.” Consumption Markets & Culture 9(3):235–255. Coulangeon, Philippe. 2015. “Social Mobility and Musical Tastes: A Reappraisal of the Social Meaning of Taste Eclecticism.” Poetics 51(4):54–68. Dewey, John. 1934. Art as Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. DiMaggio, Paul and Michael Useem. 1978. “Social Class and Arts Consumption.” Theory and Society 5(2):141–161. DiMaggio, Paul and Toqir Mukhtar. 2004. “Arts Participation as Cultural Capital in the United States, 1982–2002: Signs of Decline?” Poetics 32(2):169–194. Ganzeboom, Harry. 1982. “Explaining Differential Participation in High-Cultural Activities: A Confrontation of Information-Processing and Status-Seeking Theories.” pp. 186–205 in Theoretical Models and Empirical Analyses: Contributions to the Explanation of Individual Actions and Collective Phenomena, edited by Werner Raub. Utrecht, The Netherlands: E.S. Publications. Holbrook, Morris B., Michael J. Weiss, and John Habich. 2002. “Disentangling Effacement, Omnivore, and Distinction Effects on the Consumption of Cultural Activities: An Illustration.” Marketing Letters 13(4):345–357. Holt, Douglas  B. 1998. “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?” The Journal of Consumer Research 25(1):1–25. Hurdley, Rachel. 2006. “Dismantling Mantelpieces: Narrating Identities and Materializing Culture in the Home.” Sociology 40(4):717–733. Lizardo, Omar. 2014. “Taste and the Logic of Practice in Distinction.” Czech Sociological Review 50(3):335–364. Lizardo, Omar and Sara Skiles. 2012. “Reconceptualizing and Theorizing ‘Omnivorousness’: Genetic and Relational Mechanisms.” Sociological Theory 30(4):263–282. Lizardo, Omar and Sara Skiles. 2015. “After Omnivorousness: Is Bourdieu Still Relevant?” pp. 90–103 in Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture, edited by L. Hanquinet and M. Savage. New York: Routledge. Mohr, John and Paul DiMaggio. 1995. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Cultural Capital.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 14:167–200. Peterson, Richard A. 1992. “Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore.” Poetics 21(4):243–258. Peterson, Richard  A. 2005. Problems in Comparative Research: The Example of Omnivorousness.” Poetics 33(5):257–282. Roksa, Josipa and Daniel Potter. 2011. “Parenting and Academic Achievement: Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage.” Sociology of Education 84(4):299–321. Szmigin, Isabelle. 2006. “The Aestheticization of Consumption: An Exploration of ‘Brand. New’ and ‘Shopping.’ ” Marketing Theory 6(1):107–118. Turner, Bryan  S. 2001. “Outline of a General Theory of Cultural Citizenship.” pp. 11–32 in Culture and Citizenship, edited by N. Stevenson. London: SAGE.

194   Omar Lizardo van Eijck, Koen. 1999. “Socialization, Education, and Lifestyle: How Social Mobility Increases the Cultural Heterogeneity of Status Groups.” Poetics 26(5–6):309–328. van Eijck, Koen and Bertine Bargeman. 2004. “The Changing Impact of Social Background on Lifestyle: ‘Culturalization’ Instead of Individualization?” Poetics 32(6):447–469. Venkatesh, Alladi and Laurie A. Meamber. 2008. “The Aesthetics of Consumption and the Consumer as an Aesthetic Subject.” Consumption Markets & Culture 11(1):45–70. Warde, Alan, David Wright, and Modesto Gayo-Cal. 2008. “The Omnivorous Orientation in the UK.” Poetics 36(2):148–165. Woodward, Ian. 2007. Understanding Material Culture. London: SAGE. Woodward, Sophie and Alinka Greasley. 2017. “Personal Collections as Material Assemblages: A Comparison of Wardrobes and Music Collections.” Journal of Consumer Culture 17(3):659–676.

pa rt I I

ORGA N I Z I NG C ONSU M P T ION

chapter 9

Taste , L egiti m acy, a n d the Orga n iz ation of Consumption Jennifer Smith Maguire

There are multiple routes for examining the organization of consumption. We might look at what is being organized (e.g., consumption of food, clothing, touristic experiences, music) and attempt to discern patterns within group and individual experiences, preferences, and practices. We could also consider which symbolic boundaries and categories (understood in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, life stage, nationality, and myriad intersectionalities) are reproduced or challenged through such o ­ rganization. Equally, we might explore how that organization is effected and mobilized: the cultural, technological, spatial, and visual domains and devices, and market actors—consumers, producers, intermediaries—implicated in how such ideas as need, desire, anxiety, love, value, and identity are enacted through consumption. This chapter takes up the latter option, focusing on how the organization of consumption is enabled and energized through notions of legitimacy and taste. Legitimacy and taste are closely linked, conceptually and processually. In the work of Bourdieu, a key figure for sociocultural understandings of consumption (e.g., 1984, 1990,  1993), legitimacy and taste are centrally implicated in the organization of ­consumption, and in society generally. Bourdieu’s work suggests how notions of “good taste” and legitimacy tend to be set by the dominant group; tastes are stratified relative to the dominant group’s “good taste.” Categories of good taste, neither natural nor static, are the outcome of struggles over the power to impose legitimate classifications. They are socially and historically specific, changing over time in relation to the relative ascendancy or decline of influence of different groups (socioeconomic, generational, or otherwise). Changes in what is considered culturally legitimate taste will also bear the mark of societal changes and technological innovations that impact on the range of entities that are available for judgment, and the everyday backdrop against which judgments of taste are made. Taste, therefore, is profoundly social and deeply bound up with processes

198   Jennifer Smith Maguire of legitimation through which certain categories (of objects, practices, aesthetic qualities, persons) come to be seen as acceptable and desirable. However, this chapter is not about Bourdieu’s account of consumption per se. The goal of this review is to gain a “bird’s eye view” of legitimation and taste as phenomena that shape social action, and specifically consumption. To seek a view from above is to survey the landscape and prioritize macro patterns over the details at ground level, be that in relation to individual theorists or consumers. In providing that view, the chapter makes a case for metaphor as a conceptual device for theorizing organization. This involves, first, offering a macro view of various approaches to legitimation, drawing out the (typically unacknowledged) metaphors that scholars use to make sense of how consumption and social life are organized. Second, the chapter proposes the metaphor of gravitation for discerning several macroscopic features of how taste organizes consumption. In doing so, the chapter addresses a gap in sociocultural studies of consumption, which have typically concentrated on the ground level of individual action. A bird’s eye view offers the possibility of identifying features (normative, ­conventional, and habitual) within the landscape of consumption that might otherwise be missed or obscured by the intricacies of micro-level action and by the myth of the sovereign consumer.

Thinking through Metaphor Scholarly consideration of metaphor dates from ancient philosophical debates about rhetoric. From the nineteenth century onward, a thread of enquiry has developed in such fields as philosophy, psychology, semantics, and rhetoric that considers the role of metaphor as a cognitive device (Nerlich and Clarke 2001): thinking about how humans think through metaphor. From this perspective, metaphor is not (only) a decorative flourish within the communication toolbox; it is fundamental to the emergence, development, and structure of human language and thought. Metaphors bridge the gap between what is perceived and communicated by offering one thing in place of something else; through convention such metaphors become concretized as signifiers. As philosopher Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur noted in 1804, “every language is . . . but a dictionary of pallid metaphors” (cited in Nerlich and Clarke 2001:42). In bridging the gap between reality, thought, and language, metaphors organize our experiences, understandings, and actions (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Engagements with metaphors differ in relation to different spheres of action and will shift over time. For example, at the introduction of online shopping, the familiar idea of the shopping basket made use of an established metaphor in use (the basket or trolley standing for conventional shopping practices) to prescribe behavior in an unfamiliar setting (“place” your choices in the basket; pay before leaving). Over time, the interventionist metaphor becomes yet another everyday metaphor in use (Cornelissen et al. 2008).

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   199 Similarly, metaphors can be used to disrupt established behavior by imposing new ways of thinking. For example, substituting a “firewall” metaphor for the now common “glass ceiling” metaphor can assist in new understandings of organizational discrimination as something that results from not simply the ceiling but the entire organization (Bendl and Schmidt 2010). Given their capacity to render the complex as readily comprehensible, to intervene in established modes of thought, and to provide conceptual lenses through which to identify new understandings and actions, metaphors are potent tools for theorization. Brown (1977) sets out four principles for the use of metaphor as a device for sociological theorization. First, metaphors require a transfer of terms between systems or levels of discourse, which in turn rests on the principle of equivalence. The intentional use of metaphor as a sociological device requires that the isomorphism “identifies those dimensions we are interested in” (Brown  1977:68). Second, metaphors are absurd when taken literally, but this has a cognitive function: it “forces us to stop suddenly and to look at it more closely” (1977:64). Despite their literal absurdity, metaphors are (Brown’s third principle) “made to communicate intelligible meanings” (1977:65) and (fourth) must be treated “as if ” they are true for the purposes of conceptualization. Brown argues not only that metaphors are tools for theorization but that all sociological theories—indeed, all scientific models—are “nothing more than elaborate metaphors” (65). Like stories, metaphors are designed to be understood; this requires them to offer concise, condensed abstractions within which there is room for elaboration. The aim of the metaphor is not exactitude, but economy, coherence, and scope (1977:69). The “bird’s eye” metaphor implies an equivalence between the perspective gained from a high vantage point (a view of a forest, say, at the expense of seeing the individual trees) and the scale of organization with which the chapter is concerned: the macro organization, or macro marketing, of consumption. The absurdity of the bird’s eye view metaphor for a survey of sociocultural research lies in part in the partiality of the view. The landscape does not exist only as seen from on high, nor is the bird restricted to that view. Similarly for the organization of consumption: micro processes and practices are also at work, interwoven with macro processes and practices. However, this absurdity helps to highlight the value of foregrounding the macro view. As the bird descends, apparent patterns (a heart-shaped forest, say) can disappear from view; the bird loses sight of the forest for the trees. So, too, for the study of consumption, which has focused disproportionately on the individual at the expense of the macro view. Warde, for example, notes a gap in sociocultural studies of consumption, which “pay little attention to the creation of norms, standards, and institutions which produce shared understandings and common procedures” (2014:295). This is a critical gap, as it allows the normative, conventional, and habitual bases of social reproduction to remain hidden from critical view. To address this gap, the chapter focuses attention on the macroscopic ­organization of consumption; this requires, first, a survey of the conceptual landscape of legitimation.

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A Bird’s Eye View of Legitimation Legitimacy is at the core of the organization of social life. The pursuit of a firm grasp of legitimacy has formed a central thread in sociological thought, stemming most notably (though not exclusively) from Weber. Weber ([1922] 1978) understood legitimacy as fundamental to social action and social relationships: individual and group actions are oriented by beliefs in legitimacy (whether they are based on subjective or external factors, such as tradition, affect, values, or law). The creation, maintenance, and mobilization of legitimacy and the whole host of “hierarchies of worth or systems of evaluation” (Lamont 2012:202) that are underwritten by notions of legitimacy, remain of timely interest. That interest can be linked to agendas both conservative (e.g., the desire to maximize performance and influence through the use of metrics, benchmarks, and targets) and critical (e.g., the desire to disrupt established criteria of value that are linked to exclusive hierarchies, deepening inequality gaps and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption). Nonetheless, despite (or perhaps because of) the decisive role that legitimacy plays in social action, “understanding the general processes that underlie legitimacy has remained a difficult and persistent problem” (Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006:53). Two recent, complementary calls for systematic accounts of legitimacy and the ­organization of social action (Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway  2006; Lamont  2012) usefully highlight the issues at hand. In their review of approaches to legitimacy in social psychology and organizational studies, Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway (2006), working within a Weberian tradition, attempt to draw out the common attributes, pathways (from innovation, to local validation, diffusion, and general validation), and consequences of legitimacy (including the reproduction of inefficiencies, injustice, and other suboptimal outcomes). Their focus is largely on status characteristics and organizational forms as ideal and material objects that acquire legitimacy and thereby acquire the capacity to orient the actions of others. They note that future work is required to extend this ­synthesis to other domains such as politics. Lamont’s proposal (2012) of a “sociology of valuation and evaluation” (SVE) similarly remarks on the need for further comparative research and cumulative theory building. She pulls from eight strands of recent European and North American sociocultural scholarship to outline the main subprocesses (categorization and legitimation) and practices that underpin how worth is ascribed (valuation) and assessed (evaluation). Lamont observes that work remains to be done to specify the relationship between processes and practices and to expand beyond a focus on quantification as the framework through which evaluation is accomplished and action is coordinated. Such work is critical if SVE insights are to disrupt the prevailing power of hierarchies and support more inclusive and just ­heterarchies (2012:213–215). Let us consider the relationship between legitimacy and legitimation. We can understand legitimacy as the perception that something is “desirable, proper or appropriate” (Suchman 1995:574), and legitimation as the collective process by which that perception

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   201 comes into being and undergoes objectification so that “what is becomes what is right” (Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway  2006:57). That process establishes a relationship between two different scales of reference: the thing in question (for this chapter, we are concerned with consumption entities: goods/services, ideas, practices, sites, actors and so forth) and a more abstract, generalized framework of reference (e.g., Berger et al. 1998; Suchman 1995). A consumption entity isn’t proper and good in itself; it acquires the status of being legitimate by virtue of its “goodness of fit” within a larger framework of beliefs, norms, and values that itself seems proper and good via tradition, consensus, endorsement, and/or affirmations and enforcements by external authorities. Moreover, the legitimacy of a consumption entity is not a fixed property but an ongoing accomplishment of position taking along a spectrum that includes the not-yet-legitimate and the taken-for-granted (Bourdieu 1990; DiMaggio 1997; Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006; Scott 2014). Extending Weber’s observations ([1922]1978) regarding the bases of legitimacy, Scott (2014), for instance, differentiates between three encompassing frameworks (or “pillars”): regulative legitimacy (drawn from existing rules and regulations), normative legitimacy (drawn from dominant cultural norms and values), and cognitive legitimacy (drawn from existing classificatory schemas). Taking a different approach, Boltanski and Thévenot (1999,  2006) identify six regimes of legitimation or “orders of worth”: the worlds of inspiration and renown, and the domestic, civic, market, and industrial worlds. In either case, the theoretical conceptualization is concerned with rendering tangible a more abstract or higher scale of social action that is beyond the immediate material grasp of the individual and/or the local situation. Hence, the metaphoric language of frameworks, pillars, regimes, orders, worlds. As an example, consider Giesler’s research (2012) on the changing brand image of Botox through these two lenses. Giesler’s account (which takes the conceptualization of legitimacy and dynamics of legitimation largely for granted) notes the importance of medical and scientific expertise (e.g., authority drawn from Scott’s regulative frameworks), dominant discourses of femininity and pleasure (normative frameworks), and changing vocabularies (poison, a cosmetic procedure) in media coverage (cognitive frameworks) in shaping perceptions of Botox. (See Humphreys and Latour [2013] for a succinct review of how consumer behavior research has explicitly explored legitimacy dimensions.) Alternatively, consider how the brand image of Botox draws on different orders of worth, including the public esteem of youthfulness (Boltanski and Thévenot’s world of renown) or the relative efficiency (industrial world) and cost-effectiveness (market world) of Botox in comparison with surgical interventions. Situating Botox within these frameworks and regimes—in isolation and combination—encourages perceptions of legitimacy that, in turn, encourage individual and collective practices. Understanding the role of legitimacy and legitimation in the organization of ­consumption requires attention to the subprocesses, practices, and devices whereby consumption entities are embedded within more encompassing categories, and how that embedding is rendered credible and legitimate. Legitimacy is thus at play at multiple scales of action: the categories themselves (e.g., through convention and regulation, a

202   Jennifer Smith Maguire category is objectified as a set of identifiable attributes); an entity’s category membership (e.g., through criteria and lenses that isolate attributes of the entity in alignment with the attributes of the category and establish equivalence with other category members); the authority of judgments of categorization (e.g., categorization devices—sieving machines, filters, diagnostic tests, metrics, rules—must be robust and accepted); and the authority of those rendering judgments (e.g., through collective endorsement of the entity’s categorization, and high-visibility arbiters whose attributes align with the category of expert). Legitimation thus involves a multitude of concerns with (and unacknowledged metaphors for) classification systems and conventions, and the symbolic boundaries that constitute them; ranking systems, techniques and criteria of evaluation, and other instruments of classification; processes of comparison, normalization, and valuation; and forms of social prestige and the vested interests of cultural arbiters and gatekeepers on which rest processes of consecration and the accumulation of symbolic capital (Lamont 2012; see also Arsel and Bean 2013; Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Bourdieu  1993; Dobrev  2001; Espeland and Stevens  2008; Giesler 2012; Karpik 2010; Larsen 2016). A recurrent metaphor for the practical accomplishment of legitimation is that of “frame,” which Goffman (1974:27) uses to capture the “interpretive designs” through which people make sense of what they see and respond accordingly. As Scott (2014:173) notes, frames are used for sense making (deployed in the everyday, unthinking process of answering the questions “What does this mean?” and “What will I do?”) but also for sense giving (deployed strategically to direct the sense making of others). In both regards, frames have been especially useful for understanding the role of media representations in the discursive organization of consumption entities. Johnston and Baumann’s analysis of gourmet food magazines is an especially apt example. They examine the role of representational contextualization for the legitimation of new forms of culturally omnivorous “good taste” (2007), identifying two dominant sense-making frames—authenticity and exoticism—that encourage in the audience an understanding of certain forms of food consumption (including food stuffs, practices, sites, and producers) as high status. Their analysis specifies a number of qualities through which food writers embed food entities in these frames: geographic specificity, simplicity, personal connections, and historicism (for the authenticity frame) and foreignness/unusualness and excitement/norm breaking (for the exoticism frame). Johnston and Baumann suggest how these frames draw legitimacy from two more encompassing frameworks: liberal principles of democratic inclusivity and meritocracy, which are upheld by virtue of the omnivorous diversity of “worthy” choices on offer (such as hamburgers and rural, unsophisticated eateries, and not (just) traditional French cuisine and Michelin-starred restaurants); and traditional principles of cultural hierarchy, status, and distinction, which are reproduced through newly configured hierarchies (i.e., not every hamburger counts as “good taste”). In general, a range of studies have affirmed the importance of frames for the normative organization of consumption. In addition to the authenticity frame for sense making and sense giving in contemporary consumer markets (e.g., Beverland, Lindgreen, and

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   203 Vink 2008; Fuchs, Schreier, and van Osselaer 2015; Smith Maguire 2018b), other work has highlighted national and moral identity frames (e.g., Luedicke, Thompson, and Giesler 2010; Tian and Dong 2011), health and fitness frames (e.g., Smith Maguire 2008; Wong and King 2008), and aesthetics frames, such as those associated with modernism and craft (Arsel and Bean 2013; Campbell 2005). Scholars have also noted different types of frames. In their analysis of media representations of online gambling, for example, Humphreys and LaTour (2013) differentiate between frame labels (e.g., references to gaming vs. gambling) and “event sequence” (Barsalou 1992) frames (e.g., “rags-to-riches” vs. “get rich quick” stories). Through affiliations with labels and narrative structures with greater cultural legitimacy (gaming; rags to riches), media frames shift consumers’ perception of the cognitive legitimacy of online gambling, which in turn leads to greater likelihood of normative judgments of legitimacy. Frames (and other devices) draw authority from more encompassing regimes and, in turn, cast particular consumption entities as right, proper, and desirable. Nevertheless, a perception of legitimacy does not necessarily entail a particular course of action. The  question remains of how the process of legitimation organizes consumption practices (and social action generally) by making some ensuing actions more likely than others. To explain how, Weber utilizes the metaphor of “switchmen.” He understood human conduct to be directly governed by material and ideal interests; however, “ ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest” ([1913] 1978:280). To revisit Johnston and Baumann (2007): a culturally omnivorous foodie going out for dinner is governed by material and ideal interests (e.g., desires for food, pleasure, good value, status), but the ideas of democratic inclusivity and social distinction, distilled into a framework of omnivorous good taste and operationalized in authenticity and exoticism frames, determine the tracks available for realizing those interests. The gourmet hamburger is an available track; the fast food burger is not (unless appropriately framed as ironic). Metaphors analogous to Weber’s “tracks” are found elsewhere in the literature on legitimation and the organization of action. Individuals following a website’s interior decorating advice are “steered” by a “road map” (Arsel and Bean 2013:907, 911). The dominant aesthetic frameworks in the fashion magazine field provide the “grid that organizes modes of portrayal” and presents a “space of possible” (van der Laan and Kuipers 2016:81–82). Taken-for-granted organizational forms provide a “blueprint for organizing and conducting social action” (Dobrev 2001:420). Similarly, master narratives provide a “blueprint” for making sense of stories of others and ourselves (Andrews 2004:1) and a “blueprint for talking in socially legitimized ways” (Valsiner 2004:251). All of these metaphors (or rather, the social processes that they attempt to render comprehensible) work to the extent that they are internalized by individuals. (This is not to suggest that individual consumers’ metaphors in use are the same as those deployed by social scientists theorizing about legitimation!) The practical accomplishment of the organization of action hinges on individuals conforming to a lesser or greater degree to internalized collective social figurations—world images, aesthetic regimes, master

204   Jennifer Smith Maguire narratives. Conformity stems from the difficulty of not doing what is taken for granted, if not also because of (perceived or real) threats of penalties and/or promises of endorsements from the generalized other. The actual course of action taken will depend on individuals’ internalized structures (regimes, blueprints, grids, frames—what Elias (1998), and after him Bourdieu (1984), calls habitus) formed through biography, and through which they recognize and navigate (or not) the tracks available for realizing their interests, drives, and emotions in that context (cf. Elias 1998:73). More profoundly, then, the organization of action hinges on individuals’ internalization and assimilation of preformed social models and their capacity to establish equivalences between entities external to them: those, for Elias (1998), are the fundamental processes by which we become individuals. Legitimation is bound up in the processes that give the “we” to our “I,” and—as so much of the research on the legitimation of hierarchies and status characteristics suggests—the processes that rend our “we” apart. A bird’s eye view of legitimation thus highlights at least three overlapping families of metaphors: a higher order of abstract, encompassing world images, frameworks, and regimes; frames and other devices that accomplish legitimacy on an operational level, by drawing authority from more encompassing frameworks and making sense of—and giving sense to—consumption entities; and the capacity of those frameworks and frames to steer or guide action by virtue of their assimilation into the sense-making structures of individuals. Legitimacy is a basic facet of the organization of social action, and the processes of legitimation are at the center of what it is to be human. The chapter now turns to the organization of taste: what might be considered a particularly characteristic concern of the consumption sphere (though not exclusively so, especially in light of the consumerization of education, politics, medicine, and so forth).

The Gravitational Pull of Taste Taste is a central theme in sociological accounts of consumption and culture. Much of this work is closely informed by Bourdieu’s accounts (e.g., 1984, 1990, 1993) of how aesthetic dispositions and taste practices are implicated in social reproduction. For example, Bourdieu demonstrates how competence in legitimate bourgeois aestheticism serves as a form of cultural capital. The ability to adopt and deploy a disinterested stance vis-à-vis cultural experiences—to divorce appreciation from pleasure and sensation (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984:55, 486)—is revealed as a means of both social positioning and the reproduction of social stratification. Considerable research has extended Bourdieu’s insights regarding the implications of taste and cultural capital for the stratification of social groups (e.g., Friedman, O’Brien, and Laurison 2017; Lamont and Molnar 2001; Prieur and Savage 2013; Schimpfossl 2014). However, as per the previous section, the chapter’s focus is not on the ground level of experiences and performances of taste but on its macro-organizational dimensions.

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   205 To that end, the chapter now proposes the metaphor of gravitation1 as a way to conceptualize the capacity of taste to organize consumption entities (goods/services, ideas, practices, sites, actors and so forth) into repeated, recognizable, collective forms, generating observable, macro structures of consumption (cf. Warde 2014). As an example, consider Arsel and Bean’s (2013) research on “Apartment Therapy” (AT), a popular interior design and home consumption blog that follows a “soft modernist” aesthetic. Through visual images, stories, and advice, the blog offers an authoritative guide to middle-class consumers about what a “good home” should look like, distributing a common “roadmap” (2013:911) that frames particular domestic instances (objects, spaces, functions, events) as problems that need resolution through alignment with the AT aesthetic. Arsel and Bean suggest this constitutes a taste regime: “a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates the aesthetics of practice in a culture of consumption” (2013: 900). They argue that the AT taste regime provides an overarching logic for the combination of objects and practices so that one can “have a home that can readily be identified by others as belonging to the associated taste regime” (2013:913) and offers tangible, durable forms of cultural capital through the ritualization and routinization of AT-compliant preferences and practices (e.g., tidying schedules, buying fresh flowers). As a result, AT followers operate with a similar sense of what “fits” within the domestic sphere, resulting in recognizable patterns of home décor and inhabitation practices. With this example in mind, let us consider several points of isomorphism between gravitation and the social phenomenon of taste. First, as formulated by Newton in the late seventeenth century, gravity is a universal force. It acts between all points of mass, proportional to (the product of) their masses and inversely proportional to (the square of) the distance between them. As a metaphor, gravity suggests the pervasiveness of the social force of taste. It is not restricted to such fields as art, music, and literature but is coterminous with human endeavors. However, the absurdity of the metaphor pushes for two clarifications. On the one hand, gravity is proportional to mass. While a gravitational force is present between any two points of mass, only an entity that is sufficiently massive will generate a gravitational field: a force of gravitational attraction that is perceptible by another body. It is the effect of gravitational fields that is of consequence on an everyday level. Thus, the metaphor calls attention to internalized frames and structures of the habitus, aesthetic regimes, lifestyles and styles, ranking and classification systems that are sufficiently massive (legitimate) to exert a discernible force and organize other entities. By virtue of the AT taste regime’s gravitational field, the consumer perceives an attraction to, for example, an Eames lounge chair. Absent the presence of the AT regime (or another gravitational field), the gravitational attraction between consumer and chair would be imperceptible. On the other hand, gravity is also inversely proportional to distance. The pull of the AT gravitational field will increase for proximal bodies (e.g., kitchen tidying practices, living room paint colors, bedroom mattress options) but decrease for distal ones (e.g., automotive styles, political affiliations, university degrees). Second, a “weak equivalence” characterizes gravitational fields. Galileo, in the late sixteenth century, theorized gravity’s existence in relation to the properties of bodies in

206   Jennifer Smith Maguire free fall. If unimpeded by other forces, two bodies in the same gravitational field will fall at the same rate regardless of their composition or structure. The astronaut David Scott demonstrated this principle of “weak equivalence” during the 1971 Apollo 15 mission by simultaneously dropping a hammer and feather, which fell to the moon’s surface at the same rate. The metaphor suggests that the gravitational fields of taste regimes establish an equivalence between consumption entities; that is, they operate irrespective of the genre of consumption entities. The soft-modernist aesthetic of urbane, cosmopolitan sleekness married with warmth, coziness, and comfort (Rosenberg  2011:13) is not restricted to home furnishings or art. In the absence of other competing forces, entities as diverse as kitchen dish soap and the design of a front hall “landing strip” (Arsel and Bean 2013) are equally available points of mass to experience the AT regime’s gravitational pull. Equivalence does not mean, of course, that entities are the same. Consumption entities are “lighter” or “heavier” by virtue of their legitimacy (i.e., weight is an effect of gravity on mass) and may be less or more available to be swept up into the gravitational field. For example, an orthopedic armchair (the sort common in hospitals) would be “lighter” in the AT gravitational field than an Eames lounge chair (a modern design classic, with legitimacy conferred by, among others, New York’s Museum of Modern Art). In a different gravitational field (the ergonomically oriented aesthetic of the care home, for example), the situation could be quite different. Research on various consumption fields suggests the significance of lists, awards, and reviews (e.g., Allen and Germov 2010; Karpik 2010; Kiguru 2016; Zukin 2004) for increasing the “weight” of consumption entities. Winning an award, for example, increases the weight of a new wine style or first-time author, increasing the chances of being pulled into the orbit of a taste regime. Relatedly, in practice (i.e., outside of a vacuum), some bodies (e.g., a feather) fall more slowly because they are less able to overcome the other forces, such as air resistance—hence the importance of “streamlining devices” such as consumer reviews, which minimize possible resistance by selectively foregrounding particularly “aerodynamic” attributes and relations of use. Third, the material consequences of gravity vary by scale. At the scale of everyday life on the planet, gravity plays a critical role: it was gravity that drew heavier metallic elements to the core when the planet was first forming, giving Earth its magnetic field (and shield); gravity that set the conditions within which lifeforms evolved; gravity that allows Earth to retain its atmosphere. As a metaphor, these attributes underscore the importance of legitimacy for the conditions of existence of cultural fields. The size of the Earth results in a sufficient gravitational field to make gravity a perceptible aspect of daily life, from an apple’s path while falling from a tree to the exertion involved in jumping (which requires sufficient energy to overcome the force of gravity “holding” the jumper to the ground). The soft modernist aesthetic framework has sufficient legitimacy to render the AT taste regime “habitable”: it can support an “atmosphere” and attract followers, income from advertisers, endorsements and contributions from experts, and so on. As a result, we can “see” the effects of gravity: predictable patterns of objects aligned with the AT regime. Nevertheless, gravitational fields are not uniformly ordered.

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   207 An expense of energy can allow entities to defy gravity, such as an Apollo mission to the moon or an orthopedic chair in an AT-compliant living room. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. It is so much weaker than the others (the electromagnetic force, nuclear strong force, and nuclear weak force) that its effects can be completely ignored at the molecular scale. However, only gravity and the electromagnetic force are evident on a macroscopic scale, and unlike the electromagnetic force, gravity cannot be cancelled out. Thus, at the scale of astronomical distances, gravity is the dominant force, responsible for the large-scale structures of the universe. Through the process of accretion, gravity has pulled clouds of hydrogen and helium into stars, stars into galaxies, cosmic dust and rocks into planetesimals and planets. Gravity is the driving force behind the capacity of the universe “to build complex objects from simple building blocks” and is “one of the major sources of order and pattern” (Christian 2011:41, 42). If we proceed “as if ” the metaphor is true and elaborate within the isomorphism (Brown 1977), this might suggest that the AT regime (hypothetically understood for this thought experiment as the only regime exerting a force) has a weak capacity to organize an individual’s action: it shapes, but doesn’t determine action. At the level of microinteraction, other forces (material and ideal interests) may hold equal or greater sway in individual decisions: which bed sheets to buy (i.e., What’s on sale?); what color of paint to choose (i.e., What color goes with the rug?). But, at the more macro level of the individual’s biography, the gravitational effects of the AT regime come to dominate, pulling the domestic sphere’s “gases and dust” (e.g., furnishings, familial and self-care duties and functions) into recognizable styles and lifestyles, or what McCracken (1988) has called “Diderot unities.” And at the supermacro level, the AT regime’s gravitational pull may be the most significant force behind the fact that individual decisions of thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of geographically disparate consumers wielding an infinite diversity of interests nevertheless accrete into an identifiable pattern. That process of accretion is accomplished through individual decisions but is irreducible to them—the devices, regimes, and logics that guide actions exist independent of any individual. The center of gravity for taste regimes may be a “singular, centralized authority” or it may be “a loosely linked network of media related by an aesthetic sensibility” (Arsel and Bean 2013:900). If the AT regime is an example of the former, the latter is exemplified in the banal cosmopolitan aesthetic of “coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live/work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet” (Chayka 2016:np). Fourth, gravity is a force of attraction, such that each mass point exerts a pull on the other. (However, as noted earlier, that pull is appreciable only when one of the bodies is sufficiently massive to exert a gravitational field). The metaphor of a universal force of attraction is absurd; distaste and revulsion are also significant (Bourdieu  1984; Elias 1994). Rather, the metaphor suggests that taste is epiphenomenal. It is the effect of other forces at work: the attractive, gravitational force of legitimacy, and the pull and push of

208   Jennifer Smith Maguire pleasure and disgust via the electromagnetic force (Gerber  2017), both of which are bound up with conventions of civility and embodied sensation. Nevertheless, the metaphor underscores the dual character of legitimation and taste: attraction is a two-way process. The majority of this chapter has focused on the capacity of the consumption entity, suitably nested within a legitimating frame, to pull on the consumer. However, it is also the case—apropos of the metaphor—that the consumer reaches out and pulls on the consumption entity, by virtue of internalized social structures: the habitus. For Bourdieu (1984), habitus operates both as internalized externalities (a set of dispositions and preferences shaped by social norms) and externalized internalities (practices that “make sense” via the habitus). He suggests that all fully socialized agents operate with an internalized “system of classifying schemes” (Bourdieu 1977:124). This system, the habitus, provides a framework within which the senses operate with a “fuzzy systematicity and approximate logic” (1977:123). Senses operate via indeterminate evaluative pairs (e.g., hot/cold, heavy/light, dull/shiny), providing a basis of commensuration between multiple scenarios and moments, and ordering the world through an ambiguous system of “overall resemblance” (1977:111). For example, I have explored the role of habitus and taste as affective market devices in the organization of the natural wine field (Smith Maguire  2018a). There, the dominant taste regime is a taste for provenance, which is nested within the well-established legitimacy of terroir (a French concept that links wine quality to the environment in which it is produced), as well as an omnivorous authenticity frame and a disinterested bourgeois aestheticism. Interviews with wine makers and intermediaries reveal how a taste for provenance exerts an attractive force, serving as a dividing device (providing a principle of division between legitimate and illegitimate wines and winemaking techniques), operating device (a method of doing led by gut feeling and a sense of duty to quality and palate), and a coordinating device (a basis for mutual recognition between different actors and for coordination of engagement alongside or outside of formal regulative frameworks). Habitus thus pulls market actors toward particular decisions, actions, and relations. Fifth, differences between gravitational fields are a source of potential energy. In aerospace, this attribute is used in gravity assist maneuvers, whereby a spacecraft makes use of the relative movement and gravity of a planet (or other massive body) to increase or decrease its speed. Gravity “assists” by pulling on the spacecraft, thereby saving the craft from using a commensurate amount of fuel. The twin Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, were able to escape our solar system through several gravity assist maneuvers made possible by the highly unusual alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. This metaphor is particularly useful for thinking about the legitimation of new and notyet-legitimate cultural fields and consumption entities. For example, Dobrev (2001:421) examines how new newspapers in the emergent media environment of 1990s postsocialist Bulgaria got a “major boost” through “horizontal integration” with the established legitimacy of existing political parties. Alternatively, Wilner and Huff (2017) examine a twenty-five-year transformation of sex toys from illicit to legitimate. They note the importance of product design in shifting the focus from functional use to aesthetic

Taste, Legitimacy, and the Organization of Consumption   209 appeal and, in turn, garnering mainstream media and market endorsements. Particularly since 2008, vibrator design has reflected the dominant aesthetic of smartphones and personal technology. Like the Eames lounge chair, vibrators thus enter the orbit of a modernist aesthetic regime. Moreover, the potential energy to be drawn from taste regimes is not restricted to consumption. Espeland and Stevens (2008:423), for instance, note the role of aesthetic criteria (clarity and parsimony) for the legitimation of data visualizations, suggesting how gravitational fields (of quantification and aesthetics) might cumulatively co-amplify particular entities. Finally, the gravitation metaphor suggests that cultural producers and intermediaries are metaphorical gravitation engineers. Those attempting to shape the organization of consumption must bear in mind the gravitational properties of the entity in question: an established entity with the capacity to exert a gravitational field of its own (e.g., Château Lafite, a famous, First Growth Bordeaux wine); a not-yet-legitimate entity caught in a suboptimal orbit and in need of a gravity assist maneuver to move into a more optimal orbit (e.g., the trajectory of craft beer through alignment with the connoisseurial aspects of fine wine); a new or unknown entity in need of weighting and streamlining devices to boost its chances of being pulled into a lifestyle accretion (e.g., international wine competition awards giving English sparkling wine sufficient credibility to be listed at fine dining restaurants).

Conclusion This chapter has provided a bird’s eye view of how legitimation and taste effect an ­organizational influence on consumption, drawing out the metaphors that implicitly populate various accounts of legitimation and proposing gravitation as a metaphor for understanding the role of taste in the organization of consumption entities into discernible patterns, styles, lifestyles, and markets. In redressing the tendency in sociocultural studies of consumption to focus on the ground level of individual consumers, the chapter has identified normative, conventional, and habitual dimensions that speak to the fundamentally social nature of consumption and its organization. To treat the effects of legitimation and taste as if they are gravitational is thus to abandon the ground-level fallacy of the sovereign consumer. Gravitation is irreducible to the individual entities that exert it; it is a universal force that results in planets orbiting stars, stars orbiting within galaxies, galaxies within clusters, clusters within superclusters. Individual consumer decisions are pulled by internalized social structures; individual consumption entities are caught within the gravitational fields of taste regimes; aesthetic criteria and logics of sense and taste orbit more massive, encompassing frameworks of legitimacy. The patterns of consumption can thus be understood without either denying that these are accretions of individual actions or resorting to myths of sovereign, rational actors. This brings us, fittingly, to Einstein. For “everyday” purposes (including trips to the moon), gravity works as Newton describes it as a universal force. However, Einstein

210   Jennifer Smith Maguire demonstrated that gravity isn’t a force at all but a consequence of the curvature of space-time (itself a consequence of the unequal distribution of mass). That is, we can account for the everyday organization of consumption via the gravitational fields of taste regimes, narrative frames, orders of worth, and so forth, but we must acknowledge that these are not ultimate causes. Rather, they are consequences of the “curvature” of our space-time, as humanity’s pattern-seeking-ness responds to and bends around the unequal distribution of information. Thus, a sociocultural grasp of the organization of consumption—if it is to be useful for a conscious, ethically-oriented engineering of grav­ itational fields—must disrupt the gravitational pull of the mythic figure of the sovereign consumer and chart trajectories toward hierarchies of worth and value that are more, not less, inclusive, long-term oriented, and sustaining of life.

Note 1. Information on gravitation from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity; https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation; https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Equivalence_principle; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist; https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_biology), online physics teaching resources (https:// spaceplace.nasa.gov/what-is-gravity/en/; http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/152.mf1i. spring02/DiscoveringGravity.htm; https://opentextbc.ca/physicstestbook2/chapter/entropy -and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-disorder-and-the-unavailability-of-energy/), Christian (2011), and the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (2006 online edition).

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212   Jennifer Smith Maguire Johnston, J. and S. Baumann. 2007. “Democracy versus Distinction: A Study of Omnivorousness in Gourmet Food Writing.” American Journal of Sociology 113(1): 165–204. Karpik, L. 2010. Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kiguru, D. 2016. “Prizing African Literature: Creating a Literary Taste.” Social Dynamics 42(1): 161–174. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamont, M. 2012. “Towards a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation.” Annual Review of Sociology 38: 201–221. Lamont, M. and V. Molnar. 2001. “How Blacks Use Consumption to Shape Their Collective Identity.” Journal of Consumer Culture 1: 31–46. Larsen, H. 2016. Performing Legitimacy: Studies in High Culture and the Public Sphere. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International. Luedicke, M. K., C. J. Thompson, and M. Giesler. 2010. “Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict.” Journal of Consumer Research 36(6): 1016–1032. McCracken, G. 1988. Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nerlich, B. and D.  D.  Clarke. 2001. “Mind, Meaning and Metaphor: The Philosophy and Psychology of Metaphor in 19th-century Germany.” History of the Human Sciences 14(2): 39–61. Prieur, A. and M. Savage. 2013. “Emerging Forms of Cultural Capital.” European Societies 15(2): 246–267. Rosenberg, B. C. 2011. “Home Improvement: Domestic Taste, DIY, and the Property Market.” Home Cultures 8(1): 5–23. Schimpfossl, E. 2014. “Russia’s Social Upper Class: From Ostentation to Culturedness.” The British Journal of Sociology 65(1): 63–81. Scott, W.  R. 2014. Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests and Identities. 4th Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Smith Maguire, J. 2008. Fit for Consumption: Sociology and the Business of Fitness. London: Routledge. Smith Maguire, J. 2018a. “Taste as Market Practice: The Example of ‘Natural’ Wine.” Consumer Culture Theory Research in Consumer Behavior 19: 71–92. Bingley, West Yorkshire, UK: Emerald Publishing. Smith Maguire, J. 2018b. “The Taste for the Particular: A Logic of Discernment in an Age of Omnivorousness.” Journal of Consumer Culture 18(1): 3–20. Suchman, M. 1995. “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches.” Academy of Management Review 20: 571–610. Tian, K. and L.  Dong. 2011. Consumer-Citizens of China: The Role of Foreign Brands in the Imagined Future of China. London: Routledge. Valsiner, J. 2004. “Talking and Acting: Making Change and Doing Development.” pp. 245–256 in Considering Counter-Narratives: Narrating, Resisting, Making Sense, edited by M. Bamberg and M. Andrews. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. van der Laan, E. and G.  Kuipers. 2016. “How Aesthetic Logics Shape a Cultural Field: Differentiation and Consolidation in the Transnational Field of Fashion Images, 1982–2011.” Poetics 56: 64–84.

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chapter 10

Cu ltu r a l M a r k ets a n d Consecr ation Marc Verboord

From the perspective of neoclassical theory, markets can be perceived as forums between buyers and sellers— spaces where consumers purchase goods based upon their preferences as well as the supply and the conditions under which the supply is brought to the market (e.g., marketing, pricing, formats, access, or purchase options). Most sociologists, however, see markets as social arenas where various market actors interact in developing stable exchange relations as well as setting the value of goods while making sense of explicit or implicit social rules and conventions (Beckert and Aspers 2011; Fligstein and Dauter 2007). From this point of view, cultural markets can be conceived of as part of cultural fields, since they include institutional players—such as profit-seeking production and distribution companies, intermediaries who are gatekeepers to content, consumers—and are flanked by policy contexts, technological state-of-the-arts, and other contextual factors (Bourdieu 1993; see also Dolbec and Fischer 2015). Especially Bourdieu’s (1993) field theory has been hugely influential in thinking of how cultural value is constructed. It explicitly models cultural production in relation to market forces and emphasizes tensions between economic interests and artistic value attribution by connecting specific position-takings—inherent in aesthetic choices and expressions thereof—to the struggle for social status and power. Cultural consumer markets are to a large degree governed by processes of social stratification, distinction, and the symbolic properties of cultural taste. Yet the importance of institutional actors with the authority to consecrate (attribute specific forms of recognition or honor such as awards or canon inclusion) for shaping these properties has been increasingly questioned in research. Cultural consumption has become more “omnivorous” (mixing of highbrow and popular culture in single repertoires), implying that value assignment by experts less easily translates into the repertoires of audiences nowadays (Garcia-Álvarez, Katz-Gerro, and López-Sintas 2007; Peterson 2005). At the same time, the diversity in both market supply and how this is perceived in terms of worth has

216   Marc Verboord grown considerably: what it means to be “consecrated” seems to be in a constant state of flux (see Lizé and Renard 2016). Yet this chapter argues that it would be naive to conclude that symbolic differences no longer matter in contemporary cultural markets. They may have taken different forms or shapes, but symbolic inequalities remain persistent through the uneven distributions of resources yet continuing pursuits of status and power. I will outline possible avenues for future study by foregrounding empirical examples of two of the most important developments in cultural markets in recent decades: globalization and digitalization. Both trends have radically transformed the way producers bring products to the market, influencing what consumers perceive and how they access content, thereby creating new sorts of inequalities both at the individual level as well as at the macro level. For globalization, I focus on the representation of countries in audience markets and consecration markets on selected countries. For digitalization, I focus on digital access, with specific attention to the role of cultural mediators and consecrators. It should be signaled that I mostly confine myself to cultural markets for consumer goods (films, books, music, etc.). While field theory provides the overarching framework for this review, one of the conclusions will be that researchers need to pay greater attention to each other’s work.

Cultural Markets and Symbolic Inequalities Cultural markets are generally characterized by an abundant supply of unique experiential goods from which consumers make purchases based on accessibility, taste, price, and various types of quality cues (Caves 2000; Peltoniemi 2015). While cultural goods contain considerable creative elements, often associated with artistic properties or intentions, their market identity is ultimately dependent on classifications by institutional agents who are legitimated in certain societal contexts (DiMaggio 1987). Society has developed ways of interpreting this latent structure, mostly in hierarchical and dialectical terms: through distinctions between elite culture and mass culture, pursuing symbolic versus economic profits, “highbrow” versus “lowbrow,” and so on (e.g., Löwenthal, 1984). Classical studies by Bourdieu (1984, 1993), and DiMaggio (1982), among others, have traced such tensions back to the duality of material and symbolic production, to wider social inequalities in terms of social status and resources (or “capital”) to shape artistic or economic legitimation, and the affordances of consumption styles to distinguish oneself from other social groups. At least three important insights from field theory have been noted, each generating its own research streams. First, cultural fields’ connection to the fields of power fortifies social inequalities since forms of cultural capital that are benevolent to the dominant classes bring more social status. This sets off spirals of cultural reproduction, both for

Cultural Markets and Consecration   217 institutional agents (e.g., knowing how to “play the game” and avoiding radical deviations from existing norms helps to secure influential positions; Bourdieu 1993), but also for audiences (e.g., parental cultural socialization that is more line with educational curricula breeds successful children, e.g., Meier Jaeger and Breen 2016). These processes, however, also bear biased perceptions of culture and prompt social disparities like class differences (Bennett et al. 2009), gender inequality (Berkers, Verboord, and Weij 2016), and misrepresentation of cultural diversities (Erigha 2015). Second, attainments of economic and artistic success by cultural creators (artists, producers, etc.) are connected. As Bourdieu theorized (1993), conversion of symbolic capital into economic capital remains a strong career maker in cultural markets. The impact of critical recognition on sales is sometimes found in the short term, but it generally takes shape in the building of reputations over time (English 2014). Yet the influence also runs the other way. Studies of consecration of films and music found that having had previous commercial success increased one’s chances of winning awards (Cattani et al. 2014) or being included in the canon (Allen and Lincoln 2004; Schmutz and Faupel 2010). Third, cultural classification and symbolic production are shaped by the societal contexts in which they develop, which is why societies (can) differ in the degree to which cultural consumption can provide status (DiMaggio 1987; Lamont and Thévenot 2000). Cultural foci in educational curricula and the degree to which these are accessible for all social classes are some of these shaping circumstances. Less malleable but equally relevant is a country’s position in the global cultural field, both artistically and economically. Some countries have rich histories within a cultural domain which provide them with an almost taken-for-granted “cultural centrality” in the cultural world system (e.g., France in literature) (Casanova 2004; Heilbron 1999). Others—often the more populous countries—have an economic power through their large production output (“home market advantage”) that they export across the world (e.g., the United States and India in film) (Fu 2012). Dominant countries can exert influence through introducing and disseminating certain ways of doing (logics) at the institutional level. Despite these research threads, there is an increasing choir of critics who posit that— particularly—the Bourdieusian interpretation of cultural production as a field with autonomous and heteronomous poles has lost much of its explanatory power for understanding contemporary cultural markets (e.g., Beljean, Chong, and Lamont  2016; Hesmondhalgh 2006; Miles and Gibson 2016; Prior 2011). Some argue for more scrutinizing of individual experiences (Hennion 2001); others simply reject the “elitist” connotations that are implied in mobilizing the framework of “legitimate” culture (Miles and Gibson 2016). Although some of these critiques hold true in so far as they concern Bourdieu’s own work (e.g., Bourdieu’s neglect of large-scale production), they tend to gloss over the theoretical and empirical legacy of the underlying framework, with cross-links and bridges to the domains of consumption studies (see Warde 2014), neo-institutionalism (see Dowd 2011), world polity theory (see Meyer 2010), economic sociology (see Fourcade 2007), and critical media industry studies (see Wilkins et al. 2014). There is a large body of work that shows how the blurring of highbrow/popular

218   Marc Verboord does not mean the end of social boundaries (Lamont 1992) or distinction (Johnston and Bauman 2007; Roose, Van Eijck, and Lievens 2012), the insignificance of cultural capital (Prieur and Savage 2011), the breakdown of country differences (Janssen, Verboord, and Kuipers 2011), or the obsolescence of cultural institutions (Dowd 2011). In fact, in certain contexts, strong symbolic inequalities seem more marked than ever (cf. editorial logics versus commercial logics in fashion, Mears 2011; the widening gap between small and large publishing companies, Thompson 2010:146ff); in others new boundaries are emerging (e.g., the rise of quality television, McCabe and Akass 2007). All this is, of course, not to say that reputational regimes in cultural markets are dichotomous in nature or that “legitimate culture” is the sole benchmark of how cultural consumption is done. But if we accept that studying social inequalities matters in markets that cater for identity work, status distinctions, and representation, awareness of symbolic inequalities and their manifestations seems imperative. Having said this, the study of symbolic production and its impact on cultural markets does need to be revived in the light of recent transformations of how culture is produced and consumed. In this contribution, I deploy the prisms of globalization and digitalization, arguably the most important contemporary developments in cultural markets. Globalization has increased the supply and variety of available cultural products for consumers, yet it has also enabled producers to leverage scale advantages for increasing market shares and (de)prioritizing particular contents. Digitalization has disrupted the balance of power between consumers and producers through new access devices, distribution models, and, more generally, forms of value creation. Both trends raise questions on how inequalities in cultural markets evolve. They ask which individuals are able to acquire what content and, at a macro-level, which values are represented in the marketplace. Moreover, they reiterate the salience of analyzing the encounters of production and consumption, and which role intermediaries play (as gatekeepers, consecrators, or, put more fashionably, curators). The complexity of these developments, however, also calls for more dialogue between research streams rather than increased specialization.

Globalization Over the past decades we have witnessed a clear increase in the exchange of cultural products across the globe. This has manifested itself not only in terms of trade but also with regard to transnational collaborations of companies and artists (Crane  2002), exchange of formats and production styles (Kuipers 2011), and cultural gatekeepers discussing foreign arts and culture (Janssen, Kuipers, and Verboord 2008). While growing international exchange is viewed by some as evidence for increasing openness toward different cultures, thereby invigorating cross-cultural understanding and creating conditions conducive to coexistence, others emphasize the underlying inequalities in how global production is structured. Developing cultural content and bringing products to the market have become increasingly complex and costly since cultural markets are

Cultural Markets and Consecration   219 more and more considered winner-takes-all markets in which big profits are made from a relatively small group of products (Caves 2000; Elberse 2013). The race to producing these “blockbusters” requires heavy investments which in the long run ushers companies into seeking alliances and mergers at a global scale (Caves 2000; Hesmondhalgh 2013:185ff). The way these transformations take place shows differences across fields. For instance, the field of book publishing has seen a transition from an editorial to a market logic in the second half of the twentieth century (Thornton 2004; Verboord 2011). In the past decades, this resulted into a hunt for “big books” (Thompson 2010), which culminates in increasing isomorphic decision-making (Franssen and Kuipers 2013). In the field of popular music, major record companies combined acquiring ownership of competitors with providing some degree of autonomy to their subsidiary labels in order to profit optimally from the talent scouting capacities of these smaller units (Dowd 2004). Increased contacts with agents in other parts of the worlds—through having been incorporated in larger production units, searching for collaborations, or meeting at international events—has led to converging production logics. Everyday practices, discourses, and decision criteria of individual agents are becoming more similar (Kuipers 2011; Lavie and Dhoest 2015) in line with neo-institutional and world polity theory. Still, to claim that market supply is now coming from a completely transnational field in which borders no longer matter for cultural production seems unrealistic. Concentrating production in specific geographical spaces is advantageous due to the collaborative and networked nature of making culture (Scott 2005). Not just human capital, but arguably also symbolic capital tends to cluster, often around dominant cultures and languages (e.g., Paris as capital of literature; Casanova 2004). But do historically grown inequalities between places of production remain intact in contemporary cultural fields, or does globalization imply a breakdown of hierarchical constellations? How the representation of global regions in the consumer markets of film, pop music, and fiction books has developed in the past decades is summarized in Figures 10.1–10.3. The figures show for selected regions how prolific they were—concretely, their market share—in publicly available popularity rankings as well as consecration lists. The first indicator concerns charts (box office lists, bestseller lists, etc.) in six countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which represent some of the largest cultural markets in the world.1 Importantly, what is shown is the market share abroad: domestic success is not included (for example, the success of French products is only assessed in the other five countries). Comparable consecration instruments across genres are difficult to find. Therefore, the plotted information differs per genre: best film award nominations at international film festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Chicago, Sundance, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Sao Paulo), inclusion in end-of-year lists of music critics (selected pop magazines from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands), and winning international and foreign literary awards (Nobel Prize, Neustadt Prize, and others). For film and book awards, it was decided not to distinguish between domestic and foreign success, as many awards had an international jury and the samples were relatively small. Further details can be found in the Appendix.

220   Marc Verboord 80 70

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Figure 10.1  Regions of origin of films in box office lists of selected countries, 1960–2015.

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Figure 10.2  Regions of origin of films among nominations (including winners) of selected film festivals, 1960–2015.

Figures 10.1–10.3 show that there are no general trends that exceed specific cultural markets, and this suggests that it remains important to consider the particularities of genres and fields for understanding developments. Audience markets are to a large degree ruled by Anglo-American artists and companies, but only in the field of film have domestic products been dwarfed by the steady rise of US products since the 1970s. Particularly after 1980, Hollywood’s domination started to take gigantic proportions—suggesting that the production logics of the “blockbuster” permeated the global market for film (Caves 2000:161ff). From 2000 onward another trend should be mentioned: a substantial part of the box office hits concerns international co-productions, the majority of which concerns American involvement.

Cultural Markets and Consecration   221 40 35 30 25 20 15 10

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Figure 10.3  Regions of origin of pop music artists for pop music single charts of selected countries, 1960–2015.

The audience markets for pop music and books—arguably less capital intensive in nature—show less pronounced inequalities. Here, the United States has to share some of its market leadership with the United Kingdom, and in the case of pop music the gap with other countries actually seems to be closing in the 2010s. Space limitations prevent a detailed discussion, but two qualifications regarding this trend can be made. First, there seems to have been a change in opportunity space through the rise of particular music styles—hip-hop and electronic dance music—in the 1990s: the former has in many countries become a highly localized genre (domestic rappers being preferred over American ones); the latter has enabled individuals from more peripheral places (e.g., European mainland) to build careers through technology rather than capital. Second, in the past decade, we have seen a remarkable number of non-American artists moving to the United States to build a highly successful career (e.g., Rihanna, Justin Bieber). Growing diversity in nationalities thus partly disguises converging production logics. The book market remains relatively immune to this trend, though the increase in “genre fiction” (Verboord 2011) has arguably been mostly at the advantage of American and English authors. Nevertheless, more than for film or music, book authors from the periphery regularly convert their symbolic capital (critical acclaim, awards) into commercial success (e.g., Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami). And, similar to pop music, innovation can potentially also be a key to turning around global inequalities: the Scandinavian take on crime fiction (“Nordic noir”) has been recognized by audiences as distinctive from Anglo-American originals. Also for cultural consecration there is no pattern that can be strained across cultural genres (see Figures 10.4–10.6). Both for film and books, award juries seem to have become more aware of the variety of worthy products across the world. Both European cinema and literature—indicated here by France, Italy, and Germany—have given in much of their privileged status, while for instance Asian cinema has become an important factor in film festivals. The status of Middle/South American literature should be interpreted

222   Marc Verboord 70 60

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Figure 10.6 Regions of origin of fiction books authors for winners international literary awards, 1970–2015.

Cultural Markets and Consecration   223 with care, and it partly signals the language-oriented structure of the literary field: in the 1970s and 1980s truly international awards were rare, but the Spanish-language subfield was one of the first to create such honors. Size of the language area thus provides an advantage to become consecrated (see also Casanova 2004; Sapiro 2010). For pop music, we see none of this global convergence. Music critics—and international awards cannot repair this bias as they are basically nonexistent—predominantly focus on US and UK music. Whereas music charts have become more open to global sounds, critics stick to Anglophone music. Another perspective on these trends is to examine the overall dispersion of success across countries. By calculating the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for every market-year combination, it is possible to see how concentrated various markets have been over time.2 Figure 10.7 displays the results. Only in one market do we find a strong increase in concentration according to country of origin: the box office rankings of film. In line with the blockbuster thesis, we see that the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index—based on data in six markets—grew substantially between 1970 and 1990 from 23 percent up to 81 percent. This high level of market concentration is, unsurprisingly, caused by the box office domination of US films in the countries under study. In the years that followed, the index dropped to 61–67 percent, but one should not forget that international co-productions which involved the United States are not included in the US market share. In the period 2000–2015 these co-productions comprised about 10 to 15 percent of the market, which implies that the indexes for these years are underestimates. Concentration levels in other popular markets are far more consistent. Both book charts and pop charts fluctuate around 20 percent. Consecration markets display a similar pattern of stability. The largest equality among production countries is found for the domains of literary awards and film festival awards. Here, the Herfindahl-Hirschman 90 80 70 60

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Figure 10.7  Herfindahl Index for market share countries of various indicators, 1960–2015.

224   Marc Verboord Index revolves around a basis of 5–10 percent. Inspection of the countries that generated the consecrated products shows that within these markets it is far more common to include non-Western artists. Arguably, award juries—often international in composition— seek a certain balance in nominations within years as well as appointing winners over the years. Whereas certain cultural logics thus seem to guide this decision-making (in line with neo-institutional theory), the popularity markets are subjected to aggregation processes beyond institutional control. Yet we cannot conclude that consecration markets overall show lower concentration levels. The focus of pop music critics is highly skewed toward US and UK popular music, resulting in concentration levels from 35 percent up to 42 percent. This suggests that the aesthetics standards set within this cultural form are more bound by the conventions that originate in the dominant centers of production. Examining macro-level data enables us to probe presumptions of change and stability and make comparisons that are difficult to achieve at the case study level. The trends shown here—while obviously in need of further examination—point at huge discrepancies in which culture receives attention from audiences, but also critics, and how many of these inequalities are very persistent. At the same time, these trends trigger various questions and provisos. One obvious elaboration is how we can develop explanatory models at the individual level. A large part of micro-level consumption studies addressing globalization focus on the distinction between foreign versus domestic content. A consistent finding is that the consumption of foreign culture—which is often conceptualized as cosmopolitan taste—is more common among the higher educated than the lower educated (Meuleman et al. 2018; Rössel and Schroedter 2015). What constitutes “foreign,” however, is not always clear. When unpacking this dichotomy either by distinguishing more or less central production regions in cultural choices as well as legitimacy levels (Meuleman and Savage 2008) or by comparing consumption behaviors with social attitudes and underlying dispositions (Woodward et al. 2008), more complex patterns emerge. They are still stratified and related to social inequalities in many ways, but more nuanced in the sense that seemingly contrasting orientations can coexist within single repertoires. At the production level, the main challenge seems to be how to reconcile the accounts of hegemonic trends in the cultural and media industries with increased cross-national collaboration, emergence of transnational logics of production, and glocalization of supply. Thus, on the one hand we see increased conglomerization, concentration of ownership of production, wealthy countries using their privileged position to dominate the market (Hesmondhalgh 2008, 2013). On the other hand, artistic labor mobility seems higher than ever and previously “peripheral” countries can attain (at least in some industries) competing positions by adopting cheaper technologies and mimicking production styles from countries with more dominant positions in the international field. This also encouraged collaboration—as observed in the film field—and the development of exportable product formats (e.g., in the traditionally highly nationally organized television field), which allow glocalization within an economically controlled production framework (Kuipers 2015).

Cultural Markets and Consecration   225 Third, there are considerable differences across cultural genres and media formats in how national productions settle within audience repertoires (Straubhaar 2007; 2014). Both the film and pop music markets are to a large extent globally dominated by American products, but pop music has the advantage of being less capitalized, allowing local industries to compete by leveraging the cultural proximity factor (Marshall 2013). At the same time, the results for pop music charts and book bestseller lists are less pronounced, which is probably related to the specifics of how goods are produced (see also Verboord and Brandellero 2018). Book markets remain relatively nationally oriented due to the language-dependent nature of the product. Production is relatively cheap, and only a fraction of the output is translated (e.g., Sapiro 2010), which counters the inequality that is perceived in a high-capital market such as film. How cultural formats fare on the global market is also dependent on the criteria through which audiences perceive and evaluate products. Hollywood films—and to a certain extent also bestseller list books in the genres of romance fiction and thrillers—thrive on clear market identities (Zuckerman and Kim 2003). Popular music styles, however, seem more congruent with criteria of authenticity and self-expression, which explains why music styles such as hiphop have branched into innumerable glocalized versions (Cheyne and Binder 2010). Some of these issues should arguably be addressed using different approaches. Parallel to survey-based and content analysis-based studies of how consumers make choices in the global marketplace, media reception studies have, in the past decades, uncovered the complex ways in which the cultural practices of individuals can be understood. Liebes and Katz’s (1990) seminal work on the transnational reception of Dallas remains an important vantage point. Not only did they show the huge discrepancies in how audiences across the world extracted meaning from the same American soap television series but also how these differences were related to the identity work of audiences. In the past thirty years it has become clear that the way people interact with cultural products should be seen as a sedimentary model, in which various layers of identities as well as accompanying institutional arrangements inform individuals’ preferences and behavior (e.g., Athique 2016; Straubhaar 2014). Perceptions are influenced by how consumers see themselves and their relationship with local, regional, national, and even transnational contexts which can result in experiencing “cultural distance” or “cultural proximity” toward products from other parts of the world. Consequently, people’s cultural orientation depends on geo-cultural and cultural-linguistic ties between consumer and product origin but also on the dominant interpretative schemes within relevant localities (see Lamont and Thévenot 2000). Despite these insights in the processing of cultural expressions, the symbolic valence of the “global” is relatively understudied. Instead of complementing one another, quantitative and qualitative research strands seem to be diverging. Whereas the former increasingly seeks complexities of data analysis, the latter appears to have turned its attention mainly toward specific audience fractures (e.g., large body of work on diaspora, the emergence of fan studies) (see overview in Athique 2016). We know little about how general audiences in the marketplace perceive the distinctions between foreign and domestic, between “global culture” and “local culture,” how they compare the

226   Marc Verboord affordances and identity of various forms of mediated culture, and how this differs across contexts (but see Iwabuchi 2010; Skrbis and Woodward 2007). In other words, while cultural markets show clear signs of globalization and transnationalization, how the “global” is invoked in the minds of consumers—and thus how global inequalities play out in practice—is only partially clear. An important subquestion is how production and mediation contexts affect such perceptions, since the open cosmopolitan gaze of cultural critics and consecrators does not necessarily reach audiences anymore in times of increasing marketization. Cultural media coverage not being affected by commerce (Schmutz 2016) can also be interpreted as increasingly segregated subfields or markets where specific interpretations of global and local in relation to value attribution coexist in parallel worlds.

Digitalization There is little dispute that the rise of digital technologies—file-sharing software, Internet, smartphones, and so on—has radically transformed cultural markets in the past decades concerning consumers’ purchasing modes, companies’ business models, and overall power relations (Elberse 2013; Hesmondhalgh 2013; Nowak 2016; Smith and Telang 2016; Wikström 2013). What the precise consequences of these transformations are, and will be in the long run, is less evident. For one thing, developments in technology and the way new technologies are appropriated are still ongoing. Whereas in the 2000s the growth of webstores (at the expense of physical stores), file-sharing via computers and laptops, and the rise of new cultural mediators (e.g., bloggers, webzines) were seen as prominent trends, in the 2010s attention has shifted to streaming, the ubiquity of smartphones, and the importance of social media as new tastemakers. Second, one should distinguish first- and second-order consequences of digitalization. While most attention is paid to direct impacts such as engagement in peer production (e.g., Hargittai and Walejko 2008), income loss due to piracy (Smith and Telang 2016), or the emergence of fan sites (Jenkins 2006), digital transformations can modify existing behaviors and lifestyles in unpredicted ways. For instance, the rise of free news sites and social media has had a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to pay for regular newspapers, which arguably threatens the institution of professional journalism. At a deeper level, it appears that information-evaluation criteria and beliefs in legitimated credentials are morphing into more subjectified and value-congruent perceptions of truth (cf. fake news) (Carter et al. 2016). In a formidable review, Smith and Telang (2016) identify the following as the most relevant changes to cultural markets.3 First, the development of MP3 technology has enabled consumers to access content (a) online, which has led to the decline of brick-andmortar retailing, and (b) for free, which has increased piracy rates. Second, traditional production companies have lost a substantial part of their market share, since this largely relied on control of distribution and price differentiation. Third, new companies, often

Cultural Markets and Consecration   227 originating in an online context, such as Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Spotify, have challenged traditional majors by (a) obtaining huge market shares in (legal) online distribution, and (b) developing new business models that rely on proprietary consumer data at the individual—rather than demographic—level, which enables them to do more fine-grained market analyses and aim marketing at individuals. Fourth, consumers and artists without institutional affiliation or business support currently have the digital tools at their disposal to create and distribute content themselves. How these developments translate into cultural consumer behaviors and, more specifically, affect inequalities remains to be seen. For instance, it is no forgone conclusion that all cultural consumers have made the transition to digital access methods. An analysis of European audiences shows that there are huge differences between countries in how common it is to use the Internet to access or download audiovisual goods and music (vertical axis in Figures 10.8 and 10.9).4 Frontrunners are the Sweden and Denmark (with more than 40 percent claiming to make online purchases on a weekly basis), followed by Romania, Slovenia, Poland, the Netherlands, and Finland (for music), and Czech Republic, again the Netherlands and Finland, and the United Kingdom (for audiovisual content). However, many of the larger European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain show lower percentages of online access (between 20 and 25 percent). Even larger differences are observed for the willingness to pay—arguably one of the most hotly debated consequences of digitalization in cultural markets (horizontal axis in Figures 10.8 and 10.9). Only in three countries did a majority of the persons who made at least one online purchase in the past twelve months actually pay—either per item or via a subscription—for the purchase: Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In most countries consumers of audiovisual content used the subscription model for audiovisual content, if they indicated that they paid. For music, this pattern was less clear. In countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany more than

% AV online (at least once a week)

50 45 40

Czech

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Bulgaria Netherlands Slovenia Poland Lithuania Hungary Belgium Austria Germany Spain

35 30 25 20

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20 40 60 % AV paid-per-item & subscription

80

Figure 10.8  Online access to audiovisual media for selected European countries, 2015.

228   Marc Verboord

% Music online (at least once a week)

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15

Romania

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Denmark

Austria Netherlands Poland Hungary Finland Belgium Czech Italy Germany France Spain Lithuania

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Figure 10.9  Online access to music for selected European countries, 2015.

25 percent of the online consumers used paid-per-item, whereas 12 to 15 percent used subscriptions. On the other hand, in Scandinavia, with Sweden being the home country of Spotify, subscription models were three to five times more frequent. Obviously, inequalities in access are also situated at the individual level. Younger people are more likely to use the Internet for finding culture but also higher educated individuals tend to turn more often to the Web (Leguina et al. 2017; López-Sintas et al. 2014). Unreported analyses with the Eurobarometer data confirm the results of these previous studies. To a certain degree, these inequalities perhaps not only reflect differences in digital skills and in how new affordances are appropriated but also point at the symbolic properties that new forms of access have for new generations. Arguably, having subscriptions on Netflix or Spotify is for some a new form of cultural distinction. A second—more speculative issue—concerns the implications of digitalization for supply and demand in markets. Critics have pointed out how the reliance on the Internet—via search engines, social media networks, content platforms—might lead to taste convergence (cf. filter bubble, Pariser 2011. This does not even have to be a conscious avoidance (as in theories of medium selectivity). As was shown through experimental research, popularity markers influence choice behavior in cultural markets to the extent that existing inequalities in popularity tend to be exacerbated as individuals see these cues as quality signals (Salganik et al. 2006). Such general mechanisms may be fortified further as online spaces are increasingly networked spaces (Van Dijck 2013). Structural features of online contexts shape how individuals make use of these spaces, by for instance rewarding different types of action (Levina and Arriaga 2014). The emphasis that online platforms place on network effects and data marketization implies that their users are increasingly exposed to similar content. How will these developments affect consumer tastes in the long run—a stronger adherence to blockbusters, or a more diversified field full of niches? And what will it mean for the supply—more of the same or

Cultural Markets and Consecration   229 not? A tighter grip on countries with “central positions” on what is consumed? Many pundits, but not all, state that we are moving toward winner-takes-all markets (e.g., Elberse 2013). One thing that most theorists seem to agree upon is that the Internet has spurred the rise of an attention economy (Webster 2014). Low barriers to entry have increased supply, and therefore audiences are presented with an abundance of product. Ironically, gatekeepers—traditionally the ones to make first selections to prevent information overload—have not transitioned well into the digital age. That is, the cultural intermediaries who deployed their years of building up cultural capital for the dual instrument of consumer recommendation and symbolic production have seen their platforms (print media) being replaced by online platforms (Kristensen and From 2015). More drastically, the advent of Internet technologies has enabled consumers to engage in word-of-mouth practices beyond their face-to-face contacts, which implies that for many consumers cultural information exchange thus increasingly relies on peer production (Verboord 2010). There is some evidence that this leads to a decline of well-argued evaluations (Verboord 2014). But ultimately the legitimacy of cultural mediators will depend on whether they will able to sustain the belief in their field position. At stake could be the cultural heritage and value systems that have been in place for decades (or more), but that need a certain collective support in order to survive (Bourdieu 1993). Of course, some consider these systems as “elitist,” which is where debates on digitalization concur with those on cultural omnivorousness. One of the challenges will be to see how curating—situations in which persons add value to the process of gatekeeping—will develop vis-à-vis processes of filtering—in which selections are largely made via algorithms (e.g., automatically generated recommendation in webstores). Curating represents in certain ways the notions of expertise, symbolic production, and top-down communication, which seems at odds with the rise of peer production and the networked nature of social media. Yet the need for quality cues, the struggle of individual agents to achieve recognition, and the subsequent status dynamics also emerge in online contexts (Levina and Arriaga 2014). Perhaps the most pertinent example is that of fashion vloggers who—drawing on very different field logics than traditional fashion experts—have exerted a huge impact on the fashion market (Dolbec and Fischer 2015). Filtering, of course, more closely fits the model of cultural production that technology companies like to present as more democratic, enabling consumers to find what they want (see Smith and Telang 2016). This vision of big data as objective and value-free consumer tools is obviously unwarranted (Boyd and Crawford 2012; Webster 2014), but for many consumers the combination of user-friendliness and alleged personalization is appealing. To what extent do audiences use these various information sources and social cues to inform their consumption decision-making, and how important still are acts of consecration? Drawing on Dutch survey data from 2015, Table 10.1 compares how consumers in different age categories report to employ recommendations of cultural mediators and consecrators.5 Overall, the mean scores are very low implying that many consumers do not report having been influenced—which could mean they were indeed not influenced or that such influence was rather unconscious. Yet the age patterns are very clear: for all

Table 10.1  Results Univariate ANOVA Choice for Cultural Product Influenced by Information Sources, by Age (N = 846) High Rating Other Internet Users 16–25 26–39 40–55 56–69 70+ F-value age Linear contrast estimate

.933 .710 .406 .216 .076 30.57*** −.698 ***

Positive Review Internet User .854 .563 .368 .159 .062 30.021*** −.629 ***

Positive Review Newspaper Critic .555 .325 .375 .464 .609 3.740** .078

Listing in Bestseller List/Chart .626 .430 .368 .283 .252 5.991*** −.283***

Recommendation in Webstore (via Algorithm)

Winning of Award/Prize

Recommendation from Someone in TV Talk Show

.608 .478 .453 .323 .225 6.601*** −.291***

.771 .440 .355 .337 .269 9.578*** −.351***

.693 .433 .518 .614 .477 2.622* −.080

Source: Internet and Culture in the Netherlands 2015. Estimated marginal means. All models control for educational level and sex. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, and * p