Experiencing parenthood,care and spaces of hospitality

Drawing on research conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom, this paper explores how parenting and care provision is entangled with, and thus produced through, consumption in hospitality venues. We examine how the socio‐material practices of hospitality provision shape the enactment of parenting, alongside the way child‐parent/consumer‐provider interactions impact upon experiences of hospitality spaces. We argue that venues provide contexts for care provision, acting as spaces of sociality, informing children's socialization and offering temporary relief from the work of parenting. However, the data also highlight various practices of exclusion and multiple forms of emotional and physical labour required from care‐providers. The data illustrate children's ability to exercise power and the ways in which parents’/carers’ experiences of hospitality spaces are shaped by their enactment of discourses of ‘good parenting’. Finally, we consider parents’/carers’ coping behaviours as they manage social and psychological risks associated with consumption in such public spaces of leisure.     

Parental style,parental practices,and socialization outcomes: An investigation of their linkages in the consumer socialization context

This study aims to generate insights into the mechanisms through which parental style influences adolescent consumer socialization. Toward this end, it examines two alternative conceptual frameworks: (1) The mediation model which posits two key dimensions of parental style (responsiveness and demandingness) as antecedent variables affecting adolescent consumer socialization directly and indirectly through parental socialization practices and (2) the moderation model which posits each parental style dimension as a moderator of the link between parental socialization practices and adolescent socialization outcomes. The influences of maternal and paternal parental styles on adolescent socialization outcomes are investigated separately and compared. Results provide stronger support for the mediation model. They also show that mothers’ parental style and practices are more influential than fathers’ in shaping adolescents’ consumer socialization outcomes.     

Model Hong Kong malls and their development in mainland China: consumer iconicity and the trans/national capitalist class

Relational geographies of capital and consumption between Hong Kong and mainland China have been forming through tourism engagement in Hong Kong and the development of model Hong Kong malls in China. This analysis of urban restructuring for the consumer economy identifies how landmark Hong Kong malls are reproduced in major cities of China by networks of Hong Kong property firms and mainland elites. Adapting Leslie Sklair's formulation of architectural iconicity in the culture‐ideology of consumerism, this economic relationship, which restructures urban space, constructs iconic built forms and develops Chinese consumerism, marks hegemonic opportunities of a national capitalist class, suggesting how Chinese state capitalism and its Hong Kong networks limit and incrementally engage transnational capital while instantiating Hong Kong‐style consumer iconicity. New malls in mixed‐use developments in China often occupy sites of historical markets and thus affirm Sklair's prediction that iconic architecture increasingly proclaims consumer space while claiming historic forms of public space.     

The Perilous Freedoms of Consumption: Toward a Theory of the Conduct of Consumer Conduct

This paper considers recent work on “governmentality” for the manner in which researchers in this area have regarded the practice of consumption. Governmentality theorists (Rose, DuGay, Dean) have examined the specific cultural and economic conditions of neo‐liberalism, and concluded that practices of governmentality are aimed at producing an “enterprising self” – a mode of self regulation centered on autonomy, flexibility and instrumentality in professional and institutional life. However, research in governmentality studies has tended to underemphasize the practices of the consumer, or reduced them to a dependent set of practices to that of professional, productive life. Through an examination of consumption as a realm of carnivalesque and liminal self transformation, the thesis on governmentality is adapted to the unique conditions of consumption. Moreover, the distinctions between production and consumption, once relegated to stable institutional practices, are argued to fall under the responsibilities of individuals, who become talented at marking the boundaries of consumption as a realm of immersion, ludic behavior and expressive play. The necessity to develop these skills becomes all the more urgent as consumption becomes increasingly powerful in undermining the economizing logics of everyday life (partly as a result of increasing appeals to unplanned purchases, partly through the extension of consumer credit). To confront these powerful influences, new skills are required for the fixing of these boundaries. The paper concludes with a comment on the case of the “compulsive shopper”, whose techniques of self restraint are inscribed through the governmentality of consumption.     

Popular Music Cultures, Media and Youth Consumption: Towards an Integration of Structure, Culture and Agency

Youth, media and popular music studies have developed in separate fields of research, resulting in a lack of integration of key areas of enquiry, such as the relationship between the cultural and structural in youth music consumption and the role of media industries in 'framing' such a process. A more recent focus on popular music as a media culture suggest a way forward in exploring links between production, mediation and consumption of music and youth consumer practices. This article reviews three such frameworks: (i) the production of consumption, (ii) production of culture/cultures of production and (iii) cultures of consumption, evaluating their contribution to a more integrated understanding of how youth consume music as a structurally and culturally mediated process. Controversies over youth 'download culture' and evidence of regulatory changes in the global music industry and its impact on how youth consumers can access music media, underlines the need to pursue a research integration agenda, drawing popular music and youth consumption research closer together. Yet it remains the case that both approaches exhibit a structural vs. cultural divide over youth consumption and its relationship to the global music industry, offering optimism and pessimism in equal measure.     

Consumption in the Korean Wedding Ritual: Wedding Ritual Values, Consumer Needs, and Expenditures

Recently, consumer researchers have been interested in rituals that concisely express the consumption system in a culture. This article studies the Korean wedding ritual. The particular focus is on consumer values, needs, and expenditures related to Korean weddings. Research hypotheses were developed by analyzing the consumption phenomena in a sociocultural context and using focus groups and in-depth interviews. The author suggests that hedonic values relating to wedding rituals influence conspicuous and female-focused consumption. Implications of the study and further consumption research issues are discussed.     

Wins,Winning and Winners: The Commercial Advertising of Lottery Gambling

This study analyzed a sample of 920 lottery ads that were placed or played in Atlantic Canada from January 2005 to December 2006. A content analysis, involving quantitative and qualitative techniques, was conducted to examine the design features, exposure profiles and focal messages of these ads and to explore the connections between lottery advertising and consumer culture. We found that there was an “ethos of winning” in these commercials that provided the embedded words, signs, myths, and symbols surrounding lottery gambling and conveyed a powerful imagery of plentitude and certitude in a world of potential loss where there was little reference to the actual odds of winning. The tangible and emotional qualities in the ads were especially inviting to young people creating a positive orientation to wins, winning and winners, and lottery products that, in turn, reinforced this form of gambling as part of youthful consumption practices. We concluded that enticing people with the prospects of huge jackpots, attractive consumer goods and easy wins, showcasing top prize winners, and providing dubious depictions that winning is life-changing was narrow and misleading and exploited some of the factors associated with at-risk gambling.     

Girls being Rey: ethical cultural consumption,families and popular feminism

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that consumers of popular culture engage in practices of ‘ethical cultural consumption’, whereby the consumption of cultural texts is imagined as having the potential to ‘do good’ both individually and socio-politically. The paper explores data from an online questionnaire and drawing activity with girls aged 5–10 and their parents on the experience of costume playing as Rey from the contemporary Star Wars trilogy. Imagined as a ‘girl who can do anything’, Rey represents a new kind of popular feminist hero and role model for girls, enabling a degree of critique of normative gendered role models for children. ‘Being Rey’ also represents a deterministic project through which parents aim to cultivate the ‘right’ kind of girls, seeking to instil the resilience to ‘cope’ with unknown futures. More than a purely individual project, we argue that parents invest in an individualized idea of doing ‘good’ through consumption, drawing on a notion of the consumer as a political actor with the power to affect social change. Investigating the project of participating in and consuming culture ‘ethically’ allows for an exploration of what it means to ‘be political’ and ‘do good’ as a consumer in neoliberalism.     

The discreet charm of the children of the bourgeoisie: economic capital and its symbolic expressions at an elite business school

We address a largely neglected issue in contemporary research on cultural class divisions: economic capital and its associated lifestyles and symbolic expressions. Using qualitative interviews, we explore how adolescents from wealthy elite backgrounds, namely students at Oslo Commerce School (OCS), traditionally one of the most prestigious upper‐secondary schools in Norway, demarcate themselves symbolically from others. They draw symbolic boundaries against students at other elite schools in Oslo, more characterized by backgrounds with high cultural capital, accusing them of mimicking a ‘hipster’ style. Within the OCS student body, we describe identity work centring on styles of material consumption and bodily distinctions. The most salient dividing line is between those who manage to master a ‘natural’ style, where expensive clothes and the desired bodily attributes are displayed discreetly, and those who are ‘trying too hard’ and thus marked by the stigma of effort. We also show some interesting intersections between class and gender: girls aspiring to the economic elite obey the ‘rules of the game’ by exercising extensive control over their bodies and adhering to demanding bodily norms for their weight and slimness. Such rules are less evident among the boys, where a lack of discipline, unruliness, hard partying and even fighting constitute parts of the lifestyle valued. This article contributes to the field of cultural stratification, highlighting the importance of the ‘hows’ of material consumption when expressing elite distinction. It also adds new insight to the research field of elite education by showing how a mastery of ‘high‐end’ consumer culture is involved in fostering favourable dispositions at elite schools.     

Objects,Meanings, and Role Identities: The Practices that Establish Association in the Case of Home‐Based Employment1

Contemporary social theory suggests that the meaning of any object differs by how we, as social actors, respond and relate to it. The challenge for sociology lies in exploring the different strategies and practices recursively and productively embedded in these relationships. In this article, I present data from in‐depth interviews with 20 home‐based employees to illustrate how these individuals interact with familiar objects in their surroundings to form anchor points for diverse lines of conduct. Although I draw from a number of sociological theories in my analyses, I further utilize cognitive theory to outline three micro‐psychological practices (i.e., routinization, goal targeting, and emotional alignment) that respondents apply in their attempt to establish the desired association between objects and identities. In this way, the article both extends previous lines of inquiry into the relationship between objects and actors, and makes a new contribution to the growing literature on culture and cognition.     

Ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption: Examining local organic food networks

Sustainable consumption is gaining in currency as a new environmental policy objective. This paper presents new research findings from a mixed-method empirical study of a local organic food network to interrogate the theories of both sustainable consumption and ecological citizenship. It describes a mainstream policy model of sustainable consumption, and contrasts this with an alternative model derived from green or ‘new economics’ theories. Then the role of localised, organic food networks is discussed to locate them within the alternative model. It then tests the hypothesis that ecological citizenship is a driving force for ‘alternative’ sustainable consumption, via expression through consumer behaviour such as purchasing local organic food. The empirical study found that both the organisation and their consumers were expressing ecological citizenship values in their activities in a number of clearly identifiable ways, and that the initiative was actively promoting the growth of ecological citizenship, as well as providing a meaningful social context for its expression. Furthermore, the initiative was able to overcome the structural limitations of mainstream sustainable consumption practices. Thus, the initiative was found to be a valuable tool for practising alternative sustainable consumption. The paper concludes with a discussion of how ecological citizenship may be a powerful motivating force for sustainable consumption behaviour, and the policy and research implications of this.     

The Meanings of a Star: Interpreting Music Fans' Reviews

This article both elaborates on and empirically supports Norman Denzin's thesis on the political aesthetics of interpretation. Through a reading of consumer reviews, I discuss both the image and the music of the contemporary pop star Avril Lavigne by combining analytic tools derived from dramaturgy and social semiotics. Specifically, I present consumer reviews of Avril Lavigne's public persona as interpretive acts that decode the practices of production, distribution, and consumption of her alleged subcultural authenticity. I discuss the importance of understanding interpretation as a practice of cultural resistance against the pervasive force of consumerist ideologies and hegemonic mass media discourses. In addition, I reflect on the usefulness of a symbolic interactionist approach to a cultural studies based on Peircean semiotics and Goffmanian dramaturgy. We are losing control of the very means of cultural production itself. … More and more culture becomes an adjunct of marketing, or of the bureaucratic ethos, or of both. — C. Wright Mills (1963 :226)     

AGE,TIME, VINTAGE,AND PRICE INDEXES: MEASURING THE DEPRECIATION PATTERN OF HOUSES

Age, time, and vintage are key determinants of house prices, yet they cannot be included together linearly or as dichotomous variables in hedonic regressions as construction time + age of house = sale time. We introduce a method where the estimates of the age, time, and vintage effects on prices are obtained in a flexible manner, without requiring us to specify a pre‐determined functional form for any of these variables. Applying our method to Dutch data, we find that the estimated depreciation pattern over the life of houses does not follow the functional forms typically specified for the age of houses in hedonic regressions. (JEL C43, E01, E31, R31)     

Wearable tech,bodies, and gender

New forms of wearable technology are blurring the lines between technology and bodies, raising questions about personhood, selfhood, and what it means to be human. Consequently, scholars are examining these iterations of body/machine interface and human machine communication from a variety of angles. While fashion scholars focused primarily on garments and celebrating potential techno‐futures, media and communication scholars more critically examined how wearable tech mediates bodies and relationships. Social scientists are concerned with issues of labor, privacy, data ownership, and value, drawing on ethnographic studies of the Quantified Self (QS) community and the phenomenon of self‐tracking more generally. This scholarship is rooted in studies and theorizations of ubiquitous computing, feminist science and technology studies (STS), and fashion and dress as both ornament and second skin. Generally, it asks how wearable technology can augment the human body, how it affects human relationships to self and other, and whether wearable technology can promote human autonomy, when it is locked into commercial and power relationships that don't necessarily have the users' best interests at heart. The essay ends by briefly outlining of directions for further research, urging further investigation into wearable tech exhibiting gendered attitudes toward “femme” women, and calling for increased attention to issues raised by wearable technology's coming merger with the growing fields of biotech and synthetic biology.     

The social gradient in cultural consumption and the information‐processing hypothesis

Patterns of cultural consumption have a strong social gradient which is primarily driven by education, but what explains these educational differences in cultural preferences remains unclear. Explanations based on information processing capacity have gained widespread currency; the perceived cognitive ‘difficulty’ of both appreciating high culture, and of maintaining broad, omnivorous tastes. If, on average, high culture is more complex than low culture then a higher level of information processing capacity may be required to derive enjoyment from it. In contrast, socialization theories suggest that exposure to ‘high’ culture, may explain this gradient, particularly among university graduates with degrees in the Arts or Humanities. To test these two theories we use the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey (n = 1,079) and estimate the association between degree type and measures of cultural preference and consumption, including: film directors, artists, and cultural participation. Compared to non‐graduates, arts, humanities, and social science graduates are more likely to enjoy highbrow directors and artists, and are more likely to be cultural omnivores; while graduates from other subjects are not clearly distinct from non‐graduates in their cultural preferences. These findings suggest that information processing plays a minor role in shaping the social gradient in cultural consumption.     

Why Is There So Little Migrant Settlement in East Asia?1

Unlike states in Europe, East Asia settles very few migrants and has not developed a European‐style multicultural society. We seek to explain this variation using comparative analysis of two of the most advanced states in East Asia, South Korea and Japan, with several states in Europe. Focusing on family reunification – almost always the precursor to migrant settlement – we examine the effects of several independent variables, including supranational institutions, independent courts, interest groups, political culture, and the perceptions of migrants. We conclude that both Korea and Japan have less migrant settlement because of the lack of regional institutions pushing for family reunification rights, an elite political culture that still maintains the assumptions and repertoires of a “developmental state,” where rights may be sacrificed for economic growth and order, and migrant perceptions of greater immigration control in Asia.     

Merchandizing the Sacred: Commodifying Hindu Religion,Gods/Goddesses,and Festivals in the United States

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the gates for immigrants from India, who have come to the United States for various reasons other than religion. Their religious consciousness has grown along with the age of their children who are born in the United States. They have felt the need to retain and hand down their tradition and culture. In the process, sustaining their tradition and culture has become equivalent with religion, so they express it through rituals and festivals. With these festive observances has developed an intimate connection between commerce and religion, fashion and festival, celebration and consumption. In this scholarly essay, I analyze how Hindu religion has succumbed to the world of advertisements, mass production, and marketing in the United States. This aspect is significant because it gives an opportunity to conceptualize a larger transnational space that deals with Hindu religious practices and sees the participation of retailers and businesses located in various Hindu diasporic spaces using various marketing media strategically.     

Parenting Practices,Autonomous Motivation,and Adolescent Diet Habits

Guided by self‐determination theory, the aim of this study was to examine whether adolescents’ autonomous motivation for making healthy diet choices mediates the association between parenting practices regarding diet and adolescent food choices. We analyzed data from the NCI FLASHE study, a survey of demographically diverse parents and their adolescent children (N = 1,646 dyads). Path models supported self‐determination theory’s assertion that indirect, encouraging parenting practices fostered internal motivation; in contrast, regulation was both positively and negatively linked to motivation depending on the model. Models also yielded direct paths between parenting practices and healthy and unhealthy diet choices. Overall, regardless of what predicted motivation, adolescents’ autonomous motivation was linked with their consumption of healthier foods and drinks. As such, cultivating a sense of internal motivation during these formative years may put young people on a path toward healthy patterns of self‐regulation later in life.     

Who sees what? Demographics and the visibility of consumer expenditures

A growing body of work on social phenomena (like status, peer effects, social comparisons and fashion) rests on assumptions regarding the social observability of consumption activities. The present paper provides new empirical evidence for assessing such assumptions. We analyze data from a unique visibility survey, designed to quantify the relative “cultural” visibility of different consumer expenditures among US households. We investigate the relationship between respondents’ demographics and the expenditures they perceive as visible. We discuss implications for existing and future work.     

Hybridity with exclusion: Chinese tea rebrewed in Australia

This article aims to deepen understanding of the concept of cultural hybridity through ethnographic investigation of Australian engagement with Chinese practices of tea drinking. The consumption of tea in urban Australia, despite its apparent novelty, embeds a story of decline. Unlike the development of coffee and wine consumption, a mature Australian tea drinking style is yet to arise. Whilst being influenced by Chinese tea culture, the actors in Australian tea culture also adopt a strategy of distancing and exclusivity, demonstrating “hybridity with exclusion.” When unable to articulate what denotes an Australian style, they instead locate themselves by declaring what they don't belong to. I argue that the concept of cultural hybridity should not be taken for granted as a totally blurred boundary between different cultures; rather, it critically demands to be understood in terms of rejection and exclusion, and it could incorporate an intentional distinction and distance between the self and the other.