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An ongoing debate in the literature is around the existence and constitution of a so-called 'global elite'. This article enters that debate – seeking to understand what connected but also divided a group of wealthy young people occupying a transnational space. It examines consumptive practices at one of the most expensive secondary schools in the world, educating a cross-section of the globally wealthy in Switzerland. The article offers insights into the boredom that pervaded this group, shaping some of the consumptive practices that bound its members. It also argues that other consumptive practices reflected consciously articulated differences within this group, such as national- and linguistic-based social groupings. The case study offers a unique opportunity to examine consumption as a lens onto cohesion and distinction within a particular group of transnationally located, wealthy young people, thus contributing to scholarship around the nature of the 'global elite' at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic drug markets enable calculative, impersonal trade between faceless strangers, but also intimate interaction between pseudonymous users. In this space, do people treat banned drugs as ordinary consumer products that can be purchased from anyone? Or do drug-takers frame their consumption as a counter-cultural activity? To answer these questions, I use qualitative and computational research methods to analyse 3788 electronically published consumer reports of cannabis and psychedelic drugs from the period 2011–2017. I find that report writers emphasise product quality, customer service and transaction value, and devote less attention to the social and political sides of drug-taking. Discussions about legality, morality and counter-cultural ideas are completely absent from the texts, even in psychedelic reports, which detail profound effects. These findings suggest that drug e-commerce is primarily a normalising force, and that widening access to banned drugs is unlikely to disseminate counter-cultural perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Former drinkers in the UK are required to negotiate sobriety in a society that positions consumption (of alcohol but also more widely) as an important part of identity formation. A refusal to consume risks positioning the self outside of the established neoliberal order, particularly as traditional models of sobriety and 'recovery' position the non-drinker as diseased or flawed. As drinking rates decline across western contexts and new movements celebrating sobriety as a positive 'lifestyle choice' proliferate, this article will highlight ways in which sober women rework elements of traditional recovery models in order to construct an 'enterprising self' who remains a good consumer-citizen despite – or indeed because of – their refusal to drink. In doing so, this article enhances our understandings of the ways in which neoliberal notions of a successful, enterprising self can be incorporated into (re)constructions of the self and identity by 'anti-consumers' more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As conventional class categories hide too much pertinent information, there is a growing body of work on lifestyles and consumption patterns of more detailed occupational groups that seeks to distinguish the underlying social structures. While research in Bourdieusian class analysis focuses on class practices, limited attention is paid to agents’ strategic interests. Using French household expenditure data, this article explores the structures of consumption, instrumental for professional advancement, within the ‘service class’. The article provides conclusive evidence of maintained distinctions between the identities of business, technical and educational professionals through the expenditure-based structures of consumption. The study illustrates the capacity of Bourdieu’s capital composition principle to reveal the social structures. The article argues that the instrumental, capital-signalling role of strategic investments in the markers of distinction resonates with the principles of Bourdieu’s logic, delineating not only the symbolic but also the social space, with implications for understanding inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food consumption and risks associated with it have changed substantially since the 1960s, yet the interpretation and conceptualization of 'purity and danger' have not evolved very much since Mary Douglas' seminal work on the topic. In this study, we present an empirically based contemporary interpretation of purity and danger in relation to the consumption of food, dietary supplements and health-related everyday routines. Drawing on qualitative interviews from two recent Danish research projects, both situated within the field of consumption, we find that consumption choices are motivated by a (diffuse) sense of danger and anxiety about bodily contamination, resulting in a striving for purity. But in contrast with what was observed by Douglas in the 1960s, today's purification strategies do not stress hygiene and sterility. Instead they focus on naturalness, even though 'natural' products are known to incorporate objectively dirty and non-sterile elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Scott's recent sociology of nothing, we focus on the process of non-identification, wherein young adults seek to manage the risk of being marked by their non-participation in an important cultural practice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with undergraduate students we develop two overall identity refusal positions (resistance and othering), through which informants seek to disengage with the collective identity of the non-drinker. These positions are underlined by four categories of identity talk: denial and temporal talk (distancing through resistance), and disconnect and concealment talk (distancing through othering), which are used to repudiate non-drinking as culturally and personally meaningful respectively. We contribute understandings of how identities can be performed through active omission, developing Scott's conceptualization and demonstrating how this can be a potentially planful process, depending on the extent to which individuals credit a particular object or activity with being a 'something'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note offers a critical-constructive discussion of the article 'Class, Culture and Culinary Tastes: Cultural Distinctions and Social Class Divisions in Contemporary Norway', written by Flemmen, Hjellbrekke and Jarness (FHJ) (Sociology, 2018(1)). Concerns are raised about the methods and the use of the data. A robustness analysis with alternative data and/or alternative methods is suggested. Conceptually, the analysis of FHJ is considered not to engage adequately with a more qualitative body of historical and ethnological literature, as well as the impact of Norwegian agricultural policy. To describe and understand the evolution of social meaning and social patterns of the consumption of 'traditional' Norwegian foodstuffs, a qualitative approach could have contributed constructively. Overall, wider implications for Bourdieu-inspired analyses of cultural consumption are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological studies of youth culture have often focused on processes of social identification. Though some of this work has explored the importance of consumption within young people's identity practices, much has foregrounded the effects of economic marginality and neglected the importance of 'race'. This article explores the role of clothing and embodied dispositions, popularly referred to as 'swagger', within the ways that young people position themselves in relation to each other. Drawing on field notes and focus group data with a predominantly Somali sample of teenage boys, in a northern English city, this article elucidates the centrality of these seemingly mundane cultural signifiers within everyday processes of 'racial' and classed positioning. In doing so, the article seeks to extend contemporary studies of youth culture, consumption and identification by evidencing how marginalized young people simultaneously challenge and reaffirm their positioning, through the performance of stylized masculinity and swagger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Craft consumption is a precarious practice since consuming mass commodities can inadvertently reinforce the overly commodified world craft consumers are seeking to balance and address. Conceptualizing guitar players as craft consumers, this article illustrates the struggle for balance within musical virtual communities. Virtual communities’ commodity discussions can fuel commodity desire and foster a type of consumptive anomie that members call ‘GAS’ (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). This anomie is countered by images, norms, and evaluative standards that critically invoke ‘use value’ to regulate member’s consumption. Using Durkheim’s concepts of ‘social facts’ and ‘discipline’, the article examines how online actors ‘use use value’ to curb their anomic consumption, differentiate craft from mass consumption, and critique problematic consumptive acts. Durkheim’s work, however, illuminates how Campbell’s individualistic and psychological account of consumptive desire limits his own analysis of craft consumption, for such an individualistic understanding cannot account for the collective phenomenon witnessed throughout this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative research examines the influence of pornography consumption on young men with non-exclusive sexual orientations. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with young men from an elite university in the north-eastern United States, we examine how pornography was experienced as a leisure activity to be consumed in free time. Rather than focusing on the potential harms of pornography, we use an inductive analytic approach to explore the broader range of experiences that participants had, since the time they first consumed pornography. We demonstrate that pornography had educational benefits for these young men, related to their sexual desires, emerging sexual identities and for developing new sexual techniques. This study is part of a growing body of research that seeks to develop a holistic understanding of pornography in society, addressing the absence of the lived experience of the consumer in most pornography research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many sociological studies to date have explored the role of food in marking distinctions between groups. Less well understood is how ‘alternative’ means of food consumption become figured in such relations. Drawing on accounts of food practice derived from 20 in-depth interviews and a two-year period of participant observation, this article considers the role of class culture in the practice of alternative food consumption. As participants speak their position, expressions of class arise through discussions of food practice. Having explored how food plays a part in marking boundaries of distinction between foods ‘for us’ and ‘for them’, we are reminded that in reproducing certain ideas about proper eating, we confine our imagining of alternative food futures to a limited politics of the possible. The article highlights implications for future development of equitable alternatives to conventional foodways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sheds light on the mediating role of social networks on consumption behaviour, a significant facet of social mobility and well-being. Based on the Indian Human Development Survey, the article explores to what extent households across India participating in social networks have increased their consumption levels. While participation in formal social networks does result in improved household consumption levels, the type and number of networks are pivotal to this change. Nevertheless, not all networks lead to similar effects, although the number of social networks per se has a positive effect on consumption. Furthermore, the networks based on homogeneous groups, such as women’s self-help groups, have a negative or lesser effect on smoothing consumption, while those affiliated with heterogeneous networks have a positive effect on increasing consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological study of music consumption has tended to focus on general and typical experience instead of discrete or extraordinary experiences, consistently with a wider lack of biographical analysis. However, a popular topic among music fans is the phenomenon of peak music experiences: specific experiences involving music that are especially memorable, influential and even pivotal for the individuals involved. Drawing on the results of a pilot study conducted in Brisbane, Australia, this article shows that participants in the city’s indie music scene cite peak music experiences as central to their biographical narratives of inspiration, influence, conversion and motivation. These experiences make visible the more subtle processes by which musical meaning, taste and identity are constantly made and remade, as well as showing how encounters with music can affect subjectivities in an enduring way. The listeners are conscious of these processes, reflect on them and even try to create them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central focus of this article is to analyse empirically whether and how the monopoly and legitimacy of highbrow arts as a status marker varies across age groups. Drawing on unique Flemish survey data (n = 2846) that include information on what cultural objects are consumed as well as on how these are appropriated, I construct a two-dimensional social space that relates cultural practices to positions in the social hierarchy through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Using Class Specific Analysis, I look into the structuring principles within two age clusters (−25 and 55+) and try to determine the ways in which the distinguishing status and legitimacy of highbrow arts varies among different groups – thus challenging the assumption that cultural classifications are equally salient to every social group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we investigate how ‘ethical eating’ varies across neighbourhoods and explore the classed nature of these patterns. While our focus is on ‘ethical eating’ (e.g. eating organics, local), we also discuss its relation to healthy eating. The analysis draws from interviews with families in two Toronto neighbourhoods – one upper and the other lower income. We argue that understandings and practices of ‘ethical eating’ are significantly shaped by social class as well as place-specific neighbourhood cultures which we conceptualize as part of a ‘prototypical’ neighbourhood eating style. People compare themselves to a neighbourhood prototype (positively and negatively), and this sets a standard for acceptable eating practices. This analysis helps shed light on how place is implicated in the maintenance and reproduction of class-stratified food practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a sociological analysis of household food waste and its starting point is a critique of perspectives in which volumes of waste generation are used to infer the presence of a throwaway society. Drawing on broadly ethnographic examples, the analysis illustrates some of the ways in which the passage of ‘food’ into ‘waste’ arises as a consequence of the ways in which domestic practices are socially and materially organized. Specifically, attention is paid to: 1) routines of household food provisioning and the contingencies of everyday life; 2) the social relations manifest in the enduring convention of the family meal and; 3) the socio-temporal context of food practices. Taken together it is suggested that contemporary sociological approaches to home consumption, material culture and everyday life can usefully engage with public and policy concerns about the origins and consequences of food waste. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article highlights the paradoxical coping strategies employed by low-income families. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 families in the UK, it is demonstrated that individuals initiate strategies to avoid the social effects of stigmatization and alleviate threats to social identity. In particular, families engage in conspicuous consumption, with emphasis on ensuring children have access to the ‘right’ brands. This can be interpreted in two opposing ways. Low-income consumers, in particular single mothers, may be understood as coping within the challenging context of consumer culture to improve the standard of living for their families. However, drawing on underclass discourse surrounding ‘chav’ culture and single mothers, it is demonstrated that the coping strategies employed to achieve approval in fact fuel further stigmatization and instead of creating inclusion have the opposite outcome of exclusion and marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using participant observation and content analysis of musicians’ internet newsgroups and bulletin boards, my research examines the creation of a new socio-historic subject (‘the prosumer’) and space of production (‘the project studio’). Prosumers’ practices illustrate a nondeterministic form of structural causation that both supports and refutes Bourdieu’s theory of cultural/social (re)production. In support of Bourdieu, my empirical research illustrates the relative autonomy of the habitus and shows that cultural production can foster social change. Although Bourdieu repeatedly made such theoretical claims, his struggle to empirically support them led critics to characterize his work as a synchronously reproductive form of economic reductionism. While I reject these critiques, my work does problematize Bourdieu’s understanding of ‘capital conversion’ and complicates his somewhat ‘straightforward’ relation of cultural practice to economic class. Such ‘relations and conversions’ presuppose clearly separated economic/cultural and productive/ consumptive social spheres. Since ‘prosumption’ blurs these demarcations, we must subsequently reassess aspects of Bourdieu’s work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The narrative about the squandering lottery winner ending up alone and in debt has been shown to affect other lottery winners’ thinking about how to manage their money. Based on a narrative analysis of interviews with 14 Swedish lottery winners, this article considers the ways in which lottery winners present themselves and their post-winning life in counter-position to this story about the squandering winner. By spending their prize money responsibly in order to project moderate, non-luxury consumption, the winners are ‘rewarded’ by feelings of fortune, security, and happiness. Finally, the article discusses how this narrative about ‘the prospering winner’ might be understood in relation to norms about consumption and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paul Johnson's (2008) article 'Rude Boys', published in an earlier issue of Sociology, scrutinizes critically the commodification of the male chav for consumption by middle-class homosexual men. This phenomenon, which Andrew Fraser (2005) calls 'chavinism', takes a number of different forms: pornography, sex lines, club nights etc. In part as a response to Johnson's arguments concerning the ways in which chavinism 'further devalue[s] the individuals and groups' it depicts, creating a form of 'symbolic violence' (2008: 67), our article speculates further on the ambiguous implications of this minority consumer culture. To do this, we develop Connell's (1992, 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' to discuss what gay chavinism might mean for 'hegemonic homosexuality'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's alcohol consumption has been the focus of heightened concern over 'binge drinking' in social policy, academic research and popular culture. A normalized culture of intoxication is now central to many young people's social lives, playing an important role in the night-time economy of towns and cities across the UK. In this article we draw on the findings of a study on the significance of alcohol consumption in the everyday lives of 'ordinary' young adult drinkers to explore the significance of loss of consciousness and loss of memory in their drinking stories. Through an analysis of focus group discussions with 89 young women and men aged 18 to 25, we explore the role of 'passing out stories' in the classed and gendered domain of young people's alcohol consumption in the neo-liberal social order, focussing on the constitution of risk and pleasure in their accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than ever, social scientists have reason to question the assumption that work is the human activity of value and leisure is little more than a respite from work; a way to consume its fruits and prepare for more work. This article compares four conceptualizations of the demanding activities people choose for themselves in their spare time. Each one is based on relatively recent empirical studies and presented to social science with a distinct term: 'serious leisure', 'specialized play', 'edgework', and 'consumption within a fantasy enclave'. Any conceptual representation allows certain interpretations of social phenomena and blocks others. In this case, vastly different pictures emerge, depending on the conception chosen. Thus, the major finding of the article is that sociology urgently needs to assess its vocabulary in order to understand how the modern predicament affects men and women in their freest moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies narrative methods to an analysis of the meaning of British domestic culture. The data are from an exploratory study investigating how and why people displayed objects in their homes. Although mantelpiece displays were the principal focus, other display areas were considered, and interview respondents were invited to tell stories about the provenance and meaning of objects. Analysing such narratives as social performances, demonstrates the extent to which the apparently 'private' experiences of the self are manifested by means of display objects and domestic artefacts. Narratives and objects inhabit the intersection of the personal and the social. An analysis of four narratives that two women related during interviews in their homes shows how people account for themselves in recounting stories of their home possessions. In conclusion, a research strategy combining narrative accounts with an interpretation of photographic data is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a civil society, the governance of technology is a matter of law and regulation, but also of responsibility and accountability, within which issues of public safety and security must be balanced against individual and collective rights. Within sociology, studies have not fully examined the complexity of how governance is achieved, and how environmental changes may threaten governance systems. This article explores the negotiated character of technology governance in a case study of consumerism and the pharmaceutical industry. This industry is highly regulated, but, in the information age, traditional patterns of governance are challenged, and new strategic alliances between stakeholders may emerge. Using qualitative approaches, we explore the emergent governance processes, and conclude that governance is a dynamic process, forever breaking down and being reinvented to address societal changes. We suggest that this theoretical framework and method- ology can form the basis for a productive sociology of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits Campbell's (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism thesis in the light of new intersections with sociological issues of embodiment and emotions. A variety of themes and issues are raised: the persistence of mind/body, reason/emotion dualities in the consumption literature, the importance of 'disappointment' in consumer culture, external factors which mediate the consumption experience, and finally the interpretation of both Romanticism and romantic, interpersonal relationships. A largely disembodied and socially disembedded account of consumption and emotion is on offer here, the implications of which extend far beyond the limits of Campbell's thesis to debates on consumer culture and the sociological enterprise in general, In making these claims, we highlight the need for a 'passionate' sociology which would in turn integrate embodiment and emotions more fully into the consumption agenda. These key themes are discussed, with some sociological pointers for the future, in consumption and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do things come to embody meaning? In much anthropological and sociological writings, things have mainly been considered in two ways: either as commodities or as gifts. Correspondingly, people's relationships to things and to other people seem to fall in two broad categories, often regarded as mutually exclusive, either as impersonal, economic or market relationships with strangers, or as personal gift. relationships with intimates, friends or relatives. The 'social life of things', however, is more varied. Drawing on Alan Page Fiske's theory of the four fundamental models of human relationship, four ways in which people may relate to each other and to things are distinguished; these models are applied to empirical data from a study on the giving of gifts in the Netherlands. Complications may occur when the parties to the transaction do not share the same frame of mind with respect to each other and to the things that are being transferred. Things may have conflicting social lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last thirty years 'consumption' has become a major topic in the study of contemporary culture within anthropology, psychology and sociology. For many authors it has become central to understanding the nature of material culture in the modern world, but this paper argues that the concept is, in British writing at least, too concerned with its economic origins in the selling and buying of consumer goods or commodities. It is argued that to understand material culture as determined through the monetary exchange for things--the cash nexus--leads to an inadequate sociological understanding of the social relations with objects. The work of Jean Baudrillard is used both to critique the concept of consumption as it leads to a focus on advertising, choice, money and shopping and to point to a more sociologically adequate approach to material culture that explores objects in a system of models and series, 'atmosphere', functionality, biography, interaction and mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the light of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper begins by reviewing an argument that Western populations no longer recognise any fixed cultural hierarchy and that, instead, individuals seek knowledge of an increasingly wide variety of aesthetically equivalent cultural genres. Contrasting versions of this argument are isolated. Data concerning the frequency of use of different commercial sources of meals and the social characteristics of customers using different types of restaurant in England are examined. An attempt is made to infer the social and symbolic significance of variety of experience and, in particular, of familiarity with diverse ethnic cuisines. The findings are interpreted in terms of the complex role of consumption in personal assurance, communicative competence and social distinction. It is maintained that the pursuit of variety of consumer experience is a feature of particular social groups and that some specific component practices express social distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s have seen the rapid transformation in the consumption of football with the development, in particular, of all-seater stadiums. This article analyses the responses of a particular type of masculine fan to these transformations, thereby contributing to an emergent theoretical framework in the literature on consumption and fans, which supersedes the theories of resistance and hegemony that have typically informed cultural studies since the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore alternative meanings and functions of home-directed consumption, in particular those aspects of consumption which have to do with presentation and appearance (fittings, furnishings and decor). Our focus is on popular taste, on those whose needs are met principally by mass marketing rather than the avant garde or the connoisseur. Recent debates have drawn attention to the possibility of pleasure and self-expression through consumption: contrasting the active shaping of cultures of consumption with the notion of consumer as mere passive recipient, manipulated by business interests. Our work suggests that neither view gives a satisfactory account of the complex meanings of consumption in the home. 'Home' carries a heavy ideological weight and these meanings permeate interpretation of consumption for the home. Questions of style, design and tastefulness evidently cause anxiety, but they are largely subsumed by familial values (a relaxed, comfortable haven) and also by the desire to maintain 'respectability' through maintaining high house-keeping standards. We argue that women are frequently caught in the crux of the tensions these conflicting goals create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses some general issues concerning consumption that arise from the work of Bauman, Beck and Giddens. All maintain that biography is a reflexive project and that life-styles and consumption are critical to identity-formation and re-formation. Bauman, especially, maintains that this is a source of anxiety, the freedom implied by consumer choice entailing a commensurate degree of personal responsibility. He observes, for instance, that a function of advertising is to assuage the self-doubt that accompanies choice. I seek to argue that these accounts of the impact of reflexive modernisation on self-identity are misjudged. Consumption would be a much less pleasurable practice if it was both subject to ever-expanding free choice and the decisions made were fundamental components of a reflexive process of identity-formation. Indeed, the consequence might well be high and visible levels of distress among those individuals most deeply involved. That this is not apparent suggests that the relationships specified between the process of identity-formation and consumption is tendentious. Consumption may be anxiety-provoking for some groups; there is a real element of risk involved in choosing inappropriately. But there are many mechanisms that serve to compensate. I explore those mechanisms, suggesting that anxiety is avoided through certain processes of group identification and social regulation which the reflexive modernisation thesis claims have atrophied. I conclude that such considerations require that these theories about the relationship between consumption and self-identity be modified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an analytic framework for the comparative study of housing access, based upon the concept of the 'processes of housing access'. The aim is to devise a framework which is generalised enough to permit systematic cross-national comparison, but sufficiently grounded to take on board the wealth of empirical detail on a country by country basis. Defining the processes of housing access in any specific context involves the identification of: a) the sets of social relations that consumers enter into in gaining access to particular forms of housing; and b) the formal and informal conditions of negotiation surrounding access, defined in terms of the characteristics of both consumers and housing. The identification of the dynamic constituents of the negotiation of housing access (during which the underlying relations of power are concretised and reproduced in housing outcomes) involves an explicit focus on the interface of macro- and micro-level analyses. It is hoped that a more widely applicable model for the analysis of access may be developed from the attempt to model housing access in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]