Consumption and place : The phenomenology of relational economic geography

This article contributes to research on geographies of consumption and relationality in economic geography by analysing the interconnection of consumption and place in practice, based on ethnographic research. This text focuses on consumption defined broadly to include choice of clothing and lifestyle among young people in a British town characterized as ‘chavs’. The research is grounded in ethnographic field work, including photo elicitation interviews, observations and participant observations. To analyse the ways in which consumption is related to place, this text integrates conceptual frames used in economic, cultural and social geography with perspectives developed in economic sociology and anthropology. The study takes a relational approach in both theory and fieldwork. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that place and style consumption are relationally constitutive through practices of association and dissociation. We thereby show that the meanings attached to a place may derive partly from acts of consumption by those living there, but also that the relationship of meaning construction goes from consumption to the constitution of place. Our analysis presents evidence that style and the value attributed to people’s practices are co-constituted by the inhabitants, as well by other, typically external actors, such as bloggers and the media.