No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Do Not Go Cheaply into That Good Night: Death‐Ritual Consumption in Asante, Ghana
Abstract
Theory on identity negotiations posits that a person's identity-construction project ceases upon death. We tested this proposition using death-ritual consumption experiences of consumers in Asante, Ghana, West Africa. We found that bereaved Asante consumers engage in conspicuous ritual consumption in pursuit of newer social identities for their deceased and themselves and that funerals involve a reciprocal and continuing relationship between the living and the dead. In addition, we found that terror-management theory is limited in its relevance for non-Western contexts. We also detected limits to the ability to transform global capital into local capital. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.
... Indeed, there are 2.6 million deaths in the United States each year, and the average cost of a funeral is about $7,200; it often exceeds $10,000 (First Research, 2017). Funerals are "a service honoring the recently deceased" (Choi-Allum, 2007), where ritual sequences, interpretations, and costs vary widely by region and religion (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;. Existing consumer research on funerals has explored the meaning of the funeral ritual from a sociological perspective (Dobscha, 2016;Pine & Phillips, 1970;Holloway et al., 2013) and the social function they provide to families and communities (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Gentry et al., 1995;McGraw et al., 2016). ...
... Funerals are "a service honoring the recently deceased" (Choi-Allum, 2007), where ritual sequences, interpretations, and costs vary widely by region and religion (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;. Existing consumer research on funerals has explored the meaning of the funeral ritual from a sociological perspective (Dobscha, 2016;Pine & Phillips, 1970;Holloway et al., 2013) and the social function they provide to families and communities (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Gentry et al., 1995;McGraw et al., 2016). In light of the marketization of the funeral industry , we examine funerals from the perspective of the person planning the funeral, identifying motives that drive and manifest in funeral planning decisions. ...
... As a form of death ritual, however, they remain understudied in consumer research with few exceptions (Dobscha, 2016). Scholars have noted that there is little research on death, funerals, and consumption mainly because of the taboo associations to death in western cultures (Arndt et al., 2004;Bonsu & Belk, 2003). Funerals are consequently considered an uncomfortable consumer decision (Dobscha & Podoshen, 2017;Kemp & Kopp, 2010;Kopp & Kemp, 2007). ...
Funeral rituals perform important social functions for families and communities, but little is known about the motives of people planning funerals. Using mixed methods, we examine funeral planning as end‐of‐life relational spending. We identify how relational motives drive and manifest in funeral planning, even when the primary recipient of goods and services is dead. Qualitative interviews with consumers who had planned pre‐COVID funerals (N=15) reveal a caring orientation drives funeral decision‐making for loved ones and for self‐planned funerals. Caring practices manifest in three forms: (a) balancing preferences between the planner, deceased, and surviving family, (b) making personal sacrifices, and (c) spending amount (Study 1). Archival funeral contract data (N=385) reveals supporting quantitative evidence of caring‐driven funeral spending. Planners spend more on funerals for others and underspend on their own funerals (Study 2). Pre‐registered experiments (N=1,906) addressing selection bias replicate these results and find generalization across different funding sources (planner‐funded, other‐funded, and insurance; Studies 3A‐3C). The findings elucidate a ubiquitous, emotional, and financially consequential decision process at the end of life.
... Death-related thoughts about the "material end of the body and the social self" (Seale, 1998, p. 34) and about "separation from the realities of the world and loved ones or objects" (Bonsu & Belk, 2003, p. 41) significantly influence social judgments and behaviors (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;J. Hayes et al., 2010;Mandel & Smeesters, 2008). ...
... Several antecedents determine the salience of death-related thoughts, and consequences vary depending on contexts (e.g., Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Fransen et al., 2008;J. Hayes et al., 2010). ...
... Hayes et al., 2010). For example, people have increased thoughts of mortality after they are directly or indirectly exposed to natural disasters and terror attacks; reminders of mortality cause consumers, especially those who have low self-esteem, to increase their food consumption (Mandel & Smeesters, 2008), conspicuous consumption (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Hirschman, 1990), bargain shopping (Hubler, 2001), and striving for material possessions (Price et al., 2000). In one study, researchers asked consumers to respond to death-related statements such as "the idea of never thinking again after I die frightens me." ...
In three studies, death imagery and regulatory focus are examined for their effects in wildlife protection campaigns. Images of death are found to lead to positive intentions to conserve wildlife through fear, but only when ads are prevention‐focused rather than promotion‐focused. In Study 1, participants who view an image of a dead elephant indicate feeling fear and stronger intentions to conserve wildlife. In Study 2, participants who view a prevention‐focused ad depicting a dead rhino indicate stronger intentions to sign a wildlife conservation pledge, but the effect is attenuated when the ad is promotion‐focused. Study 3 finds similar results using the image of a dead tiger. Theoretical insights and practical implications are discussed.
... Vietnamese families exchange elaborate gifts during marriage rituals when single men and women transform into couples (Nguyen and Belk 2013). Asante families invest in funeral services to enhance the social status of deceased loved ones as they transition into the afterlife (Bonsu and Belk 2003). Van Gennep (1909/1960 and Turner (1967Turner ( , 1969 emphasized the importance of liminality as a temporary threshold, a "betwixt and between," that people pass through as they transition from old to new cultural statuses. ...
... Some preachers set up shop in the traditional marketplace, others market their services on public buses, and still others go door to door. In short, Ghana embraces the marketization of religion (Bonsu and Belk 2010). ...
... Pentecostalism is also well known for its prosperity gospel through which adherents are encouraged to make significant monetary donations to the church in exchange for material blessings from God (Haynes 2012;Maxwell 1998). Unlike most religious movements that view the marketplace as ensnaring (Izberk-Bilgin 2012), Pentecostalism is decidedly materialistic and pro-market, blurring any suggestion of a secular/ sacred boundary between religion and the market (Bonsu and Belk 2010;Lindhardt 2009). Despite its noted indeterminacy and danger, Pentecostals believe that the market is where God materially rewards believers who make monetary donations to the church with "blessings." ...
Some life transitions are difficult and prolonged, such as becoming an independent adult, forming a family, or adopting healthy consumption habits. Permanent liminality describes transitions that can span years and even a lifetime with no anticipated end. To understand how consumers are caught in permanent liminality, we examine how Pentecostal converts consume religious services in their difficult transition from the secular "world" to Pentecostalism. We draw on the concept of in/dividual personhood to explain how the Pentecostal dividual is coconstituted in an endless movement between the undesired "worldly" in/dividual and the contiguous incorporation into the desired Pentecostal in/dividual and structure. Pentecostals' permanent liminality thus involves ongoing cycles of separation and incorporation within zones of indeterminacy, in which neither separation nor incorporation is ever completed. This theoretical framework explains the unfinished transition of Pentecostal converts as contested dividuals. We extend this theoretical explanation for future research on liquid modernity and consumers caught in permanent liminality.
... As an additional analysis, it is suggested that the fear of death might contribute to online buying behavior. It might sound morbid, but the link between death-anxiety and economicconsumption or money spending has been studied many times in the past few decades in the consumer-related study [38]. ...
... A man tries to cope with the existential crisis of death through the accumulation of material objects [42]. These objects accumulated (bought) serve as a temporary symbol of immortality that helps people minimize the terror of death [38]. The instrument used to obtain the object, money (or wealth), has long been used to secure the meaning of immortality [43], rather than just a tool to obtain survival kits. ...
... Luxury items that "non-essential" items that contribute to the luxurious lifestyle, flatter all senses, considered valuable, rare, and better quality in the market [46]. Bonsu and Belk [38] revealed that a type of TMT study has been prominent in Western society. While in their case it is Africa region, in this study, coverage of this present study includes one of the world's largest emerging e-commerce markets, Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia. ...
Online impulse buying could harm someone financially and psychologically. Previous studies have identified variables that predict impulse buying, but not many of them have examined the human's self. This study aimed at investigating the roles of insecure self-engulfed self and perceived aesthetic of online shop in predicting the online impulse buying. The participants were 285 private sector employees (156 males and 129 females; Mean of the age of 27.1 years old; Standard deviation of the age of 5.9 years) in the Greater Jakarta, Indonesia. Data analysis using multiple linear regression analysis showed that empirical data supported the positive prediction hypotheses. An additional descriptive analysis applying the Terror Management Theory showed that participants with higher mortality salience tend to have more online buying experience, and they are inclined to purchase more luxurious items such as jewelry and expensive watch than participants with lower mortality salience. This study contributes to developing the interdisciplinary field of psychological science and information technology by integrating the self and the virtual medium of shopping variables as well as by recommending behavioral engineering to control online impulse buying. © International Journal on Advanced Science Engineering Information Technology.
... African (i.e., sub-Saharan African) culture and Ghanaian culture are thus used interchangeably (Oppong 2003;Gyekye 2003) for the purpose of this study. Culture is defined as a people's overall way of life, their courtship and worship (Bonsu and Belk 2010;Bonsu and Belk 2003), as well as how they investigate their natural environment and utilize its possibilities (Bonsu 2007a). Given the broad stance of its meaning, culture is likely to affect (a) notions of trust, communication, interpersonal relations, negotiations, and conflict resolution, (b) people's processing of information, and (c) people's relations with each other. ...
... "When one of my workers has a bereavement in his/her family, my duty is to contribute drinks, farm produce such as plantain, yams, vegetables, and money, and participate in the funeral celebrations, especially if it concerns my village . . . in Ghana, this is expected of any boss or close friends and work colleagues," Entrepreneur 14 explained. Likewise, "work colleagues usually donate a lump sum of money to the bereaved colleague from contributions they have accumulated and meant for such eventualities" (Entrepreneur 4) (see also Bonsu and Belk 2003;Bonsu 2007b). This socio-cultural activity was observed, notably, in the Ashanti, Eastern, and Western Regions, where Entrepreneur 11, Entrepreneur 14, and Entrepreneur 27 contributed money to bereaved colleagues and participated in their celebrations (see Bonsu and Belk 2003). ...
... Likewise, "work colleagues usually donate a lump sum of money to the bereaved colleague from contributions they have accumulated and meant for such eventualities" (Entrepreneur 4) (see also Bonsu and Belk 2003;Bonsu 2007b). This socio-cultural activity was observed, notably, in the Ashanti, Eastern, and Western Regions, where Entrepreneur 11, Entrepreneur 14, and Entrepreneur 27 contributed money to bereaved colleagues and participated in their celebrations (see Bonsu and Belk 2003). Grimm et al. (2013) find that strong ties to the village of origin and to kinship underpin entrepreneurial activities in Western Africa. ...
Using social identity theory and social capital theory as a backdrop to understand the context of subsistence marketplaces, this study investigates how rural micro and small businesses engage in marketing practices and how poverty reduction policies affect micro and small business activities and growth. The results show that rural micro and small businesses weave morality and religiosity into their commercial activities and survive in a competitive subsistence marketplace by engaging with social networks, relationships with customers, and relationships with staff. The interdependence among these relationships contributes to the competitive positioning of the business and its intelligence gathering. Despite the existence of government programs to fund micro and small business startups, most owner-managers use social networks to initially fund and grow their businesses. The paper ends with implications and future research directions.
... (Quoted from Habegger 2015) For Katie, giving these "little things" to her deceased son is a critical component of her grieving process and a symbolic representation of their ongoing relationship. Survivors feel a sense of responsibility to celebrate, honor, and memorialize their deceased loved ones through material goods (Bonsu and Belk 2003;Harper 2012;Thursby 2006;Turley and O'Donohoe 2012). As anecdotally demonstrated by Katie's experience, consumer spending on deceased loved ones does not end with the funeral as gift giving to the deceased continues long after loved ones pass away. ...
... Previous research on death and material goods primarily investigates the disposition of possessions at the end-of-life (Bradford 2009;Lastovicka and Fernandez 2006;Price, Arnould, and Curasi 2000), objects left behind by the deceased (Turley and O'Donohoe 2012), and items presented to the deceased at the time of their death (Bonsu and Belk 2003;Harper 2012). For instance, in Ghana, the living give "one last gift" to deceased loved ones at their funerals in an attempt to raise their social status within the community, while alleviating feelings of guilt and grief (Bonsu and Belk 2003). ...
... Previous research on death and material goods primarily investigates the disposition of possessions at the end-of-life (Bradford 2009;Lastovicka and Fernandez 2006;Price, Arnould, and Curasi 2000), objects left behind by the deceased (Turley and O'Donohoe 2012), and items presented to the deceased at the time of their death (Bonsu and Belk 2003;Harper 2012). For instance, in Ghana, the living give "one last gift" to deceased loved ones at their funerals in an attempt to raise their social status within the community, while alleviating feelings of guilt and grief (Bonsu and Belk 2003). In contrast, our study seeks to understand post-mortem gift-giving practices beyond one last gift. ...
When a gifting relationship is disrupted by death, why might a living consumer continue to invest in it? Consumer spending on deceased loved ones does not end with the funeral. Given the embodying power of a physical gravesite, this article examines the practice of gift giving to the deceased in the context of American cemeteries. We employ a longitudinal approach, in which 180 cemetery gravesites were photographed. The photographic data are coupled with a netnography of grief and bereavement communities. Findings support a restorative perspective of gift exchange. Bereaved consumers utilize restorative giving as a mechanism to cope with loss and maintain relationships with deceased loved ones. We outline five categories of gifts given to the deceased and present a framework of restorative giving practices. Implications are discussed in terms of identity development, symbolic communication, and reciprocity in gift giving, as deceased consumers continue to be recipients of tangible goods.
... He asserts that mortality is that condition with which everyone must be reconciled because it is a natural state of affairs hence if there were no death, then there would be no life. Scholars like Arndt, Solomon, Kasser and Sheldon (2004), and Bonsu and Belk (2003) note that there is little research on death, funerals, and consumption mainly because of the taboo associationed with death in western cultures. In the same vein, Dobscha and Podoshen (2017), and Kemp and Kopp (2010) feel that burials are considered an uncomfortable consumer decision. ...
... Studies carried out by Bonsu and Belk (2003), O'Donohoe and Turley (2006), and Gentry, Kennedy, Paul and Hill (as cited in Whitley, Garcia-Rada, Bardhi, Ariely, & Morewedge, 2021) show that funerals emerge as emotionally charged and reflexive consumption context characterised by high stress and often extreme grief, and that grief experienced after the death of a family member reduces consumers' ability, motivation, and opportunity to fulfill their roles during this time. Also, when death occurs, the bereaved are expected to be in a mournful mood and wear sorrowful looks. ...
Dance is usually associated with joy while death is related with sorrow; however, there may be rare occasions, like burials, where the two commingle. Hence, this study reviewed the paradoxes and connexions between burial and dance, utilising library and observation methods of research. It examined a dance performance that took place during a burial. It is considered a misnomer when people who are expected to be mourning start to dance; what therefore is the force behind dance in a burial? The
... Bireylerin inanç sistemi, değerleri, kültürel kimlikleri ve tüketici davranışları arasındaki ilişki düşünüldüğünde konunun daha detaylı araştırılması ihtiyacı ortaya çıkmıştır. Ölüm olgusu, ölümle ilgili ritüeller, taziye uygulamaları ile ilgili literatürde birçok çalışmaya rastlanılmaktadır ( Ersoy, 2002;Cihan, 2005;Ergün, 2013;Dikmen, 2015;Bonsu ve Belk, 2003;Çınar, 2014;İncirliler, 2014;Koçanoğlu, 2005;Terzi, 2016;Cengiz, 2014). ...
... Özellikle cenaze törenini düzenleyen yakınların ritüelleri uygularken sembolik tüketim ve gösteriş tüketimi ile uyumlu şekilde süreçleri yönettikleri görülmektedir. (Bonsu ve Belk, 2003). Ölen kişinin ne şekilde defnedileceği, törenin ne şekilde düzenleneceği, törene kimlerin katılacağı çoğu zaman ritüeller tarafından belirlenmektedir. ...
... Considerable research in the social sciences has addressed death and funeral rituals (Kubler-Ross, 1969;Bonsu and Belk, 2003;Hunter, 2007;Kastenbaum, 1992;Kalish and Reynold, 1976). Much of previous research on death and dying in Western culture holds that individuals engage in denial and repression of thoughts about death and seek to expunge it from everyday consciousness (Becker, 1973). ...
... Identity management strategies Some perspectives on death and dying suggest that death takes away a person's identity, including opportunities to renegotiate an identity (Riley, 1983). Bonsu and Belk (2003) found evidence in a non-Western culture that loved ones of the deceased often make efforts to reconstruct the deceased's identity posthumously. However, individuals may make efforts to construct their postmortem identities prior to death. ...
Purpose
Research on death and dying in Western culture holds that individuals engage in a denial and repression of thoughts about death. However, this paper aims to propose that some individuals actively make attempts to exercise control over their eventual demise by engaging in decision-making to achieve an “appropriate death.” A framework is introduced that provides the basis for exploring aspects of decision-making for end of life.
Design/methodology/approach
Depth interviews were conducted with 18 consumers about their dispositions toward death and their decision-making regarding their own funerals.
Findings
An analysis of the consumer narratives suggests that individuals make efforts to prepare for end of life by reducing conflict and finishing business, enlisting identity management strategies and coming to terms with death itself. Unique consumption experiences and decisions accompany each of these efforts.
Research limitations/implications
This research provides understanding regarding how individuals cope with death by attempting to enlist control over a situation in which they have very little control. In doing so, these individuals make efforts to achieve an “appropriate death” by making explicit decisions for end of life.
Originality/value
Instead of actively engaging in defense mechanisms to deny and repress thoughts of death, this research demonstrates that individuals may recognize the inevitability of death as fulfillment of life. In doing so, they may subscribe to positive illusions regarding end of life and make attempts to exercise control over the event.
... An array of different studies has been reported challenging specific theoretical extensions of TMT, without necessarily undermining its foundation. For example, the heightened materialism hypothesis has been challenged by research in Africa on death rituals (e.g., Bonsu & Belk, 2003). Similarly, TMT's extension on the evolution of disgust (Cox et al., 2007;Goldenberg et al., 2001), has been challenged by other research and findings (Fessler & Navarrete, 2005). ...
Terror Management Theory (TMT) is the dominant social psychological theory examining the relationship between death awareness and human behaviour. According to TMT, cultural worldviews and self-esteem are thought to serve an important anxiety-buffering function in order to manage (or ‘tranquilise’) existential fear of death. This chapter reviews the evidence for TMT in a wide array of settings, evaluating empirical support of the fundamental principles of the theory and for more recent theoretical extensions of the original account. These review addresses empirical findings that examine cognitive, attitudinal, affective, and behavioural consequences of the awareness of our own death. It also examines moderators proposed and the potential role of death anxiety in psychopathology. Lastly, competing theoretical accounts offering alternative explanations for the empirical findings of the role of death awareness on human behaviour are briefly introduced.
... Outras pesquisas sobre o luto do consumidor abrangeram três perspectivas principais. A primeira diz respeito às elaborações dos consumidores, abrangendo os sentimentos e respostas emocionais vivenciados após a perda, incluindo como os indivíduos organizam suas relações com a memória do falecido (Bonsu, 2007;O'Donohoe & Turley, 2005) e o papel dos rituais fúnebres (Bonsu & Belk, 2003). A segunda perspectiva centra-se no descarte de bens materiais, em relação à forma como os consumidores lidam com os objetos deixados pelo falecido (Canning & Szmigin, 2010;Guillard, 2017;Kates, 2001). ...
Resumo Apesar do interesse pelo papel do consumo no processo de luto, o conceito de luto do consumidor e o processo através do qual os consumidores vivenciam o luto permanecem pouco estudados. Considerando a ruptura trazida pela pandemia da COVID-19 e a necessidade de entender como os consumidores respondem a esse cenário, este artigo tem como objetivo conceituar o luto do consumidor, entendendo os mecanismos criados pelos consumidores para lidar com a perda. Tendo em vista a importância de experiências extraordinárias e seus efeitos transformacionais no corpo e no tecido social, neste estudo netnográfico exploramos a perda de uma experiência extraordinária a partir da investigação com corredores de maratona. O artigo evidencia que o consumidor lida com a perda da experiência por meio de um processo composto por cinco mecanismos, mediados pelas redes sociais, que permitem ao consumidor reverter, reenquadrar e restabelecer a experiência perdida. Os mecanismos de refutação, desespero, abstenção-compensação, transgressão e aceitação mostram como os consumidores se comportam nos diferentes momentos de luto, permitindo-lhes construir suas trajetórias no processo de luto, individual e coletivamente. Como contribuição, expandimos a literatura sobre o luto do consumidor, explicando os processos pelos quais os consumidores passam quando lidam com a perda de uma experiência. Além disso, apresentamos uma perspectiva coletiva sobre o processo de luto, deslocando a análise do luto de um indivíduo ou de uma unidade familiar para a socialização do luto.
... Further research on consumer grief covered three main perspectives. The first concerns consumers' elaborations, encompassing the feelings and emotional responses encompassed subsequent to the loss, including how individuals arrange their relationships with the memory of the deceased (Bonsu, 2007;O'Donohoe & Turley, 2005) and the role of funeral rituals (Bonsu & Belk, 2003). The second perspective focuses on the disposal of material possessions, in relation to the way consumers deal with the objects left by the deceased (Canning & Szmigin, 2010;Guillard, 2017;Kates, 2001). ...
Despite the interest in the role of consumption in the bereavement process, the concept of consumer grief and the process consumers experience when grieving remain undertheorized. This article aims to conceptualize consumer grief considering the disruption brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to understand how consumers respond to this scenario, understanding the mechanisms consumers create to deal with loss. In view of the importance of extraordinary experiences due to their embodied, social, and transformational power, in this netnographic study, we explore marathon runners’ loss of an extraordinary experience. Consumers deal with the loss of an experience through a process composed of five mechanisms mediated by social media, which enable consumers to reverse, reframe, and reestablish the experience. The mechanisms of refutation, despair, abstention-compensation, transgression, and acceptance show how consumers behave in different moments of grief, allowing them to build their trajectories in the grieving process, individually and collectively. As a contribution, we expand the literature on consumer grief by focusing on the specific concept of consumer grief, explaining the processes consumers go through when they deal with the loss of an experience. Additionally, we present a collective perspective on the grieving process, shifting the analysis of the grief of an individual or a family unit to the socialization of grief.
... For example, children in Hong Kong are often expected to reciprocate the care of their parents only when they are aged and incapable (Joy 2001). Reciprocal care obligations are common in many Ghanaian cultures, and among some tribes such as the Ashanti, they are even maintained between the living and the dead (Bonsu and Belk 2003). We unpack the particularities of this gift economy in our context using wealth in people. ...
In some cultures, migrants bear an obligation to bring gifts from the foreign country for their relations when returning to their homeland. Why, and to what end? We examine the reasons for these transnational gift obligations in a multisite study of Ghanaian migrants in the United States and Australia, as well as people in Ghana with migrant relations living overseas. We adopt a wealth-centered perspective that problematizes the underexplored mutual impact of migrants and their gifts on social hierarchies within societies and transnational spatial hierarchies between societies. We show how the concepts of wealth in people and wealth in place connect with local gift economies to explain transnational gifting obligations. Specifically, informants use transnational gifts that embody wealth in place to acknowledge “being wealth” to people and to acquire wealth in others. We highlight the wealth in things that are exchanged as gift objects and the wealth in people who are exchanged as gift subjects between here and there. Our findings implicate a “glocal” gift economy that results from the global flows of things and people as gifts within transnational places of differing statuses. We discuss how this glocal gift economy (re)produces transnational spatial hierarchies and local (national) status hierarchies.
... Consumer research contexts are often unique. Previous research has studied unique consumers such as homeless women (Hill, 1991), river rafting enthusiasts (Arnould & Price, 1993), the Harley Davidson rider community (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), Star Trek fans (Kozinets, 2001), African death ritual consumers (Bonsu & Belk, 2003), fans of abandoned brands (Muñiz Jr. & Schau, 2005), Turkish squatter women (Üstüner & Holt, 2007), Disney visitors (Bettany & Belk, 2011), Ottoman coffeehouse patrons (Karababa & Ger, 2011), Turkish barber salon workers (Üstüner & Thompson, 2012), fatshionistas (Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013), skating girls (C. Thompson & Üstüner, 2015), Tough Mudder racing participants (Scott et al., 2017), Roma immigrants (Veresiu, 2018), academic conferences (Schembri & Fırat, 2018), Indian gym trainers (Baas & Cayla, 2020), and members of the religious group Tablighi Jamaat (Rauf, Prasad, & Ahmed, 2018). ...
To address the prohibitive cost of qualitative research and to increase the utility and versatility of collected data, this paper puts forth the idea of reusing and sharing qualitative data. This procedure may be employed not only across projects carried out by the same researchers (reuse), but perhaps more importantly also across scholars working separately prior to data analysis (sharing). The paper then notes possible opportunities, important considerations, barriers, benefits, and recommendations for data reuse and sharing.
... Given the potential of ritualization to explain many facets of consumer culture, researchers have extensively investigated ritual and made significant contributions to several topics such as identity, gift giving, and marketplace development. For example, ritual studies have considered the fate of a person's identity project after death (Bonsu and Belk 2003), observed gift giving through the lens of moral and market economy logics (Weinberger and Wallendorf 2012), examined the role of dress in collective identity shifts (Chaney and Goulding 2016), considered Thanksgiving Day as consumer discourse on U.S. consumer culture's categories and principles (Wallendorf and Arnould 1991), analyzed the salience of retailers' language use to facilitate marketplace formation (Otnes, Ilhan, and Kulkarni 2012), deconstructed the management of symbolic boundaries (Weinberger 2015), and explored the functions of the neotribal and cocreated ritual experiences of clubbing (Goulding and Shankar 2011;Thornton 1996). ...
Rituals, particularly religious rituals, may play a significant role in times of crises. Often, these rituals undergo revision in order to adapt to the changing needs of the time. In this paper, we investigate recent unofficially revised Hindu religious rituals as performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The multifarious creative interplay between Hindu tradition and change is illustrated through four cases – the religious festival of Durga Puja, the devotional songs or bhajans, the ritual of lighting lamps or diyas, and the fire rituals or havans. We offer a systematic discourse analysis of online news articles and YouTube posts that illuminate several aspects of ritual revision during unsettled times. We focus on the changes that were made to ritual elements – who was in control of these alterations, how were these modifications made, and what potential benefits did these revisions offer to the community of ritual participants. Based on our findings, we highlight public policy implications regarding the involvement of diverse social actors, the creation of faith in science, the creation of feelings of unity and agency, and the amplification of local ritual modifications on a national scale.
... Roller derby tribes provide sites for women's cathartic performance of a temporary inversion of gender norms but also a vehicle through which these norms evolve (Thompson and Üstüner 2015). Bonsu and Belk (2003) showed how Asante funerals are an institutional device for the redistribution of prestige value. Crockett (2017) shows that African American consumers produce a distinctive middle-class value regime in the face of stigmatization (see also Stamps and Arnould 1998). ...
This article provides a history of the treatment of consumer collectives in the social sciences literature. It highlights some of the insights derived from recent work in consumer research on consumer collectives which we organize under a heuristic taxonomy distinguishing packs, tribes, and bands. All of this suggests some future directions for consumer collectives and areas for future research. The proliferation and diversification of digital technologies will continue to shape and be shaped by consumer collectivities. Platforms are likely to accelerate and diversify consumers’ collective uses of their affordances. Algorithms seem destined to play a bigger role in the formation and management of collectives. Both geography-free and local collectives are likely to develop further. The article concludes with synopses of the competitive and invited articles in this issue, which richly portray the behaviors and meanings that shape and are shaped by consumer collectives.
... We conceptualize practice diffusion as the dispersion of a nexus of sayings, doings, and understandings (Schatzki 1996) within and across distinct sociocultural contexts (Shove et al. 2012). Consumer research reveals the centrality of practices in cultural consumption experiences (Canniford and Shankar 2013;Seregina and Weijo 2017;Woerman and Rokka 2015), rituals (Bonsu and Belk 2003), routines/habits (Epp, Schau, and Price 2014;Phipps and Ozanne 2017), communities (Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009), and journeys (Akaka and Schau 2019). Practices are complex and dynamic social phenomena (Schatzki 1996), which, when continually reproduced, constitute social structure (Giddens 1984). ...
Diffusion is traditionally examined at a macro-level, measured by adoption (e.g., sales), or at a micro-level, assessed by consumer characteristics (e.g., adopter types). We address diffusion at a meso-level focusing on how a practice disseminates across extended time and cross-cultural and cross-national space. We conduct an historical analysis and ethnographic inquiry of the dispersion of an indigenous practice, surfing, and the consequences of practice diffusion on practice reproduction. Our data suggest practice diffusion is not the wholesale adoption of a practice. Rather, a practice emerges across diverse cultural and national contexts through adaptation, fueled by processes of codification and transposition. We find that the movement of practice elements (meanings, materials, and competences) and their dynamic linkages (transposition, codification, and adaptation) enable a practice to (re)emerge across broad historic epochs and complex sociocultural landscapes. This study reveals how a practice evolves through shifts in power between practice carriers and non-carriers and results in distinct forms of practice reproduction (demarcation, imitation, acculturation, and innovation) that can mask the cultural genealogy of a practice. The continual maintenance and evolution of a practice depends on its strength of alignment and embeddedness within systems of practices that make up the social fabric of everyday life.
... We view various physical criteria inscribed in each of these consumption activities as the basis for establishing communities of time and bodies.Scholars can similarly explore the role of integrative consumer timework for long-term identity work regarding the death of the body. While extant knowledge exists on consumer identity transitions into death(Bonsu and Belk 2003), researchers can further investigate how ...
This article unpacks time as a cultural consumption resource and introduces the concept of consumer timework. Consumer timework refers to marketplace stakeholders’ negotiation of competing interpretations of how the past and the future relate using a wide range of consumption objects and activities. Building on the theory of temporalization, we argue that social tensions, conflicts, and breaks drive the past and the future apart in multiple incompatible ways that individuals and societies must contend. We theorize four fundamental dynamics of consumer timework in which market stakeholders engage: integrative, disintegrative, subjugatory, and emancipatory. Integrative and disintegrative consumer timework respectively harmonize and rupture the multiple temporal orientations (past, present, and future) to create shared communities or counter-communities of time through consumption. Subjugatory and emancipatory consumer timework respectively enforce and disrupt temporal hierarchies of power through consumption. We delineate these temporal dynamics using examples from extant consumer research. We conclude by establishing a future research agenda on consumer timework.
... On the other hand, there is limited literature on this topic in the field of consumer culture and marketing, with the prominent exception of Dobscha (2017). Death-related consumption in Western (Gable, Mansfield, and Westbrook 1996;Gentry et al. 1995; and non-Western contexts (Bonsu and Belk 2003;Hackley and Hackley 2017;Zhao and Belk 2008) has been empirically investigated in recent years. But no study on contemporary death rituals in Japan seems to exist in consumer research, however. ...
In this paper, we introduce the concept of saunascape. To that end, we
explore what kind of socio-material practices are carried out within sauna bathing, and thereby discover the elements of saunascape. We focus on interrelated practices of sauna bathing and address the agentic capacity of saunascape as it structures these practices. The data were generated through interviews that took place in sauna
departments at five different hotels in Finland. In total, 39 informants participated in interviews. The findings show four interconnected socio-material practices relating to sauna bathing: purification, nostalgization, medicalization and democratization. As saunascape emerges in the nexus of these practices, its spatially-constructed
elements (places, people, meanings and material processes) appear connected to practices. The study participates in discussions in which the spatiality and non-human agency in consumption practices are evolved. Furthermore, it showcases an example of how an understudied cultural-historical phenomenon may be linked to modern
consumption trends.
... For the value as rewards in service exchanges, this study focuses on value-in-use from a consumer's perspective, as value emerges from consumer experience (Jain et al., 2017). Interviews can illuminate the changes in consumer's perception of services (Bonsu and Belk, 2003), and we therefore also, conducted in-depth interviews to determine how obtained value changes (Table 2). Two older people who had used the mobile supermarket for more than three years were selected as respondents to represent consumers who have transformed from recipients into generic actors. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model for the role transformation of vulnerable consumers through support services.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on four years of participant observation at a community-based support service and in-depth interviews with the consumers. Visual ethnography was used to document the process of the consumers' role transformation through service exchanges.
Findings
The main outcome of this study is a consumer transformation model, describing consumers' role transformation processes, from recipients to generic actors. The model demonstrates that vulnerable consumers will transform from recipients to quasi-actors before becoming generic actors.
Social implications
Vulnerable consumers' participation in value cocreation can be promoted by providing social support according to their dynamic roles. By enabling consumers to participate in value cocreation, social support provision can become sustainable and inclusive, especially in rural areas affected by aging and depopulation. Transforming recipients into generic actors should be a critical aim of service provision in the global challenge of aging societies.
Originality/value
Beyond identifying service factors, the research findings describe the mechanism of consumers' role transformation process as a service mechanics study. Furthermore, this study contributes to transformative service research by applying social exchange theory and broadening service-dominant logic by describing the process of consumer growth for individual and community well-being.
... The Thai Death Ritual for the Living requires some translation for Western audiences. Firstly, the notion of death in the East differs from the Western notion of death as a finality and end point (Tumbat andBelk, 2011: Bonsu andBelk, 2003). In Buddhism, there is a vivid sense of the continuity of life and death. ...
... There is an extensive research (e.g. Rattray 1927;Arhin 1994;Aborampah 1999;Parkes 1998;Bonsu and Belk 2003;De Witte 2003; van der Geest 1995; Lee and Vaughan 2008) on African belief systems like death and the ritual practices surrounding it, but very little on how death rituals are harnessed for livelihood purposes. In view of this academic lacuna, this present study is about how amidst life challenges, the innovative entrepreneurial Asante in Ghana see death rituals (funeral celebration) as a form of social capital or asset that can be utilized to create a meaningful livelihood for themselves and therefore alleviate poverty. ...
This study analysed the harnessing of ritual observances of death as part of livelihood strategies among the Asante of modern Ghana. It employed qualitative unstructured open-ended interviews supplemented by observation and interpretation of textual materials. Among other things, the findings of the study revealed that funeral celebrations over the years among the Asante in Ghana has generated the development of funeral enterprises as permanent or additional source of livelihoods in many communities in Kumasi and its environs. These enterprises have now become stable economic ventures for the owners as well as their employees that contribute to the quality development of many in the society. The study has also discovered that livelihood is not just a matter of gaining a living comprising one’s assets and the activities to which they are put. It also involves how social relations, structures and institutions mediate the interaction of these to achieve a living. The study is significant because, among other things, it has contributed to the existing debates on livelihoods, and the role of religion in development.
... Research on the bystander effect shows that an individual's likelihood of helping others in distress decreases as the number of people around them increases (Darley & Latane, 1968;Fischer et al., 2011). Similarly, research on the free rider effect shows that contributions made by individuals in groups reduces as group size increases (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Kerr & Bruun, 1983). These effects are said to be driven by diffusion of responsibility, such that individuals feel less personally responsible for helping as the number of others around them increases (Garcia, Weaver, Moskowitz, & Darley, 2002;Weesie, 1993). ...
Charitable campaigns sometimes display information about others’ participation to influence the behavior of prospective donors. This research shows that the effect of others’ participation on charitable behavior is moderated by recipient resource scarcity, i.e., the extent to which campaign recipients are perceived to lack financial and material resources. Results indicate that others’ participation has a positive effect on charitable behavior when recipient resource scarcity is high but a negative effect on charitable behavior when recipient resource scarcity is low. Results also provide evidence for an underlying psychological mechanism based on activation of agencycommunion motives in prospective donors. This research contributes to the literature by identifying recipient resource scarcity as a moderator and activation of agencycommunion motives as a mechanism underlying the effect of others’ participation on charitable behavior.
... Trong lĩnh vực Marketing, nghiên cứu định tính có thể giúp nhà nghiên cứu hiểu về quá trình xây dựng bản thân của người tiêu dùng thông qua các hoạt động tiêu dùng hàng ngày (ví dụ: Nguyen & cộng sự, 2018); quá trình phát triển các bao bì hay sáng tạo sản phẩm (ví dụ: Martin & Schouten, 2013); hay quá trình hợp thức hóa một hoạt động marketing (ví dụ: Humphreys, 2010a). Nghiên cứu định tính có thể giúp nhà nghiên cứu khai thác những đề tài mang tính nhạy cảm như về cái chết (ví dụ: Bonsu & Belk, 2003); về tình dục (ví dụ: Brown, 1998); phẫu thuật thẩm mỹ (ví dụ: Giesler, 2012); tôn giáo (ví dụ: Sankikçi, 2020); về một hoạt động mang tính chất nhạy cảm (ví dụ: hoạt động hối lộ trong nghiên cứu của Campbell & Göritz, 2014); hay là về một cộng đồng bị bỏ quên bởi xã hội (người lớn tuổi, người nghèo, người mù chữ, người tàn tật). Nghiên cứu định thích hợp cho các nghiên cứu khai thác các đề tài liên quan đến văn hóa ví dụ như nghi lễ đám cưới châu Á (Nguyen & Belk, 2013); văn hóa cộng đồng fan K-pop (Nguyen, 2016); văn hóa tiêu dùng (ví dụ: Belk & cộng sự, 1988 ); văn hóa tổ chức (ví dụ: Smollan & Sayers, 2009). ...
... Studies that seek to answer the following question: how does the emergence of consumption as a dominant human practice reconfigure cultural blueprints for action and interpretation and vice versa? (MacCracken, 1986;Witkowski, 1989;Bonsu & Belk, 2003) The Socio historic Patterning of Consumption A group of studies that addresses the institutional and social structures that systematically influence consumption, such as class, community, ethnicity, and gender. (Allen, 2002;Holt, 1997;Wallendorf, 2001;Thompson, 1996;Ward & Reingen, 1990) Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies and Consumer's Interpretative Strategies ...
This paper aims at identify, interpret and summarize the available international literature on Consumer Culture Theory available on the Scopus abstract and citation database. Consumer Culture Theory was introduced by Arnould and Thompson in 2015 an it is defined as a group of studies addresses dynamic relationships between consumer actions, the marketplace and cultural meanings. We used a systematic literature review approach with bibliometrics technics and content analysis. Our sample had 137 articles, from 32 journals and 220 authors and co-authors. We were able to identify the growth of the research over the last 14 years of development. The journal with most publications on CCT was "Marketing Theory" and the United States is still the country with more publications. We conclude reaffirming the relevance of CCT to consumer research and limitations and suggestions to further studies.
... However, studies show that even households in developing countries are engaged in statusseeking consumptions by spending a substantial amount on entertainment, clothing and festivals, even before food and shelter are entirely covered. As argued by [14,9,12,31,38,48], households in developing countries may have relatively higher levels of conspicuous consumption, because of extreme inequalities in income, relatively stronger social relationships and traditions and the urge to show off of the nouveaux riches [33]. Thus, even though, conspicuous consumption on wedding seems to have significant implications for the livelihood of households in developing countries in general and Eritrea in particular, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical studies have been conducted on the determinants of this behaviour in Eritrea. ...
The level of household consumption expenditure indicates and is critical for enhancing the level of economic development as well as the wellbeing and wealth of societies. Conspicuous consumption, one component of the household consumption expenditure, includes the practice of purchasing goods or services for public display of wealth or status-seeking rather than covering basic needs and is common practice in developed and developing economies. One form of conspicuous consumption, households engaged in, is the extravagant spending on wedding celebrations, which have grown prohibitively expensive over time. The study, based on an OLS model, tries to investigate the determinants of household conspicuous consumption on a wedding ceremony in Adi-Keih town, Eritrea. The result of the study, based on household survey data, shows that on the average, households spend more than twice of their annual income on the wedding ceremony. Moreover, it reports that age, religion and level of education of the head of household, the total yearly income of the household, and financial support from abroad have significant effects on the level of conspicuous consumption on wedding ceremony. Based on these, policies on how to minimize the disproportionately large amount of spending that is diverted to signalling status are recommended.
... Identity research has sought to build a culturally relative understanding of consumer self-hood. For example, in Bonsu and Belk's (2003) ethnography of death-ritual consumption in Asante, Ghana, they show that "existing conceptual frameworks can be challenged and extended based on evidence found in differing cultural contexts" (Bonsu and Belk, 2003, p. 41). These authors complement existing identity theory that assumes identity construction stops after death. ...
This review takes stock of the development of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and provides a perspective from which this field of research can be framed, synthesized, and navigated. This review takes a conceptual and historical approach to map the rich theoretical inventory cultivated over almost 40 years of culturally-oriented research on consumption. The authors describe how CCT has emerged, chart various approaches to consumer culture studies, outline the dominant research domains, identify debates and controversies that circulate in the field, discuss the latest conceptual and methodological developments, and share managerial implications of a CCT approach. From this vantage point, they point to some promising directions for CCT research. © Eric Arnould, Melea Press, Emma Salminen and Jack S. Tillotson (2019).
... Since Bonsu and Belk (2003) lamented the rarity of references to death in consumer studies, this body of work has grown (e.g., Brandes, Nüesch, & Franck, 2016;Lee-Wingate, Moon, & Bose, 2014;Wang, 2014 people do-or do not-prepare for life's end. Perhaps, as Becker (1973) observed, people, deny the existence of death through psychological and behavioral defenses, and therefore, avoid reflecting on death products to avoid anticipated negative emotions (see also Routledge et al., 2010;Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991, among many others). ...
Death is inevitable; yet, not all consumers prepare for death by purchasing end‐of‐life (EOL) products. Using the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the dual‐process model framework, this study aims to examine the role of emotions and cognitions in influencing consumers' decisions to engage in planning for death. A mixed methodology design was used. Study 1, a qualitative study, uncovered positive and negative emotions and deliberative reasoning that comprise consumers' EOL purchase decision process. Study 2, a quantitative study, confirmed that emotions and deliberations independently and jointly influenced consumers' EOL attitude and behavior and that emotions affected deliberations for both prepaid funerals and wills. Subjective norms outperformed attitude in predicting both products' purchase behavior. These finding supported the dual‐process model of behavior and the TRA in the EOL research context and contributed to the EOL literature by investigating the effects of emotions and deliberations concurrently; thus validating the important role of emotions in influencing EOL planning and purchase. In light of our findings, marketers could, after due cognizance of the morbidity and sensitivity of the topic, develop actionable promotional and segmentation strategies for EOL products and other emotion‐laden, unsought products and service.
... (Re)construction of desire for the Hereafter Life after death is one of the most fundamental beliefs for believers of many religions (Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Flannelly, Ellison, Galek, & Silton, 2012). It is, indeed, the idea of rewards and punishments that make religious people abide by certain restrictions and self-monitor their thoughts and behavioursor, what Foucault (1978) referred to as, the disciplining of the subject (Fernando & Prasad, in press). ...
In this article, we revisit Russell Belk, Guliz Ger and Soren Askegaard's study on consumer desire. We do so in an effort to further advance the extant understanding of desire in consumer research. Specifically, informed by Lacanian psychoanalytic thought and sharing much affinity with Foucault's central argument in The History of Sexuality, we consider how the institution of religion functions as a disciplining force by which to mediate the (potential) conflict between human desire and the social order. For the purposes of this article, we focus our analytical gaze on how consumption practices have the disciplinary effect of regulating desire. That is to say, we illuminate how religion (and religious ideology) dictates certain consumption practices, which ultimately perform to ensure that the pursuit of desire does not contravene the pre-existing social order that structures society and organises social relating. To animate our theoretical claims, we draw on a qualitative study of the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic sub-culture originating in South Asia. This article builds on extant sociological and anthropological studies that have captured the nexus between religion and the workings of the marketplace. However, unlike past studies, the question posited at the crux of this article concerns desire and, particularly, how desire becomes subjected to the discourses pertaining to religiously prescribed consumption practices.
... For instance, when a prominent shoe-maker died a coffin built as a replica of a Nike sneaker was commissioned, and when a taxi-driver died his family arranged for a coffin built as a replica of a Mercedes Benz. Moreover, as a number of scholars have noted, among the Asante such products are highly valued status symbols and they are usually linked to efforts to 'refine' or 'renegotiate' a new identity for the deceased (Bonsu and Belk 2003;de Witte 2003;Griffiths 2000). By contrast, in the case of fan funerals, it seems that branded funeral products are used because they are regarded as the most effective way to reveal or reflect the 'actual' or 'authentic' identity of the deceased, their 'true' life passions rather than their social aspirations. ...
This article explores how the branding of death among 'die-hard' fans involves the production and articulation of multiple forms of value. Specifically, it asks: how do corporations attempt to increase their profits by harvesting the individual and collective sentiments of fans during mortuary rituals? What kind of work do branded funeral products do for die-hard fans? How might the branding of death facilitate new forms of remembering and even enable the deceased to remain in circulation among the living? It is argued that while the branding of death clearly enables corporations to augment their profits by appropriating the emotional investments of fans, it may also provide fans with a novel mechanism for expanding their own value by extending their remembered presence across space and time after death. This argument is developed in three movements. First, I engage with some of the recent literature on branding and value co-creation in the new economy. Then I draw upon studies of fan consumption to consider the forms of identification that animate the relationship between fans and brands. In the third section of the paper I explore the appeal of branded funeral products by returning to some anthropological writings on value transformation and gift exchange. The article concludes by considering what the branding of death reveals about the relations between consumption, identity, and memorialization within the context of contemporary capitalist society.
... With this treatment of the object, death, as something more than its obvious and facile qualities (i.e. the end of consciousness), we see that it holds strange possibilities like immortality, whether it be through digital continuation (Gabel 2016) or ribald haunting (Hackley and Hackley 2016), to speak nothing of truly exterior potentialities. Death can even be a thing to be met on one's own terms, as in the case of physician assisted suicide (Passerard and Menaud 2016) or conspicuous celebrations of an individual in Ghanaian death rituals (Bonsu and Belk 2003). Perhaps that's what matters. ...
A peculiar note from a neighbor of a consumer culture theorist stationed at Miskatonic University who has gone missing arrives for you. The Arkham police have tasked the neighbor with sorting out some seemingly-incoherent academic notes left behind by the professor. In particular, they have tasked him with reaching out to you in order to determine the meaning of a peculiar phrase, “the lurker waits in the object” scrawled into the missing professor's desk. The notes concern several topics, but seem, in the neighbor's opinion, to revolve around object-oriented ontology, horror reality, genre horror, and information by allusion. The neighbor emphasizes that the missing professor may have suffered some mental illness or other tragedy, but has no other viable leads aside from the phrase and notes and begs your expert advice on the topic.
... In consumer research, the study of the distribution of social capital has been found useful for examining how ritualised consumption practices serve to generate and reproduce resources for individuals (e.g. Albinsson & Perera, 2012;Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Holt, 1997Holt, , 1998Mathwick, Wiertz, & De Ruyter, 2008). Recent works have explained how the consumption of elite and/or popular culture can be used to forge social ties (Lizardo, 2006;Pugh, 2011). ...
The use of rituals to bolster social cohesion is well-established theoretically, but alternative outcomes of rituals—when individuals or groups fail to gain, or actively lose, social capital – have been neglected. This research investigates a rarely studied but common interaction ritual—adult social drinking – to explore how network ties and interaction rituals interact producing variegated outcomes. A framework is introduced that, based on the strength of ties of participants (social network theory) and degree of synchronicity obtained (interaction ritual theory), demonstrates four outcomes of everyday rituals: bonding, bridging, blocking and breaching. The study demonstrates interaction rituals, with their attending norms and patterns, foster group identity and cohesiveness, and reinforce prejudices, distrust, and group isolation, which, in the end, can serve to produce or reproduce inequality.
... Essentially, the idea behind identity projects exhorts people's progressive engagement with the construction, development, transformation, and maintenance of a sense of identity (Belk 1988;Larsen and Patterson 2018). Though some consumer culture scholars affirm Gabriel and Lang's (1995) view that consumers seeking identities engage with commodities to satisfy themselves, others highlight how consumers' immersion in extraordinary experiences supports their identity projects (Arnould and Price 1993;Schouten and McAlexander 1995;Belk and Costa 1998;Bonsu and Belk 2003). ...
This study explores the consumption of dance during the identity transition of a homosexual man as a means of appreciating the role of dance in identity management. The account explicates how consumption of a transcendental and paradoxical form of dance called Tandava, or “the cosmic ballet,” empowers an individual to deal with his homosexual identity issues at key liminal junctures. Specifically, the study explores how the homosexual body mobilizes the movements and symbolism in the dance to negotiate identity issues. The study employs the first author’s lived experiences as the research material and depicts his Tandava against the backdrop of his “moments of marginalization.” In particular, autoethnographic writing is fused with the first author’s dance performance to serve as a method of inquiry into his homosexual identity formation. The study shows how dance facilitated the first author’s identity transition from a state of confusion to acceptance. In so doing the study contributes both to the literature on homosexual identity formation and on dance in consumer research.
... It has been observed, for example, that Western societies seem to be accelerating, as captured in Bauman's (2000) notion of "liquid modernity," and the related concept of "liquid consumption," which refers to how people's relationships with possessions are becoming increasingly concerning death and consumption, for example, illustrates how objects can enable people to transport memories of themselves or loved ones into the future following physical death as a form of symbolic immortality (e.g. Bonsu and Belk 2003;Price, Arnould, and Curasi 2000;Turley and O'Donohoe 2012). Moreover, as Türe and Ger (2016) demonstrate in their study of family heirlooms, objects do not simply carry fixed narratives of the past into the future, since special possessions can also be modified and take on new narratives over time. ...
Based on in-depth interviews with nine tattoo consumers, participant observation at a tattoo studio, a tattoo consumption diary, and photography, we investigate embodied processes of remembering and forgetting temporal experiences. We unpick participants’ experiences of combatting the fragility of memory, negotiating which temporal experiences to remember or forget, and constructing temporal order through their tattooed bodies. These insights are enriched theoretically with reference to Ricoeur’s ideas concerning time, narrative, and memory. By focusing upon the embodied dimensions of memory work, we contribute fresh insights into the underexplored relations between bodies, time, and consumer culture. Furthermore, we indicate the continuing significance of temporal continuity, durability, and the past in accelerating Western cultures. Finally, we elucidate the importance of also attending to “absences” in consumer research. We conclude by considering the wider implications of our findings for better understanding an accelerating, liquid, and unstable consumer culture, beyond the context of tattooing.
... Similarities and differences in how modern societies interpret and ritualise death have been recorded and research on dying as a sociological phenomenon has been undertaken not only through the lens of individual nations, but also through comparative, crosscountry analysis (Walter, 2012). In contrast, despite its paramount role in providing (what can be defined as) an essential human service, funeral care has not been studied systematically and references to death in consumer studies are rare (Bonsu and Belk, 2003). The situation is gradually changing and research has recently attempted to understand: the public experience of attending funerals (O'Rourke et al., 2011); the affordability of funeral care (Foster and Woodthorpe, 2017) and the critical and growing issue of funeral poverty (Corden and Hirst, 2016); the motivations and experiences of funeral directors of doing funeral business (Beard and Burger, 2017); and the complexity of relationships between funeral directors and their clients (Howarth, 2017). ...
This paper contributes to the on-going debate on how hospitality should be defined and what constitutes hospitality as a social and commercial phenomenon. The paper takes a conceptual approach, reviewing the literature relevant to hospitality and funeral care provision, and proposing a reclassification of hospitality. The paper reveals that funeral care holds a number of core attributes that have long been associated with (more) conventional hospitality services. The paper articulates these similarities and introduces the notion of ‘last hospitality’, which is conceptualised as the hospitality services provided by funeral directors to the deceased and their families and friends. The paper argues that ‘last hospitality’ alongside the related services of funeral directors should be subsumed into traditional notions of hospitality. The paper discusses the implications of this inclusion for hospitality research, theory and practice.
... Further, in charting the life stories of individuals, identity projects may involve loss (Üstüner and Holt 2007), movement (Ruvio and Belk 2013;) and experimentation with identities over the life course, but particularly during major life transitions or turning points (Syrjälä 2016). Indeed, identity work has no end and may even continue after death as identities enacted during a person's lifetime are renegotiated post-mortem during consumption-laden funeral rites (Bonsu and Belk 2003). ...
The use of commodities in the service of identity projects is widely acknowledged as a core concern within contemporary consumer culture. But, in a world where the in-fluence of long-established social categories has eroded, and where the authority of consumption is more pervasive, such identity projects become increasingly precari-ous. Building on a review of extant literature, and an analysis of the key underlying junctures, we argue that while market-based choice opens up new possibilities for identity construction, it also carries with it new burdens and obligations. For example, in pursuing difference, consumers are fed a pre-packaged, commodified form of indi-viduality that is nothing of the sort. Meanwhile, accomplishing sameness is compli-cated by the ever exploding trajectory of lifestyles available to consumers. One major outcome of such factors is that individuals are always in danger of getting identity wrong, particularly when identity projects have become a matter of individual choice and responsibility.
... Belk et al. (1989) describe sacralization rituals, and Sherry (1983) explains interaction rituals in the gift-giving process. Ritual also plays an important role in understanding the consumption of the American Thanksgiving holiday (Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991), activities within consumption subcultures (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), the creation of fantasy consumption enclaves (Belk & Costa, 1998), brand communities (Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001), Burning Man consumption (Kozinets, 2002a), intracommunity gifts (Weinberger & Wallendorf, 2012), death and identity (Bonsu & Belk, 2003), the wedding harmonization process (Nguyen & Belk, 2013), the lavish wedding (Otnes & Pleck, 2003), and the meaning of alcoholic beverages to college students (Wolburg & Treise, 2004). ...
Although the consumer culture field has addressed the role of ritual processes in consumption, no research has yet identified how connoisseur consumers, through ritual practices, establish and manipulate their distinction from other consumers. Drawing on key concepts from ritual theory, this research addresses the role played by ritual in connoisseurship consumption and consumers’ taste. In conducting an ethnographic study on connoisseurship consumption, the first author immersed himself in the North American specialty coffee context-Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, and New York-from August 2013 to July 2014. He used long interviews and participant observation to collect data, which was then interpreted using a hermeneutic approach. We introduce the taste transformation ritual, theorizing the process that converts regular consumers into connoisseur consumers by establishing and reinforcing differences between mass and connoisseurship consumption. We develop a broader theoretical account that builds on consumption ritual and taste formation.
... As the sacred is experienced more and more in a secular context, consumer culture theorists have examined the mystification of the profane in the context of consumption (e.g. Belk, Wallendorff & Sherry, 1989;Bonsu & Belk, 2003;Belk & Tumbat, 2005;Muñiz & Schau, 2005;Bell & Taylor, 2016). In this article, co-authored by Johanna Moisander, we bring together the views of fandom as religious practice and consumption as a site of experiencing a mystification of the mundane, and adopt a view of fandom as sacred consumption (Belk & Tumbat, 2005). ...
One of the growing research interests in media and Internet studies concerns how the self is constructed in the digital environment, while the complex relationship between the self and consumption continues to be of interest in consumer research. This thesis is an examination of relational being at the intersection of digital media and consumer culture. It takes a critical perspective to examine the conditions under which the contemporary self is constructed and how the self is articulated in digital contexts, and thus views the online as embedded in the offline. Rooted in social constructionism, the relational perspective sees the self as an intersection of multiple and shifting relations.
The aim of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of self-construction in our media-saturated consumer society. The study examines bloggers and fans and their mediated consumption practices through the lens of the social imaginary. The empirical material is collected from social media sites, plus-sized fashion blogs and YouTube, and analysed in the discourse analytic tradition combined with digital ethnography.
The findings of the empirical studies show how ‘aspiration’ is constructed in the imaginary, with two conflicting, yet mutually constitutive notions of ‘being yourself’ and ‘improving yourself’ being negotiated at the site of the self, in the relational flow of the Internet. The studies also discuss disenfranchisement and marginalisation as properties of relationships, and show how imaginaries, in offering a range of interpretative resources for the self, also provide opportunities for counter-discourses.
The study makes several theoretical and methodological contributions: within media and Internet studies, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the embeddedness of the digital and to the ongoing discussion of how the digital is shaping the self; within consumer research, to the theorisation of relational self in the contemporary consumer context.
Treating imaginaries as semiotic systems allows us to see imaginaries as constructed terrains of aspirations with complex significations. Thus, as sources of relational tension, imaginaries can be seen as implicated in the positioning, even othering, of individuals. The study suggests that the self is a fluctuating process of various alignments and disalignments within the matrix of social, cultural, and economic forces, with momentary discursive and relational achievements translating into temporary and situated congruence with others.
... The excitement about the possibilities was palpable and I knew we were on to something. Death went beyond rituals (Bonsu and Belk 2003) and bereavement (O'Donohoe and Turley 2006;Turley and O'Donohoe 2012) to include what I considered to be endless avenues of study. This topical diversity is evident in my edited book (Dobscha 2016) where authors from fields that ranged from chemistry to sex studies made meaningful contributions to this emerging discourse. ...
This special issue on consumption and death marks another point on an upward trajectory of the mainstreaming of death and death-related consumption and marketing research. Death, like sex, is all around us; marketing and consumption is interwoven into the services we choose, the products we prefer, and the relationships we revere. This introduction provides a brief overview of consumption and death research, and summarizes the papers included in the special issue.
Mythmaking Strategies and Their Effects on Consumer Identity Projects: A Look Into Healthy and Unhealthy Snack Advertisements is work from 2021-2022 done by researchers: Galin Genov (Bulgarian), Stefan and their supervisor Professor Guojun He: Analyzing ads from unhealthy and healthy snack products, then conducting consumer interviews shows how mythmaking concepts and strategies are developed for advertisement purposes during the COVID-19 period (2019-2021). The advertisements interpreted by consumers have an effect on consumers' perceptions, identity projects, and consumption choices. The findings show that brands portraying healthier alternative snacks focus on brand story and product ingredients. Further research on additional strategies used and perception about healthier alternatives can be explored in the future. This research plays an important role in furthering the academic knowledge in consumer behavior and can provide benefits to snack manufacturers and their marketing teams.
Konsep makan para foodie bahwa konsep makan itu sendiri masih relatif berbeda-beda bagi setiap foodie. Namun Adapun kesamaan-kesamaan terkait batas-batasnya seperti makan yang dibatasi dengan ketersediaan nasi atau tidak dalam sebuah sajian, ngemil sebagai sebuah makanan yang ‘ringan’ (praktis dan cepat) dan pengganjal yang bisa berupa apa saja, namun dengan porsi yang lebih kecil. Para foodie juga telah mentransformasi nilai-nilai yang bersifat non-materi hingga bersifat materi dari makanan ke dalam makna-makna yang dijadikan medium berinteraksi secara sosial. Hal tersebut kemudian dapat berlaku baik hubungan antar kelompok maupun perorangan.
Pengetahuan dari proses pengalaman hidup seorang foodie dan hubungannya dengan makanan menciptakan perilaku yang ‘mendudukkan’ makanan sebagai obyek aktualisasi dan mereproduksi diri. Makanan juga telah menjadi medium bagi para foodie dalam mengekspresikan diri dan pengetahuannya tentang makanan baik untuk kepuasan diri maupun sebagai ‘hadiah’ kepada orang-orang disekitarnya.
Dalam dimensi pengetahuan dan perilaku terhadap makanan, terdapat proses penilaian terhadap makanan yang telah menjadi bagian dalam pendiskusian tentang makanan dan dasar bagi seorang foodie untuk memuaskan diri maupun orang disekitarnya. Dari rasa, perasaan terkait pelayanan, dan kondisi tempat makan, tidak ada yang dapat berdiri tunggal sebagai yang paling dominan dalam menentukan penilaian seorang foodie terhadap makanan. Salah satu dari faktor tersebut dapat menggugurkan penilaian baik di faktor lain. Disisi lain, dalam melakukan sebuah penilaian, para foodie mendasari penilaiannya secara umum dari ekspektasi terhadap citra makanan, pembuat makanan, tempat makan dan juga harga makanan.
Foreigner executives coming to Ghana will notice attitude to time and family relations as some of the distinct characteristics of the Ghanaian culture. For example, after a couple of months sojourn in Ghana, foreigners engage in discussions with Ghanaians about the extent to which they value time. These discussions are relevant for a foreign business executive as well. They frequently observe that their Ghanaian workers act slowly and appear to be un-concerned about their productivity. In simple language, they waste time. This observation is quite understandable. Since we all have only 24 hours a day, the manner in which we use every minute of the day is important to our success as individuals and as business owners and managers. Other issues that foreign executives tend to complain about include the influence of the extended family system on workplace behaviour and decisions, deference to power and authority and attitude to gifts. This chapter explains the cultural roots of some of these observed behaviours and dis-cusses their implications for management decisions.
Objetivo do estudo: entender como o consumidor atribui significado mágico ao produto, revestindo-o de poderes mágicos. Metodologia/abordagem: foram realizadas 10 entrevistas fenomenológicas com torcedores de time de futebol. Os dados qualitativos foram analisados utilizando-se a abordagem hermenêutica. Originalidade/relevância: a magia está em todo lugar em um estado difuso, entretanto pouco ainda se sabe sobre como os consumidores revestem os produtos de poderes mágicos por meio de rituais de consumo. Principais resultados: como resultado, a pesquisa explica como o consumidor atribui poder mágico ao produto performando (1) ritual de escolha do produto, (2) ritual de revestimento do pensamento mágico, (3) ritual de uso do produto mágico. Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: o trabalho contribui para os estudos sobre pensamento mágico, explicando como os consumidores empreendem esforços para imbuir os objetos de poderes mágicos, assim como papel desses objetos na vida dos consumidores que revestem de magia as suas experiências de consumo.
This monograph describes the marketing research that has been published in the top marketing journals since their inception relating to health care, broadly defined. Over 1,000 articles are summarized across the chapters relating to consumer behavior and food, consumer behavior and other consumption, and business marketing issues. Research from outside of marketing is also briefly reviewed. This monograph celebrates the research that has been accomplished and closes with suggestions for future research.
This book seeks to explore the managerial challenges that foreign executives may experience in Ghana from a cultural perspective. It also provides current and future executives with some guidelines for managing successfully within the Ghanaian environment. The discussions in this book are predicated on the understanding that foreign executives may experience some tensions between the Ghanaian culture/management practices and the values and policies that they are likely to bring to the country. Thus, by gaining insight into the culturally grounded reasons underlying Ghanaian managers’ behaviour, foreign executives may be better able to determine appropriate changes in management practices within their host organizations and be more successful in implementing these changes. Issues discussed include:
• Cultural concept and impact on managerial decisions
• Cultural influences on employee behaviours
• Leadership style and relationships with Ghanaian employees
• Recruitment and career path development
• Learning and training
• Motivation
• Organizational change
• Collaboration and trust
This research focuses on shopping centers and on the shopping and consuming experiences produced and undergone within these retail spaces in different cities and in different regions of the world. Although significant work has been done on this topic in developed economies, significantly less has been devoted to emerging economies and even less has been done in comparative terms. This work builds on the existing Consumer Culture Theory related literature and it attempts to address current gaps in this body of work, as well as to provide managerial recommendations based on research findings. It differentiates itself from previous research on shopping centers on four main aspects: (1) By studying the phenomenon of shopping centers in Latin America, a largely unexplored domain; (2) By adding a multicultural perspective to the body of research on consumer and shopping experiences at shopping centers through the study of cases in five different cities; (3) By establishing a process of case selection to provide a priori variability of cases; (4) By comparing on ¨continuum¨ (Carù & Cova, 2007; Roederer, 2008) the full array of shopping experiences: produced, undergone and co-driven (Csaba and Askegaard, 1999; Tsai, 2010) and assessing whether these experiences vary across locations as well as the possible causes of variation.
The human-domesticate relationship has long been a focus of archaeological research, and one recognized as a complex decision-making process with risks and benefits inextricable from the environment. Expectations from behavioral ecology suggest growing human populations, depressed habitats, and the need to produce more food, are potential reasons for husbandry, but the timing, nature, and decision-making processes of this relationship remain unclear. Focusing on the North American turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), why adopt domesticates when hunting is an option, and if husbandry is adopted, what are the dynamics of the human-ecological system? Results of human hunting and foddering models indicate turkey husbandry is not as costly as previously thought, especially if fodder is not the primary food source for turkeys. Comparison between hunting and foddering returns suggest turkey husbandry should be adopted when local (~5 km) habitats are depleted of wild birds and foddering investment is low. Even when foddering costs are high (100% of turkey diet), adoption should take place when habitats are depleted of turkeys within 60-80 km of the community. The model also reveals that when maize and turkey husbandry are viewed as a dynamic, coupled human-agricultural system and foddering costs are low, the returns from the system are higher than either turkeys or maize could produce alone.
The author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing-relevant insights from the "texts" of consumer stories and gives an overview of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of this approach. Next, the author describes a hermeneutic framework for interpreting the stories consumers tell about their experiences of products, services, brand images, and shopping. An illustrative analysis demonstrates how this framework can be applied to generate three levels of interpretation: (1) discerning the key patterns of meanings expressed by a given consumer in the texts of his or her consumption stories, (2) identifying key patterns of meaning that emerge across the consumption stories expressed by different consumers, and (3) deriving broader conceptual and managerial implications from the analysis of consumer narratives. This hermeneutic approach is compared and contrasted to the means-end chains laddering framework, the "voice of the customer" approach to identifying consumer needs, and market-oriented ethnography. The author concludes with a discussion that highlights the types of marketing insights that can result from a hermeneutic interpretation of consumers' consumption stories and then addresses the roles creativity and expertise play in this research orientation.
This paper argues that what we do not want to consume is often as personally and socially important as what we desire. Are desire and distaste really two separate bodies of knowledge; do we keep separate mental lists of good and bad, of things to be sought out and things to be avoided? Or are the positive and negative aspects of goods always intimately related to each other, so that we learn a series of relationships between desire and disgust, or desired and detested objects?This inquiry was prompted by a long term study of consumption in the Central American country of Belize. Survey data show that distastes, aversions, and dislikes are much more socially diagnostic than positive desires. I argue that dislikes and distastes are not the mirror images of tastes and desire, but instead provide very different ways for people to express identity and difference, to create senses of self, space, and personal and social time.
The impact of globalization on the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World are examined, drawing on examples of consumer culture contact with the More Affluent World. We find that rising consumer expectations and desires are fueled by global mass media, tourism, immigration, the export of popular culture, and the marketing activities of transnational firms. Yet rather than democratized consumption, these global consumption influences are more apt to produce social inequality, class polarizations, consumer frustrations, stress, materialism, and threats to health and the environment. Alternative reactions that reject globalization or temper its effects include return to roots, resistance, local appropriation of goods and their meanings, and especially creolization. Although there is a power imbalance that favors the greater influence of affluent Western cultures, the processes of change are not unidirectional and the consequences are not simple adoption of new Western values. Local consumptionscapes become a nexus of numerous, often contradictory, old, new and modified forces that shape unique consumption meanings and insure that the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World will not result in Western consumer culture writ globally.
An existential psychodynamic theory is presented based on Ernest Becker's claim that self-esteem and cultural worldviews function to ameliorate the anxiety associated with the uniquely human awareness of vulnerability and mortality. Psychological equanimity is hypothesized to require (1) a shared set of beliefs about reality that imbues the universe with stability, meaning, and permanence; (2) standards by which individuals can judge themselves to be of value; and (3) promises of safety and the transcendence of death to those who meet the standards of value. An empirical research program in support of this theory is then described, and the personal and interpersonal implications of these ideas are briefly considered.
The dominant model found in contemporary bereavement literature sees grief as a working through of emotion, the eventual goal being to move on and live without the deceased. This article challenges this model by analysing the own author's own experience of loss and by drawing together recent research papers which suggest an alternative, more sociological, model. Survivors typically want to talk about the deceased and to talk with others who knew him or her. Together they construct a story that places the dead within their lives, a story capable of enduring through time. The purpose of grief is therefore the construction of a durable biography that enables the living to integrate the memory of the dead into their ongoing lives; the process by which this is achieved is principally conversation with others who knew the deceased. The process hinges on talk more than feeling; and the purpose entails moving on with, as well as without, the deceased. This kind of grief process is particularly necessary in a late modern society whose members must continually re-create their own identity—but the detachment from tradition, place and kin that makes it necessary also makes it singularly difficult. The article concludes by outlining practical and research implications of the new model.
Throughout the past few thousand years, historical accounts, philosophical treatises, and works of fiction and poetry have often depicted humans as having a need to perceive themselves as good, and their actions as moral and justified. Within the last hundred years, a number of important figures in the development of modern psychology have also embraced this notion that people need self-esteem (e.g., Adler, 1930; Allport, 1937; Homey, 1937; James, 1890; Maslow, 1970; Murphy, 1947; Rank, 1959; Rogers, 1959; Sullivan, 1953). Of these, Karen Homey most thoroughly discussed the ways people try to attain and maintain a favorable self-image. The clinical writings of Horney, and other psychotherapists as well, document the ways in which people attempt to defend and enhance self-esteem; they also suggest that difficulty maintaining self-esteem, and maladaptive efforts to do so, may be central to a variety of mental health problems. In this chapter, we will first review the research supporting the existence of a need for self-esteem. Then we will present a theory that accounts for this need and specifies the role it plays in a variety of phenomena including self-presentation.
The author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing-relevant insights from the “texts” of consumer stories and gives an overview of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of this approach. Next, the author describes a hermeneutic framework for interpreting the stories consumers tell about their experiences of products, services, brand images, and shopping. An illustrative analysis demonstrates how this framework can be applied to generate three levels of interpretation: (1) discerning the key patterns of meanings expressed by a given consumer in the texts of his or her consumption stories, (2) identifying key patterns of meaning that emerge across the consumption stories expressed by different consumers, and (3) deriving broader conceptual and managerial implications from the analysis of consumer narratives. This hermeneutic approach is compared and contrasted to the means—end chains laddering framework, the “voice of the customer” approach to identifying consumer needs, and market-oriented ethnography. The author concludes with a discussion that highlights the types of marketing insights that can result from a hermeneutic interpretation of consumers’ consumption stories and then addresses the roles creativity and expertise play in this research orientation.
The method which permeates the human studies is that of understanding and interpretation. In this method, all functions converge. It contains all of the truths of the human studies. At every point, understanding opens up a world.
The Long Interview provides a systematic guide to the theory and methods of the long qualitative interview or intensive interviewing. It gives a clear explanation of one of the most powerful tools of the qualitative researcher. The volume begins with a general overview of the character and purpose of qualitative inquiry and a review of key issues. The author outlines the four steps of the long qualitative interview and how to judge quality. He then offers practical advice for those who commission and administer this research, including sample questionnaires and budgets to help readers design their own. The author introduces key theoretical and methodological issues, various research strategies, and a simple four-stage model of inquiry, from the design of an open-ended questionnaire to the write up of results.
Deliberately considering relevant theories put forward by earlier writers and examining them in the light of the research for this particular book, the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and he attended 25 burial services. First published in 1962.
In Western culture, the involuntary severance (through death, desertion, or geographical separation, for example) of a relationship defined by actor as “significant” or “meaningful” is generally conceived of as a “loss” experience. In this essay, I want to pursue the question: What is lost? Stated more positively, I want to ask what it is that humans do for one another? What links self to other, personality to society? I want to make, that is, a modest foray into those matters that psychologists typically pursue with such concepts as “attachment,” “affect,” and “separation anxiety,” and that sociologists pursue in their inquiries into the nature of the social bond.
Acknowledgments vii 1. An Orientation to the Study 1 I. Making the World 27 2. "Evil Flee, Goodness Come In": Creating and Securing Domesticity 29 3. Heartplaces and Households: Haya Culinary Practices 51 4. Mealtime: Providing and Presenting a Meal 80 5. A Moral Gastronomy: Value and Action in the Experience of Food 127 II. The World Unmade 151 6. Plastic Teeth Extraction: An Iconography of Gastrosexual Affliction 155 7. "Buying Her Grave": Money, Movement, and AIDS 179 8. Electric Vampires: From Embodied Commodities to Commoditized Bodies 202 9. Conclusions: The Enchantment of the Disenchanted World 220 Notes 227 References 239 Index 247
Akan women play central roles in the care and disposal of the dead and the management of bereavement. Mortuary rituals provide members of the society with adaptive means of mourning the dead, and the expressions of grief ensure a systematic adjustment to human loss. Funerals and mourning rites include music and dance, which capture so many aspects of Akan transitional rituals. The funeral celebration has become a perfect medium for not only understanding Akan traditional and popular culture, but also for appreciating the impact of social changes on Akan society.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This paper rests on the belief that various forms of advertisement of self such as the obituary and congratulation publications in the Nigerian daily newspapers exhibit a number of common themes in the imagery with which they handle the fact of achievement. Further, it argues that these themes may be a mix of modern and traditional criteria of success and represent an attempt by the elite to restate their superior attributes. The data were collected from Nigerian Daily Times and Daily Sketch, from interviews conducted with the business managers of the Daily Sketch and the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, with Guardian and Daily Times correspondents, and with newspaper vendors and advertisement agents based in Ile-Ife. A survey of attitudes to the publications and their implicit criteria of success was also investigated. In all, the consensus of opinion is that the publications do raise the revenue base of the print and the audio-visual media, that attitudes to the publications vary across ethnic, religious and class groups, and that the construction of selfhood within each of the advertisement formats is but an aspect of social relationships, mediated in this case through the forms of economic or political development in Nigeria.
A major concern of those who study bereavement and survivorship is the reintegration of survivors into society. Implicit in this research is the notion that emotional attachment of survivor to deceased may continue for long periods of time after separation through death. This paper examines how the emotional attachment of survivor to deceased is socially accomplished. Before they die, people interpret and apportion cues to their personal identities for those who will survive. Conversely, survivors are left with images, materials, objects, and wishes of the deceased which must be sorted and selectively preserved. I analyze the actions of both parties as strategies of identity preservation.
Death notices and obituaries published during the same calender month (March, 1975) by daily newspapers in Boston and New York were examined for possible sex bias. A clear pattern of male preference was found. A disproportionately low number of women received obituaries, and female obituaries were also shorter. The likelihood of a recently deceased male receiving an obituary with a photograph was approximately 10 times greater than that of a female. These results suggest that terminal rites of passage tend to confirm and perpetuate rather than challenge or transfigure previously existing values. Discussion includes possible use of obituaries as an unobtrusive measure of social change, as well as some aspects of the death system's involvement in discriminatory policies.
The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.
Deux problèmes liés sont abordés ici: 1) pourquoi la persistance et L'augmentation au niveau de l'échelle des rites de funérailles (avec pour conséquence beaucoup plus de dépenses) a la fois pendant L'époque coloniale et après-coloniale; 2) quel effet ont ces plus grandes dépenses des funérailles sur L'économie de PAsante aujourd'hui? II est suggéré que les rites de funérailles d'aujourd'hui ont seulement des significances religieuses superficielles; ce sont leur importance socio-économique qui explique la vigueur avec laquelle ils sont toujours pratiqués. Loin d'être un gaspillage sur le plan economique ils nourissent des activités économiques qui sont lucratives dans l'ensemble. C'est le mélange de l'utilité économique et sociale qui soutient, et même accrôit l'échelle de la pratique des rites.
This review takes off from the remarkable decline in mortality as one of the most striking features of the social history of the past century. Most deaths now occur not among the young but among the old. Death, thus postponed, is taking on new meanings for both the individual and society. Three lines of sociological inquiry over the past two decades, together with an extensive bibliography, are critically reviewed. First, the literature on dying and the self includes dying as a social process, dying trajectories, attitudes toward death, and the potentially mortal impact of such social stressors as retirement, residential relocation, and economic change. Second, a broad and often confusing literature deals with bereavement, grief, and the meaning of loss by death to surviving significant others, touching upon such topics as the “broken heart syndrome,” widowhood, types of death and bereavement, and anticipatory grief. Third, sociological inquiries examine the norms and social structures found in all societ...
This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ (1) description (2) within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and (3) seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott (1994), that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.
The consumer-research field has not yet explored the consumption dynamics of gay and lesbian chosen families. Also, there is currently a lack of work on death, dying, and disposition of possessions. The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a study of recipients' meanings of possessions in a very specialized context: dying of and death from AIDS. Three broad conceptual categories or themes emerged that fully described the meanings of dispositions and problems experienced among the chosen family: possessions and remembrance, inclusions and exclusions through disposition, and the means and meanings of final disposition. Overall, these consumers are trying to consume in prosocial manners and in doing so, negotiate the family unit and encounter difficulty through lack of social and legal recognition of their family bonds. Given that the time horizon of the relationship trajectory had been drastically curtailed, informants appeared to enter an entirely different paradigm of gift giving and receipt. This paradigm may well be one of agapic love in which gifts are given in the spirit of expressing altruistic, unselfish regard for family members and so negotiate reworked ideal of family. In this context, the agapic paradigm appears to stress the creative agency of the individual as opposed to the structuring effects of preexisting norms and conditions surrounding gift giving. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.' In The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen sets out 'to discuss the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life'. In so doing he produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behaviour. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy; with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential goods for the sake of personal profit. Fashion, beauty, animals, sports, the home, the clergy, scholars - all are assessed for their true usefulness and found wanting. The targets of Veblen's coruscating satire are as evident today as they were a century ago, and his book still has the power to shock and enlighten. Veblen's uncompromising arguments and the influential literary force of his writing are assessed in Martha Banta's Introduction.
Originally published in 1976, this classic work helped to establish the legitimacy of understanding economic behaviour in psychological terms. Its central theme was that, despite the economic abundance that Americans enjoyed in the mid-twentieth century, they were at heart dissatisfied with much of their lives. Mainstream economics could not account for this kind of reaction and Scitovsky sought to explain it in theories that combined economics with psychology. Scitovsky has revised the last chapter and added a new chapter dealing with some contemporary aspects. In addition, Robert Frank, author of Choosing the Right Pond (OUP, 1985) has written a foreword.
For its millions of readers, the National Geographic has long been a window to the world of exotic peoples and places. In this fascinating account of an American institution, Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins explore the possibility that the magazine, in purporting to teach us about distant cultures, actually tells us much more about our own. Lutz and Collins take us inside the National Geographic Society to investigate how its photographers, editors, and designers select images and text to produce representations of Third World cultures. Through interviews with the editors, they describe the process as one of negotiating standards of "balance" and "objectivity," informational content and visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some six hundred photographs, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, progress, and modernity through an analysis of the way such things as color, pose, framing, and vantage point are used in representations of non-Western peoples. Finally, through extensive interviews with readers, the authors assess how the cultural narratives of the magazine are received and interpreted, and identify a tension between the desire to know about other peoples and their ways and the wish to validate middle-class American values. The result is a complex portrait of an institution and its role in promoting a kind of conservative humanism that acknowledges universal values and celebrates diversity while it allows readers to relegate non-Western peoples to an earlier stage of progress. We see the magazine and the Society as a key middlebrow arbiter of taste, wealth, and power in America, and we get a telling glimpse into middle-class American culture and all the wishes, assumptions, and fears it brings to bear on our armchair explorations of the world.