Journal of Consumer Culture current issue

Hypermodern Consumption and Megalomania: Superlatives in commercials

Gottschalk, S. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

Recent French sociological scholarship suggests the notion of hypermodernity to characterize the contemporary moment. While the meanings of this concept vary, the idea of excess seems central. Informed by this new scholarship, this article analyzes the superlative rhetoric in contemporary televised and internet commercials, and suggests elective affinities between this rhetoric and the various trends characterizing the hypermodern present.

Making a Habit of It: Positional Consumption, Conventional Action and the Standard of Living

Dwyer, R. E. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

Rising inequalities and high levels of consumption in many capitalist economies make understanding the relationship between stratification and consumption especially important at the turn of the 21st century. I propose that one way to advance this research is to build on work in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption. This scholarship is often disparaged as positing an overly rational and manipulative consumer actor. I argue instead that the positional consumption literature in the Veblenian tradition offers a more complex view of the consumer actor than typically recognized and in particular allows an important role for habit, routine, and convention in consumer behavior. I identify three major arguments about the influence of habit on positional consumption from work in the Veblenian lineage. I conclude that incorporating this more complex view of emulative consumption produces more satisfying theoretical propositions about the dynamic relationship between consumption levels, the standard of living, and structures of inequality than typically addressed in research on stratification and consumption.

Good Young Nostalgia: Camera phones and technologies of self among Israeli youths

Schwarz, O. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

The nostalgic consumption of images, which only a few years ago was practised mainly by adults, has lately become prevalent among Israeli teenage girls. Girls often describe themselves as ‘nostalgic’ and nostalgia has become a desired emotion. Unlike the nostalgia of former generations, this nostalgia is cumulative and not necessarily based on a strong dichotomous contrast between past and present. The transformation of nostalgia is closely related to developments in technology (the camera-phone and the internet) and in the possession-patterns of devices. Personal mobile phones are used by teenagers for production, archiving and consumption of documentary images on a daily basis. These images, not unrelated to those of mass media, are consumed by teenagers in order to evoke nostalgia and other emotions, as a technology of self. This trend also contributes to blur the ontic distinction between events and their representations.

Emotions, Imagination and Consumption: A new research agenda

Illouz, E. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

This article has three objectives. The first calls on vigorously injecting the notion of emotion in the sociology of consumption. In particular, I show that the former has much to contribute to the latter, especially when consumption is conceived as inherent in the process of identity building and maintaining. In this respect, and this is the second goal of this article, I argue not only that the category of ‘emotion’ can be heuristic for a sociology of consumption, but also that the sociology of consumption has long been, albeit unknowingly, dealing with emotions. Making explicit this analytical category helps strengthen, conceptually, much of the sociology of consumption. The third purpose of this article is to offer preliminary thoughts on the ways in which consumers’ volatile desires and emotions are mediated by culture. For the category of ‘emotion’ not to be psychological or individualistic, we need to understand just how it is infused by cultural meaning through and through. The conceptual link explaining the articulation between emotion and consumption is to be found in the notion of ‘imagination’, understood as the socially situated deployment of cultural fantasies.

Book Review: Robert, J. Foster, Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. 304 pp. ISBN-13 978--0--230--60386--8 (hbk), ISBN-10 0--230--60386--6 (pbk)

Sassatelli, R. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

Book review: Steve Hall, Simon Winlow, and Craig Ancrum, Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2008. 248 pp. ISBN 978--1--84392--255--1 (pbk)

Jipson, A. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

Book review: Jason Chambers, Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 322 pp. ISBN 978--0812240474 (hbk)

McGovern, C. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT

Book Review: Jo Littler, Radical Consumption: Shopping for Change in Contemporary Culture. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008. 160 pp. ISBN-13 978--0--3352--2152--3/ISBN-10 0--3352--2152--1 (pbk)

Carducci, V. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:35 PDT