Sociology of consumption

With an emphasis on everyday life, this respected text offers a lively and perceptive account of the key theories and ideas which dominate the field of consumption and consumer culture. Engaging case studies describe forms of consumption familiar to the student, provide some historical context, and illustrate how a range of theoretical perspectives – from theories of practice, to semiotics, to psychoanalysis – apply. Written by an experienced teacher, the book offers a comprehensive grounding drawing on the literature in sociology, geography, cultural studies, and anthropology. This new revised and expanded edition includes more extended discussion of gender, the senses, sustainability, globalization, and the environment, as well as a brand new chapter on the ethics of consumption.

In virtual worlds, consumption of digital, virtual commodities is apparently limitless. In game-oriented worlds like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XI the acquisition of desirable goods is limited only by skill, time and patience – but mostly patience. Given enough attempts to kill an enormously powerful monster, each player will receive the item she desires. What limits can be meaningfully placed on consumption in an economy of such apparent abundance that patience is the main obstacle to possession, a world in which everyone could eventually acquire everything given enough time?

This paper examines two limits of a spectrum of self-imposed limits to virtual consumption as explained by players of Final Fantasy XI with the moral limits of arbitrage at one end, and a focus on collective accumulation of wealth at the other. The moral constraints on arbitrage in FFXI are tied to a deeply rooted sense of economic fairplay and a strong – and surprisingly pervasive, given that this research was conducted before the financial crisis – ideology of “fair” rather than “free” markets. Some economic behaviour that is morally questionable, such as price gouging and supply manipulation, is understood not only as market manipulation that detracts from users’ game play experience, but also as a threat to players’ enjoyment of the virtual world of FFXI as a commodity, and their acquisition of digital virtual commodities. Players band together in linkshells (guilds) in FFXI to defeat powerful foes and acquire powerful and highly desirable equipment, or more baldly put, to increase their consumption capacity. Distribution of goods through these organisations can be a fraught affair, but generally, the spoils of conquest are distributed evenly. Though such rewards are individually held, the prestige and power of the organisation is increased as its members acquire increasingly sought-after goods, transforming individual accumulation and consumption into collective achievement.

Qu'est-ce que consommer ? Comment aborder, en sociologue, un phénomène si familier ? Le présent ouvrage apporte des réponses à partir d'un ensemble de recherches, toutes empiriquement fondées. Les différentes thématiques abordées-enjeux de définition, étude des budgets des ménages, rôle des marchés et des dispositifs marchands, liens entre consommation et hiérarchisation des groupes sociaux, rapports entre consommation et politique-permettent de comprendre comment la sociologie « bouscule » la notion de consommation et en redessine le contenu et les contours. En introduisant de nombreuses analyses, riches et stimulantes, ce livre interroge les frontières entre certaines catégories-comme celles qui séparent consommation et production ou consommation et culture. Il questionne également certaines habitudes de pensée : pourquoi la consommation est-elle rattachée à la sphère domestique ? Pourquoi est-elle si souvent considérée comme une activité féminine ou encore pourquoi fait-elle sans cesse l'objet de jugements moraux ? SOMMAIRE : Comment aborder la consommation ?-Consommation et budgets familiaux-La consommation face à la production-Consommation et stratification sociale-Consommation et politique.

The article traces the changes in everyday practices of production and consumption of amateur photographs at the beginning of the XXIst century. The authors argue that transformations were caused by a massive shift towards use of digital cameras and by rapid development of Web 2.0. As a result, the number of amateur photographs posted
in Internet has dramatically increased. This led to criticism resulted in uprising of specific resistance practices. Among the resistance practices are return to film-type cameras and the lomography movement.

В статье представлен анализ трансформации повседневных практик производства и потребления любительских фотографий в начале XXI века. Ее причиной, по мнению авторов, является переход
к использованию цифровых камер и активное развитие нового подхода к организации интернет-контента Web 2.0, в результате чего основной функцией любительской фотографии становится самопре-
зентация, направленная на создание образа творчества. В итоге насыщения информационной среды идентичными фотографическими образами появляется критика доминирующего способа обращения с
изображениями, а также специфические практики сопротивления. Среди последних в статье рассматривается возврат к технологии пленочной фотографии и появление движения ломографии, которое
позднее приобретает цифровую форму.

Energy use is a very important question nowadays in the context of global warming and the cost of energy. "Energy conservation" is paradoxal: environmental awareness is increasing, but so is energy demand. Sociological knowledge concerning energy uses and energy savings remain important to understand the possible evolution of practices and values and thus possible future energy policies. Can the "consumer society" become a "less energyintensive" society? This paper's purpose was to understand how individuals, at each stage of life, in the context of historic events and intra-familial relationships, build a specific relationship to energy and "energy care" (paying attention to energy) and a specific appropriation of public policies, energyefficient technologies and environmental discourses. The notion of "logics of action" provides a way to combine the analysis of historical events and the analysis of daily practices, integrating the way people act, the justification of actions and the dynamics of life course stages. The social age approach has policy implications, for example, helping to segment people's profiles and to tailor the tools to age groups. The paper also questions the fact that some policies focus on children to transmit their messages. This paper is based on the analysis of several qualitative studies in various age groups of French people.

Partendo dalla constatazione che oggi il consumo sembra essere la principale proprietà capace di descrivere le caratteristiche individuali e l’appartenenza di ognuno all’interno della struttura sociale, questo lavoro empirico prende avvio dalle maggiori teorie sociologiche che hanno permesso il costituirsi di un ramo di studi indirizzato a spiegare fenomeni che al giorno d’oggi sono sotto gli occhi di tutti. Sono stati utilizzati strumenti metodologici e metodi di ricerca sociale quantitativi e qualitativi, in base a un approccio mixed-methods. Sembra che la società, con i suoi dettami consumistici, spinga l’attore sociale contemporaneo verso scelte di consumo legate al godimento immediato, all’hic et nunc. I beni acquistati e consumati con modalità sempre più fugaci sembrano avere ancora un fortissimo valore simbolico e, nonostante l’attuale momento di crisi economica, la corsa all’acquisto di prodotti costosi e destinati a una rapida obsolescenza prende senso se letta in un’ottica di definizione di un sé sociale sempre più transitorio.

Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in
waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who
voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of
hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials
to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question
we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical
practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we
show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple
ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation
and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of
life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun
with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour
for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect;
finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are
dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice
allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and
distance themselves from it.

The present study examined the relationship between music preferences, values and musical identities in a sample of 606 Greek college students in the three institutes for higher education in Thessaloniki (Greece). Students indicated the importance of their music preferences in defining and evaluating themselves and their values on an abbreviated version of the Schwartz Value Survey (1992). The questionnaire included 26 musical genres resulted from an exploratory research.

The factor analysis revealed a typology of music preferences with five items: Sophisticated and Complex (e.g. jazz), Native-Greek Traditional (e.g. 'rembetika'), Sentimental and Sensational (e.g. pop), Established Rebellious (e.g. rock), and Non-mainstream Dissonant (e.g. punk).

Hierarchical regression analyses showed that values and perceived importance of music to self-definition (i.e. musical identities) contribute differentially in predicting the music preference structures (e.g. self-transcendence predicts Established Rebellious, conservation Sentimental and Sensational etc.).

The findings are discussed and interpreted in a social psychological framework as well as from the point of view of the sociology of music that has a long tradition in studying the musical taste and the factors that may have some influence on it. The chosen approach and point of view are based on the fact that during the last years it becomes more and more difficult to explain cultural consumption based on the "classical" demographic factors. As a result, there is an increasing interest to explore the common grounds between the omnivorousness hypothesis, developed by R. Peterson, and the homology argument, formulated by H. Gans and elaborated by P. Bourdieu.

This is the first study of this kind carried out in Greece, while the analysis of the relation between values and musical taste is not very common in the literature.

This paper attempts to explore the idea of agelessness through secondary literature, in the light of the successful ageing discourse. It makes an attempt to analyze, the presence of the desire to age well within the construct of beauty and fashion in the realm of the Indian cosmetic products advertisements, especially that of the anti-ageing creams. It tries to understand how the notion of femininity gets regenerated through these advertisements. In the process of the analysis, the paper explores into the meanings of ageing itself within the society and how the consumer culture provides a solution of agelessness in order to age well.

The paper reviews recent practice theoretical approaches to emotion and affect and assesses their potential contribution to the sociology of consumption. How emotion is implicated in the “motivational structure of consumption” (Campbell, 1994) has been a foundational concern of consumption scholarship. Illouz (2009) has called for “vigorously injecting the notion of emotion into the sociology of consumption” (p. 377). However, emotion and affect are highly contested notions in social and behavioural science (Harre and Parrott, 1996). Since the millennium, the burgeoning attention of social and cultural theorists to emotion and affect has led some to characterise this as an “affective turn” (Greco and Stenner, 2008; Harding and Pribham, 2009). And in recent years, a growing body of work has developed practice theoretical accounts of emotion and affect: in sociology (Reckwitz 2012, 2017; Weenink and Spaargaren, 2016); history (Scheer, 2012); social psychology (Wetherell, 2012, 2013, 2014); and human geography (Simonsen, 2007). Practice theory accounts of emotion offer a critique of, and alternative to, influential “non-representational” theories of “affect” (e.g. Anderson, 2010; Massumi, 2002; Thrift, 2004) that posit affect as inarticulable, pre-discursive and pre-social (see Barnett, 2008; Leys, 2011; Wetherell, 2014). Despite the ‘practice turn’ in the sociology of consumption, and with one or two exceptions (e.g. Rafferty, 2011; Sahakian, Bertho and Erkman, 2016), consumption scholarship drawing on practice theory has largely yet to engage with this theoretically allied field. Drawing insights from these approaches, the paper goes on to unpack the potential for the sociology of consumption of Schatzki’s (2002, 2010) concept of “teleoaffectivity”—which articulates how motivation towards goals (teleology) and emotion (affect) are mutually implicated in practices and larger social formations.

The introductory sociology market is vast, and dominated by traditional textbooks. These textbooks generally take a fairly similar approach, dividing the field up into chapters based on disciplinary subfields like culture, family, deviance, race/ethnicity, and so forth. While these approaches are certainly thorough, what they possess in breadth they often lack in sociological imagination – the kind of spark that ignites a cognitive connection between one’s private troubles and public, or structural issues. The sociological imagination was defined by C. Wright Mills as "the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society." Similarly, Peter Berger talks about a sociological "perspective", which allowed one to "see the general in the particular". Indeed, our hope as teachers is that our students won’t necessarily memorize everything there is to know about sociology as a discipline, but that they develop a sociological imagination, or perspective, that allows them to think broadly about the problems and issues in their individual lives, and move beyond the limitations of myopic individualism. By starting with consumer culture, and the "stuff" it so voluminously produces, this book will encourage students to unpack the back-story behind the stuff they love (and the stuff they hate). Through this process, they will see that the seemingly individual act of shopping – whether that be selecting a tube of toothpaste, or ordering a pair of shoes online – is never a solo experience. Instead, it is a profoundly collective phenomenon that joins the cultural and the material world, individual agents with broader structures, and local realities with global trends.

https://www.routledge.com/Introducing-Sociology-Using-the-Stuff-of-Everyday-Life/Johnston-Cairns-Baumann/p/book/9781138023383

Une grande part du marché de la bière de qualité en Belgique fait référence au monde monastique du fait de la réputation séculaire des bières trappistes. L'utilisation de l'imaginaire monastique est inversement proportionnelle aux liens réels existant avec une abbaye. En réaction, les moines travaillent à la différenciation de leurs produits mais aussi du fonctionnement même de leur économie pour marquer une spécificité monastique, cela tout en engageant les consommateurs à une limitation et à une esthétisation de leur consommation. Il s'agit alors d'une économie charismatique car véritablement fondée sur le charisme inimitable de ses producteurs. Et ce charisme sera d'autant mieux reconnu par la société qu'elle le réinvestit par ses attentes. Mots-clés : Bière. Monachisme. Belgique. Économie monastique. Charisme.

Since the turn of the century, a considerable body of work has developed in what is now known in English as " food studies. " While this body of work is largely interdis-ciplinary, exhibiting many fruitful overlaps across academic boundaries, disciplines still maintain their own particular trajectories in it, which have developed over time in relation to specific substantive issues. The new book by Alan Warde, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, tries to articulate a specifically sociological approach to consumption, and particularly eating, by drawing on the most recent developments in practice theory. Forty-four years after the publication of Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice [1972], it seems that practice-theoretical approaches to social life are still alive and well (Warde is, after all, one of the foremost experts on Bourdieu).

Cet article contribue à l’analyse d’une voie de promotion sociale peu étudiée : il explore les ascensions sociales par un métier commercial. Il s’appuie, pour ce faire, sur des analyses statistiques et une enquête ethnographique sur les agents immobiliers. Il montre que des agents immobiliers sont entrés dans le métier avec un espoir d’ascension intra- ou intergénérationnelle, attirés par des espoirs économiques et des aspirations liées au statut du métier. Il examine ensuite les manières dont les agents immobiliers vivent leur trajectoire et souligne les ressorts de l’ascension sociale subjective. Enfin, il analyse l’évolution des styles de vie des agents immobiliers qui connaissent une ascension intergénérationnelle : il met en évidence l’importance de la dimension matérielle de ces déplacements à travers la consommation, tout en montrant que ces derniers peuvent aussi s’accompagner d’une transformation du rapport au corps, à la culture et au politique.

This article puts the emphasis on how a commercial business can lead to upward mobility – a path that has been partly overlooked. It relies on a statistical analysis and on an ethnography of real estate agents. We show that real estate agents entered this industry because they were expecting some economic success and found the status they would be granted attractive. Then, we look at how real estate agents experience their own mobility and how subjective factors play out during this process. Finally, we describe the evolution of the lifestyles of real estate agents who have been upwardly mobile over one generation. We highlight the material dimension of such a mobility by focusing on their consumption habits and we show that these changes can also be accompanied by a transformation in their rapport with their body, culture, and politics.

Early exposure to environmental chemicals is associated with multiple health problems, including neurological and reproductive disorders. In response to this problem, the environmental health movement has emerged as a leading authority on strategies of self-protection, or what we call " precautionary consumption. " In this paper, we use discourse analysis to examine two decades of environmental health reports and advice from a key organization in the United States: the Environmental Working Group (EWG). During this period, the discourse of environmental health used by this organization presents babies as contaminated before birth, and mothers as vectors of chemical risk. This discourse locates risk within three primary sources: first, inadequate regulation of environmental chemicals; second, maternal environments of the body and home; and finally, maternal desires for food and beauty. We argue that EWG strategically mobilizes existing medical and scientific discourses surrounding maternal bodies to build greater support for chemical regulation. Key to this discursive construction is a differential attribution of blame and responsibility, where blame for pollution is assigned to regulatory failure, yet responsibility for mediating children's exposure is assigned to individual mothers. This social construction of pollution as a mother's problem is not only gendered but also classed and racialized, and warrants greater attention in feminist research. Our analysis also contributes to scholarship on the maternal-fetal conflict by tracing the ambiguous place of maternal self-care within constructions of child well-being, and advances research on the regulation of women's bodies and actions throughout their reproductive lives.

Pressures of globalisation such as the focus on the growth of productive economies, consumerism, and long work-hours have fragmented cultural beliefs and practices worldwide. Devaluation of deeply held soulful, creative, and nature-based practices in the dominant neoliberal capitalist discourse has challenged the way cultural and spiritual wellbeing are lived. Instead of being completely subsumed into the neoliberal global discourse, local responses incorporating global themes are emerging in the form of the “neo-tribal” festival experience. Although festivals have primarily been seen as places of consumption, this misunderstands the drive to participate in a festival experience. This article investigates a women’s arts and ecology festival held in The Blue Mountains, Australia, where members of the local community celebrate the return of spring. Findings suggest that this festival was a site for reclaiming a localized sense of connectedness, where participants reclaimed what was sacred to them. I will argue that consumerism is secondary to the desire for a sacred synergy of connectedness at this festival where critical creative action challenges the neoliberal and patriarchal discourses in the negotiation of global culture.

The proportion of the British population reducing their consumption of animal food products has increased dramatically over the last decade, while vegetarian and vegan options are now widely available in supermarkets and restaurants across the UK. This phenomenon presents vital benefits for climate change, environmental degradation, human health and animal welfare. Yet, little research has investigated the rapidly growing trend. A broader understanding of the decision to reduce one's consumption and the cognitive, social and physical processes involved in maintaining dietary changes is essential for policy makers, campaigners and researchers working toward a sustainable future. Meat reduction and vegan campaigns by non-governmental organisations serve as a primary promoter of reduction and present a unique opportunity to research reducers when they may first be seeking a dietary transition. The theoretical framework employed within this dissertation combines the first comprehens...

The proportion of the British population reducing their consumption of animal food products has increased dramatically over the last decade, while vegetarian and vegan options are now widely available in supermarkets and restaurants across the UK. This phenomenon presents vital benefits for climate change, environmental degradation, human health and animal welfare. Yet, little research has investigated the rapidly growing trend. A broader understanding of the decision to reduce one's consumption and the cognitive, social and physical processes involved in maintaining dietary changes is essential for policy makers, campaigners and researchers working toward a sustainable future. Meat reduction and vegan campaigns by non-governmental organisations serve as a primary promoter of reduction and present a unique opportunity to research reducers when they may first be seeking a dietary transition. The theoretical framework employed within this dissertation combines the first comprehensive model of behaviour change, the Behaviour Change Wheel (Michie, Atkins and West 2014), with the fields of social consumption and sustainable and ethical consumption to analyse the reducer and the reduction process through a more comprehensive framework. A mixed-methods approach has been used to investigate the barriers, motivators and goals of participants in seven UK-based meat reduction and vegan campaigns through focus groups (n=33) and a longitudinal web-based survey (n=1,587). To the best of the researcher's knowledge, this represents the most comprehensive study of reducers and reduction campaigns to date. Interviews with campaign staff (n=13) and an examination of campaign messaging and strategies have been used to further analyse campaign participation and the reduction process. Findings reveal key trends within highly diverse approaches to reduction, including a reduction hierarchy that prioritises red meat and neglects fish and egg reduction through a tendency for small, gradual dietary changes. While meat reducers were likely to be successful on a short-term basis, they were unlikely to maintain reductions over a prolonged period. Those with the greatest levels of abstention were, instead, the most likely to meet their reduction goals. Animal protection also emerged as key for many reducers, potentially creating a new perspective - a mindshift - that re-positions the animal source within the consumption process. Findings suggest that policy makers, campaigners and advocates need to consider the psycho-social element within the reduction process, with the potential for a wide variety of consumer types and, importantly, the need to not simply address what is consumed but to address normative omnivorous consumption that is formed around a meat component and de-values meatless meals.

Wie die jüngsten Diskussionen im Sommer 2016
um ein Verbot des Burkini an den französischen
Badestränden zeigen, ist das Abreißen der gesellschaftlichen
sowie der politischen Diskussion um
das Kopftuch als „ein Stück Stoff“ und ein „Quadratmeter
Islam“ (Oestreich 2005) auch über
zehn Jahre nach den ersten großen Kopftuchdebatten
in Europa nicht zu erwarten. Seit ihrem
Aufkommen spiegeln sich diese Debatten auch in
den Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften sowie der
Geschlechterforschung wider: In Deutschland
wurde die „Politik ums Kopftuch“ (Haug und
Reimer 2005) u. a. zum Gegenstand von integrations-
und gesellschaftspolitischen (Berghahn
und Rostock 2009; Göle und Ammann 2004;
Korteweg und Yurdakul 2016) sowie von rassismuskritischen
(Kreutzer 2015) Untersuchungen,
während zugleich die kopftuchtragenden Musliminnen
in den Fokus der Geschlechter- und
der Identitätsforschung rückten (Fournier und
Yurdakul 2010; Korteweg und Yurdakul 2010;
Nökel 2002) und ins Zentrum populärwissenschaftlicher
und teils polemischer Debatten um
Feminismus, Emanzipation und Integration (vgl.
Haug und Reimer 2005; Ate¸s 2008; Schwarzer
2010). Jüngst sind auch einige kleidungssoziologische
Studien entstanden, die das Kopftuch als
eine vestimentäre Praxis untersuchen (Haddad
2011; Sahin 2014). In diese Studien reiht sich
auch das hier rezensierte, 2014 im Campus-Verlag
erschienene Buch „Kopftuch und Karriere“
von Svenja Adelt ein, das – so der Untertitel –
„Kleidungspraktiken muslimischer Frauen in
Deutschland“ untersucht.

Conventional psychological theories of branding have an Achilles heel that we should no longer ignore. Outside of certain technology- and service-driven categories, where brands are built largely through reputation effects, branding's big stakes are decided increasingly by cultural symbolism. Brand symbolism delivers customer value by providing culturally resonant stories and images that customers use to buttress their identities.

How can we comprehend people who pay for an experience marketed as painful? On one hand, consumers spend billions of dollars every year to alleviate different kinds of pain. On the other hand, millions of individuals participate in extremely painful leisure pursuits. In trying to understand this conundrum, we ethnographi-cally study a popular adventure challenge where participants subject themselves to electric shocks, fire, and freezing water. Through sensory intensification, pain brings the body into sharp focus, allowing individuals to rediscover their corporeal-ity. In addition, painful extraordinary experiences operate as regenerative escapes from the self. By flooding the consciousness with gnawing unpleasantness, pain provides a temporary relief from the burdens of self-awareness. Finally, when leaving marks and wounds, pain helps consumers create the story of a fulfilled life. In a context of decreased physicality, market operators play a major role in selling pain to the saturated selves of knowledge workers, who use pain as a way to simultaneously escape reflexivity and craft their life narrative.

The chapter aims at providing a set of interpretive tools to analyze the outcomes of consumer activism when performed through collective action. In the last years, in fact, we have witnessed a shifting from political consumerism understood as a practice of the individual 'citizen-consumer' to political consumerism performed by a growing number of organized collectives like solidarity purchasing groups, consumer-producer cooperatives, ecological communities etc. This implies that a re-conceptualization of political consumerism should be accompanied by renewed interpretive frameworks and methodologies. Drawing from the literature on social movements and their outcomes, the authors come forth with an interpretive 'compass' composed by six main features (type, domain, nature, target, timing, duration) that help understanding the effectiveness of consumer activism in light of the recent developments. In the second and final part of the chapter, the authors underline the importance of taking into account factors like resources, media outreach and alliances as well as the political, socioeconomic and cultural context.

This study explores how men make sense of their participation in the feminized practice of salon hair care. By placing white, middle-class, heterosexual men at the center of analysis, I investigate the meaning of beauty work for a population that has been overlooked in research on gender and the beauty industry. Specifically, I demonstrate that men embed their purchase of salon hair care in the need to appropriate expectations of white professional-class masculinity. Ultimately, these men reproduce raced and classed gender differences in the hair salon by resisting feminization while at the same time transgressing gender boundaries.

Czy dzieciństwo zawsze istniało? To pytanie może wydać się dziwne. Jest prowokacją, ale chcę przez nie podkreślić, jak wielkie przemiany zaszły w ludzkiej świadomości na przestrzeni wieków. Nie zawsze bowiem dzieci traktowano tak jak obecnie.

El presente texto se propone poner de relieve el significado que adquiere el papel ritual que desempeñan las actividades de consumo en las presentes sociedades capitalistas, en cuanto expresión de un género de sociabilidad posmoderna, dentro del cual actividades en principio profanas destinadas a satisfacer estrictas necesidades de subsistencia económica cumplen sin embargo la citada función ritual como trasunto de su dimensión neo-sacramental, enfatizando de este modo la intrascendencia definitoria, en el sentido literal del término, que caracteriza a tales sociedades. El artículo concluye argumentando cómo la inmanencia que así es propia de la ritualidad posmoderna abre la vía hacia un nuevo género de religación social ya no basada en la adhesión individual y colectiva a una verdad trascendente de cualquier tipo, poniendo así las condiciones para la eventual emergencia de las sociedades autónomas con las que han soñado los reformadores sociales de todas las épocas.

Whether through food, leisure activities, or places
they inhabit, people’s taste is one way they distinguish themselves
from others (Bourdieu 1984). In this paper, I focus on the distinctions
that middle-class seekers of “authenticity” make between themselves
and others through their attitudes towards Dubai’s urban
spaces. Dubai’s new urban spaces have often been depicted as “superficial,”
“alienating,” and “inauthentic” by academics, journalists
and commentators. These common depictions have led some people
to dismiss the very places they use and socialize in as “inauthentic”
based on stereotypical ideas of what an “authentic” place is. Yet,
the reality is that Dubais rapid changes and “glitzy” spaces are
experienced and perceived in different ways even among people
who share the same economic class, age or ethnic background.
By conducting an urban ethnography with middle-class Emiratis
and long-term residents of the city, I hope to answer the following
questions: Who feels excluded by the city’s rapid changes? Who
is concerned about the “authenticity” of Dubai’s glitzy spaces?
And does the quest for “authenticity” become a way for people to
perform social distinction?

Özet
Gündelik hayat pratikleri insani etkinliğin sürdürüldüğü zaman ve mekân örgütlenmesi olarak Marksist anlamda kapitalist sistemin üretim ve yeniden üretim süreçlerini içermektedir. Tarihsel gelişim aşamasına koşut bir şekilde ekonomik etkinlikler günümüzde üretim alanından tüketim alanına doğru yönelim gösterirken neoliberal ekonomik sistemin kentsel mekânlar özelinde örgütlendiği görülmektedir. Kentin neoliberal dinamikler etrafında örgütlenme sürecinde bir yandan kent, kapitalist üretim ve tüketim ilişkilerinin merkezi olarak öne çıkarken diğer yandan kentin bizatihi kendisi bir tüketim nesnesi haline gelmiştir. Kentsel mekânlar, dünyada 1970’li yıllardan itibaren postmodern kültürün etkisiyle gösteri ve tüketim etkinlikleri içerisinde fantazmagorik mekânlar olarak planlanırken özellikle 1980’li yıllarda toplumsal alanda etkisini hissettiren küreselleşme olgusu bu alanlarda eklektik tarz ve üslupların yerleşmesine olanak sağlamıştır. Bu süreçte kentin eski yapıları meta ekonomisi içerisinde mübadele ve kullanım değeri temelinde soylulaştırma pratiklerine tabii kılınırken kültür endüstrileri de tüketime dayalı bu yeni toplumsal alanın işlerliğini sağlamaktadır. Günümüzde kentsel mekânların yaratıcı endüstriler temelinde soylulaştırma pratikleriyle şekillenmesi sürecinde eskinin tarihsel dokusu yeni ve güncel tüketim eğilimleriyle bir araya gelmektedir. Kültürün tüketim temelli dönüşüm sürecinde iletişim araçlarından bu mekânsal pratikler ve yaşam tarzları örnekleri gerek konvansiyonel gerekse dijital medya araçlarında paylaşılmaktadır. Mekânın gerçek ve imajiner tüketimi gündelik hayat pratiklerine eşlik ederken kentsel mekânların sahip olduğu özgün tarihsel doku ve işlevler dönüşüme uğramaktadır. Bu çalışma, kentsel mekânın soylulaştırma pratikleri bağlamında tarihsel arka planından arındırılarak küresel beğeniye hitap edecek şekilde tüketim ideolojisi ekseninde dönüştürülmesini incelemektedir. Yaşanan kültürel dönüşümün kuramsal düzeyde insan-mekân ve toplum ekseninde tartışılması çalışmanın araştırma konusunu oluşturmaktadır. Çalışma ayrıca çağdaş toplumların gündelik hayatının ideolojik üretim ve yeniden üretim sürecine odaklanarak burada işleyen küresel ve yerel dinamikleri tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır.
Bu kapsamda çalışmanın örneklemini araştırmanın amacına uygun olarak İstanbul’da soylulaştırma pratiklerinin belirgin olarak gözlemlendiği Tarihi Yarımada Bölgesi sınırları içinde bulunan Balat, Eminönü, Sultanahmet ve Süleymaniye semtlerindeki tarihi öneme sahip tescilli yapılar olan Balat Merkez Şekercisi, Beta Yeni Han, The Sarnıç Restaurant, Haliç Cafe ve Hayriye Hanım Konağı oluşturmaktadır. Ele alınan mekânlar Nitel İçerik Analizi yöntemiyle eleştirel perspektiften incelenmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Gündelik Hayat, Kentsel Mekân, Soylulaştırma, Neoliberalizm, Tüketim Toplumu, Kitle İletişim Araçları, Tarihi Yarımada

Abstract
Daily live practices, as the organization of life and space that humane activities are perpetuated, include production and reproduction processes of the capitalist system in Marxist terms. Synchronically with historical development, it is observed that neoliberal economic system is organized specifically to urban spaces while today economic activities are showing inclination from production field to consumption field. In the process of town organizing itself around neoliberal dynamics, on the one hand, it appears as the center of the capitalist production and consumption relations, on the other hand, the town itself became the object of consumption. While urban spaces, with the impact of postmodern culture, are planned as phantasmagoric places in demonstration and consumption activities from the 1970s onward, the globalization phenomenon that adumbrated its influence in the social sphere especially in the 1980s enabled eclectic style and wordings to settle themselves in these fields. In this process, while the old structures were subjected to exchange and gentrification practices on the basis of usage value in the commodity economy, cultural industries ensure the operability of this new social sphere that is based on consumption. Today, the historical texture of the past meets the new and current consumption orientations in the process of shaping urban spaces with gentrification practices based on creative industries. In the consumption-based transformation process of culture, these spatial practices and lifestyle examples that are among the communication tools are shared with both conventional and digital media tools. While the real and imaginary consumption of space is accompanying daily life practices, the unique historical texture, and functions that the urban spaces have are exposed to transformation. This study examines the transformation of urban space in the context of gentrification practices, purifying it from its historical background in a way that appeals to global taste in the axis of consumption ideology. Discussing the cultural transformation experienced in the axis of human-space and society at the theoretical level constitutes the research subject of the study. The study also aims to discuss the global and local dynamics operating here by focusing on the ideological production and reproduction process of the daily life of contemporary societies.
Within this scope, Balat Merkez Şekercisi, Beta Yeni Han, The Sarnıç Restaurant, Haliç Cafe and Hayriye Hanım Mansion, which are registered buildings that have historical importance in the Balat, Eminönü, Sultanahmet and Süleymaniye districts within the boundaries of the Historical Peninsula Region, where gentrification practices are clearly observed in Istanbul constitute the sample of this study following the purpose of the research. The spaces that were discussed were analyzed from a critical perspective with the method of Qualitative Content Analysis.
Key Words: Everyday Life, Urban Space, Gentrification, Neoliberalism, Consumption Society, Mass Media, Historical Peninsula

Food waste reduction is a substantive problem that reflects the broader societal challenges posed by the ideal of sustainable consumption. Consistent with dominant approaches to sustainability, there is a tendency to treat food waste either as a matter of production-side inefficiencies or as the responsibility of profligate or inept consumers. These approaches, we argue, provide limited explanation of the consumption processes through which food disposal takes place. This chapter applies insights from theories of practice in order to explore some of the inter-connections that shape and explain contemporary patterns of food waste. A practice theoretical lens presents a different framework for systematically examining how different constellations of activities give rise to patterns of food disposal. Conceptualising eating as a ‘compound’ practice (following Warde, 2013) suggests the need for analysis of the constituent sets of activities from which the practice is comprised (e.g. provision, storage and preparation, eating occasions, disposal). We locate food waste within both the specificities of the compound practice of eating, and the ways that eating is arranged in relation to other practices (e.g. of mobility or work). The conceptual approach is illustrated using a recent large-scale dataset of eating patterns in the UK, showing certain types of meals to be much more likely to produce surplus food. It is in these forms of organization and arrangement that new insights into the scope for shifting patterns of food waste in more sustainable directions are to be found.

Tanto na literatura científica disponível sobre pessoas trans quanto no senso comum, é frequente a referência a um corpo que mescla características convencionalmente masculinas e femininas como um corpo prototravesti ou pretransexual. Este trabalho, que tem o propósito de pôr em revista tal premissa, consiste em um estudo etnográfico com um jovem negro de classe popular cuja apresentação visual se enquadra nesse perfil (de inconformidade de gênero). No curso da pesquisa foi possível observar, a partir da compreensão do corpo como um capital, um processo de desfeminilização levado a cabo por meu interlocutor, orientado pela necessidade de inserção no mercado de trabalho e por um ávido desejo de ascender socialmente. Esta etnografia, ao complicar a linearidade do chamado modelo progressivo ou etapista de identidade trans, termina por lançar luz para as possíveis condições de emergência da identidade gay em um contexto periférico. Enquanto uma atribuição respeitável, esta é acionada em oposição às vexatórias categorias de bicha e viado, e reclama um expediente de afastamento moral de seus vizinhos da favela por parte do sujeito etnográfico. Articula-se nessa laboriosa fabricação de identidade sexual não apenas o gênero como também a classe e o poder de consumo. Por fim, argumento que o projeto de mobilidade ascendente é a chave para a mediação e compreensão da transformação corporal operada. Através de um roteiro por vezes claudicante, meu colaborador de pesquisa busca recursos para perseguir o sonho de um diploma universitário, apostando em um poderoso encontro entre capital corporal e cultural.

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Both in the available scientific literature regarding transgender persons and in common sense, we find reference to a body, which mixes conventionally masculine and feminine characteristics like a pre-transsexual. The present research, which aims to reconsider such a premise, consists in an ethnographic study of a black working class young whose visual self-presentation fits this profile (of gender nonconforming). In the course of the research, it was possible to observe, based on an understanding of the body as capital, a process of defeminization undertaken by my interlocutor, aimed to fulfill a need to integrate themselves into the labor market and from an avid desire for social ascension. This ethnography, by complicating the linearity of the so-called progressive or step-by-step model of transgender identity, ends up shedding light on the possible conditions of emergence of gay identity on the urban outskirts. As a respectable attribution, it is used in opposition to the derogatory categories of faggot/queer (“bicha”, “viado”), and claims an imperative of moral withdrawal from his neighbors in the shantytown  (“favela”) on the part of the ethnographic subject. Not only gender but also class and buying power are articulated in this laborious fabrication of sexual identity. Finally, I argue that the project of ascendant mobility is the key to the mediation and understanding of the bodily transformation operated. Through an at times uneven script, my research partner seeks the resource to pursue the dream of a university diploma, betting on the powerful meeting point between bodily and cultural capital.

Recent years have seen not just a revival, but a rebirth of the analogue record. More than merely a nostalgic craze, vinyl has become a cultural icon. As music consumption migrated to digital and online, this seemingly obsolete medium became the fastest-growing format in music sales. Whilst vinyl never ceased to be the favorite amongst many music lovers and DJs, from the late 1980s the recording industry regarded it as an outdated relic, consigned to dusty domestic corners and obscure record shops. So why is vinyl now experiencing a 'rebirth of its cool'?

Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward explore this question by combining a cultural sociological approach with insights from material culture studies. Presenting vinyl as a multifaceted cultural object, they investigate the reasons behind its persistence within our technologically accelerated culture. Informed by media analysis, urban ethnography and the authors' interviews with musicians, DJs, sound engineers, record store owners, collectors and cutting-edge label chiefs from a range of metropolitan centres renowned for thriving music scenes including London, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, and especially Berlin, what emerges is a story of a modern icon.

Endorsements & Reviews:

“Vinyl is a state-of-the-art treatment of an unforgettable object and medium that raises many of the issues central to contemporary anthropology. Its subject-matter should make it appealing to students and general audiences, while its theoretical sophistication makes it relevant to scholars of music, technology, popular culture, and cultural objects.” –  Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“Bartmanski and Woodward have created a masterpiece that any record lover should have on their shelves” –  Record Collector magazine

“Bartmanski and Woodward … provide meticulous detail as to how materiality matters … Bartmanski and Woodward divide their book into chapters that fervently trace various aspects of vinyl: its history, its functionality and use as a medium, its production and physical properties, and its consumption. In each chapter, they attend to the materially mediated cultural meanings within which vinyl is entangled.” –  Robin Bartram, Northwestern University, Qualitative Sociology

“Vinyl culture is back, and it’s even more vibrant than it was in its heyday, before digitalization. Bartmanski and Woodward take us to the epicentres of this revolution, and let those who are behind it tell us about their passions for this iconic medium. This is an exemplary study of the social and sensory life of things." - David Howes, Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

“In the age of the digital, with the ubiquitous smart phone and MP3 technologies providing consumers with instant access to global sounds irrespective of where they are, Vinyl explores the persistence of an old technology within the production and consumption of music. In doing so it demonstrates the complex ways in which material objects form a meaningful part of our everyday lives – not just through the sounds of vinyl but by how it feels and looks. The text is beautifully written, impassioned, yet critical. Welcome to the world of the post-digital.” –  Michael Bull, Professor of Sound Studies, University of Sussex, UK.

“A passionate ode to the analogue record, and testament to how vinyl embodies the content it mediates, with each record's unique journey etched into the material” –  Hillegonda C. Rietveld, The Times Higher Education

Branding is often viewed as a form of ideological influence, but how brands impact ideology has not been carefully specified. I use a genealogical study of the emergence of Jack Daniel's Whiskey as an iconic brand to specify the ideological role played by such brands in relation to other producers of ideological change, particularly the other culture industries. I demonstrate that brands play a distinctive role, quite different from that critics have described: brands act as parasites riding the coat-tails of other more powerful cultural forms, but then use their market power to proselytize these ideological revisions. Through ubiquity and repetition, brands transform emergent culture into dominant norms.

Bu çalışmada; İzmir’de farklı semtlerde konumlanmış alışveriş merkezlerinde (AVM’lerde) çalışan satış görevlilerinin çalışma koşulları ve bu bireylerin çalışma deneyimleri mercek altına alınmaktadır. ‘AVM çalışanlarının çalışma koşulları nasıl bir görünüm arz etmektedir?’ ve ‘Çalışanlar bu çalışma koşullarını nasıl algılamakta ve deneyimlemektedirler?’ soruları araştırmanın ana problemlerini oluşturmaktadır. Bu problemlerin cevap bulması, son on senede oldukça popüler yaşam alanları hâline gelen—alışveriş, yemek, eğlence, spor, eğitim, hobi ve iş olanakları sunan—alışveriş merkezlerinin çalışanlar üzerindeki etkilerini ortaya koymak açısından önemlidir.

Bu çalışmada, karma araştırma metodolojisinden yararlanılmıştır. Nicel teknik olarak ölçek içeren anket, nitel araştırma tekniği olarak yüz yüze derinlemesine görüşmeler uygulanmıştır. Örnekleme yöntemleri ise küme örnekleme ve kartopu örneklemedir. Saha araştırması sekiz AVM’de gerçekleştirilmiş, nihai anket yedi AVM’de 389 satış görevlisi tarafından doldurulmuştur. Derinlemesine görüşmeler ise 35 satış görevlisi ile gerçekleştirilmiştir.

Neoliberal ekonomik politikaların sistematik hale getirdiği örgütsüzlük, esnekleşme, güvencesizlik ve kuralsızlık gibi çalışma koşullarının ücret, çalışma saatleri, sosyal güvence ve diğer haklar açısından çalışanların aleyhine işlediği, bu çalışmadaki bulgular ile desteklenmektedir. Araştırma bulgularına göre, AVM satış görevlileri açısından çalışma hayatlarına ilişkin en önemli olumsuzluğun esnek çalışma saatleri olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Bunun yanında fiziksel/ergonomik zorluklar, ücret yetersizliği ve duygusal emek çalışanlar için önemli görülen diğer olumsuzluklardır.

Özellikle duygusal emek olgusunun çalışanların iş tatminine ve satış görevliliği mesleğine ilişkin hissedilen sosyal statüye olumsuz şekilde etki ettiği anlaşılmaktadır. Estetik emek olgusu beklentilerin tersine çalışanların büyük bir çoğunluğu tarafından olumsuz olarak değerlendirilmemektedir. Çalışanın işindeki memnuniyeti ise yaş, çalışılan sektör ve gelir değişkenleri tarafından farklı oranlarda etkileniyor görünmektedir. Ayrıca, kadın ve erkek çalışanlar arasında gelir seviyesi ve yöneticilik pozisyonlarına yükselme fırsatları açısından belirgin bir fark bulgulanmış, AVM’lerde cinsiyetçi çalışma ilişkilerinin güçlü olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Genel olarak satış görevlilerinin tüketim toplumunun tüketim dinamiklerine ayak uydurdukları anlaşılmaktadır.

Since the 1980s, shops have elbowed their way into more and more museums and taken up increasing space within them. But I want to assert that even when the shop is or was not physically present in the museum, it is or was there all the same. It is there as part of a cultural dialogue with and about things – a dialogue played out through the sameness and difference of shops and museums; that is, through shops being like museums and at the same time not being like them.
Like the museum, the shop is concerned with objects. Both museums and shops are special ›thing places‹, where objects are clustered together, out of everyday use. Both take care with how they select, store and arrange things, with how they record and create information about them, with how they position some things in relation to others, with the lighting they do or do not shine on them, with the colour and design of the surroundings. Both employ some kind of labeling. Both have expert people – ›staff‹ – whose role is to know about, organize and care for them. Both are places where other people – ›the public‹, ›consumers‹ – are invited to come and behave in preferred ways, paying some kind of homage to the things on display.

A ‘rites of passage’ movie set in the USSR of the 1950s, Valery Todorovsky’s film Stilyagi (2008) tells the story of the transformation of the hero Mels from loyal member of the Komsomol to stilyaga. For many critics, Todorovsky’s stilyagi are the very embodiment of anti-conformism. And yet to read the film in this way is to overlook one of its key elements - consumption. For in order to acquire their clothes and other accessories, the stilyagi need money. Zooming in (literally) on the financial transactions that these young people engage in with such astonishing regularity, Todorovsky reminds us that without money, there can be no ‘style’, and consequently, no stilyagi. Seen in this light, the stilyagi are not at all subversive, but in fact highly conformist precursors of today’s post-soviet shoppers. It is this paradox at the heart of the stilyagi and their ‘revolt’ as presented by Todorovsky which will be the subject of our article.

Yakın zaman içinde meydana gelen birçok protesto, demokratikliği ve etikselliği
sorgulanan sistemlere karşı çıkan toplulukların varolduğunu tekrar göstermiştir. Bu
topluluklar, kimi zaman AVM inşaatı için ağaçların kesilmesine karşı çıkmakta, kimi
zaman toplu taşıma fiyatlarının artışını protesto etmekte, bazen de kapitalist dünyanın
hükümdarları olduğu düşünülen %1’lik kaymak kesimin alanlarını işgal etmektedir. Bu
hareketlerin önemli bir bölümünü ise tüketici hareketi oluşturmaktadır. İşte bu çalışma;
tüketimin, zararlı, yok eden, küçük düşürücü ve ayrıştıran yönüne karşı çıkan özgün bir
grubu—tüketim karşıtlarını—inceleme yoluyla toplumsal/sürdürülebilir Pazarlama
nosyonuna katkıda bulunmayı amaçlamaktadır.
Temellendirilmiş Kuram isimli nitel metodolojiden faydalanılarak yürütülen araştırma,
Türkiye’de farklı illerde yaşayan ve farklı jenerasyon ve altyapılara sahip tüketim
karşıtlarının, baskın pazarlama ve tüketim sisteminin özelliklerinin farkında olan bireyler
olduğunu ve bu bireylerin tüketime benzer şekilde baktıklarını ortaya koymaktadır.
Araştırma sonucunda beliren model, tüketim karşıtlarının dönüşüm, amaç ve
davranışlarını tüm yönleriyle açığa vurmaktadır. Araştırma sürecinin işletme ve
pazarlama yönetimine sağladığı yol haritası, üretilen ürünlerin, fonksiyonalite, rasyonel
değer, verimlilik ve etik değer ölçüleri gözetilerek geliştirilmesi ve fiyatlandırılmasına
işaret etmektedir. Bu yol haritasına göre etik olmayan imaj inşası ve etik olmayan
tutundurma faaliyetleri de pazarlama tarafından artık bir kenara bırakılmalıdır. Tüketim
karşıtlarının nitelikli insan kaynağı özellikleri taşıdıkları görülmekte, farkındalığı yüksek
ve etik değerler ile hareket ettiği düşünülen bu bireylerin toplumsal gelişme yolunda kilit
oyuncu rolleri üstlenebileceği anlaşılmaktadır.

When graffiti writing was transferred onto canvas for sale during the Manhattan art boom of the 1980s, it was widely felt to have ‘sold out’ to the exploitative interests of the art establishment and become a ‘post‐graffiti’ art movement. In contrast, recent British street art demonstrates the capacity to be both more critical and complicit in the influential spheres of art and commerce. Yet, despite growing recognition of these ‘new directions in graffiti art’, there remains little critical attention to how such post‐graffiti aesthetic practices are mobilized, not simply by the heroic tactics of the lone male street artist, but by a significant body of cultural intermediaries, institutions and firms. Established in 2002 by the notorious street artist, Banksy, and his agent, the photographer Steve Lazarides, Pictures on Walls Ltd (POW) was a company that in many ways stood at the cutting edge of these developments. As such, it serves as a rich case study of the ways street art can be understood as a sophisticated form of creative industry. Specifically, as a key way of buying into the street art scene, the limited edition POW screen print is used here to exemplify a cultural economy that is both rooted in the contemporary city, and poised at an intersection between the urban and the virtual. Following the printing, pricing and collecting of such products, this research traces street art from its production in the fashionable art district of Hoxton, east London, and into the everyday lives of a passionate group of Internet collectors and fans.

Özet: Bu makale, tüketim, tüketim toplumu ve tüketim kültürü kavramlarına odaklanmaktadır. Bu kavramların literatürde nasıl tanımlandığına değinerek, karşılaştırmalı bir analizini sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Ayrıca bu makalede tüketim olgusu başta olmak üzere, tüketim toplumu ve tüketim kültürünün günümüzde ne ifade ettiğine odaklanılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda ihtiyaçların manipülasyonu tezi, gösteri toplumu kuramı, reklamın bir tüketim propagandası olduğu yönündeki iddia ve tüketimin fazla ürüne sahip olmayla herhangi bir bağlantısının olmadığını ileri süren düşünce ele alınmaktadır. Tüketim olgusunun iktisadi, sosyal ve kültürel olmak üzere çeşitli boyutlarını ele alan literatürün karşılaştırmalı bir analizi üzerine kurulan bu çalışmada, sadece bir şeyler satın almanın insanları tüketici yapmadığına, insanın ihti-yacına tekabül eden nesneleri tüketmesinin onu tüketiciye dönüştürmediğine değinilmektedir. Tüketim toplumunda, tüketimin artık ihtiyaçtan dolayı gerçekleşmediğine aksine bizzat tüketi-min kendisinin bir ihtiyaç haline geldiğine odaklanılmaktadır. Böyle olduğu için de insanların artık kültür yaratmadıklarına " tüketim kültürü " nün nesnelerine eklemlenerek kendilerini var ettiklerine dikkat çekilmektedir. Bu doğrultuda genel olarak çağımızın artık tüketim kültürü-nün hüküm sürdüğü bir çağ olduğu iddia edilmektedir. Bireyin artık tüketimle, kültürüne dair bir ifade biçimi ortaya koymadığı tam tersine artık tüketim nesnesinin kendisinin birey için bir imaj ve mesaj iletimi halini almış olduğu tartışılmaktadır. Bu anlamda tüketim kültürünün, kendi kültürünü her yere sirayet ettirmiş olduğu gösterilmektedir.

Abstract: This paper centres on the notions of consumption, consumption society and
consumption culture. It seeks to present a comparative analysis by addressing the ways these
notions have been defined in the literature. The paper moreover focuses on the contemporary
meanings of these notions, with a prior focus on the consumption phenomenon. In this context,
the manipulation of needs thesis, the society of spectacle theory, the claim that advertisement is
a means to boost consumption and the notion that consumption is not related to the amount of
purchased goods are tackled in this work. Based upon a comparative analysis, which addresses
the social, cultural and economic dimensions of the consumption phenomenon, it touches upon
the notion that the mere purchase of goods and their mere consumption in proportion to a
person’s needs does not automatically qualify people as consumers. It focuses on the point that in
consumption society consumption does not accrue out of a need anymore; instead consumption
itself becomes the need in consumption society. Consequently, people realize themselves not
anymore by producing culture, but by being merely added to the very objects of “consumption
culture”. As such, this paper argues that our age largely corresponds to an age dominated by
consumption culture. Through consumption, the individual ceases to produce expressions
relating to its culture. On the contrary, the commodity of consumption itself becomes the image
and communication vehicle of the individual. The study thereby seeks to demonstrate the extent
to which consumption culture has spread its very own culture into all areas of life.

This thesis is based on the professional experiences of a small group of transnational Angolan traders known as the Moambeiras, due to their particular method of importing goods: suitcase trading. Considered in Angola as being on the margins of legality, these women travel abroad to bring back manufactured products (clothing, shoes, and women’s accessories) that they transport in their suitcases without declaring the commercial aim of this activity. This practice, used across the African continent, developed during the 1990s in the context of economic scarcity due to clientelistic economic policies. After the end of the Angolan civil war in 2002, allowing for the opening of international relations with partners such as Portugal, Brazil, Dubai and China, the feminization of this commercial practice intensified. However, since 2010 with the constant devaluing of the kwanza against the U.S. dollar, the plummeting of oil prices and the strengthening of bureaucratic and security policies worldwide, these commercial travels have been made more and more difficult to accomplish.
This thesis analyzes these phenomena through different case studies involving two waves of female transnational traders: the first being from Angola to Brazil, and the second from Angola to China. By investigating the specific roles of these African women in the three different spaces where they were observed, the markets of São Paulo, Luanda and Guangzhou, the research fits into the perspective of globalization from below. The business travels of these women also shake up traditional gender roles as well as the sharing of tasks and powers within families. By investigating these emancipatory processes, this research attempts to verify if this commercial activity allows the women to become conscious of the power relations that marginalize them and whether this consciousness develops the capacity to transform them. However, the thesis defended here assumes that the characteristics of the “parallel” economy, where the borders blur between legal and illegal, licit and illicit, condition the capacities of the women’s empowerment and put them at a disadvantage in the collective demands for their rights.  At of time when globalization is accelerating, this study endeavors to give an intimate, feminist vision of mobility through the journey and the life stories of various Angolan women as they travel between Brazil, Angola and China.

إذا كان الفقيه صاحب الصنعة لا يرى في جمهرة السلع المتداولة بأسًا، ولا يرى في طريقة بيعها شيئًا يُصادِم الشرع، إلا أني قد حرَّمتها على نفسي إذ آمنتُ بحُرمة أي تلاعُبٍ بالإنسان وشهواته. هذا الاختلاف في المنظور لا يرجع إلى عجز وتهافُت الفقيه التقليدي صاحب الصنعة ونقص أدواته فحسب، وإنما مرجعه كذلك إلى كونه سطحي برَّاني يتعامل مع الأقضية كلها -والمستجدَّة خصوصًا- كأنها ظاهر بلا باطن، ولا ينظر في المآلات غالبًا؛ إذ يقعد به فقر أدواته عن إدراك المآلات النفسيَّة والاجتماعيَّة التي تُصادِم الشرع ومقاصده على طول الخط. بل الأسوأ والأخطر أنه يُعامِل الإنسان كأنه ظاهر بلا باطن، وجسد بلا روح. روح تتأثَّر وتفسد وتمرض كما يمرض الجسد. والحديث يطول لكن هذا ليس مقامه.

ورغم أنني دُوَّنتُ هذه الدراسة بين عامي 2005-2007م؛ إلا أنها لم تُنْشَر للمرَّة الأولى إلا في شتاء عام 2008م، في مطبوعة فصليَّة قاهريَّة محدودة الانتشار. وها أنا أعيد نشرها ثانية نشرةً إلكترونيَّة، لكثرة سؤال بعض الأصدقاء عن أمور في صميم ما تناولته فيها، فلعلَّ الله ينفع بهذه النشرة، وتصِل إلى طائفة أكبر من القراء؛ فيفيدوا بها، ويُمطروا علينا وابلًا من دعواتهم الصالحات. والله من وراء القصد، وهو يهدي السبيل.