RN05 | Session 01a Leisure and Digital Consumption
(Big) data-driven programmes and the “post-TV culture”
Bogumila Mateja-Jaworska
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland bmateja(at)amu.edu.pl
With the announcement of ‘the era of Big Data’ (e.g.
Anderson 2008), many believe that it is only a matter of time when Big Data will supersede traditional kinds of research. The case of Netflix series “House of cards” was particularly often analysed (Smith, Telang 2016) and set as a proof that data-driven programmes are the future of media industry (Wolk 2015).
Following the Netflix example, media specialists are convinced that in contemporary creative business
“customer data is king” and they may be obtained using algorithms. Big data describing the actual media consumption and viewing habits are often treated by the media industry as an ultimate, “objective” solution to the problems of anticipating popularity of certain TV programmes and creating new ones. In my presentation, I will argue that this kind of “post-television culture” (Strangelove 2015) or “algorithmic culture” (Striphas 2015) opens up new areas for critical cultural analysis and in-depth research. What is more, understanding post-TV landscape and its mechanisms seems to be crucial in order to embrace the changes in production and circulation of meanings in contemporary western societies.
Analog Affect and the Renaissance of ‘Dead’
Media
Alev Pinar Kuruoglu, Joonas Rokka
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark; EMLYON Business School
alev(at)sam.sdu.dk, rokka(at)em-lyon.com
In late 2016, Guardian newspaper reported that vinyl sales overtook digital sales in the UK (Ellis-Petersen 2016). Kodak announced at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas it will bring back Super 8 film cameras, Ektachrome film, and hints at the return of beloved Kodachrome film brand. Analog media have experienced a major resurgence. With analog media – records, cassettes, polaroids, fanzines, VHS film, and others – authors have drawn attention to the emotional intensity (Kuruoglu and Ger 2015), warmth (Bartanski and Woodward 2015), and tactility (Bartanski and Woodward 2015; Marks 2000) of media objects. This paper expands theorizing towards understanding the affective experience of analog in contradistinction to digital media, and in this
way wishes to explain the renaissance of analog media in the era of the digital. In particular, we ask:
how do different forms of media lend themselves to affective atmospheres and sociabilities? Based on our fieldwork since 2013, we explore how affect is produced, transmitted, and circulated within a community of skateboarders in Helsinki. Following this scene and its members, we found a strong counter-trend towards digital media and a proclivity towards producing and consuming their own analog media. We find that the material objects, including the skateboards, the analog media, and the media contents, both generate and are embedded in an affective atmosphere. The city of Helsinki also lends itself to “intensive space-time” (Anderson 2009) that the skateboarders and their productions traverse.
All consuming popular media? a Swedish perception study
Tullia Jack
Lund University, Sweden tullia.jack(at)gmail.com
Media is now omnipresent in everyday life: we are constantly inundated with messages of what we should aspire to and how we should do normality.
There is concern that stylised imagery instills a sense of inadequacy, leading to positional treadmills and implicated unsustainable consumption. Little is known, however, about how everyday people actually respond to media (MacFadyen et al., 2003). Representation and reception are not necessarily one and the same.
This study uses focus groups to unpack the relationship between representation, reception and application of media narratives in everyday life. To this end I explore ways that everyday people perceive cleanliness narratives in popular magazines.
Cleanliness provides a clear case of inconspicuous consumption of water and energy implicated in accelerating cleanliness practices (Shove, 2003).
Focus groups are employed for their potential in studying processes of ‘attitude formation and the mechanisms involved in interrogating and modifying views’ (Barbour, 2007: 31) that inform the reception of social narratives, like cleanliness. People constantly produce themselves in all contexts of interaction by
‘telling, negotiating, re-telling and performing their self-narratives’ (Halkier, 2010: 76), offering insights into how representations are interpreted and made sense of in the context of everyday life.
By interrogating various media discourses surrounding cleanliness, this study offers insights into ways that representations are perceived and integrated into social normality by everyday people. This is useful in understanding how media is perceived and applied with exciting implications for sustainable consumption.
13TH CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
162
Consumption of digital technologies across the life course – does age affect technology readiness among media consumers in Finland?
Sanna-Mari Kuoppamäki University of Jyväskylä, Finland sanna.kuoppamaki(at)jyu.fi
In a digital society, consumption practices from communication, entertainment, shopping, banking and health care are digitalising and digital literacy has become a necessity for participation in a consumer society. Previous research indicates that digital literacy as well as ownership of digital devices is connected to socio-demographic factors; age, education and income level being the most important ones. In sociological research, less emphasis has been put on technology readiness (TRI) that measures people’s propensity to embrace and use new technologies in everyday living (Parasuraman et al., 2015). Technology readiness has four dimensions (optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity) that are believed to affect a person’s predisposition to use new technologies. The study asks, to what extent age and other socio-demographic factors predict technology readiness (TRI) among media consumers in Finland and whether or not life course factors (household structure and social relationships) have an effect on technology readiness. The results are derived from an online based survey collected in 2016 among Finnish media consumers aged 18 to 83 (N=1,366). Preliminary results suggest that age is negatively associated with optimism and innovativeness and positively associated with discomfort. In insecurity, age does not remain a significant predictor, and household structure is associated only with discomfort. By analysing technology readiness among media consumers of different age groups, new insights to digital inclusion and exclusion can be obtained, which simultaneously contribute to the discussion of challenges that digitalising consumer society encounters in a period of economic changes.
RN05 | Session 01b Sociology of Taste
What is the place of taste in the value chain?
Coffee shops, baristas and specialty coffee in contemporary Brazil
Mauricio Piatti Lages
University of São Paulo, Brazil murucopl(at)hotmail.com
This article attempts to investigate the transformations of coffee along its value chain, from the most primary links to the service sector, when it comes into play the appreciation of the sensorial attributes of the product.
We have observed that the rise of niche coffee shops in the last ten years has contributed to the systematic change of preferences, as consumers are becoming increasingly interested in more acidic and sensorially complex coffees, instead of the typical bitterness of traditional Brazilian and European coffees. In order to understand how these new material and symbolic
frameworks are propagated, we turn our attention to the professional barista, which acts as a mediator in the relationship between the consumer and the product. In this way, it appears that the production of consumer taste by these intermediary links of the chain acquires a key role in the reorganization of the coffee market. Furthermore, such transformations are part of a larger process in which the production models migrate to a “quality logic”, which aims to forge specific niche markets defined by the valorization of quality and origin. In total, we investigated seventeen coffee shops and applied questionnaires to twenty-nine baristas in São Paulo and Brasília. Considering the articulation between consumption and production, the article also seeks to contribute to the understanding of the value production in the very spaces where consumption occurs, extending the reflection to other comestibles and beverages.
Tastebrary(1) as a sociological concept Sandra Fontanaud
Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France sandra.fontanaud(at)u-picardie.fr
The field of gastronomy is omnipresent in France and has been got more dense, diversified and complicated since the 2000s : the traditional chefs of the 70s sitting behind their stoves and surrounded by their assistants (replaced by the charismatic leaders of these last years), are joined today by female chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, coffee roasters, chocolate makers, baristas and other food thinkers.
Since Pierre Bourdieu and Distinction(2), we know that tastes and colors are very widely discussed, that they are matters of socialization, social class and cultural good willingness. We can however wonder about the promoters of taste democratization who appeared a few years ago. In what ways do these artisans transform their knowledge and know-how into feelings ? Since when do the consumers expect to live an “experiment” by tasting products ? How does this popularization transform customers into informed and critical amateurs, gastronomes or cooking enthusiasts
? What differentiates a cooking chef developing his labor around a product, from a chef who tries to translate his labor into an emotion or an idea ?
By using the concept of tastebrary and by examining its nature, the goal of this study is to understand how actors of taste receive, maintain and transmit their culture, and how they participate in the democratization of taste and in the definition of their professional field.
(1) Translation of « gustothèque », contraction of
“goût” (taste) and “bibliothèque” (library), a term coined by Philippe Conticini, a pastry chef
(2) Bourdieu P., La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Les éditions de Minuit, coll. Le sens commun, 1979
Cultural Taste, Social Mobility and Shame. A qualitative approach
Kamil Luczaj
University of Information Technology and
Management in Rzeszow, Poland kamil.luczaj(at)gmail.com
The qualitative methodology, namely the life story approach (D. Bertaux, I. Bertaux-Wiame), can help draw a detailed picture of upwardly mobile people.
Pierre Bourdieu refers to them as “les miraculés du mérite” because they significantly improved their social position over the years, against all the odds.
This paper offers a theoretical overview of problems related to the impact of social mobility on aesthetic taste. Upwardly mobile individuals inherit a certain (usually lowbrow) cultural capital and, after the change, they need to adapt themselves to the standards of different culture, which sometimes can be perceived as a foreign culture (Ch. Walley). I will focus on the issues of “rankism” (R. Fuller),
“biographical work” (A. Strauss), sociology of shame (T. Scheff), and various notions from Pierre’
Bourdieu’s theory.
Regrettably, under Bourdieu’s framework, an individual is perceived as coherent individual (ego), even though the obvious lack of consistent identity is visible when one has to constantly switch between
“old” and “new” practices, e.g. if different preferences should be displayed in public (at work, in the local community) and different in private (during family gatherings). The switching can be traced especially when there is a need to reconcile incompatible culinary tastes, musical sensibilities, architectural preferences, or practices related to particular brand consumption. The life history method allows researchers to treat an individual as a process (N.
Elias, B. Lahire, J.-C. Kaufmann) and the real sociology of individual becomes possible.
Autonomy versus commercialization: An analysis of the advertisement content of the culture sections of European newspapers, 1960–2010.
Riie Lotta Solveig Heikkilä University of Tampere, Finland riie.heikkila(at)staff.uta.fi
Previous research has shown that newspaper cultural sections are central foci for classifying and legitimizing tastes. Cultural journalists and especially reviewers can be considered both gatekeepers and tastemakers:
they filter what is written about and then participate in defining its value. Apart from the editorial content of newspapers, there is a substantial and growing amount of non-editorial content, constituted mostly of commercial advertisements. Advertisers are at the heart of what Bourdieu calls the “new cultural intermediaries”, central for constituting taste milieus.
Advertisements, assigning different values to distinct cultural products and making them desirable for potential consumers, are definitely part of the general
“cultural package” of contemporary newspapers. In this paper, I will scrutinize an aspect of commercialization that has not been paid much attention: the advertisements found in the cultural sections of newspapers. I ask how the much-discussed “commercialization of cultural journalism”
claim shows in terms of concrete advertisement content in the cultural sections of six European quality newspapers between 1960 and 2010. Firstly, is there an increase in the absolute or relative amount of advertisements between 1960 and 2010 in the cultural sections and how does this commercial content relate to editorial content? Secondly, how do the advertisements change over time? To answer these questions, I use a large data deriving from Finnish, Swedish, British, French and Spanish European newspaper culture sections and the advertisements found in them and take a both quantitative and qualitative look on them. My data consists of 2799 advertisements and 3393 newspaper pages.
RN05 | Session 02a Markets of Consumption The Sharing Economy’s Transformation of Lonely Trips to Common Experiences: The Airbnb Case Francesca Setiffi, Gian Paolo Lazzer
University of Padova, Italy; Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy
francesca.setiffi(at)unipd.it, gianpaolo.lazzer(at)gmail.com
This research investigates the meanings that consumers give to social practices that take place in the sharing economy. The case study on which this research is based is Airbnb. Within this economic activity, the meaning of ‘home’ has shifted from a private environment to a space that can potentially be shared with strangers. For homeowners – especially middle-class owners – the main reason for participating seems to be the chance to earn money from a short-term rental. Within this form of sharing, there are at least three ways to create a ‘shared experience’: the relationship with the owner, the relationship with other unknown persons in the house or the relationship with people (like friends) with whom the customer is travelling. Considering these relationships means understanding how people experience the sharing economy. For them, cost saving is not the only reason for using Airbnb.
This research is based on qualitative methods and has been carried out in Italy through 28 in-depth interviews with travellers. In brief, there are two main findings:
1. The platform lowers the degree of ‘strangeness’ of the owner and/or of the house. Thus, it emphasises the role of trust as a positive factor for the growth and the development of the sharing economy.
2. The ‘sharing experience’ is a kind of wish – a new travelling experience – that allows consumers to live a different experience compared to hotels, considering a private home is closer to the culture of a particular place.
Airbnb is a recent phenomenon, but for several of the persons interviewed, it is already a ‘new normal’.
Combatting scruffiness. Chaos and order in the retro world
Helene Brembeck
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
13TH CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
164
helene.brembeck(at)cfk.gu.se
This presentation is based on the notion of a disorganized and shabby history of the thrift industry and the fight against mess and squalor as the key to the transformation of secondhand objects and shops from scruffy flea markets to trendy boutiques. During much of the 1900s, flea markets and thrift stores have been associated with the ugly, uncomfortable and almost indecent closely associated with poverty.
Meanwhile, the traditional flea market’s chaotic elements have been highlighted as a central aspect of its special aesthetics and appeal. Objects reside in a gray zone between throwing and keeping, between the hopelessly outdated and the potentially kitsch and cool. In the modern inner city 'cozy' shopping areas objects are taking the plunge into store logic where the used, worn and shabby traits are carefully washed away with staff's help. This presentation shows how this transformation is happening using strategies, such as ‘washing away’, ‘shop making’ and ‘creating flows’.
The material consists of interviews with store managers and staff, observation and photo documentation of a large number of retro stores in central Gothenburg. It is in the store objects qualify to become goods and thereby get a second chance in process of circulation. By preening, complementing, redoing and putting in new contexts, second hand objects are transformed to fashionable, ‘cool, and
‘kitsch’, that they are given the ‘green values’ and made attractive by being placed in artificial worlds associated with nostalgia and sentiment.
Rethinking Trust and Social Capital in trading Chinese Antiquities
Yuying Lee
Yuan Ze University, Taiwan leeyuying58(at)gmail.com
For avoiding opportunism and reducing risk, consumers tend to use interpersonal relations in many consumption decisions both in the search process and in the choice of transaction partners. This paper illustrates the limitation of interpersonal relation in the field of antique market. Owing to antique market is a small scale business; there is no formal organization to regulate the market. Information asymmetry, opportunism, and deceit are normal in the trade.
Therefore, what is important in the transactions are personal trust and guanxi as to ensure the transactions. Ironically, this does not guarantee the traded goods would be genuine because there are numerous fakes in market. In the antique market, actors are competing on economic power and social, cultural capitals. Buying or trading antiques is heavily depending on social network in order to obtain fine artifacts. Antique market is about relationship between traders and trustful sources, about traders and customer in negotiating prices, and about knowledgeable expert interpreting the value of a piece of artifact. Rarity and one-of-a-kind made Chinese antiquities transaction a distinctive type of consumption. There is no space for
consumers/collectors to shop around and compare prices. Buying antique is similar to gambling, rational choice is under contesting.
I applied a variety of qualitative research techniques to examine intricate relation between Guanxi and knowledge in buying ancient jade. These techniques include extensive use of in-depth interviews, observation and the use of a variety of documentary sources. Field trips were done in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, and Taiwan from 2009 to 2015.
Gift Is Not Only the Present, But Also the Future:
The Food Offerings of Middle-class Turkish Women
M. Fatih Karakaya
Istanbul University, Turkey zinderud(at)gmail.com
The sociological literature on the transformation of modes of exchange (from Malinowski and Mauss through Polanyi and Sahlins to Caillé and Karatani) tacitly asserts a linear history. According to that linear history, mode of exchange tends to transform from pure gift to commodity exchange, a tendency which is considered as both a cause and an effect of changing social solidarities. On the other hand, the transformation of a small gift practice of middle-class Turkish women, i.e. food offerings to the neighbors paves the way for a counter-argument, which points an alternative history that is more cyclical than linear.
In other words, after transforming into a latent indebtedness, food offerings to the neighbors in the course of daily routines of Turkish women tend to take the form of a pure gift within a modernized, individualized, financialized world. Based on a qualitative analysis of the data derived from in-depth interviews, this study at first, aims at describing in detail how this food, and of course the plate traffic takes place in daily lives of middle-class Turkish women. Secondly, this study seeks to illustrate how this practice transforms into something a pseudo-gift, which is still undermining the solidarities by loosening the social ties among neighbors (that is why it is called
“pseudo”) while still having a potential to maintain solidarity since it is very close to a pure gift form. All in all, this study is willing to point out alternative forms of exchange in daily life within a world dominated by debt oriented market capitalism.
RN05 | Session 02b Ethical and Political Consumption
Universalistic moral discourses, situated
moralities: Communicating ethical trade in Poland and Finland
Kinga Natalia Polynczuk-Alenius University of Helsinki, Finland kinga.polynczuk(at)helsinki.fi
This paper approaches ethical trade as a communication problem that relays on a moral disposition, which must be constructed through
communication efforts of ethical trade organisations.
Originating from the Anglosphere, the moral discourses that surround ethical trade employ the horizontal division between the ‘Global North’, including Poland and Finland, and the ‘Global South’.
In this homogenising metageography, North is imagined as a hemisphere of consumption, wealth and privilege, while South figures as a hemisphere of production, poverty and deprivation. From the presupposed prosperity in the North stem the moral obligations of solidarity, care and responsibility that Northern consumers should extend towards Southern producers.
During a year-long fieldwork with ethical trade organisations in Poland and Finland, I observed that although their communication heavily drew on these universalistic moral discourses, it was nevertheless anchored in and accountable to more nuanced economic, political and cultural conditions in their respective societies. Particularly, Polish ethical trade organisations were much more vigilant than their Finnish counterparts about the potential negative reception of their message among the public. Thus, I argue that ethical trade communication responds to the projected ‘situated moralities’ of consumers. To elucidate this situatedness more clearly, I borrow the vocabulary of world-systems theory which positions Finland at the core of global trade system (among the greatest beneficiaries of the global market and the holders of the largest economic capital), and Poland in the semi-periphery (simultaneously dependent on the
‘core’, forced to compete with other semi-peripheral countries, and oppressing the ‘periphery’).
Political consumption and social stratification – some critical thoughts
Eivind Jacobsen
Oslo and Akerhus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway
eivind.jacobsen(at)sifo.hioa.no
Apparently, as it has “moved South” “production” has lost some of its defining role in relation to social stratification in the NorthWest. So has “consumption”, as it has been “democratized” by means of mass marketing and -distribution. In the paper, I will discuss whether political/ethical consumption could be seen to represent ways of doing social stratification by other means, whereby social class is performed and class structures upheld.
Political consumerism: towards a new typology of practices
Margarita Komninou
University of Patras, Greece; Technological Educational Institute of Western Greece mkomninou(at)upatras.gr
Consumer practices which do not render themselves to be easily commodified by the market, such as acts of DIY, downshifting, dumpster diving, reusing, sharing, shoplifting and occupying, are infrequently discussed in the literature of ethical and political
consumption. Why does that happen and what insights can we draw from an attempt to incorporate such practices in the concepts of ethical and political consumerism?
Our failure to address the ideological context of
‘consumption’ has resulted in perceiving and measuring political consumerism mainly in terms of buycotting and boycotting. By viewing ‘consumption’
as only relevant to acts of ‘purchasing’ and ‘shopping’, the agency of the ‘consumer’ is bound to certain rules and mechanisms of a capitalist market. Moreover, by arbitrarily ascribing a strictly ‘non-economic’
motivation behind the ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ framings of consumption, we automatically exclude private (economic) troubles from the public sphere (ignoring thus their political nature). Consequently, the typical profile of the ethical/political consumer (well-educated, female gendered, well-off, middle to upper social-class) is perhaps nothing more than the reflection of a bias imposed by our tendency to measure only practices which do not breach the limits of the capitalist market (its internal logic and moral system).
This paper calls for an expansion of the repertoire of consumer action associated with political consumerism if we want to understand consumption as an “arena of politics” and a form of political participation in a democratic manner (where every person gets to “vote”). A working typology of political consumerism practices will also be presented and discussed.
Co-Creation through Crowdsourcing? - Consumer-citizens’ involvement in local environmental policy measures
Pål Strandbakken, Harald Throne-Holst
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway; Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway
pal.strandbakken(at)sifo.hioa.no, harald.throne-holst(at)sifo.hioa.no
“Crowdsourcing is a method for harnessing the collective intelligence of online communities to solve specific problems or produce goods” (Brabham 2013:
50). A Norwegian project (iResponse) studies the use of crowdsourcing as a method to involve citizens in a two-way dialogue with local authorities for meeting problems of storm water/flooding, urban air quality and urban planning.
Based on a nationwide web survey (urban areas, N = 1933), we address questions about consumer involvement in smaller decision making processes;
using ideas about participatory democracy and co-creation. Due to the novelty of these concepts in the crowdsourcing approach, the survey mainly had an exploratory design, introducing theoretical and sociological perspectives in the subsequent analysis.
Results indicate that age and gender influence both familiarity with the concepts and the willingness to engage with and to employ modern technologies like smart phones for political participation.
One aim of this study is to assess whether crowdsourcing based on digital platforms is an