Domen Bajde (editor) - Consumer Culture Theory

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 11

Domen Bajde, Dannie Kjeldgaard and Russell W. Belk

This volume presents a selection of competitive papers submitted to the 13th Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Conference held in Odense, Denmark, June 28 to July 1. This years conference witnessed a very strong set of submissions. Despite being persistently interrupted by quothful ravens, we managed to select a dozen papers to feature in this volume. Given the conferences thematic emphasis on storytelling we aimed to select chapters that would tell stories that open our eyes and minds to new ideas, theories, and contexts.

The papers selected for this volume are presented along three narrative lines that were prevalent during the conference, and which to some extent also reflect the tradition of CCT inspired research in Odense. The first thematic part, Objects and Their Doings, reflects a research theme in CCT and elsewhere, that has developed over the last decade or so, namely, research on materiality and object agency informed by the traditions such as Actor-network theory, assemblage theory, and post-humanist perspectives.

We open this part with a chapter on ritual doings. Borraz investigates a romantic ritual in which material objects and sites (i.e., locks, bridges, and railings) play a central role. His study of love-lock pilgrimage unravels how love becomes enacted as a sacred and enduring reality through variable, yet patterned and loosely scripted assemblages of mythology, materiality, and performance. The second chapter in this part by Walther, investigates erotic consumption cycles as co-constituted by subjects and objects, exploring the agency of objects upon the consumption subject and vice versa. Furthermore, Walther explores how erotic products change meaning and agency through the consumption cycle through repurposing and personification. This is followed by Syrjl and Norrgranns chapter, which investigates the distribution and fluctuation of agency across the multiple actants that enact the home. Rather than providing a (yet another) demonstration of the agency of objects, the authors investigate the ways in which agency is shared among human and non-human entities (i.e., objects and pets), and the manner in which the power of these actants oscillates. While the final chapter of the part, authored by Abdelrahman, Banister, and Hampson, does not explicitly focus on object agency and power, it does touch upon the power, and the vulnerability, of objects. Namely, the authors stress that the power, and the need, of historic objects to compel people to care for them, are greater than previously recognized. Their study of vintage traders explains why and how people become guardians of historic objects that are not their family heirlooms. The chapter, thereby, nicely complements the previous two chapters in this part by unpacking the human commitment and work required for (social) preservation of objects.