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Consume This! Alternative Urban Consumption and Chile’s Shopping Malls

In our May issue of Consume This!, Liliana De Simone takes us on a tour of the research around—and social implications—of Chile’s shopping malls, and introduces us to the work of the Observatory of Consumer, Culture, and Society (OCCS UC), at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section Chair) Consume This! Alternative Urban Consumption […]

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Consume This! Eating for Taste and Eating for Change

In our April blog, Emily Huddart Kennedy, Shyon Baumann and Josée Johnston explore the intersection of status, ethics and aesthetics in relation to food preferences, and provide a fascinating prompt for a ‘cultural capital 2.0’ research programme for the sociology of consumption. —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section Chair) Consume This! Cultural Capital 2.0? Eating for Taste […]

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Consume This! Why “Eating for Change” Won’t Fix the Food System

In our March issue of Consume This!, Sinikka Elliott, Joslyn Brenton and Sarah Bowen draw from their recently published book, Pressure Cooker, to highlight some of the many tensions between holding individuals responsible for ‘eating for change,’ and the need for collective solutions to the ills of our contemporary food systems. —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section […]

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Consume This! Diversity Capital and Corporate Cultural Patronage

In this month’s blog, Patricia Banks develops the concept of “diversity capital” to unpack how patronage of the black cultural sector operates as an instrument of corporate communication and impression management. —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section Chair) Diversity Capital and Corporate Cultural Patronage By Patricia A. Banks In 2011, Aetna, a health insurance company, announced a $1.275 […]

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Consume This! Plumbing of Capitalism: Credit as “Ordinary Consumption”

This month, Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Zsuzsanna Vargha make use of the practice theory concept of ‘ordinary consumption’ to consider the consumption of credit, and demonstrate the power of thinking through metaphor—in this case, plumbing! —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section Chair) Revisiting the Plumbing of Capitalism: Credit as “Ordinary Consumption” By Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Zsuzsanna Vargha Household debt has […]

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Consume This! Cultural Participation and Professional Wrestling

In this month’s Consume This!, Gary Yeritsian gives us a thought-provoking and entertaining glimpse into the world of professional wrestling, suggesting how WWE’s use of social media for highly-scripted, sanctioned forms of audience participation nevertheless creates possibilities for contestation and disruption. —Jennifer Smith Maguire (Section Chair) Cultural Participation From Above and Below: The Case […]

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Consume This! Consumption, Vulgarity and Vulgar Times

Hello all, and welcome to September. As the current Chair of the Consumers and Consumption section and in keeping with tradition, I’m delighted to contribute the September Consume This! essay. In this issue, I expand upon an article I recently completed on media representations of the nouveaux riches, taking a tour through the theme of […]