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This study aims to illuminate the way in which consumers question the authenticity and worth of musicians, leading to a classification of selling out. The authors contribute to the debate on authenticity by attending to the question of worth that is under-examined in existing literature, by drawing upon French pragmatic sociology with specific attention to convention theory to understand conflicting interpretations of worth.

The considerations music fans go through navigating whether artists are selling out and the loss of worth were explored through 22 semi-structured interviews, complemented by focus group discussions (20 participants) and analysis of an online video blog.

The study identified three key themes: “Authenticity and Worth in the Inspired World”, “Selling Out as Loss of Worth” and “Signifiers of Selling Out”.

The emergent themes enable us to understand the worth that consumers place on musical artists, and the clash between the ideologies of the market world and the inspired world. The ideas regarding selling out and the signifiers may apply to other consumption experiences where the clash between the inspired and the market worlds exists and the conflicting ethos of each can lead to a loss of worth and selling out.

In this research, the authors examine situations in which consumers stigmatise as “sell outs”, artists who are marketised under the influence of capitalist social relations of production. As a result, these artists lose their authenticity and worth in the eyes of consumers. In doing so, this research contributes to the debate on authenticity by attending to the question of worth that is under-examined in existing literature.

This paper aims to propose the lens of social practice theory (SPT) as a means of deepening insights into childhood consumer culture.

The data comprise four qualitative interviews and ten focus groups with 58 8-13 year olds in six diverse schools across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Transcripts were coded with NVIVO10. Analysis was guided by the three elements of SPT: materials, meaning and competence.

Branded technology products and clothes consistently combined with both the socially sanctioned objective of achieving and maintaining a place in the peer hierarchy and also the three skills the authors have labelled “social consumption recognition”, “social consumption performance” and “social consumption communication” in regular, predictable ways to produce an ordered and, thus, reproducible nexus of actions. Analysis of the inter-relationship between these elements showed that children’s consumption is a specific practice, embedded in their everyday routines. Consumption is also linked inextricably to social position; children’s variable performance of it links with their degree of social acceptance and popularity.

Although the study included a broad cross-section of school catchment areas, they cannot be said to represent all British children. Nonetheless, SPT provides an alternative theoretical perspective on children’s consumption by shifting the focus away from the child, the social context or even the products, thus ceasing to privilege the notion that consumption is something external to children that they learn to be socialised into; or to consciously use for their own symbolic or other purposes; or that they have to be protected from.

Consumption practice is deeply embedded in children’s relationships and is inextricably linked to their well-being. Policies seeking to tackle any single element of the practice, such as media literacy training, are only likely to have limited effectiveness. This research implies that responsible marketing measures need to concentrate on the links between all the elements.

This SPT analysis of children’s consumption makes three contributions. First, it provides a much-needed new theoretical perspective beyond the dominant but limited “consumer socialisation” research paradigm that confines analysis of children’s consumption to the functioning of their individual cognitive capacity. Second, it suggests new research methodologies for understanding the interaction between children and the commercial world. Third, it offers a different approach to policymakers tasked with the controversial issue of regulating marketing to children.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the activity‐based focus group as a useful method with which to generate talk‐in‐interaction among pre‐schoolers. Analytically, it aims to illustrate how transcribed talk‐in‐interaction can be subjected to a discourse analytic lens, to produce insights into how pre‐schoolers use “Coca‐Cola” as a conversational resource with which to build product‐related meanings and social selves.

Fourteen activity‐based discussion groups with pre‐schoolers aged between two and five years have been conducted in a number of settings including privately run Montessori schools and community based preschools in Dublin. The talk generated through these groups has been transcribed using the conventions of conversation analysis (CA). Passages of talk characterized by the topic of Coca‐Cola were isolated and a sub‐sample of these are analysed here using a CA‐informed discourse analytic approach.

A number of linguistic repertoires are drawn on, including health, permission and age. Coca‐Cola is constructed as something which is “bad” and has the potential to make one “mad”. It is an occasion‐based product permitted by parents for example as a treat, at the cinema or at McDonalds. It can be utilised to build “age‐based” social selves. “Big” boys or girls can drink Coca‐Cola but it is not suitable for “babies”.

This paper provides insight into the use of the activity‐based focus group as a data generation tool for use with pre‐schoolers. A discourse analytic approach to the interpretation of children's talk‐in‐interaction suggests that the preschool consumer is competent in accessing and employing a consumer artefact such as Coca‐Cola as a malleable resource with which to negotiate product meanings and social selves.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a typology of enchantment approaches that are related to storytelling practices in organizations: enchantment by design and enchantment by emergence.

The authors explore this enchantment framework in a storytelling drawing on examples of living storied spaces and narratives from hospital studies.

This essay asserts three aspects about enchantment: that mainstream organizational narrative, rooted in classical structuralism and modernity, seems intent on disenchanting life within them. Second, despite such narratives, organizations, such as hospitals the authors studied, were never disenchanted because enchantment resides in many living storied spaces. Finally, many forms of “enchantment” and “disenchantment” are taking place in organization action and its storytelling.

The paper equips managers with a deeper understanding of how storytelling in organizations can encourage enchantment or disenchantment within the organization and in its relations with their environments (community, nature, humanity).

The value of the paper lies in its theoretical contributions, integrating enchantment‐disenchantment perspectives with a theory of storytelling.

Purpose – This chapter briefly outlines the history of childbirth in the United States and describes the influence of the natural birth movement and consumer demand in shaping the contemporary advertising of mainstream maternity services.

Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative content analysis of 59 hospital websites was undertaken in order to understand how hospitals depict childbirth in their online advertising.

Findings – Our findings illustrate how contemporary medical institutions idealize childbirth through their depictions of its physical and social dimensions. Although hospital advertising has adopted some of the rhetoric of the natural birth movement in describing the social and symbolic dimensions of the childbirth experience, this rhetoric is shown to stand in tension to the highly rationalized and bureaucratic institutional nature of hospitals. These tensions are most apparent in advertised descriptions of the physical environment of maternity centers and in the attempt to depict hospitalized birth as an opportunity for the individual empowerment of women.

Research limitations/implications – This research is limited to an analysis of how providers advertise their services and does not provide data on whether practices actually reflect the rhetoric of the ideal birth. Future research should consider the fit between rhetoric and reality in hospital maternity practices in order to better understand the social structural constraints of delivering these services in a hospital maternity center.

Originality/value – This chapter highlights the importance of consumer demand for how maternity services are portrayed and identifies key tensions between an idealized image of birth and the rational, bureaucratic demands of modern medical institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main individual and collective strategies online communities employ to appropriate fantasy worlds and the ways in which community members use imagination within this context.

A qualitative study drawing on an ethnography of online communities including individual in‐person interviews with community members of the world is considered.

The predominance and the vital importance of the production/consumption of stories within these communities has been shown. The multiple benefits of this practice have been illustrated, including the pleasure of creating and playing with one's imagination. These benefits engender the surprise and enchantment of community members, who lavish other members with encouragement, congratulations and thanks.

Because of opting for a non‐participatory ethnography, it was impossible to directly contact the members of the community to conduct interviews. Thus a convenience sample was chosen representative of the study subject and individuals outside of these communities were questioned.

The online community allows members to collectively and playfully participate in entertainment related to the fantasy world. It appears as an imaginary organization of the (entertainment) service provider. The members of this organization can take part in value coproduction and share the benefits of an extended entertainment service that sparks their imagination and allows them to enjoy the fruits of their creations. Given the fantasy world's power to fire the imagination of fantasy lovers, the paper demonstrates that it is important for leisure and entertainment service providers to consider adding a fantasy component to their service.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how individual creativity of internet users is expressed in the production of online music videos and how the creative dynamic among amateur internet video producers can be characterized.

The researchers became readers and authors in the aim of providing the academic community with a scholarly narrative of creative YouTube video production. To develop their narrative, they explored the narrative woods that have grown up on the other side of the monitor screen in the form of videos inspired by one song.

The collective creative force is shown not to be expressed merely through the semantic and non‐semantic montages that make internet users into postmodern tinkerers, but also through such mechanisms as imitation, diversification and ornamentation. This force and these mechanisms give rise to chains that link and connect individual minds, imaginations, interests, enthusiasms, talents, abilities and skills.

As part of a relationship, or even a “conversation” to be initiated, sustained, and maintained on behalf of an industry organization, or brand with its consumers, the authors believe that the way to deal with digital participatory culture and the creative force manifested in innovation communities is to capitalize on these creative chains as judiciously as possible.

The authors suggest that this process should be part of a high‐impact interactive marketing strategy likely to promote (self‐) enchantment and foster loyalty among community members through (self‐) enchantment, particularly via the coproduction of a story, with community members creating the scripts.

The purpose of this paper is to address the concern for prosumption, created by Alvin Toffler’s work, and its fusion with Marx’s ideas to create the view that the people now live in an era of prosumer (rather than producer or consumer) capitalism. As a social theorist, the author routinely studies the ideas of classical (and contemporary) theorists not only to understand their thinking, but also for ideas that he can use, and expand upon, to better understand contemporary society, especially the economy. The author has used the ideas of Max Weber on rationalization – to develop his thinking on McDonaldization, and his ideas on enchantment and disenchantment – in the development of the author’s thinking on the cathedrals of consumption. The latter can also be seen as means of production from the perspective of Karl Marx’s theories. Georg Simmel’s theorizing about money led the author to insights on credit cards, especially the greater temptation to imprudence associated with them in comparison to cash. More recent postmodern theory helped the author understand the mechanisms (e.g. simulations) by which the cathedrals of consumption have undergone a process of enchantment.

This is a work in historical theory and metatheory.

The careful review of classical (and contemporary) social theories could, when adapted, help us to better understand contemporary society, especially, in this case the economy.

This is not a piece of research, but rather a theoretical exploration of contemporary prosumer culture based on classical ideas in social theory. It implies a radical change in the thinking about the modern economy.

This essay brings together some of the author’s ideas – and their classical roots – to offer an original perspective on the contemporary economy.

With the shift from an industrial to a knowledge economy, organization theorists continue to address the role and nature of control in organizational structure. The continuing utility of bureaucracy in new organizational forms was a focal point for this discussion. Research on this shift contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of ethics in bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizations. This paper suggested that the work of the artist Joseph Cornell provides a visual representation of the dimensions of this debate. First, the paper introduced Cornell to the reader. Next, the paper reviewed the research on bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizations with a focus on ethics, control, and enchantment in organizations. To provide visual reflections of the literature, this paper embedded examples of Cornell’s works throughout the discussion. Cornell’s art not only provides representations of these organizational forms, but also demonstrates how conflicts of an artist capture the development of thought within this area of organizational analysis.

Deriving pleasure and meaning from one’s job is especially potent in the cultural industries, where workers routinely sacrifice monetary rewards, stability, and tidier careers for the nonmonetary benefits of self-expression, autonomy, and contribution to the greater good. Cultural labor markets are consequently characterized by the continual churning of its workforce; the lure of “cool” employment attracts an oversupply of aspirants while precariousness and routinized work lead to short careers. This article draws on qualitative data to further conceptualize the appeal and limits of nonmonetary rewards over time. Why do workers stay in precarious “cool” jobs? More specifically, how do workers stay committed to their jobs and perform the requisite deep acting for their roles? Through qualitative research on two sets of workers – music industry personnel and craft cocktail bartenders – this article examines patterns in these workers’ “experiential careers.” We identify three strategies cultural workers use to re-enchant their work lives: (1) deep engagement, (2) boundary work, and (3) changing jobs. In doing so, we show how the experiential careers of cultural workers resemble more of a cycle of enchantment than a linear path to exiting the field.