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1 – 10 of over 2000Delphine Godefroit-Winkel, Marie Schill and Margaret K. Hogg
This paper aims to examine the interplay of emotions and consumption within intergenerational exchanges. It shows how emotions pervade the trajectories of grandmothers’ relational…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the interplay of emotions and consumption within intergenerational exchanges. It shows how emotions pervade the trajectories of grandmothers’ relational identities with their grandchildren through consumption practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This study analyses qualitative data gathered via 28 long interviews with French grandmothers and 27 semi-structured interviews with their grandchildren. This study draws on attachment theory to interpret the voices of both grandmothers and their grandchildren within these dyads.
Findings
This study uncovers distinct relational identities of grandmothers linked to emotions and the age of the grandchild, as embedded in consumption. It identifies the defining characteristics of the trajectory of social/relational identities and finds these to be linked to grandchildren’s ages.
Research limitations/implications
This study elicits the emotion profiles, which influence grandmothers’ patterns of consumption in their relationships with their grandchildren. It further uncovers distinct attachment styles (embedded in emotions) between grandmothers and grandchildren in the context of their consumption experiences. Finally, it provides evidence that emotions occur at the interpersonal level. This observation is an addition to existing literature in consumer research, which has often conceived of consumer emotions as being only a private matter and as an intrapersonal phenomenon.
Practical implications
The findings offer avenues for the development of strategies for intergenerational marketing, particularly promotion campaigns which link either the reinforcement or the suppression of emotion profiles in advertising messages with the consumption of products or services by different generations.
Social implications
This study suggests that public institutions might multiply opportunities for family and consumer experiences to combat specific societal issues related to elderly people’s isolation.
Originality/value
In contrast to earlier work, which has examined emotions within the ebb and flow of individual and multiple social identities, this study examines how emotions and consumption play out in social/relational identity trajectories.
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Raquel Castaño, María Eugenia Perez and Claudia Quintanilla
The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework on the experience of cross‐border shopping. This experience is constructed on narratives, rituals, and intergenerational…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework on the experience of cross‐border shopping. This experience is constructed on narratives, rituals, and intergenerational transfers that move beyond the simple description of experienced events to provide explanatory frameworks of family identity construction.
Design/methodology/approach
Nine in‐depth interviews are conducted with three generations of North Mexican women from three families who shop frequently across the border.
Findings
The findings highlight different processes associated with the experience of cross‐border shopping. First, each family works throughout the years to construct its own identity using the tales of their shared experiences. Second, an intergenerational transfer of knowledge going from grandmothers to mothers to granddaughters in each family occurs as result of the experiences lived together. Third, common knowledge is developed both by Mexican consumers and North American retailers that translates into particular commercial practices. Finally, all our contributors are immersed in a national culture, the North Mexican, sharing and transmitting values like thriftiness, malinchismo, and the relevance of family ties. These values affect their shopping patterns, generating important consequences for both the Mexican and North American economies.
Originality/value
The authors' intent is to contribute to the understanding of the process of family identity construction through consumption. This consumption occurs in a particular context; cross‐border shopping. The experience is singular in the sense that families spend considerable amount of time together while traveling and establishing their shopping routines. This work depicts the shopping rituals passed down from generation‐to‐generation and the derived construction of meaning within the family.
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Through biographies we read the fragments of people’s lives that have been structured into a narrative discourse, the written text the mediating force that turns ’narrative into…
Abstract
Through biographies we read the fragments of people’s lives that have been structured into a narrative discourse, the written text the mediating force that turns ’narrative into logic’ (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 30) This article reflects upon the fragmented nature of memories through both the stories of the author and the written works from a selection of influential texts encountered by the author. The photographs in this article frame a series of disjointed images that are connected to me through narrated stories. How much of these stories do I truly remember and how much do I embellish? The storytellers, my grandparents, are dead yet the stories remain. They are the connections I have with my family history and they are the historical conceptions I frame my personal discourse within (Flood, 2003). When trying to make sense of our lives it is to the fragments of memory we turn to construct our stories. The author, through the telling of her stories and the recounting of significant events surrounding her family’s histories as told by her grandmother, provides an exemplar of how such fragments can add to the understanding of the self. She reveals that by encountering such fragments within a life story, we can begin to make sense of our lives.
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When I was young my grandmother used to tell me stories, her stories. These stories have now become my own and have been visually represented to share with a wider audience. Using…
Abstract
When I was young my grandmother used to tell me stories, her stories. These stories have now become my own and have been visually represented to share with a wider audience. Using the medium of a digital video installation, the viewer will be invited to partake in a space that presents these stories and at the same time create a unique storytelling environment. It will be possible to participate in a nonlinear visual experience that allows the viewer to be both listener and teller of stories. This paper presents the processes and background to the formulation of the project, incorporating the themes of memory, narrative and identity. By utilising the narrative inquiry research methodology, I have been able to combine the project and research in a symbiotic way. The method of narrative inquiry allows for a personal account of the research and by its very nature, being concerned with narrative discourse, is at the core of this project. The paper is presented with accompanying video footage from the installation to illustrate the major themes of the research.
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Cynthia Szymanski Sunal and Dennis W. Sunal
This multi-day lesson involves pre-kindergarten - grade 3 students in exploring the similarities found in grandchild-grandparent relationships across the world’s cultures. It…
Abstract
This multi-day lesson involves pre-kindergarten - grade 3 students in exploring the similarities found in grandchild-grandparent relationships across the world’s cultures. It stresses key concepts associated with these relationships: love; listen; explore; tell stories; play; teach; learn; celebrate; share; care; and happy, safe, and loved.
Congratulations cards, gifts, and announcements in newspapers are some features of the social rituals surrounding the birth of a child, normally a happy occasion. A subtle mixture…
Abstract
Congratulations cards, gifts, and announcements in newspapers are some features of the social rituals surrounding the birth of a child, normally a happy occasion. A subtle mixture of public and private activity intermingle in reactions to this unique yet universal event. In this article I intend to explore the rituals and processes involved in hearing and spreading the news of a birth, with particular reference to grandparents. Such a discussion of the announceable features of becoming a grandparent can form the beginning of an assessment of the meaning and significance of grnadparenthood, something which has received little attention in sociological work. In providing an account of the essential features of ‘telling the news’, I hope to generate an understanding both of the procedures used to ‘make sense’ of grandparenthood, and of the structural assumptions and processes underlying the way in which events are announced.
In the epigraph of the paper, Aristotle reminds us that confusion and inconsistency arise when people attach more than one meaning to any particular term (“name”). It seems that…
Abstract
In the epigraph of the paper, Aristotle reminds us that confusion and inconsistency arise when people attach more than one meaning to any particular term (“name”). It seems that Aristotle could not have better described the situation with the connotation of Jewishness in the contemporary world.
Rachel Stevenson and Jean Atkinson
This is an opinion piece provided by Rachel, 31, and her grandmother, Jean, 97, who have been living together for two and a half years, since Rachel became unwell with myalgic…
Abstract
Purpose
This is an opinion piece provided by Rachel, 31, and her grandmother, Jean, 97, who have been living together for two and a half years, since Rachel became unwell with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
Design/methodology/approach
Each author shares their experiences of intergenerational living through the pandemic.
Findings
What each of them has learned about intergenerational living during the COVID pandemic and mutual support and what has surprised them, including how it has improved quality of life for both of them.
Originality/value
This is an unusual intergenerational first-person account of intergenerational mutually supportive living during the pandemic, with insider insights.
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Begins by considering whether the economic theory of the supply, nature and demand for biographies developed by James M. Buchanan and Robert Tollison might apply to this…
Abstract
Begins by considering whether the economic theory of the supply, nature and demand for biographies developed by James M. Buchanan and Robert Tollison might apply to this autobiography. Outlines Tisdell’s experiences in his pre‐school years (1939‐1945), at school (1946‐1956) and as a university student (1957‐1963). Covers the period of his first appointment as a temporary lecturer at the Australian National University (1964) and of his postdoctoral travelling scholarship (1965) which took him to Princeton and Stanford and the period of his employment from 1966 onwards. His family and its history are given particular attention.
It is with a deep sense of humility that I even dare to speak on the subject of ‘Selecting the right people’ since I am very much aware that everyone is their own expert on…
Abstract
It is with a deep sense of humility that I even dare to speak on the subject of ‘Selecting the right people’ since I am very much aware that everyone is their own expert on people. What I have to say is fundamentally so simple that I am likely to leave myself open to accusations of trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. However, I have seen so many grandmothers blow, scramble and in other ways disintegrate their eggs that I make no apology for a very basic approach to the subject.