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Extending knowledge of the cultural shaping and variegating of white identity that occurs through the commercial diffusion of identity myths, we examine the reception of Southern identity myths promoted in the oppositional narratives of New South commercial media. We characterize oppositional narratives as texts which operate by eliciting an interpretive reading that devalues rather than supports the surface narrative, and explain the duplicitous text as one intended to seduce a dominant power, while empowering and bolstering identity of a marginalized group. After elaborating how oppositional discourse can serve to reinforce the identity frame constructed by regional media producers, we report on a study examining how urban and rural Southerners read and respond to this discourse. Our findings highlight mediators in the relationship between individuals’ oppositional readings and their alignment of identity in a manner responsive to it.

This paper describes the results of five previously unpublished studies designed to investigate the distinctiveness of consumers' need for uniqueness scale (CNFU) from two competing predictors of differentiating behaviors from the psychological literature - individuation and general need for uniqueness. Consumers' need for uniqueness is defined as the trait of pursuing differentness relative to others through the acquisition, utilization, and disposition of consumer goods for the purpose of developing and enhancing one's self-image and social image. As such, the research offers additional evidence from an extensive program of research regarding the validity of the consumer need for uniqueness scale developed by Tepper, Bearden and Hunter (2000). Specifically, the results of the studies demonstrate that the scale operates distinctively through counterconformity motivation as hypothesized and moderates the effects of situational variables on preferences for differentiating consumer offerings as expected.

Purpose – We use data from the United States and Finland, a literature review, and historical analysis to understand the concept and role of cool within global consumer culture.

Methodology/approach – This is a conceptual review and qualitative analysis of data from depth interviews, journals, and online discussion groups in two U.S. locations and one Finnish location.

Findings – Cool is a slang word connoting a certain style that involves masking and hiding emotions. As cool diffuses we find that it is both distilled and diluted. The concept itself has also evolved. What was once a low-profile means of survival and later a youthful rebellious alternative to class-based status systems has become commoditized.

Research limitations/implications – The study has been conducted in two cultures with a limited range of ages thought to be most susceptible to the appeal of being cool.

Practical limitations/implications – Marketers may not yet have exploited cool as effectively as they have exploited sex, but mainstream consumers now look for cool in the marketplace more than within themselves. The result is a continuous race to offer the next cool thing.

Originality/value of chapter – It is argued that coolness is a new status system largely replacing social class, especially among the young.

Through an analysis of data from depth interviews with modern American consumers, we examine whether and how individuals quest for life's meaning through consumption. Our analysis identifies three worldviews that are differently related to the experience of transcendence through consumption. A rationalist worldview is revealed as being unrelated to such a pursuit. It contrasts two magical worldviews held by most informants in which consumption objects are infused with supernatural and metaphysical beliefs that animate life's meaning for them. Our discussion highlights how recognition of magical worldviews contributes to consumer theory, methods, and concepts of investigation.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.