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1 – 10 of 116Katri Weckroth and Elina Närvänen
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by practice-theoretical thinking, combines focus group discussions with activities that represent the practices at the centre of the research.
Design/methodology/approach
The application of the AFG method is demonstrated with an empirical study of the transition to plant-based food consumption practices in Finland, involving four group sessions of 13 participants.
Findings
The findings from the empirical application of the AFG method illustrate that its key strength is the ability to foster fruitful and natural discussions on routine consumption practices that connect with discursive and practical dimensions and thus generate multidimensional data in resource-efficient ways.
Originality/value
The AFG method extends the methodological approaches in practice theory–oriented research, responding to the call for creative, real-life-reflecting methods that are able to grasp the discursive and embodied dimensions of practices. The method is proposed to be particularly suitable for research on mundane consumption practices.
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This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017.
Findings
The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements.
Research limitations/implications
The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting.
Practical implications
The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems.
Originality/value
The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.
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This paper aims to study how activists involved in consumer-initiated cooperatives, in a specific context, challenge the practices of the neoliberal system and develop…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study how activists involved in consumer-initiated cooperatives, in a specific context, challenge the practices of the neoliberal system and develop counter-practices that are ingrained with their values. It aims to access the transformative capacity and inclusiveness of consumer-initiated cooperatives and the role played by prefigurative practices in changing the status quo. Three practices – defetishization of agricultural commodities, surplus generation and distribution, prefiguration – that enable the inclusion of those groups who are marginalized in the food production and consumption nexus by neoliberal policies are identified.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings of this paper were developed from 23 unstructured interviews, participant observation and analysis of the social media accounts of five consumer-initiated cooperatives located in different districts of Istanbul and which are involved in a collective response to the neoliberal policies.
Findings
The study discusses that, in a specific context, political events and economic policies can be a catalyst for the initiation of alternative consumer-initiated cooperatives. The findings indicate that these organizations can develop and articulate prefigurative practices that are influential in transforming the prevailing capitalist food provisioning system to be more inclusive.
Research limitations/implications
The findings offer an alternative view to the dominant capitalist logic and advance the concept of how the economic sphere can be re-politicized and how the persevering notion of financial performance is resolved by invoking values of inclusion, solidarity, responsibility and sharing. The findings are based on the study of five cases in a specific context during a specific period.
Originality/value
This paper focuses on cooperatives owned and governed by activist consumers and presents results concerning their underlying practices for creating a food provisioning system that is inclusive and aiming for social justice and equality. Similarly, it provides evidence of how local political and economic conditions influence the appropriation and development of these practices – commodity defetishization, surplus distribution and prefiguration.
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Stefan Wahlen, Hilje van der Horst and Roosje Pothoff
Adolescents are at a stage in their life course in which they increasingly become choosers, buyers and preparers of food. Hence, they develop and employ required competences…
Abstract
Purpose
Adolescents are at a stage in their life course in which they increasingly become choosers, buyers and preparers of food. Hence, they develop and employ required competences. Current food-related competences of adolescents are shaped in an environment with an abundance of convenience foods. Simultaneously food education has been limited in many western countries. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize how young practitioners engage with the notion of convenience in a context with a strong presence of convenience foods.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical data for this paper have been collected in a Dutch high school context following a participatory approach in focus group discussions. Data have been gathered from different food-related exercises within a classroom context.
Findings
The findings indicate that adolescents’ food competences and meanings are heavily shaped by the abundant presence of convenience foods. Adolescents perceive a nuanced picture of a skilful consumer that incorporates convenience foods in ways that minimize time efforts, preserves some preparatory tasks for fun cooking and has knowledge about health effects of fatty and salty foods.
Originality/value
The investigation takes a novel look on convenience food consumption from a practice perspective scrutinizing competences through the lens of adolescent practitioners. The authors make a plea for tapping into the potential of research on children and adolescents as novice performers of practices to understand how practices are shaped and changed and how practices recruit new practitioners.
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Ryszard Kłeczek and Monika Hajdas
This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.
Findings
The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.
Research limitations/implications
The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.
Practical implications
Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.
Social implications
The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.
Originality/value
The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.
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Gilroy Hughdonald Middleton and Hyoung Tark Lee
This study aims to progress knowledge by developing and analyzing an integrated model of behavioral loyalty enhancement related to non-profit organization (NPO) donation. To…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to progress knowledge by developing and analyzing an integrated model of behavioral loyalty enhancement related to non-profit organization (NPO) donation. To achieve this aim, the study examines the influences of three variables of donor loyalty, namely, attitude toward beneficiaries, trust and self-esteem in one integrated model. Additionally, to compare the extent to which each variable affects donor loyalty, mediating effects are suggested.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from 245 Korean donors are used to investigate the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling with AMOS.
Findings
Findings from the study demonstrate that trust has the highest mediating influence on the intention to continue donation. Similarly, the findings reveal that self-esteem has the highest mediating influence on positive word-of-mouth (PWOM). However, the study findings suggest that attitudes toward beneficiaries are not significant predictors of both intentions to continue donating and PWOM.
Research limitations/implications
The impact of trust on the intention to continue donating is more important than that of self-esteem and attitude toward the beneficiary.
Practical implications
Similarly, the impact of trust and self-esteem on positive WOM is more important than that of attitude toward beneficiary.
Social implications
With this research, NPOs can make more budget from personal donation efficiently.
Originality/value
The findings of this research provide evidence that there are three important components relative to donation, namely, donor, NPO and beneficiary, and propose an integrated model which is composed of these three key components.
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Elin Åström Rudberg and Orsi Husz
The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals, so-called advertising technicians and the knowledge they acquired. Examining correspondence courses in the technology of advertising, we focus particularly on the production of technified knowledge and mass personas.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a qualitative analysis of course material from Sweden’s two largest correspondence schools in the 1930s and 1940s. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis: the concept of market devices and the notion of personas, both of which we use to show how the courses crafted a particular kind of advertising professional as well as knowledge.
Findings
The study shows that courses created a template-based persona of the advertising technician, who possessed what we call bounded originality characterized by diligence, modesty and rule-governed creative imagination. Similarly, the courses created a body of knowledge that was controllable and highly practice-oriented. The advertising technician was expected to embody and internalize the advertising knowledge, thus, becoming an extension of this knowledge on the market.
Originality/value
By directing the searchlight at the cadre of ordinary, middle-class advertising professionals instead of the high-profile “advertising creatives” and innovators, the paper brings to the foreground the nonelite level of the advertising industry. These practitioners went to work in the business world to produce the everyday advertising that was not necessarily groundbreaking but was needed in a growing mass-consumption society.
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