Carys Egan-Wyer

What is leisure? According to literature, leisure is the opposite of work; is uncoerced, autotelic, and unproductive; and is characterised by a consumption rather than a production logic. However, this exploration of endurance running as a hobby reveals that our understanding of leisure is outdated. In consumer culture, humans and human activities are increasingly treated like commodities and, in the stories of endurance runners, we see evidence of the commodification and subsumption of leisure and hobbies. Leisure is no longer valued according to a use-value logic but according to an exchange value logic; a means to an end without intrinsic value. Leisure is commodified, it is human labour and, like labour in Marx’ analysis of capitalism, is subsumed under capital. In this case though, the capital produced is social capital rather than economic capital.

Ethical brands have risen to prominence in recent years as a market solution to a diverse range of political, social and, in this case most interestingly, ethical problems. By signifying the ethical beliefs of the firm behind them, ethical brands offer an apparently simple solution to ethical consumers: buy into the brands that represent the value systems that they believe in and avoid buying into those with value-systems that they do not believe in. Lehner and Halliday (this issue), for example, argue that brands are a ‘practical and effective way’ (13) to address the market demand for ethicality because ‘they offer a means for firms to internalise positive externalities’ (23) associated with ethical behaviour. The assumption, then, is that if society desires ethical behaviour from firms, firms will not dare to behave otherwise for fear of inflicting costly damage on their carefully crafted brand images. According to economic rules of demand and supply, the market should then ensure that firms respond to the ethical requirements of the society in which they reside. As a consequence, brand management has incorporated as one of its main tasks the translation of the ethical positions on the market into communicable brand messages.

However, critical research has acknowledged the fundamental incompatibility of ethics and capitalism, as it is argued that ‘ethics’ tend to be used quite superficially as a legitimising signpost, effectively concealing the (possible) structural lack of ethics built into the capitalist order per se. Consequently, ethical branding may in fact legitimise the un-ethical aspects and elements of capitalist relations and practices. Moreover, when ethics are commodified, e.g. in the form of brand image, the human relations underlying the production processes are, in effect, concealed rather than exposed: ‘instead of seeing these human relations we see only an object’ (Jones, Parker and ten Bos, 2005: 104). Paradoxically, so it seems, ethical brands may indeed repress – or at least obfuscate – the most urgent ethical questions in capitalism rather than bringing them into the limelight.

As is the case with ethics itself, a term which is difficult to pin down in one, single definition (e.g. Jones, 2003; Jones, Parker and ten Bos, 2005; Muhr, 2008), the notion of ethical brands seems to be rife with paradoxes and dilemmas (see also Muhr and Rehn, forthcoming). An overriding tension in debates about ethical brands is that of the incompatibility of ethics and capitalist modes of production and consumption. This special issue is an attempt to address, discuss and reflect upon this.

http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/ethics-brand

Do you know your cappuccino from your frappuccino; your mocha from your moka; and your pocillo from your palazzo? Does that make you a coffee nerd? A snob? Or perhaps a connoisseur?
http://review.ehl.lu.se/the-new-snob/

This subject is explored further in the following conference paper:
Bertilsson, J., Egan-Wyer, C., Johansson, U., Klasson, M. & Ulver, S. (2014) Nerdery, Snobbery and Connoisseurship: developing conceptual clarity within the area of refined consumption

Is your hobby worth the time? According to Carys Egan-Wyer, our leisure activities look a lot like labour. In this post she gives you a theory on what has happened to your hobbies.
http://review.ehl.lu.se/whatever-happened-to-hobbies/

This subject is explored further in the following forthcoming paper:
Egan-Wyer, C. (Forthcoming) Whatever happened to hobbies? The commodification and subsumption of leisure under capital.

Do people care about consumption? Not necessarily, according to Elizabeth Nixon, from the University of Bath, School of Management. Many may be simply indifferent to the lures of consumer culture.
http://review.ehl.lu.se/do-people-really-care-about-consumption/

As well as being consumers of work (Schultz and Hatch 2008; Chertkovskaya 2013), workers see themselves as self-branded consumables on the job market. Leisure is an important part of the branding process and only leisure with appropriate symbolic value—which enhances employability—is consumed. Thus, leisure is transformed from work—which provides intrinsic satisfaction—into labour (Auden 1993)—which is instrumental. Leisure is put to work in the service of employability. Consumption provides a model for how we act, think and imagine, in all areas of our lives (Gabriel 2003). Consumer society (Lury 1996; Slater 1997; Baudrillard 1998) doesn’t only influence what we buy, where and how we work but also what we do with ‘free’ time. No time is truly free in consumer society. Leisure must earn its keep!

As consumers in Western consumer culture have increasingly turned from high cultural to low cultural consumption categories to cultivate themselves, the meanings of the traditional and socio-cultural concepts used to represent different forms of consumer expertise have been blurred or altered.  Drawing upon sociocultural literature on taste and distinction we attempt to provide theoretical clarity to the concepts of connoisseurship, snobbery, and nerdery; concepts that are often used interchangeably and without rigor in both (contemporary) popular and academic discourse. The outcome of our conceptual analysis is concretised using a semiotic square to illustrate how the concepts differ from each other. Our analysis suggests that the democratisation of consumption through the imprinting of status meanings upon traditionally illegitimate cultural objects may lead to the “bastardisation” of taste regarding those same illegitimate cultural categories – a performance formerly restricted to high culture.

ABSTRACT Following Slavoj Žižek, critical marketing scholars have interrogated the ideological fantasies of mainstream marketing, de-romanticising markets and marketing. However, Žižek argues there is no ideology-free subject, so it stands to Žižekean reason that critical marketing scholars are also ideological fantasists. Our paper seeks to de-romanticise critical marketing theory by identifying the fantasy of capitalist corruption. This sustains the ideology of critical marketing theory by disavowing (self-)destructive desires within the human unconscious and suggesting that displacing capitalism will be enough to usher in a postcapitalist utopia. This ideological fantasy has therapeutic, motivational, and institutional benefits, but romanticises the human subject in ways that ultimately frustrate the critical project of societal betterment. By acknowledging the human unconscious as a corrupting influence, we hope to make critical aspirations more likely to be realised. We illustrate our argument via studies of sustainability, a favoured topic of Žižekean, critical, and mainstream scholars alike.

There is no apparent need for individuals to endure this kind of suffering in contemporary Western society with all its advantages. Nevertheless, endurance running is now a mainstream leisure pursuit. Why do hundreds of thousands of men, women and even children choose this torturous kind of leisure activity? In previous literature on consumption of extraordinary experiences, authors focus on the purifying or restorative power of extraordinary experiences, particularly those that take place in natural settings (Canniford & Shankar 2013; Arnould & Price 1993; Belk & Costa 1998). Personal and interpersonal growth and transformation are frequently emphasised (Arnould & Price 1993; Belk & Costa 1998). Anthropological concepts such as communitas (Arnould & Price 1993; Celsi et al. 1993; Schouten & McAlexander 1995), liminality (Belk and Costa 1998), and drama (Celsi et al. 1993) are used to explain extraordinary experiences as rituals that allow participants to transcend everyday life. Endurance running does not fit this model. Although there are elements of transformation, ritual and communitas in endurance running, here the logics of contemporary society—late capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello 2005), consumer culture (Arnould & Thompson 2005), or neoliberalism (Harvey 2014)—are not suspended or inverted. Endurance runners obsessively record times and distances so that they can track and publicise their achievements. Running measured distances, in ever-decreasing times, is the goal of most endurance runners. Good and bad runs are rarely measured in terms of communitas, liminal transcendence or even pleasure. Good and bad are measured in terms of time and distance, achievement and record. Endurance running achievements are used to signal worth as employees, partners, leaders, and good neoliberal subjects. The logics of contemporary capitalism— economic logic, enterprise logic, market logic—remain at the heart of the consumption of endurance running, even when participants try to set them aside. 1 Marathon running, ultra-distance running, triathlon, or obstacle course racing. In much of the afore-mentioned literature on the consumption of extraordinary experiences, the consumer is considered to have considerable agency. This no doubt relates to the postmodern underpinnings of the theories and concepts used in these papers—e.g. the work of Victor Turner (1969; 1974; 1982). Leisure is seen in these papers as a liminal space of anti-structure that allows consumers space for reflexivity, agency and transformation. However, this is not what I see in endurance running. Rather than being emancipated through marketplace performances, I see consumers that are compelled to be productive in their leisure pursuits. They reproduce societal discourses that compel them to be productive, creative high achievers; to think of themselves as enterprises and their leisure as sites of investment and return rather than of freedom and reflexivity. I argue that it is time to revisit the consumption of extraordinary experiences and suggest that endurance running provides a useful empirical context for generating theory about leisure in contemporary capitalism. Extraordinary experiences are no longer a “time out of time” (Belk & Costa 1998, p.233), set apart from ordinary life. Instead they are an essential part of the labour of success in contemporary capitalism. Leisure is not an escape from the logics and demands of late capitalism. Rather it is a space where good neoliberal subjects must embody those logics and fulfil those demands. Both work and life outside work are mobilised in the project of developing a sellable self2. It could be argued that consumer culture theorist have unwittingly contributed to this predicament (Fitchett et al. 2014). They strived to conceptualise consumers as active, productive creators of value in marketing studies and models, rather than passive recipients of marketing strategies or mere destroyers of value created by producers (Kozinets 2002). Has this led to the situation where consumers are now compelled to consume creatively and productively? Marx tells us that workers become alienated when their work becomes instrumental and the fruits of their labour valued in terms of exchange. When consumption becomes, not a space of reflexivity and agency but one of compulsory creativity and productivity, the fruits of which are instrumental in selling oneself, might consumption also become alienating? And if consumption is no longer our escape from alienation (Miller 1994), what then? (Less)

Since the 1970s critical marketing scholars have called for systemic change to overcome the ethical problems generated by consumption, such as unsustainable resource use, industry-induced climate change, and social inequities. Mainstream marketing research has instead problematised the individual consumer and sought ways to diminish the so-called gap between ethics and consumption. The current conceptual paper follows Carrington et al. (2016) and other contemporary critical marketing scholars in redirecting attention away from individual (un)ethical consumers and toward the (im)moral market structures that inflect their decision-making. Its first contribution to this line of thinking is to propose an ethical consumption cap rather than an ethical consumption gap. This subtle but significant shift in emphasis suggests that contemporary capitalism creates conditions in which ethical consumption is costly in terms of money, time and effort. Rather than the responsibilising rhetoric of the ‘gap’, the ‘cap’ acknowledges the plethora of systemic pressures that make it difficult for consumers to consume ethically and invites researchers to look elsewhere for solutions. The second contribution of this paper is to follow Grayling (2019) in delineating the character of ethics from the concept of morality, which is more suggestive of obligations and duties. With this etymology in mind, it is argued that other market actors can do much more to remove problematic choices from the market and thus raise the mean market morality. Attending to the average morality of markets instead of emphasising capped ethical consumerism treads a difficult conceptual path between conflicting political positions, but may buy enough time for viable socioeconomic alternatives to neoliberalism to emerge and expand.

Since the 1970s critical marketing scholars have called for systemic change to overcome the ethical problems generated by consumption, such as unsustainable resource use, industry-induced climate change, and social inequities. Mainstream marketing research has instead problematised the individual consumer and sought ways to diminish the so-called gap between ethics and consumption. The current conceptual paper follows Carrington et al. (2016) and other contemporary critical marketing scholars in redirecting attention away from individual (un)ethical consumers and toward the (im)moral market structures that inflect their decision-making. Its first contribution to this line of thinking is to propose an ethical consumption cap rather than an ethical consumption gap. This subtle but significant shift in emphasis suggests that contemporary capitalism creates conditions in which ethical consumption is costly in terms of money, time and effort. Rather than the responsibilising rhetoric of ...

Purpose: The main purpose of our research is to create interesting theoretical and practical insights rather than developing empirical generalisations about the experiences of employees from Prestige Consulting and BigTech regarding the merger and subsequent integration of the two organisations. Methodology (Empirical Foundation): The research is based on an empirically driven case study within the Management Consulting industry in the United Kingdom. The research was conducted from an interpretative perspective, using qualitative research methods. Theoretical Perspective: We examine existing literature on the multiplicity of identities, the relationship between organisational and individual identities as well as the perceptions of authentic/inauthentic selves. In light of our findings, we suggest the extension of existing theory to encompass our empirical context. Research Question: Why do some BigTech employees cling to their Prestige identities after nine years of ‘integration’ w...

As consumers in Western consumer culture have increasingly turned from high cultural to low cultural consumption categories to cultivate themselves, the meanings of the traditional and socio-cultural concepts used to represent different forms of consumer expertise have been blurred or altered. Drawing upon sociocultural literature on taste and distinction we attempt to provide theoretical clarity to the concepts of connoisseurship, snobbery, and nerdery; concepts that are often used interchangeably and without rigor in both (contemporary) popular and academic discourse. The outcome of our conceptual analysis is concretised using a semiotic square to illustrate how the concepts differ from each other. Our analysis suggests that the democratisation of consumption through the imprinting of status meanings upon traditionally illegitimate cultural objects may lead to the “bastardisation” of taste regarding those same illegitimate cultural categories – a performance formerly restricted to...

Ethical brands have risen to prominence in recent years as a market solution to a diverse range of political, social and, in this case most interestingly, ethical problems. By signifying the ethical beliefs of the firm behind them, ethical brands offer an apparently simple solution to ethical consumers: buy into the brands that represent the value systems that they believe in and avoid buying into those with value-systems that they do not believe in. Lehner and Halliday (this issue), for example, argue that brands are a ‘practical and effective way’ (13) to address the market demand for ethicality because ‘they offer a means for firms to internalise positive externalities’ (23) associated with ethical behaviour. The assumption, then, is that if society desires ethical behaviour from firms, firms will not dare to behave otherwise for fear of inflicting costly damage on their carefully crafted brand images. According to economic rules of demand and supply, the market should then ensur...

There is no apparent need for individuals to endure this kind of suffering in contemporary Western society with all its advantages. Nevertheless, endurance running is now a mainstream leisure pursuit. Why do hundreds of thousands of men, women and even children choose this torturous kind of leisure activity? In previous literature on consumption of extraordinary experiences, authors focus on the purifying or restorative power of extraordinary experiences, particularly those that take place in natural settings (Canniford & Shankar 2013; Arnould & Price 1993; Belk & Costa 1998). Personal and interpersonal growth and transformation are frequently emphasised (Arnould & Price 1993; Belk & Costa 1998). Anthropological concepts such as communitas (Arnould & Price 1993; Celsi et al. 1993; Schouten & McAlexander 1995), liminality (Belk and Costa 1998), and drama (Celsi et al. 1993) are used to explain extraordinary experiences as rituals that allow participants to transcend everyday life. En...

In this thesis, I critically explore the ways in which people consume extraordinary experiences and what this can tell us about contemporary society. My findings question the idea that extraordinary experiences are an escape from the demands of everyday life. I show instead that social (especially neoliberal) discourses discipline endurance runners and shape the ways in which they understand and account for their extraordinary experiences.As a research context for this qualitative study, I chose endurance running, which includes triathlon, obstacle adventure racing and ultra-distance running. Endurance running is an extreme but popular experience in contemporary consumer culture. If we don’t consume branded endurance running events, such as Ironman or Tough Mudder, ourselves, we might have sponsored a colleague or friend to run up Mont Blanc or across the Sahara desert. Few of us can have escaped the sight of people pounding the pavements or running laps in the local park, building ...

PurposeThe study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio.Design/methodology/approachCase study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm.FindingsThe concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit-focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints.Research limitations/implicationsIdeas about the different characteristics of new store format...

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: firstly we introduce a (tentative) theoretical framework to conceptualise the development of market systems on a mid-range (or meso-) level; secondly, we spell out methodological suggestions for how to study such development. The paper is a conceptual paper, with no primary data used or presented. We introduce a conceptual framework, which we refer to as Consumption Field Refinement (CFR), to represent the development of a market system. Central to our framework is the idea that the market system consists of several interlinked subsystems or consumption fields, each focused on a particular consumption interest.