Catherine A. Coleman

Consumption and gender identity in popular media: discourses of domesticity, authenticity, and sexuality

The goal of this research is to compare contemporary representations of masculinity and femininity in two HBO television series, Entourage and Sex and the City, and illustrate how these representations intersect with consumption. In the analysis, the authors discuss how gender fluidity gives the characters the freedom to be multifaceted in their performances – performances with regard to three emergent themes: domesticity, sexuality, and authenticity. Characters in both programs negotiate the tensions between more traditional gender roles and the assumption of contemporary roles through consumption. The characters find ways to simultaneously re-establish and reinforce their gendered identities as they create new roles, often with the aid of consumption. On the other hand, it is the consumption itself that is sometimes complicit in creating new tensions.

Advertising Professionals' Perceptions of the Impact of Gender Portrayals on Men and Women: A Question of Ethics?

This research investigates advertising professionals’ perceptions of how gender portrayals impact men and women and how these perceptions influence their strategic and creative choices. Two rounds of qualitative data were collected to examine these issues. Findings reveal professionals’ perceptions about womens vulnerability and mens immunity to the negative consequences of advertising, as well as the societal discourses and institutional dynamics that drive their business decisions. The authors detail four themes with regard to professionals’ conceptualizations of the influence of gender portrayals on consumers and the ethical considerations surrounding such images. Theoretical and managerial implications and consumer welfare ramifications are offered.

Poverty in consumer culture: towards a transformative social representation

Abstract In this article, we consider the representations of poverty within consumer culture. We focus on four main themes – social exclusion, vulnerability, pleasure and contentment – that capture some of the associations that contemporary understandings have made with poverty. For each theme, we consider the portrayals of poverty from the perspective of key agents (such as marketers, media, politicians) and then relate this to more emic representations of poverty by drawing on a range of contemporary poverty alleviating projects from around the world. We conclude with a set of guidelines for relevant stakeholders to bear in mind when elaborating their representations of poverty. These guidelines may act as a platform to transform marginalising representations of poverty into more empowering representations.

Gender Justice and the Market: A Transformative Consumer Research Perspective

Despite growing awareness of the importance of gender equality in the advancement of global economies, the involvement of marketing and policy in (re)producing and resolving gender injustices remains understudied. This article proposes a transformative consumer research approach to studying gender-related issues. It develops the “transformative gender justice framework” (TGJF), which identifies perspectives from three enfranchisement theories: social and distributive justice, capabilities approach, and recognition theory. By applying a multiparadigmatic analysis, the authors encourage a dialogic and recursive approach so that scholars and policy makers can assess the interactions between structural, agentic, and sociocultural forces that underlie gender injustices. They argue the TGJF is necessary for full comprehension of the complex, systemic, glocalized, institutionalized, and embodied nature of gender injustices, as well as how policy, markets and marketing can both perpetuate and resolve gender injustices. To demonstrate the TGJFs analytical power, the authors apply the framework to one site of gender injustice (i.e., the sex tourism industry), propose applications across additional sites, and discuss questions it raises for future research.

Power logics of consumers’ gendered (in)justices: reading reproductive health interventions through the Transformative Gender Justice Framework

ABSTRACT Global gender asymmetries in marketing and consumer behavior were recently exemplified by the Transformative Gender Justice Framework (TGJF). The TGJF, however, lacks an explicit reference to power – an aspect that becomes apparent when it is used to assess a consumer phenomenology. In this article we augment the TGJF by building out the power logics and by empirically testing it through an assessment of the reproductive market in Uganda. We capture macro-, meso-, and micro-level power asymmetries, and explore how bio-power and control over resources melds with local gender relations and agentic practices that (i) leave social marketing efforts misaligned with embodied realities, and (ii) result in dichotomies and tensions in the reproductive health market as the North–South strive to define the modern-traditional, medical-pleasurable, and women-men nature of contraceptives.

The Moral(izing) of the Story: Marketing’s Influence on Moral Life

reinterpret core beliefs and norms for practitioners and for practices that would fulfill the public’s needs for information, explanation, perspectives, advocacy, reform, participation, and dialogue. The driving spirit, he says, should be ecumenical, not a desire to erase difference but to seek some grounds for unity or for mere tolerance when world views are too different. “Integrated ethics is possible if practitioners identify minimal meanings that can be spelled out in different robust interpretations within a tradition of media ethics” (p. 159). Part III, the shortest of the book’s three sections, spells out “The Principles of Global Integrated Ethics.” The “ultimate political goal of journalism is the maintenance and promotion of democracy” (p. 173). That form of democracy should be “social liberalism,” Ward declares, as he becomes both more specific and prescriptive. He ends the book with a fairly realistic assessment of the distance between his reach and his grasp. He might have added some elements to this: For example, an acknowledgment that journalism in most parts of the world, including the developed world, are constrained by laws most Americans would deem repressive. He ends with a proposed model code. As the book progresses, Ward’s ethics map grows increasingly complex and expands into additional dimensions. Every concept, including the word “concept” itself, has levels of meaning, and those meanings connect to other concepts with different levels of meaning. It is a road map with length, width and height that also moves through time and space. The writing and explanations are consistently clear and comprehensible, but the accumulation of towering ideas would certainly overwhelm the undergraduate. A graduate seminar, however, tackling one part at a time, could build a rich discussion. Ward’s map valiantly points us to where the discussion needs to go. This book is an important intervention to alleviate conditions that will worsen because technology, corporatism, globalization, and opportunism that is exploiting the alienation people feel toward the new media are all marching forward. We will not all agree with Ward’s recommended routes, but new technology both forces us to confront the necessity of this radical change he advocates and allows us to move the lines to adjust the way we want it go.