Elizabeth Parsons

Practising thrift at dinnertime: mealtime leftovers, sacrifice and family membership

Exploring our relationship with mealtime leftovers tells us a lot about not only our relationships with waste, but with one another, in the home. In our study of British mealtimes we explore how leftovers are transformed and reused as meals. We refer to theories of disposal in exploring the skills involved in transforming leftovers. We also explore the motivations behind these transformations. Drawing on the work of Miller (1998) we examine how the reuse of leftovers involves sacrifice by individual family members for the greater good of the whole family. We also find that reusing and eating up leftovers involves a collective sacrifice by family members which marks out their membership to the family unit.

Charity retail: past, present and future

Explores the development of the charity retailing sector in the past decade. Examines the role of charity shops in their local communities. Provides some suggestions as to the likely future of the sector.

Praxis or performance: does critical marketing have a gender blind-spot?

To date the processes of knowledge reproduction in the emerging field of critical marketing have been subject to little scrutiny. Given the current burgeoning of the field we feel the time is over-ripe to address this absence and explore the norms and practices of this collective scholarly group. In doing so we focus our attention on the related issues of gender, embodiment and performance. We attempt to learn from critiques within critical management studies that have found a series of exclusionary practices operating in the field. Authors argue that in particular critical management studies has encouraged performances that draw significantly on masculine ways of knowing and being to the exclusion of alternative subjectivities. Our concern is that the emerging field of critical marketing may be reproducing exclusionary practices in a similar manner. Therefore we attempt to shed light on these practices and performances in critical marketing, and explore ways in which we might break through them by offering a series of suggestions for doing both gender and organising differently.

Brands at Work: The Search for Meaning in Mundane Work

Brand scholarship traditionally resides within the marketing literature and focuses on organizations’ external relationships with customers. However, increasing critical attention in organization studies has focused on the brand in order to understand its impact on the internal dynamics of employment relations in contemporary organizations. Drawing on an ethnography of frontline service work in an IT consultancy call centre, we explore the brand as an internal organizational resource sustaining the process of employee meaning-making activities. Documenting the ‘work of the brand’, we outline what the brand offers both employees and employers and, in doing so, we theorize the brand at work as a connecting mechanism between processes of identity formation/re-formation and regulation. While employees are encouraged to internalize particular brand meanings (in this case prestige, success and quality), we found that they often willingly buy into these intended brand meanings as a palliative to ‘cope’ with mundane work. In this way brand meanings are central to producing a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity.

Sharing the Meal: Food Consumption and Family Identity

Purpose – In this chapter, we seek to explore the collective responsibilities undertaken by the family as a whole in maintaining familial bonds through meal consumption. We draw on work which examines the role of gift giving (Ruskola, 2005), sharing (Belk, 2010) and sacrifice (Miller, 1998) in consumption. We take an original approach which does not look at the family meal in isolation but rather focuses on the patterning of meals and the relationships between them. Methodology – The ethnographic study draws on interviews with 18 families and follows up mealtime observations with 15 families. Findings – The analysis reveals a mealtime patterning involving collective participation in saving (in the form of consuming ordinary and thrifty meals during the week) and spending (in consuming extraordinary meals at weekends). Even if in the women and mothers in the household tend to sacrifice themselves more than other family members, the consumption of thrifty or ordinary meals implies a process of sacrifice involving the entire family. In viewing the meal as gift, we also observe a process of reciprocity in operation with family members obliged to both share in, and contribute to, the meals that have been cooked for them. Social implication – Our analysis reveals discordances between the aspirations of family members (which are arguably largely based on cultural ideals), and their everyday experiences of family mealtimes. Originality/Value – The chapter show how these micro experiences of family mealtimes have implications for a macro understanding of the idealised and culturally loaded construct of the family meal.

UK Charity Retailing: Managing in a Newly Professionalised Sector

The charity retail sector has seen unprecedented growth in the UK over the past ten years. Alongside this growth charities have become progressively professionalised and commercialised and have begun to adopt strategies developed in commercial retail contexts. This paper unpacks this process of professionalisation examining exactly what it constitutes on the ground. It then goes on to consider in turn how this new professionalism has impacted on store managers. The paper closes in considering the challenges represented by these requirements and offers some suggestions for future research.

Charity shop managers in the UK: becoming more professional?

Abstract The charity retail sector in the UK has undergone a series of changes over the last decade which have typically been grouped under the heading professionalisation. Shop managers have been under increasing pressure from senior management to maximise profits for the parent charity. However charity retail harbours many contradictions and additionally, shop managers are aware of the need to ‘act charitably’ towards their volunteers and customers. This paper focuses on senior managers’ interpretations of professionalism and attempts to close the gap between charity retail and commercial (non-charity) retail and contrasts this with the day-to-day working experiences of shop managers. In doing so it highlights the symbolic and often contested nature of (charity) retail spaces.

Markets, identities and the discourses of antique dealing

This paper examines the ways in which market exchanges in the world of antique dealing offer dealers resources for the creation and expression of identity. As such, the paper takes a specific view of identity as discursively produced through interaction. Analysis of interviews with 16 UK antique dealers found that they typically drew on discourses of taste and aesthetics, and of morality and care, to manage their identities. In doing so they mobilized differing (and most often oppositional) constructions of customers, other dealers, antique markets and antique objects. The paper therefore has two key aims: to explore the antiques world as a marketplace institution within which particular sets of discourses circulate, and to examine the intersection of these discourses in dealers’ constructions of self, others and ‘world’. In closing, the paper argues for a fuller application and conceptualization of ‘discourse’ within marketing and consumer research. The author suggests that the hitherto underused concept of ‘marketplace institutions’ might help to understand how discourses and identities are thoroughly embedded in the marketplace.

Consuming Bollywood: Young Sikhs social comparisons with heroes and heroines in Indian films

Abstract This interpretivist study uses social comparison and social identity theory to consider how members of the British Sikh community are consuming Bollywood films (the Indian movie industry). In applying social comparison theory to this ethnic context, we seek to extend knowledge of how this theory relates to cultural identity construction. In terms of social identity and acculturation, the social function of Bollywood films and their popular consumption provide a valuable narrative space to negotiate and ‘remoor’ ethnic identity. Three key themes emerged to illustrate the ways in which the social comparisons that Bollywood encourages are influencing the identities of third generation British Sikhs: (1) social comparison and ideals of romance; (2) gender differences: making comparisons to heroes and heroines; and (3) British versus Indian self: Bollywood as a medium for identity reconstruction.

Charity retailing in the UK: a typology

Abstract Recent unprecedented growth in the UK charity retail sector has seen charities becoming increasingly strategic in managing their retail operations. This paper reviews the present state of the charity retail sector through a three-fold typology and uses this typology to critically analyse the range of strategic approaches within the sector. Review and analysis of these strategies suggest that ironically the most profitable charity retailers are not necessarily the most strategic ones. Independent, localised charities which maintain close links within their communities are often more profitable than their more professional national counterparts. The paper closes by exploring the fundamental tension for these retailers, between generating the highest possible profits, and maintaining a charitable and caring image and questioning the future for this distinctive retail sector.