Per Østergaard

Becoming a 'Woman to the Backbone' : Lingerie consumption and the experience of feminine identity

The connection between consumption and identity construction is a well-known topic in consumer research.Identity has two sides: a social side directed towards an external world of shared values and symbols, and an intra-psychological side directed towards an internal world of longings and bodily sensations.In this study we investigate how womens consumption of lingerie may enhance their experience of inter- and intra-psychological identity.This process of identity formation is analysed with reference to Foucaults concept of ‘technologies of the self’which emphasizes the role of practices and instruments in generating a sense of ‘self’.Lingerie is treated as such an instrument, and the categorizations that consumers use are treated as a form of practical knowledge of how to determine the‘right’underwear for the‘right’occasion. Consuming lingerie with the purpose of experiencing feminine identity is a matter of controlling your bodily performance in social life.This working on identity by purchasing and wearing lingerie may furthermore fulfil or generate longings, thus potentially leading to intensified experiences, feelings and sensations of ‘who I really am’.The article highlights some of the paradoxes in this attempt to manage identity.The analysis is based on interviews with 22 women about their underwear and lingerie consumption.

‘The wild and wacky worlds of consumer oddballs’: Analyzing the manifestary context of consumer culture theory

The article starts with the assumption that the research community of consumer culture theory (CCT) is materially experienced and negotiated in its continuous rhetorical construction. Here, we use the concept of manifestos to analyze the fragile dialectics of a rhetorical and social praxis. In two manifestary moments in the historical development of CCT, we compare how manifestos materialize the transitions from individuals to the linked subjects by a shared relation to ‘the other’. The analysis shows how the ‘we’ of yesterday was written differently from how the ‘we’ of the present and the future requires to be articulated. This sense of ‘we-ness’ is then connected to the changes in the internal and external layers of the academic environment. We conclude that to ensure a sustainable, dynamic development of CCT that avoids disintegration as well as eroding subjugation and stasis, a balance between radical and pragmatic voices has to be established. This balance incorporates the idea that power and knowledge are dynamically intertwined. In this sense, ‘we-ness’ is not a utopian final state, but a permanent necessity for CCT that emerges out of struggles and engages in conflicts.

Just for fun? The emotional regime of experiential consumption

Experiential consumption emphasizes emotional and hedonic qualities in the marketplace stressing the importance of experiences for ‘the good life’ and positioning consumption as a legitimate way to generate interesting and relevant experiences. The concept of emotional regimes (Reddy, 2001) is used to emphasize the dialectics between structural changes in the modern marketplace and the modern way of perceiving and practising hedonic behaviour. The article considers the main ideas that have furthered modern hedonism and the practices that have transformed the abstract longing for sensitivity into concrete experiential appetites. The development of a regime of experiences is outlined, consisting of a set of techniques to bring about sensual pleasure, a discourse to verbalize the methods of pleasure seeking, and an ideology that turns pleasure into a legitimate existential goal in life for the sake of self-actualization.

Doing and Meaning: Towards an integrated approach to the study of women's relationship to underwear

In our last issue, the Journal of Consumer Culture published two very different contributions to the debate around womens underwear. In order to develop the issues raised in the original articles, we invited the authors to engage in a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary exchange.This dialogue is the result.

Consumers’ collective action in market system dynamics: A case of beer

This article examines how consumers may work strategically to alter market dynamics through formally organized activities. We address this issue in the context of the Danish beer market and its evolution over the last two decades, with a specific empirical focus on the role of a formally organized consumer association. We draw on key tenets of recent advances in sociological field theory, which views social order as comprising multiple and related strategic action fields. From this perspective, we describe the Danish beer market and its transformation, with an emphasis on how Danish beer enthusiasts played a significant role in altering the logics of competition in the market, but also played a significant institutionalized role within the field itself. We theorize this activity as consumers’ collective action.

Relationship marketing and the order of simulation

This paper applies Jean Baudrillard’s order of simulacra to further investigate the paradigm of relationship marketing (RM). A brief overview of RM is given, followed by a summary of the main critical perspectives taken towards the approach. We argue that Baudrillard’s theories of simulation and post-industrial culture provide a useful analytical approach through which to resolve some of these critiques. Relationships are simultaneously ‘real’ and ‘imagined’. In the culture of simulation all cultural forms, including relationships, are open to critical analysis and interrogation. They are a construct that results from the complex interplay between signs, code and programme, which for our purposes are manifest as the market, marketing institutions and marketing technologies.