This paper explores the gendered experience of singleness in Britain through a theoretical and empirical understanding of the 'abject'. Drawing on the writings of Judith Butler, we argue that 'singleness' is culturally pathologised as an 'abject other', a liminal state which renders the legitimation of the 'single subject' unintelligible. Through 14 active interviews withBritish singles, we demonstrate how our participants negotiate their marginal status vis-à-vis the marketplace and the broader society that continue to uphold heterosexual partnership as a normative form of intimacy. Our data uncovers persistent and powerful stereotypes of how singles ought to organize their lives and conform both to social, as well as market-driven, pressures. We therefore highlight research gaps in the experience of singleness and critique the heteronormative framework that remains dominant, yet concealed, in gender research. Summary Statement of ContributionThis paper advances a theoretical and empirical understanding of the neglected experience of singleness and how singles understand and negotiate their gendered subjectivities in a coupleoriented marketplace. Theoretically, we have enhanced understanding of how the concept of 'abjection' can be developed to expose the 'naturalisation' of heterosexual relationships as a legitimate practice. We argue that the marketplace remains politically vested in the institution of heteronormativity. Our empirical study contributes to the understanding of how the circulation of the heterosexual imaginary in the marketplace shapes the experience of singleness. Most notably, our findings reveal that the experience of singleness is structured along gendered lines: a statein which single women are 'visibly' subjected to the disciplinary power that produces their 'abject' status. While single men have seemingly averted the disciplinary gaze, on the other hand, we also show that their singleness remains tenuously tethered to the heteronormative framework.

This article explores how social class is linguistically negotiated and contested in parental narratives of school choice in the British education marketplace. Our study reveals prevalent yet obscured vestiges of 'class talk', and in doing so, unmasks 'micro-political' acts of status claiming. Using interactional narrative interviewing with 30 parents, we explore how inter-and intra-class differences are emotionally expressed, thus exposing the embodied dispositions of parents' habitus and its' subtle influence on school choice. The parental narratives also unveil a moral and political tension between the neoliberal ideal of entrepreneurial self-advancement and an egalitarian sentiment for social equality. Our study therefore challenges the neoliberal educational policy of market choice in closing the attainment gap.ARTICLE HISTORY

Purpose Consumer studies drawing on interpretative approaches have tended to rely on sedentary interviews, which the authors argue are ill-equipped to capture the embodied, tacit and pre-reflexive knowledge that conditions routinized practices. This paper aims to provide practical and theoretical framing of the walking-with technique, in particular, with reference to practice theories. Specifically, this paper draws on Bourdieu’s concept of the “habitus” to illustrate the “workings” of the habituated body in performing routine consumption. Design/methodology/approach This paper used the walking-with technique to elicit “mobile stories” with senior executives in Hong Kong. This paper explored how walking to and from work/lunch/dinner can open up culturally and historically embodied narratives that reflect evolving consumption practices throughout participants’ professional trajectories. Findings This paper demonstrates the uses of the walking-with technique by illustrating how embodied narratives foreground the pre-reflexive practices of mundane consumption. This paper illustrates how walking as a “mobile mundane practice” can expand a researcher’s horizon of understanding, enabling them to “fall into the routines of participants’ life”, “get into grips with participant’s temporal (time travel portal) and cultural conditioning” and “co-experience and empathise with participants through bodily knowing”. The authors argue that walking-with necessarily implies an inter-subjective sharing of intermundane space between the researchers and the participants. Such a method is therefore conducive to engendering co-created embodied understanding-in-practice, which the authors argue is accomplished when there is a fusion-of-habituses. Future applications in other consumer contexts are also discussed. Practical implications The walking-with technique embeds data collection in the day-to-day routes taken by participants. This does not only ease the accessibility issue but also render real-life settings relevant to participants’ daily life. Originality/value Despite receiving growing attention in social science studies, the walking-with technique is under-used in consumer research. This paper calls for the need to mobilise walking-with as a method to uncover practical and theoretical consumer insights in a way that allows for embodied and performative knowledge (know-how) to emerge.

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