Caring and Conflicted: Mothers’ Ethical Judgments about Consumption

Heath, Teresa; O’Malley, Lisa; Heath, Matthew; Story, Vicky

doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2441-z

Cited by 39 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…And it's about me changing as a person because I've worked on myself so that my internal changes has changed everything on the outside [Chloe] Chloe often projects onto the environment maternal qualities (e.g., she refers to it as "nurturing" and "caring") and is highly concerned about the sustainability of her family's consumption practices. At the same time, in line with previous studies (e.g., Heath et al, 2016), she acknowledges that care for the environment and extended others is often traded against issues such as convenience, immediate family needs and so on, highlighting the challenges of expressing care in consumption in a consumer orientated society. Nonetheless, a sense of relationality and reparatory urges (key characteristics of the depressive position) remain a predominant theme throughout her accounts:…”

supporting

confidence: 72%

A psycho-social approach to consumer ethics

Chatzidakis

Shaw

Allen

2018

Journal of Consumer Culture

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Research into consumer ethics has grown considerably over the last two decades. However most studies adopt either a psychological or a socio-cultural approach and there has been little in the way of bridging the two together. Accordingly, we draw on Kleinian psychoanalysis as a means of advancing an explicitly psycho-social understanding of consumer ethics. Following an emerging tradition that conceptualises moral dilemmas as questions of care, rather than abstract principles of moral and environmental justice, we conceptualise consumer care as a capacity that for its extension across difference and distance is subject to a variety of biographical, inter-subjective and institutional-level processes.Subsequently, we attempt to redress forms of theoretical reductionism noted in both psychological and socio-cultural accounts of everyday morality in consumption. We corroborate a more nuanced, mid-ground conceptualisation that neither precludes nor overstates the possibility of consumer agency whilst also locating agency in inanimate objects. Finally, we offer a methodological contribution by introducing a psychoanalytic (Kleinian) approach to analysing textual and visual data..

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supporting

confidence: 72%

A psycho-social approach to consumer ethics

Chatzidakis

Shaw

Allen

2018

Journal of Consumer Culture

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“…This also emphasises the need for a deeper understanding of the nature and role of out-groups, and of their positive, as well as negative, influence on in-groups. Finally, the suggested influence of family background on the attitudes and behaviour of our participants highlights the importance of taking a wider contextual and relational view of alcohol consumers rather than looking at them simply as independent individuals, which agrees with previous findings on complex consumption decisions (e.g., Heath, O'Malley, Heath, & Story, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Out‐group peer involvement in youth alcohol consumption

Gallage

Tynan

Heath

2017

J of Consumer Behaviour

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Recent studies of alcohol consumption among students have consistently linked in-group influence with excessive drinking. Concurrently, these studies have largely overlooked the influence of non-alcohol-consuming peers (the out-group) on the in-group's decisions to consume alcohol.However, out-groups can have a significant impact on in-group members' decisions regarding publicly consumed products (White, Simpson, & Argo, 2014), such as is the case of alcohol. In light of this, our study aims to explore how in-group members' views of their consumption of alcohol are influenced by their out-group. This study uses Social Identity Theory as the theoretical lens to explain consumer interaction with the out-group (abstainers) and subsequent views of in-group members (alcohol consumers). A social constructivist approach is adopted to enable this exploration of meaning, with concomitant use of the qualitative narrative methodology. A sample of 18 postgraduate students studying in the UK was selected. Narratives were collected and analysed using thematic analysis. Although the widely accepted view is that people tend to avoid products or behaviours that are linked with an out-group, this paper demonstrates conditions in which alcohol consumers appreciate the out-group. Furthermore, it reveals how drinkers' interaction with their out-group can lead to negative attitudes towards their in-group and their own consumption of alcohol. Based on their views of out-groups, we propose a categorisation of alcohol consumers into 3 groups: avoiders, open admirers, and covert admirers. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications for social marketers and policy makers.

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“…First, we build on an emerging stream of consumer research (Heath et al ., ; Shaw, McMaster and Newholm, ) that has foregrounded care ethics as an improved framework for understanding the ways in which ordinary consumer decisions are gendered, relational and socioculturally embedded. Our study illustrates that even within this stream (and the stream of care ethics more broadly; e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability: Issues of Scale, Care and Consumption

Chatzidakis

Shaw

2018

British J of Management

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This paper investigates how consumers interested in sustainability are affected by conflicts in caring and scale. Contrasting previous emphasis relating scale to production, the paper illustrates how scale influences consumption and social reproduction, including consumers’ more concrete preoccupations with caring about and for themselves, significant others and, not least, the planet. The paper makes three contributions to the nascent management literature in this field. First, it illustrates how scalar logics at urban through to global levels influence seemingly micro‐social routine consumption decisions. Second, it develops an approach that emphasizes the scale‐sensitivity of consumer decision‐making around sustainability and the conflicts inherent in caring. Third, it addresses critiques of current studies preoccupied with processes of production rather than social reproduction and illustrates the critical role that consumption plays in the social construction of scales. Based on these findings, we argue that policy promoting sustainability may be misplaced in that it does not sufficiently acknowledge how people's consumption and caring decisions are nested in relational and spatial contexts.

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Caring and Conflicted: Mothers’ Ethical Judgments about Consumption

Cited by 39 publications

References 56 publications

A psycho-social approach to consumer ethics

A psycho-social approach to consumer ethics

Out‐group peer involvement in youth alcohol consumption

Sustainability: Issues of Scale, Care and Consumption

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