Consuming for an Imagined Future: Middle-Class Consumer Lifestyle and Exploratory Experiences in the Transition to Adulthood

Abstract

This study examines middle-class consumption and lifestyle during the transition to adulthood in the United States. Based on analysis of qualitative data from interviews with emerging adults between adolescence and settled adulthood, we argue that middle-class emerging adulthood is marked by a focus on exploratory experience consumption: the consumption of novel experiences with cultural capital potential. This tacit, embodied orientation is rooted in a habitus developed during entitled childhoods but is also shaped by an anticipated shortage of opportunities for exploration after they marry and have children. Accordingly, middle-class emerging adults voraciously consume exploratory experiences in the present with their imagined future selves in mind. The class basis for this orientation is examined through our analysis of interviews with working-class emerging adults whose lifestyles are characterized not by exploratory experience consumption but by a desire for the familiar, a fear of the unknown, and a longing for stability. The discussion focuses on how the middle-class consumer orientation toward exploratory experiences reinforces class (dis)advantage, life trajectories, and inequality.

Shopping as a “networked experience”: an emerging framework in the retail industry

“…On the one hand, these illustrate how the idea of an "extension" of the self' in consumption throughout the advancement of digitally-mediated forms of communication is a key aspect that requires consideration for retail research, as mobile technologies of communication come to be part of a social setting in which the visit to a real point of sale represents just one aspect in a variously faceted dynamic. Furthermore, these have a notably experiential nature; this complements findings in Weinberger et al (2017) construct retail environments that favour this 'sharing' experience. These insights show the initial stages of an ongoing process of cultural transformation of retail as a social practice, of which younger consumers seem to be at the forefront, and that needs to be taken into adequate consideration.…”

Champagne taste, beer budget: The new poor’s incongruent capital and consumption

“…You stay as long as you want, you interact with local people who have different cultural and ethnical backgrounds … Those who always travel by joining group tour are impotent in travel … I sometimes look down upon them because they cannot do what we can do. (Calvin, M, 29, Taipei)The “correct way” to consume tourism echoes the exploration- and experience-oriented value held by middle-class youngsters in their emerging adulthood (Weinberger et al., 2017), and evidences that the shopping literacy as a form of cultural capital can be a marker of different social classes. Compared to economically secure informants in the study of Weinberger et al.…”

“…(Calvin, M, 29, Taipei)The “correct way” to consume tourism echoes the exploration- and experience-oriented value held by middle-class youngsters in their emerging adulthood (Weinberger et al., 2017), and evidences that the shopping literacy as a form of cultural capital can be a marker of different social classes. Compared to economically secure informants in the study of Weinberger et al. (2017), while they all stress the participatory experiences in common, new poor informants seem to be more eager to dissociate the performance of cultural capital from their financial standing.…”

“…Expecting little chance for upward mobility in the near future, informants may lose incentives to regulate their behavior toward long-term financial success (Yoon and Kim, 2016). Unlike financially secure youngsters, the consumption of new poor informants reflects little consideration of an imagined future (Weinberger et al., 2017) as their lives have been left behind the planned trajectory. Therefore, informants choose to “seize the moment” to enjoy their lives as much as they can, while being careful to not accrue debt for an uncertain future.…”

Bridging the determinist-interpretivist divide in intercultural competence research

“…Relatedly, when is ICC relevant to a field? Certain forms of cultural capital can be conceptualized as field-transcendent, generalized forms of cultural capital, which are converted more easily between fields (Arsel and Thompson, 2011), thereby allowing individuals to gain status in different fields (Weinberger et al, 2017). Consequently, conceptualizing ICC should involve specifying when and how possessing cultural or intercultural competences differs within and across organizational contexts.…”