Consumption, ageing and identity: New Zealander's narratives of gifting, ridding and passing on

Mansvelt, Juliana

doi:10.1111/j.1745-7939.2012.01233.x

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…All of the residents spoke of being unable to take all of their possessions with them on moving into the residential home. Several residents told me that while they had found it difficult to leave certain things behind, they felt much better when relatives were able to keep items, as it comforted them F o r P e e r R e v i e w 9 that objects which had been meaningful to them were kept in the family, a finding reported in previous studies of household disbandment (Ekerdt, Luborsky and Lysack 2012;Mansvelt 2012). For some residents, their move into The Cedars had coincided with grandchildren setting up home, or other family members' changing circumstances, which resulted in practical items such as white goods and kitchen equipment being kept within the family and put to good use.…”

Section: How Materials Culture Helped Residents To Maintain Existing Smentioning

confidence: 94%

Relationships and material culture in a residential home for older people

Lovatt

2020

Ageing and Society

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Residents of older people's homes furnish their rooms with belongings that are associated with meaningful relationships. Previous research shows how material culture symbolises residents’ past and existing relationships, helping residents to remain embedded within familial and social networks. Less attention has been paid to how relationships are actively (re)constituted through socio-material interactions, and to the potential for objects to facilitate new relationships. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study into the everyday experiences of residents of an older people's home in northern England. Using observations of daily life and in-depth interviews with residents, it demonstrates how residents used material culture in gift-giving, divestment practices and in mundane social interactions. In this way, residents used objects to not only maintain relationships with family members outside the home, but form new relationships inside the home with other residents and members of staff. Combining theories of materiality, relationality and social practice, I argue that residents’ interactions with material culture helped to facilitate new social interaction and meaningful relationships. This is important in a social context where loneliness has been identified as a significant threat to residents’ mental and physical health. Residential homes for older people can develop guidance on practical activities and strategies that can use material culture to increase social interaction and enhance quality of life for residents.

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Section: How Materials Culture Helped Residents To Maintain Existing Smentioning

confidence: 94%

Relationships and material culture in a residential home for older people

Lovatt

2020

Ageing and Society

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“…Three interviews of 1–2 hours’ duration were held with the 13 participants at 1 -, 2 - and 3-month intervals in 2009 and 2010. The research focussed on experiences and practices surrounding participant’s consumption, examining how individual, parental and familial identities (Mansvelt, 2012) were framed in the context of consumption practices, including acquisition, possession, gifting, passing on and wasting of commodities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Role modelling appropriate consumption is evident in the ways in which commodities are not just bought, but given away as gifts, handed on or given as items of legacy (Mansvelt, 2012). Here, the limited availability of resources intersects with the role modelling of motherhood through the demonstration of a son unable to recognise the self-sacrifice of his mother:See my son ran out of money to finish painting my grandson’s room and I was visiting so they asked me.…”

Section: The Role Model Mothermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We understand consumption as the diverse sphere of practices and discourses centred upon the sale, purchase and use of commodities (Mansvelt, 2005). Consumption is expressed in the ways in which commodities are purchased, possessed, used, given away or passed on as items of legacy (Mansvelt, 2012). Understanding consumption in this way, we explore how consumption features in accounts of mothering among older women with adult children.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Still being ‘Mother’? Consumption and identity practices for women in later life

Mansvelt

Breheny

Stephens

2015

Journal of Consumer Culture

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Studies of mothering and consumption have primarily focussed on mothers to be and mothers of young children with little known about the intersection between consumption and mothering beyond the years of childhood dependence. This article argues that performances of mothering enacted through consumption do not end with children leaving home. Many women were consciously 'Still being mother', with consumption choices significant in the ways in which mothering identities were performed. The analysis of interviews from three studies of family life, living standards and consumption in older age identified three constructs of the 'good' mothering of adult children. Aspects of the 'provisioning mother' were evident in providing for children through gifts, material and financial support. Appropriate consumption practices by adult children demonstrated the 'role model mother' who has taught her children well. Mothers also framed themselves as 'independent mothers' who had sufficient social and financial resources to not burden children, hinting not only at their own 'controlled' consumption practices but also at future changes in mothering and consumption that might need to be managed as they aged. These mothering identities were not static and were exhibited differently across a range of living standards. 'Still being mother' mattered, but the resources available to women to shape these identities through consumption practices differed according to their material circumstances, expectations and familial relations, which had implications for their identity as independent mothers and children.

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“…Different disposal strategies can also reflect the morals and values of the owner. In interviews with older adults in New Zealand, Juliana Mansvelt found that through choosing different disposal strategies of gifting, ridding and passing on, older adults could perform ideals of being good parents and good consumers (Mansvelt 2012).…”

Section: Reappraising and Divesting Of Possessionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2015

Cult. Unbound

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With modernity, the circulation of used objects though donation, selling, barter and gifting has tended to take place in the shadow of increasingly dominating forms of industrial commodity production and consumption. Progress-oriented consumer modernity in the 1950s and 1960s and deregulated global markets in the 1980s and 1990s created conditions for great leaps forward for a linear consumption practice that in Sweden was strikingly captured by the motto 'buy, use and discard' (Husz 2009; Löfgren 2012). Lately, however, the relatively unchallenged position of first cycle mass production and consumption has come under question, and throughout affluent countries in the Global North there is an emergent interest in various forms of circulation and reuse (Featherstone 2011). Across social fields, consumers are motived to reduce, reuse and recycle, in order to to manage precarity and lessen impact on the environment. Within this broader trend of circulation, trading trinkets, textiles, furniture and household items from days gone by have become a popular pastime as well as a significant industry (Gregson &

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Consumption, ageing and identity: New Zealander's narratives of gifting, ridding and passing on

Cited by 10 publications

References 31 publications

Relationships and material culture in a residential home for older people

Relationships and material culture in a residential home for older people

Still being ‘Mother’? Consumption and identity practices for women in later life

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