De-romanticising the market: advances in Consumer Culture Theory

This special issue continues in the spirit of ongoing debates on the future prospects, challenges, and limitations of the compelling academic project named Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, 2007, 2015, 2019; Arnould et al., 2019; Askegaard & Linnet, 2011; Askegaard & Scott, 2013; Belk & Sobh, 2019; Bode & Østergaard, 2013; Rokka, 2021; Thompson et al., 2013). The original idea for the issue emerged from a ‘critical curiosity’ (Shankar & Zurn, 2020) to imagine what a modest denaturalisation and de-romanticisation of the market-centrism of CCT might look like. The problem for many of us working in the general area of CCT is that, for obvious reasons, it can often feel like we know quite a lot about where our research discussions will probably and inevitably conclude, even before we have begun to contemplate entering the proverbial field. We start out with our focus trained squarely on consumption and, by the end, it will usually have led to a comment on consumption. That tight focus might, of course, bequeath readers with different types, forms, or dimensions of consumption, and insights into the ambits and contexts of consumption, or perhaps, on occasion, even an evaluation of consumption’s merits and demerits. But usually consumption nevertheless. It is in the title after all. Of course, many might believe that there is nothing especially problematic about this kind of inevitability. Consumption remains very much part of the spirit of the age we live in, whatever one might think about it. And yet a nagging problem persists. No matter how sophisticated, nuanced, proliferated and subtle our accounts of consumption become, a sense of unease remains regarding the inevitable need for boundaries, limitations, and the foreclosed opportunities they necessitate (Fitchett et al., 2014; Graeber, 2011). As the papers and commentaries in this special issue illustrate, some of the most interesting things about consumption and markets are found at the edges of where the material world, shared social conditions, and global capital converge, and where their cultural, ideological, ecological, and political obduction fractures and splits. [Opening paragraph]