The RN Sociology of Consumption invites contributions to the programme that explore consumption from different perspectives, reflect on their ambiguities and trouble its boundaries. As political anxieties over borders and migration have recently intensified, questions of cultural difference, participation and consumption have become freighted. Yet sociological research suggests many of these frustrations arise from inequality, problems accessing the goods and services which allow full participation in society, and crisis and transformation in the provisioning of collective consumption –housing, transportation, energy, care and education. Consumption is concerned with a broad range of these contemporary challenges, from the patterns of cultural difference, distinction and identity to the politics of alternative forms of provisioning goods and services such as cooperatives and the‘sharing economy’. In reconfiguring capitalism in the wake of the crisis, new ways of organising the economy call require the careful consideration of consumption and the needs of citizens, imagination in meeting these needs, and a sober re-evaluation of the ideological project of consumer choice. The RN Sociology of Consumption draws on a theoretically plural and empirically diverse tradition of research. We invite papers that address various aspects of the sociology of consumption.
Possible themes include but are not limited to:
- RN05_a – Sociology of Consumption (Open Session)
- RN05_b – Collaborative consumption and sharing economies
- RN05_c – Communication campaigns and marketing strategies to motivate sustainable lifestyle
- RN05_d – Compulsive consumption
- RN05_e – Conspicuous consumption
- RN05_f – Consumption and the body
- RN05_g – Consumption and social capital
- RN05_h – Consumption inequalities
- RN05_i – Cultural stratification
- RN05_ j – Digitalisation and consumption
- RN05_k – Ethical and political consumption
- RN05_l – Food and consumption
- RN05_m – Gender and consumption
- RN05_n – Generations and consumption
- RN05_ o – Leisure and consumption
- RN05_p – Markets of consumption
- RN05_q – Material culture
- RN05_r – Politics of distinction
- RN05_s – Prosumption
