Liquid Relationship to Possessions

This study investigates consumers' relationship to possessions in the condition of contemporary global nomadism. Prior research argues that consumers form enduring and strong attachments to possessions because of their centrality to identity projects. This role is heightened in life transitions including cross-border movements as possessions anchor consumer's identities either to their homeland or to the host country. This study reexamines this claim via in-depth interviews with elite global nomads, deterritorialized consumers who engage in serial relocation and frequent short-term international mobility. An alternative relationship to possessions characterized by detachment and flexibility emerges, which is termed "liquid." Three characteristics of a liquid relationship to possessions are identified: temporary situational value, use-value, and immateriality. The study outlines a logic of nomadic consumption, that of instrumentality, where possessions and practices are strategic resources in managing mobility. A liquid perspective on possessions expands current understandings of materiality, acculturation, and globalization.

[1]  M. Burawoy.  The Extended Case Method* , 1998 .

[2]  Katie Walsh.  British Expatriate Belongings: Mobile Homes and Transnational Homing , 2006 .

[3]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  Older Consumers' Disposition of Special Possessions , 2000 .

[4]  P. C. Salzman.  Pastoral Nomads: Some General Observations Based on Research in Iran , 2002, Journal of Anthropological Research.

[5]  S. Tambyah,et al.  Trying to Be Cosmopolitan , 1999 .

[6]  L. Oswald.  Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle-Class Haitian Immigrants , 1999 .

[7]  S. Krätli.  Cattle breeding, complexity and mobility in a structurally unpredictable environment: the WoDaaBe herders of Niger , 2008 .

[8]  Matthew B. Miles,et al.  Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook , 1994 .

[9]  D. Holt.  Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption , 1998 .

[10]  Melanie Wallendorf,et al.  Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation , 1994 .

[11]  Transnational Capitalist Class , 2000 .

[12]  R. Belk.  Possessions and the Extended Self , 1988 .

[13]  L. Peñaloza.  Atravesando Fronteras/Border Crossings: A Critical Ethnographic Exploration of the Consumer Acculturation of Mexican Immigrants , 1994 .

[14]  S. Mintz,et al.  The Anthropology of Food and Eating , 2002 .

[15]  Akhil Gupta,et al.  Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era , 1997 .

[16]  Russell W. Belk,et al.  Extended self and possessions in the workplace , 2005 .

[17]  U. Hannerz.  Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture , 1990 .

[18]  Linda L. Price,et al.  The Storied Life of Singularized Objects: Forces of Agency and Network Transformation , 2010 .

[19]  M. Gilly.  The Consumer Acculturation of Expatriate Americans , 1995 .

[20]  J. J. F. Sherry.  Gift Giving in Anthropological Perspective , 1983 .

[21]  Igor Kopytoff.  The social life of things: The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process , 1986 .

[22]  E. Chung.  Navigating the primordial soup: charting the lived worlds of the migrant consumer , 2000 .

[23]  B. McSweeney.  Hofstede’s Model of National Cultural Differences and their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith - a Failure of Analysis , 2002 .

[24]  Linda L. Price,et al.  Making Contexts Matter: Selecting Research Contexts for Theoretical Insights , 2006 .

[25]  Grant Mccracken.  Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods , 1986 .

[26]  Jean Baudrillard,et al.  3 For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign , 1980, Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings.

[27]  R. Rosaldo,et al.  Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity , 1995 .

[28]  D. Dalli,et al.  Working consumers: the next step in marketing theory? , 2009 .

[29]  B. Cova.  Community and consumption , 1997 .

[30]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  Postassimilationist ethnic consumer research : Qualifications and extensions , 2005 .

[31]  A. Appadurai.  Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy , 1990 .

[32]  D. Slater.  Consumer culture and modernity , 1997 .

[33]  A. Giddens.  Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age , 1992, The New Social Theory Reader.

[34]  K. Gergen.  The saturated self : dilemmas of identity in contemporary life , 1991 .

[35]  Julien Cayla,et al.  Asian Brands and the Shaping of a Transnational Imagined Community , 2008 .

[36]  T. Barfield,et al.  The Nomadic Alternative , 1993 .

[37]  Akhil Gupta,et al.  Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology , 1997 .

[38]  J. Schouten.  Selves in Transition: Symbolic Consumption in Personal Rites of Passage and Identity Reconstruction , 1991 .

[39]  J. Tomlinson.  Globalization and Culture , 1999 .

[40]  Marsha L. Richins.  Valuing Things: The Public and Private Meanings of Possessions , 1994 .

[41]  Zygmunt Bauman,et al.  Liquid Times Living in an Age of Uncertainty , 2006 .

[42]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[43]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Cap. 1 Consuming Experiences: an introduction , 2007 .

[44]  H. Bernard.  Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches , 1988 .

[45]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  “My Favorite Things”: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry into Object Attachment, Possessiveness, and Social Linkage , 1988 .

[46]  C. Craig,et al.  Beyond national culture: implications of cultural dynamics for consumer research , 2006 .

[47]  J. C. Wilkinson,et al.  Nomads and the outside World , 1985 .

[48]  Rob Shields,et al.  Flow as a New Paradigm , 1997 .

[49]  Danny Miller.  Material Culture and Mass Consumption , 1987 .

[50]  Mohammed Shunnaq,et al.  The Modern Sociocultural Significance of the Jordanian Bedouin Tent , 2008 .

[51]  Please Stay: Pied-a-Terre Subjects in the Megacity , 2007 .

[52]  Anders Bengtsson,et al.  Negotiating cultural boundaries: Food, travel and consumer identities , 2010 .

[53]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  How Individuals’ Cherished Possessions Become Families’ Inalienable Wealth , 2004 .

[54]  S. Hutchinson,et al.  the cattle of money and the cattle of girls among the Nuer, 1930–83 , 1992 .

[55]  W. Neuman,et al.  Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches , 2002 .

[56]  I. Köhler-Rollefson.  Camels and Camel Pastoralism in Arabia , 1993, The Biblical Archaeologist.

[57]  Russell W. Belk,et al.  Artifacts, Identity, and Transition: Favorite Possessions of Indians and Indian Immigrants to the United States , 1991 .

[58]  Steven Colatrella.  Workers of the world : African and Asian migrants in Italy in the 1990s , 2001 .

[59]  Nikhilesh Dholakia,et al.  The Epistemic Consumption Object and Postsocial Consumption: Expanding Consumer‐Object Theory in Consumer Research , 2006 .

[60]  R. Belk.  Moving Possessions: An Analysis Based on Personal Documents from the 1847-1869 Mormon Migration , 1992 .

[61]  Aihwa Ong.  Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality , 1999, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[62]  Jean-Sébastien Marcoux,et al.  The ‘Casser Maison’ Ritual , 2001 .

[63]  Susan Spiggle.  Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data in Consumer Research , 1994 .

[64]  John Tomlinson,et al.  The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy , 2007 .

[65]  A. Venkatesh,et al.  Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption , 1995 .

[66]  T. Huang.  The cosmopolitan imaginary and flexible identities of global city‐regions: articulating new cultural identities in Taipei and Shanghai , 2006 .

[67]  Kent Grayson,et al.  Indexicality and the Verification Function of Irreplaceable Possessions: A Semiotic Analysis , 2000 .

[68]  Mike Featherstone,et al.  Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity , 1995 .

[69]  A. Strauss.  Basics Of Qualitative Research , 1992 .

[70]  Gnliz Ger,et al.  Constructing Immigrant Identities in Consumption: Appearance Among the Turko-Danes , 1998 .

[71]  Shay Sayre.  Possessions and Identity in Crisis: Meaning and Change For Victims of the Oakland Firestorm , 1994 .

[72]  Victor Roudometof,et al.  Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Glocalization , 2005 .

[73]  Jeremy Rifkin,et al.  The age of access : how the shift from ownership to access is transforming capitalism , 2000 .

[74]  Yu Chen,et al.  Possession and access : consumer desires and value perceptions regarding contemporary art collection and exhibit visits , 2009 .

[75]  K. Dovey.  Home and Homelessness , 1985 .

[76]  E. Arnould,et al.  Reflections and Reviews Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research , 2005 .

[77]  Anthony D'Andrea,et al.  Global Nomads: Techno and New Age as Transnational Countercultures in Ibiza and Goa , 2007 .