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The vocabulary and tactics developed by actor–network theory (ANT) can shed light on several ontological and epistemological challenges faced by consumer culture theory. Rather than providing ready-made theories or methods, our translation of ANT puts forward a series of questions and propositions that, captured through the metaphor of 'flattening', invite a rethinking of how ontologies of consumption—its subjects, objects and devices, content and contexts, materiality and socioculturality—are enacted through precarious networks of heterogeneous relations.

As the impact of market actors and their doctrines on philanthropy gradually increases, the debate between the proponents and the critics of 'marketization' of philanthropy intensifies. Curiously, the debate has largely centred on 'philanthrocapitalists' and philanthropic professionals, while less attention has been devoted to the ways in which the newly emergent philanthropic ideologies and practices are 'marketed' to and adopted by the broader audience of philanthropic givers. In response, we explore the ideological elements that make lending through Kiva, an emergent microfinance charity, meaningful to its creators and supporters. A combination of interpretive methods is used to outline Kiva's ideology of entrepreneurial philanthropy. This utopian ideology is found to legitimize 'marketized' philanthropic practices by invoking alternative conceptions of poverty, social progress and philanthropy (i.e. representations of philanthropic giving, philanthropic benefactors and beneficiaries and the relations between them).

Why do people willingly bestow upon themselves the responsibility to tackle social problems such as poverty? Consumer research has provided valuable insight into how individuals are created as responsible subjects but has yet to account for the crucial role of affective dynamics in subject formation. We draw upon affect theorizing and nascent research on "affective governmentality"in organization and policy studies to theorize the formation of responsible subjects via affective encounters (i.e., consumption encounters through which consumers' capacities to affect and to be affected change), and to explore how affective encounters are mediated downstream. Through a qualitative investigation of the online microloan market, we explain how market intermediaries contribute to the creation of affective-entrepreneurial subjects who willingly supply interest-free loans to the disadvantaged. The intermediaries accomplish this by nurturing and dramatizing a structure of feeling that subtends affective encounters and by deploying apparatuses of affirmation and relatability to target and intervene into affective encounters. In addition to illuminating the affective dynamics involved in consumer responsibilization and subject formation more broadly, our study facilitates critical reflection on the subject-formative power of consumer experiences and experiential marketing and carries important implications for research on charitable giving and critical thinking on microcredit.

Purpose This paper aims to illuminate the characteristics of Analytic and Continental scholarship to generate a deeper appreciation for both writing styles in the consumer culture theory (CCT) community. Design/methodology/approach Two CCT researchers discuss the merits of Analytic and Continental scholarship in an accessible dialogical format. Findings Analytic ideals of scholarship, espoused by elite academic journals, include conceptual rigor, logical claims, theoretical coherence, researcher agnosticism and broad generalizability. Continental ideals of scholarship, more likely to be espoused by niche and/or critical journals, include creative writing, holistic interpretation, intellectual imagination, political provocation and deep contextualization. Originality/value This dialogue may build more understanding across variously oriented scholars, literatures, and journals in the CCT community.

ABSTRACTAlthough recycling is often experienced as a moral dilemma, studies that systematically approach this issue from an ethical perspective are scarce. Moreover, previous studies have explored recycling by mainly using single ethical constructs, such as moral norms, values or obligations, rarely approaching it as an ethical decision‐making process. Our study takes a more holistic approach and integrates the recycling literature with business ethics theory in order to develop a conceptual model of ethical decision making involved in recycling. The model is based on Jones' issue‐contingent model and its key concept, that is, moral intensity, which we extend by adding altruism as an important personality trait that influences pro‐social behaviour. The data were collected from a sample of 367 adult consumers, representative of the Slovenian population by gender and age. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling. The results of our study confirmed the relationships between three key facets of ethical decision making: moral recognition, moral judgment and moral intention. Higher levels of moral recognition were found to lead to more positive moral judgments, which in turn positively influenced the formation of intentions to recycle. Moreover, moral intensity was found to be a significant predictor of moral recognition and moral judgment, while altruism was found to be a significant predictor of moral recognition. These findings hold important implications for public policy makers and social marketers who have to consider not only the consumer characteristics but also the issue characteristics in seeking to understand and influence consumer recycling. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Consumer research has extensively explored digital ownership and possession, focusing on the entities owned, the owners, and their relationships to their possessions. This paper advances this literature by introducing the concept of "ownership technologies," as an analytical lens to attend to the technological devices and techniques that mediate ownership (shape social arrangements and interpretations of what constitutes ownership, what can be owned, who can own, and how). We illustrate the utility of this lens by providing historical examples, as well as through the prism of contemporary technologies such as blockchains and NFTs. We identify three ways in which technology mediates ownership—demarcation, enclosure, and transferability—and conclude by suggesting directions for future research on digital ownership.

This paper explores the cultural dynamics underpinning platformization by unpacking the emergence of the sharing economy—a vital terrain of platformization—as a culturally significant category. Drawing on online archival data, our study reveals the important role of social movement organizations (SMOs) in establishing the sharing economy as a prominent cultural category and infusing it with powerful social meanings. We outline the discursive strategies used by SMOs to articulate this macro-market category, and to frame platform technology as a benevolent enabler of social change. Our study contributes to platformization research by turning attention to how cultural dynamics (i.e., the discursive strategies giving rise to the emergence of sharing economy) shape platformization. In addition, we contribute to market system dynamic research by expanding the focus of investigation from singular industries to the macro economy level, shedding light on new discursive dynamics (e.g., discursive strategies for articulating and technologizing the emergent economy), and by the extending previous work on the role of SMOs and social movements in market shaping.

In this paper, we theorize the "social thickening" of market futures—the process through which imagined market futures take on social and moral significance and gel into shared visions of desirable social futures. Market studies have produced valuable insights into the role of representations and expectations in the constitution of future markets. However, extant research has been primarily concerned with the ways in which narratives of future markets affect the predictive and calculative capacities of market actors faced with uncertainty. In contrast, this paper draws attention to the social and normative aspects of discursive market future-making. Inspired by work on socio-technical imaginaries (STIs) and visioneering, we investigate how market visioneers such as consultancies, focal industry players, and mainstream media contribute to the "social thickening" of market futures in the context of commercial drones. Based on a qualitative analysis of a corpus of texts (consultancy reports, news media articles, and promotional videos), we uncover four discursive techniques of visioneering through which market futures are socially thickened: presencing, prospecting, problematizing, and entwining futures. Our study extends current theorizing of discursive market making and opens avenues for future research of market visioneering.