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Programme News: Research Findings
Multinational
Retailers in China and Skills Development
Work in the retail sector tends to be
characterised as low-skilled and deadend
‘McJobs’. British firms are often
seen to have taken a low skill route.
International research points to a more
positive picture. Research in British and
Japanese owned retail stores in Chinese
cities found that these firms provided workers with opportunities to develop
valuable skills. Prospects for rapid
promotion offered the chance to move
up the hierarchy and into managerial jobs.
A British firm provided at least as much
opportunity in this respect as Japanese
firms. The Chinese context appears to
promote skill enhancement. An ample
supply of well-educated labour allows
firms to recruit employees who match
their requirements. For foreign firms
seeking to enter a fiercely competitive
market, customer service staffed with
enthusiastic, skilled workers is a
valuable means of differentiation. Meanwhile, Chinese customers’
expectations bring pressure to upskill
service workers: their demands on foreign firms are higher than those
placed upon local firms.
For further information contact
Jos Gamble, Royal Holloway
University of London
telephone 01784 414094
email j.gamble@rhul.ac.uk
Not Like Shopping
Providers and users consistently view
public services as different from
commercial transactions, new research
shows. The idea that people expect to
be treated as consumers has become a
central idea in public service reform
under New Labour. But in health, policing,
and social care services researchers
have found that more than half of staff
and service users see themselves as
members of the local community or the
wider public. Fewer than one in five
thought of service relationships in
terms of consumers or customers.
People are becoming more assertive in
their relationships with public services,
and less deferential. But they are also
insisting that public services are about
on-going personal relationships, and
not like shopping. Users were more
positive than providers about the
potential benefits from greater choice.
Police staff expressed the greatest concern about the impact of choice. At
the same time, users also worried that
choice would favour those who were
best able to work the system.
For more information contact
John Clarke, The Open University
telephone 01908 654542
email john.clarke@open.ac.uk
or see our web-page for research report
www.consume.bbk.ac.uk
The Truncated Life
of a Modern Industrialised Chicken
Food chains and industrialised food
production raise important questions
where academic research connects with
public culture and debate. Food scares
are the theme of Plat du Jour, Matt
Herbert’s new album of dance tracks.
Researchers on the project Manufacturing Meaning along the
Food Chain helped with the research
behind the album and with sourcing
sound recordings, including the sounds
of 30,000 broiler chickens, and a bass
line derived from the cheep of 24,000
minute-old chicks. The album highlights
the complex costs and choices available
to contemporary consumers. For more
information on the relationship
between memory and food, and the
politics and histories of food chains,
contact:
Peter Jackson
University of Sheffield
telephone 0114 222 7908
email p.a.jackson@sheffield.ac.uk
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Research Focus
Shopping Routes: Networks of Fashion Consumption in
London's West End 1945-1979 investigates the changes that have
taken place in the vibrant district of
London's West End, including the retail
trade, tourism, the representation of
the West End in film, television and print journalism, and the back street energy of the 'rag trade'. The project
provides a new history of the West End,
a better understanding of the shopping
experience, and an account of urban
regeneration which acknowledges the
important role played by fashion.
A public exhibition ‘Sixties Fashion’ will
run from 6 June 2006 until January
2007 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
For more information:
Christopher Breward
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
South Kensington SW7 2RL
telephone: 020 7942 2000
email: c.breward@vam.ac.uk
or
David Gilbert
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham TW20 0EX
telephone 01784 434455
email d.gilbert@rhul.ac.uk
Social Status,
Lifestyle and Cultural Consumption is a comparative research project led by Tak Wing Chan and
John H. Goldthorpe. It involves seven countries: the United
Kingdom, Chile, France, Hungary, Israel,
the Netherlands, and the United States.
We ask whether a status order - a
hierarchy of generalised superiority,
equality and inferiority - still exists in
these societies. How does this status
order map onto class structure, and how
does social status affect cultural
consumption in these societies?
For more information:
Tak Wing Chan
University of Oxford
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UQ
telephone 01865 286176
email tw.chan@sociology.ox.ac.uk
Designing and
Consuming:
objects, practices
and processes is a theoretical project run by Elizabeth Shove with Matt Watson
and Jack Ingram. It seeks to enrich and
extend our understanding of the dynamic
relation between product design and
consumption practices. Research on Do-It-Yourself projects and digital photography
reveals new ways of conceptualising
the objects, practices and
processes of consumption. The project
exploits the interface of science and
technology studies, design theory and
the sociology of consumption to advance
a new theory of design and consumption
practices.
For more information:
Elizabeth Shove
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YL
telephone 01524 594610
email e.shove@lancaster.ac.uk
www.durham.ac.uk/designing.consuming
The Housewife in
Early Modern Rural
England is a research project led by Jane
Whittle and examines patterns of
consumption in the early seventeenth
century. Based on the household
accounts kept by a Norfolk gentlewoman,
Lady Alice Le Strange, the project explores
the role of consumption in the family
life-cycle and gentry identity; the
acquisition of goods and services; the
material culture of furnishings and textiles; the production and consumption
of food and drink; and the
provision of servant labour. A detailed picture of earlier practices places
modern consumption in a new
perspective.
For more information:
Jane Whittle
History Department
Exeter University
Amory Building, Rennes Drive
Exeter EX4 4JR
telephone 01392 263292
email J.C.Whittle@exeter.ac.uk
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Activities
Choice and Voice was the theme of a
public seminar organised by the
Cultures of Consumption programme at
HM Treasury on 24 June 2005. Chaired
by Malcolm Dean of The Guardian, the
meeting brought together experts from
government, academic, and consumer
groups, including Claire Tyler from The
Social Exclusion Unit, Mary Tetlow, from
the Office of Public Services and
Reform, and Graham Vidler, from Which?
Richard Simmons and Johnston Birchall
from the Cultures of Consumption
programme stressed the importance of
giving users more choice about voice,
especially by promoting a more
appropriate mix of voice mechanisms
and responding to the causes of
withdrawal. John Clarke reported on
how users of social services employed
relational reasoning rather than
thinking in terms of competitive choice
or a cash nexus.
For more information:
Stefanie Nixon
telephone 020 7079 0601
email esrcConsume@bbk.ac.uk
www.consume.bbk.ac.uk
The Politics of Necessity was the focus
of discussion at an international
workshop held on 9-10 September 2005
at St Hilda’s College, Oxford University.
Focusing on the politics and regulation
of water and energy, participants
discussed the role of needs in the
formation of modern social movements
and democratic politics in modern
Britain, Africa, India, and in global
governance. ‘The Politics of Necessity’
will be the theme of a special issue for
the Journal of Consumer Policy edited
by Bronwen Morgan and Frank Trentmann.
Further details can be
found at
http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~lwbmm/necessity-politics-details.html
The dynamics of consumption in the
domestic sphere were discussed at an
exploratory workshop RESTLESS INTERIORS, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2
November 2005. The meeting brought
together researchers from the AHRC
Centre for the Study of the Domestic
Interior, the Cultures of Consumption programme, and a Swedish project on
The Forgotten Consumption, Uppsala
University. Discussion explored the ways
in which homes are valued, how
interiors are arranged, and how objects move into the home, around it, and out
of it.
For more information:
Stefanie Nixon
telephone 020 7079 0601
email esrcConsume@bbk.ac.uk
www.consume.bbk.ac.uk
Segmenting the over 50s market was
the first of a series of workshops by
academic researchers and market
research practitioners on consumption
in later life, at Birkbeck College Sept 28
2005.
For more information:
Paul Higgs
telephone 0207 679 9466
email p.higgs@ucl.ac.uk
At a workshop on ‘The Diffusion of
Cultures of Consumption’ at
Manchester, 17-18 November 2005, experts compared and discussed
consumption patterns in the United
Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, post-communist Estonia, India
and the Netherlands.
For more information:
Alan Warde
telephone 0161 275 7363
email Alan.warde@man.ac.uk
‘Italian Coffee: History, Quality and
Culture’ was the theme of a public
event at the University of Hertfordshire
on 4th November that brought
together experts from the coffee trade,
academics, and members of the public.
Professor Jonathan Morris explored the
changing cultures of consumption surrounding Italian coffee. Dr Carlo
Odello of the Italian Espresso National
Institute explained how to prepare the
perfect espresso, and participants were
treated to a tasting of four Italian
espresso blends.
For further information
www.cappuccinoconquests.org.uk
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Publications
Frank Trentmann (ed.), The Making of
the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and
Identity in the Modern World (Oxford
and New York: Berg, 2006).
Alan Warde, ‘Consumption and the
Theory of Practice’, Journal of
Consumer Culture, 5(2)(2005), pp. 131-54.
Chris Gilleard and Paul Higgs, Contexts of Ageing: Class, Cohort and
Community (Cambridge: Polity, 2005).
Clive Barnett, Nick Clarke, Paul Cloke
and Alice Malpass, ‘The Political Ethics
of Consumerism’, Consumer Policy
Review 15(2)(2005), pp. 45-51.
Stephen Peckham, Mark Exworthy, Ian
Greener and Martin Powell, ‘Decentralisation in the NHS: We’ve been here before, haven’t we?’, Public Money and Management, 25(4)
(2005), pp. 221-228.
Kate Soper, ‘The Enchantments and
Disenchantments of Nature:
Implications for Consumption in a Globalised World’ in J. Paavola,& I.
Lowe,(eds.), Environmental Values in a
Globalising World (London & New York:
Routledge, 2005), pp. 51-65.
Dale Southerton & Mark Tomlinson, ‘Pressed for Time: The Differential
Impacts of a Time Squeeze’, Sociological
Review, 53(2)(2005), pp. 215-39.
New Working Papers:
Tak-Wing Chan and John H. Goldthorpe, Social Stratification and Cultural
Consumption Music in England
Lewis Holloway, Moya Kneafsey, Laura
Venn, Rosie Cox, Elizabeth Dowler and
Helena Tuomainen, Possible food
economies: food production-consumption
arrangements and the
meaning of ‘alternative’.
See: http://www.consume.bbk.ac.uk/publications.html
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Links
The Cultures of Consumption research programme seeks to facilitate dialogue
between research in academic and public bodies. On this page we
will provide you with updates and links to work done elsewhere.
1. Shopping Generation is the first national survey of how
children experience consumer life. The report by the National Consumer
Council looks at what young people
think about their place in consumer life. As a result of the NCC’s research, young
people have set out a ‘Children’s agenda
for consumer life’. The report looks at
how that agenda can be put into action,
including how parents can help, along
with recommendations for government.
http://www.ncc.org.uk/protectingconsumers/shopping_generation.pdf
2. Over 60 public, private and
voluntary sector bodies are
represented in the Consumer Education Alliance, a new body set up
in November 2005 for delivering the
consumer education strategy of the Organisation of Fair Trading, devised in
consultation with major UK companies,
academics, government departments, enforcement bodies and consumer
organisations. The OFT strategy aims to
increase consumers' confidence by
providing them with the skills they need
to analyse information effectively,
manage resources and assess risk when
buying goods and services. The work
includes: an OFT-led campaign to inform 18 to 24 year olds about the relative costs of different types of credit when choosing how to finance particular
purchases; an initiative bringing
together internet service providers and other industry stakeholders to give
consumers the skills to resist internet scam; and a credit industry-led project
to develop coordinated messages on
credit products and services.
http://www.oft.gov.uk/News/Press+releases/2005/209-05.htm
3. ESRC Research Seminar Series ‘Identities and Consumption’,
January 2006 – July 2007
A new ESRC seminar series provides a
forum for debating crucial themes of
contemporary consumption: branding
and marketing, child and youth
consumption; participation and
citizenship; health, identities and consumption.
For further information contact:
Christine Griffin
telephone 01225 385293
Department of Psychology
University of Bath
email c.griffin@bath.ac.uk
4. What influences the choices we
make, and how much choice do we
really have?
On the face of it, we have never had so
much food choice. But in reality how
meaningful and informed are the
choices we make? A new report by
Which? looks at the nature and
consequences of food choices?
http://www.which.net/campaigns/choice/0509foodchoice_rep.pdf
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