CMC journal

Consumption Markets & Culture, an interdisciplinary journal  published 6 times per year by Routledge, has published a number of papers on issues relevant to place, narratives, and visualizations, including:

Just looking? Choice and constraint in practices of visual consumption at magazine newsstands, by Mehita Iqani.

"This article takes as its subject practices of looking that occur in London's newsstands (magazine retail displays). Taking an ethnographic approach inspired by the flâneur and emphasising the symbolic properties of consumption activities that take place in public retail space, it reports on an extensive participant observation of newsstands. A three-fold typology of visual consumption is put forward: “drifting,” “speed-shopping” and “free-reading.” These practices of looking are then critically analysed in the light of theoretical perspectives on visual consumption, in particular, the tension between arguments prioritising the pleasures and, conversely, the constraints that it entails. The analysis culminates in the argument that the most fruitful position is a dialectical one that acknowledges the conditional freedom of visual consumption."

Gettysburg re-imagined: the role of narrative imagination in consumption experience, by Anthinodoros Chronis, Eric Arnould, and Ronald Hampton.

"We investigate the role of imagination in the consumption experience and we theorize the ways in which important collective narratives are (re)imagined at storyscapes – consumption spaces where narratives are the focal object of consumption. We ground our empirical investigation in the historical narrative of the American Civil War and we explore ethnographically the ways in which this historical episode is (re)imagined and articulated in tourism at Gettysburg. Our research provides an alternative account to mental imagery theory that is based on restrictive cognitive conceptions of imagination and expands narrative-based theories of consumption experiences. We argue that the workings of imagination in tourism sites are inextricably linked to the production of cultural imaginaries, that is, socially important narratives invested with collective values; we illustrate the process through which cultural imaginaries are co-constructed at storyscapes; we develop theoretically the concept of consumer imagination; and we make a case for consumer imagination as a social process."

Synchronising retail and space: using urban squares for competitive place differentiation, by Gary Warnaby. 

German Christmas market (December 2009).

"This paper argues that the town/city square, through its role as an urban node, has an important potential role in the creation of competitive place differentiation, especially in terms of the activities occurring therein (with particular reference to retail activities, such as periodic markets), which can, in turn, be considered as contributory elements in existing conceptualisations of an urban place “product”. Drawing on the concepts of rhythmanalysis and synchronisation, the paper suggests the existence of a more overt temporal dimension which can contribute to the creation of a genius loci (or “spirit of the place”), which can be capitalised on for place marketing purposes. The paper considers such issues in the specific context of St Ann's Square in Manchester, in the north west of England."

The mobilities and post-mobilities of cargo, by Thomas Birtchnell and John Urry.

"Cargo is moved from factories through global production networks via supply chains to consumers, but this process is hidden from them by what Raymond Williams termed the magic system of marketing and what Allan Sekula and Noël Burch call the forgotten space of containerization. This paper addresses recent concern that the mobilities paradigm has neglected two domains relevant to cargo: global production networks and global cultures of consumption. These domains are examined in relation to three key elements in this paper: distribution, consumption and marketing. In assessing moving consumption from the perspective of the mobilities paradigm, this paper recommends that the future of cargo, the ease of which consumers take utterly for granted, is far from clear-cut from a strategic foresight perspective."

An emotional economy of mundane objects, by Alev P. Kuruoğlu and Güliz Ger. 

"This article illuminates the affective potentialities of objects. We examine the circulation of Kurdish music cassettes in Turkey during the restrictive and strife-laden period of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. We find that the practices comprising circulation – recording, hiding, playing, and exchanging cassettes – constituted tactical resistance and generated communal imaginaries. We illuminate the “emotional economy” that is animated by a mundane object: the cassette, through its circulation, becomes saturated with emotions, establishes shared emotional repertoires, and habituates individuals and collectives into common emotional dispositions. Cassettes thus play a part in shaping and reinforcing an emotional habitus that accompanies the emergence of a sense of “us,” the delineation of the “other,” and the relationship between the two. We thus demonstrate the entwinement of materiality and emotions, and examine how this entwinement generates emotional structures that shape and perpetuate the imagining of community as well as the enactment of resistance."

Review Essay: Frank Cost, Bricks and mortar: offline shopping in online America, by Thomas O'Guinn.

Review of RIT photography professor's Frank Cost's book produced by wearing a GoPro camera during twelve shopping trips in the Rochester region.

More information is available on the journal's homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcmc20/current