Marco normativo del proyecto

This section begins by outlining how consumer research on negotiating gender identities has developed as part of a focus on consumer identity projects (Hearn and Hein 2015; Maclaran 2015). The section then highlights how much of this research assumes a social performance approach (Thompson and Üstüner 2015:237). In contrast, this thesis responds to recent calls to examine how consumers’ negotiations of gender identity might disrupt ‘taken-for-granted gender norms’ (Fischer 2015; Maclaran 2015:1735). The section ends by discussing two highly relevant studies (Coskuner-Bali and Thompson 2013; Thompson and Üstüner 2015) that both draw on and extend a performative approach to negotiating gender identities. These studies are used to help position the thesis, as well as highlighting areas to which this thesis can contribute.

Understanding how consumers negotiate their gender identities has emerged in consumer identity research (Hearn and Hein 2015; Maclaran 2015; Murto 2015). Such research is based on the idea that consumers construct their identities through their consumption of products and services (Arnould and Thompson 2005; Belk 1988; McCracken 1986). What we possess and consume are incorporated into how we know or define ourselves and others,

reflection itself’ (Adams and Raisborough 2008:1168). Section 2.5.3 offers further discussion of how reflexivity informs the theoretical framework.

37 to the extent that ‘we are what we have’ (Belk 1988:160). Our ‘possessions’ incorporate ‘all that we consider ours, such as personal belongings, persons, places, group possessions that help define our identity, and even parts of our bodies’ (Noble and Walker 1997:30). This is not to say that we are simply the sum of all we consume, rather that consumption can help to create meaningful identities (Shankar and Fitchett 2002).

It is widely accepted, within consumer research, that individuals negotiate and construct their gender identity through consuming objects and experiences (Cronin et al. 2014; Fischer and Arnold 1990). The focus of gender research on consumer identity has largely been on understanding how consumers construct their gender identities through the ‘symbolic’ offerings of the marketplace (Arnould and Thompson 2005:868). The contexts for many of these studies (c.f. Goulding and Saren 2009; Kates 2002; Martin et al. 2006; Schouten and McAlexander 1995) are usually ‘autonomous enclaves’ that are somewhat removed from consumers’ everyday lives (Thompson and Üstüner 2015:237). For example, Belk and Costa (1998:218), in their study of ‘modern mountain men’ suggest that within this enclave their participants were able to ‘enact’ different forms of masculinity. Similar studies have suggested that consumer enclaves and subcultures enable consumers to perform their gender identities in ways that appear less constrained by mainstream gender norms (Goulding and Saren 2009; Kates 2002; Martin et al. 2006; Schouten and McAlexander 1995).

Although these studies (c.f. Goulding and Saren 2009; Kates 2003) often refer to a performative approach, they portray autonomous enclaves as an alternative stage for the expression of individuals’ real or true gender identity (Thompson and Üstüner 2015). For example, Martin et al.’s (2006) study found that female Harley Davidson riders were seeking escape from the confinements of their traditional domestic gender roles. Goulding and Saren (2009:30) focus on the gothic subculture at the Whitby Goth Festival, likening their

38 participants’ performances to a ‘sense of theatre’. Here, their participants can express their ‘real’ identity by temporarily managing their performance through clothing and acting (Goulding and Saren 2009:30, 34). Yet their suggestion that consumers have a ‘core’ or ‘real’ identity would be contested from a performative approach to gender identity (Thompson and Üstüner 2015).

Indeed, gender research often portrays consumers as having ‘choice to manoeuvre’ among gender norms (Hearn and Hein 2015:1640). In this thesis, such an approach would be problematic, because of its simplistic view of negotiating gender identities and changing gender norms. A social performance approach would portray South Asian women as able to choose how they negotiate their gender identities. Such a perspective overlooks how these consumers are positioned in culturally specific, and potentially unequal ways. Furthermore, since this study aims to consider how gender identities and norms are negotiated through everyday mothering and consumption practices, studies of autonomous enclaves tend to be less insightful, as they are far removed from (South Asian) women’s everyday lives.

Even studies that focus on contexts that are more closely embedded in daily life (c.f. Holt and Thompson 2004; Martin et al. 2006; Moisio et al. 2013) tend to be based on a social performance approach (Thompson and Üstüner 2015). These studies often portray consumers as conflict resolvers, coping with or managing tensions in their contexts (Murto 2015). For example, several studies have examined how men construct their gender identities through managing tensions between traditional breadwinner roles and more emergent norms of masculinity, such as men-of-action heroes (Holt and Thompson 2004) and domestic masculinity (Moisio et al. 2013). These studies often cite a ‘doing gender’ approach, frequently drawing on West and Zimmerman (1987), Goffman (1976) or Butler (1990), with little distinction between the dramaturgical and performative approaches to gender identity.

39 A ‘recurrent assumption’ within these studies is that consumers possess a ‘core’ or true identity (Thompson and Üstüner 2015:238), which, as discussed, would be problematic in this study.

Given these limitations of existing consumer research, it is unsurprising that there have been calls for consumer research to examine ‘unequal gender power relations’ (Hearn and Hein 2015:1640). In particular Maclaran (2015:1735) calls for more insight into how consumers’ negotiations of gender identity might ‘disrupt taken-for-granted gender norms’. There is a small but growing number of studies that answer these calls (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013; Kjeldgaard and Storgaard 2010; Thompson and Üstüner 2015; Valtonen 2013; Zayer et al. 2012). Two of these studies (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013; Thompson and Üstüner 2015) are particularly relevant to this thesis, as both draw on and extend a performative approach to negotiating gender identities and changing gender norms. These studies are influenced by sociological concepts such as habitus, field, capital, and reflexivity, as well as performativity.

In the first of these studies, Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2013) focus on a group of white middle-class American men who have become at-home fathers, drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984; 1986) theories of habitus, fields and forms of capital. Within consumer research, Bourdieu’s theories have been widely used to examine the ‘socio-cultural structuring’ of consumption (Allen 2002; Arsel and Thompson 2011; Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013:19; Kates 2002; Üstüner and Holt 2007, 2010).

Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2013) suggest that consumers negotiate their gender identity from different positions within different social fields. In particular, the authors suggest that consumers’ gendered habitus, cultural capital and movement between different social fields can affect their ability to negotiate new gender identities and change gender norms (see

40 section 2.5). They argue that the white, middle-class men in their study could invest and convert forms of cultural capital, as they left their breadwinning role to become at-home fathers. However, because these fathers were socialised with high levels of cultural capital, they were skilled at negotiating new gender identities by mobilising and converting different forms of capital. Due to their previous higher status position, they were able to push for wider cultural legitimacy in their new gender identities as stay-at-home fathers.

Coskuner-Balli and Thompson’s (2013) findings are relevant in several ways. First, they suggest that consumers’ primary gender socialisation (i.e. their upbringing/habitus) shapes their ongoing negotiation of new gender identities. Understanding South Asian women’s gender socialisation will offer important insights into their ability to negotiate new gender identities. Second, their findings suggest that everyday parenting practices are important sites for negotiating gender identities and changing gender norms for consumers who occupy a dominant position (as white, middle-class men). This thesis extends Coskuner-Balli and Thompson’s (2013) research by examining the extent to which consumers who occupy a marginal/minority position can pursue new gender identities and change gender norms as they become mothers. It also extends Coskuner-Balli and Thompson’s (2013) study by considering what happens when a marginalised group of consumers encounter firmly entrenched gender norms, and seek to challenge these norms through their pursuit of new gender identities.

In the second of these studies, Thompson and Üstüner (2015) focus on how the US roller derby field, as a consumption site, opened up new ways for female consumers to negotiate new gender identities and change gender norms. They suggest that by participating in roller derby, their participants became ‘reflexively aware’ of the constraining yet dominant gender norms that shape both their primary gender socialisation and everyday lives. Such reflexivity

41 is argued to enable the derby girls to pursue ‘strategic’ acts of ‘embodied resistance’ whilst retaining a sense of legitimacy. Thompson and Üstüner’s (2015:257) findings suggest that, within certain consumption fields, female consumers can push the boundaries of dominant gender norms in the form of a ‘quiet revolution’.

The study carried out by Thompson and Üstüner (2015) helps to position this thesis in several ways. First, the thesis draws on their approach to negotiating new gender identities, which is well equipped to examine how ‘radical and small’ changes to gender norms can emerge, as new gender identities are performed (Morison and McLeod 2013; Nentwich et al. 2015:240). Second, Thompson and Üstüner’s (2015) findings could be extended to examine how consumers are reflexively pushing the boundaries of gender norms in everyday settings, such as parenthood, rather than specific marketplaces like U.S. roller derby. Third, while Thompson and Üstüner (2015) focus on how female consumers negotiate gender norms, scant information is offered regarding their participants’ ethnicity. Their findings shed little light on whether all consumers who occupy a marginal position are equally able to reflexively negotiate gender identities and norms. This thesis seeks to address these issues by examining whether and how some South Asian women may be better positioned than others to do so, as they become mothers.

Indeed, the context of motherhood is often regarded as a key consumption site in which deeply entrenched gender norms persist (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013; Ritch and Brownlie 2016). Section 2.3 outlines how this thesis fits in relation to existing consumer research on motherhood and the negotiation of new gender identities.

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