Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

The articles in this special edition on 'Commercializing Emotions' represent a series of studies that apply and develop current approaches to consumption, with a focus on the content and emotional bases of its cultural meaning. In different ways, all throw light on the social processes by which consumption is imbued with meaning. Taken together, they demonstrate the complex interactions of cultural and commercial logics that shape consumption. Beginning the issue is Kylie Jarrett's analysis of why e-commerce is frequently seen to empower consumers. Jarrett uncovers the ways e-commerce can be used to enlist consumers in the construction of new virtual 'communities' that require affective commitment from them. These are sometimes seen as empowering consumers by forcing producers and retailers to be more responsive to their demands and needs. Digging deeper, Jarrett argues that this image of empowered consumers is possible partly because post-Fordist production regimes require the constant generation of consumer demand. More important, it also flourishes as other images of empowerment associated with more traditional social groupings, such as class, break down leaving space for new images of consumption communities. Jarrett effectively claims that the meaning of consumption and consumption communities in contemporary e-commerce can be understood only by taking account of both the character of contemporary post-Fordist production regimes and the disintegration of older bases for group and community formation. Ken Parker's article presents a fascinating tour of 19th-century department stores, focusing on the meanings embodied in the visual merchandising they used. Parker shows that 19th-century consumers were effectively urged to consume goods as much for their symbolic value as for their use value, just as contemporary shoppers are said to do. Nineteenth-century department stores tried to imbue their merchandise with meanings that had special attraction at the time, those of wealth (opulence), mystery (exoticism) and abundance (excess). Parker's demonstration of the complexity of meaning formation in consumption thus directs our attention to the historical specificity of the meanings that retailers build to try to attract consumers. Marriage has long attracted the attention of sociologists. Raelene Wilding takes the act of getting married--the wedding--as the focus for an examination of the relation between the narratives of popular cinema and those of 'real' people undergoing the same experiences. Responding to the idea that the consumption of popular culture generates people's understandings of social phenomena, she shows the parallels and divergences in the meaning given to the wedding in cinema and 'real life'. Her challenging interpretation is that the meanings that are shared between these realms have a common origin, rather than one producing the other. …