Thesis

"Narratives of redemption" : consumers' identity re-construction after having overcome a spell of poverty

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2020
Thesis identifier
  • T15522
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201377076
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • This study illustrates how consumers produce different culturally constituted accounts of assigning meaning to a past traumatic event, such as slipping into poverty. Positioned in Consumer Culture Theory’s (CCT) consuming identity stream of research, it adresses a gap in the literature on tracing long-termed identity formation following disruption. As such, the study’s originality stems from offering a focus on the temporary nature of relative income poverty and its implications on consumers’ identity (re)-construction. Both a narrative theoretical lens and methodology were deployed to explore the cumulative impact of such multiple transitions over time (downward and upward) on identity re-construction. Following others who have drawn consumption insights from autobiographic work (Hirschman, 1990; Turley and O’Donohoe, 2012; O’Donohoe, 2015), published autobiographies from German poverty survivors were analysed and informed subsequent long (narrative) interviews with 14 transient poor informants, including book authors. Findings obtained from analysis of both autobiographical work and interviews make three broad contributions to consumer research. Firstly, the study reveals that consumers having undergone major disruptions in their assumptive worlds make use of different past selves by, for example, rejecting or revisiting them in order to construct their present and future post-trauma consuming identities. Secondly, the findings shift the perspective on traumatised consumers from restoring what was lost during a disconcerting life event (Caldwell and Henry, 2017; Thompson, Henry and Bardhi, 2018) to transformative identity construction in terms of enduringly leaving behind pre-crisis selves. Thirdly, this study demonstrates that (transient) low-income consumers form an important part of voluntary simplicity theorisations.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Hamilton, Kathy
  • Jafari, Aliakbar
Resource Type
Note
  • Previously held under moratorium from 16th October 2020 until 16th October 2025.
DOI
Date Created
  • 2020
Former identifier
  • 9912922690502996

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