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 accountsof assigning meaning to a past traumatic event, such as slipping into poverty.Positioned in Consumer Culture Theory’s (CCT) consuming identity stream ofresearch, it adresses a gap in the literature on tracing long-termed identity formationfollowing disruption. As such, the study’s originality stems from offering a focus onthe temporary nature of relative income poverty and its implications on consumers’identity (re)-construction. Both a narrative theoretical lens and methodology weredeployed to explore the cumulative impact of such multiple transitions over time(downward and upward) on identity re-construction. Following others who havedrawn consumption insights from autobiographic work (Hirschman, 1990; Turley andO’Donohoe, 2012; O’Donohoe, 2015), published autobiographies from Germanpoverty survivors were analysed and informed subsequent long (narrative) interviewswith 14 transient poor informants, including book authors.Findings obtained from analysis of both autobiographical work and interviews makethree broad contributions to consumer research. Firstly, the study reveals thatconsumers having undergone major disruptions in their assumptive worlds make useof different past selves by, for example, rejecting or revisiting them in order toconstruct their present and future post-trauma consuming identities. Secondly, thefindings shift the perspective on traumatised consumers from restoring what was lostduring a disconcerting life event (Caldwell and Henry, 2017; Thompson, Henry andBardhi, 2018) to transformative identity construction in terms of enduringly leavingbehind pre-crisis selves. Thirdly, this study demonstrates that (transient) low-incomeconsumers 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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