At the 9th conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) I will give a presentation on my research project. The conference with the theme “European Society or European Societies?” will take place in Lisbon/ Portugal. My paper has been accepted by the Consumption Research Network of ESA. In the session on “Politics of Consumption” I will present results of my research project. The topic of my presentation will be “Consumer policy, consumption practices and consumer society“.
Recently I had the possibility to attend an intensive course on Methods and Methodologies in Cross-Cultural Comparative Research. The course was organised by the national Finnish doctoral programme in business studies “KATAJA“. It was held at the University of Vaasa in the northern Finnish city of Vaasa. The faculty giving the lectures included professors from various European countries: Austria, Germany, the Netherland and Finland.
The aim of the course was to familiarize participants with the specialities of research in cross-cultural, cross-national and cross-disciplinary settings. Moreover, skills to conduct cross-cultural comparative research projects have been on top of the agenda, including issues related to the empirical design of the study.
A paper that I am currently working on has been accepted to the 4th International Consumer Research Conference with the theme “Consumer voice and representation”. The conference is to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland at the end of June 2009.
The paper I am going to present is dealing with “Consumer representation in a ternary sphere of consumption”. Focussing on governmental consumer policy, the paper elaborates on ideas that have been explicated by the scientific advisory board on consumer and food policy to the Federal German Government, which have been published as well in the Journal of Consumer Policy by Lucia A. Reisch.
Governmental institutions are trying to reduce or remove disadvantages that citizens occupy in their role as consumers in arenas where consumption processes take place, for instance on markets. A ternary sphere of consumption as theoretical framework for consumer policy research distinguishes three principle domains: Consumers act in their household and everyday living environment; the business sector contributes commodities; and state authorities regulate consumer issues. These three dimensions are considered as interlaced in a joint sphere, where citizen-consumers act on regulated markets to facilitate exchange between households and companies. Hence, the provided framework anticipates the consumer to be treated differently in numerous systems of concepts and fields of activity.
Though, a ternary sphere of consumption is proposed to serve as a theoretical framework in consumer policy research, as it concatenates different approaches to a systematic frame of reference. This integrative way emphasizes interdependencies between societal macrostructures and practitioners in everyday consumption settings.
