Consuming and living the corner shop: belonging,remembering, socialising

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic case study in Germany investigating the relationship between shopkeepers and customers of small grocery stores owned by immigrants. The focus is on social practices within the shops and how those engaged in these activities make sense of them. Shops become meaningful through shared practices that revolve around selling and buying. However, this process is complex and not without conflict. Moving through the themes of belonging, remembering and socialising, I will show how the everyday lifeworlds of customers and shopkeepers, including their aspirations, expectations and uncertainties, intersect and how the shop emerges as a meaningful space through negotiation. Rather than looking at cultural differences alone, it is concluded that there can be significant other ways to understand multicultural places by focusing on the multiple ways that consumers engage with so-called ‘ethnic’ enterprises.     

亚文化消费空间场所依赖维度探索性研究——以大连市泡泡玛特门店为例

在后现代消费时代,文化逐渐成为城市消费空间建构的重要手段。其中亚文化以其有别于主流文化的文化特质,引导人们在消费空间中有着别样的空间实践,进而传递给人们独特的空间感知。本文借助场所依赖理论,以大连市 5 家泡泡玛特门店为例,通过开放式深入访谈和参与式观察等形式的实地调查收集资料,运用扎根理论对资料进行三级编码分析,获得一个由亚文化风格、文化审美、消费空间、休闲时间、社会交往五个维度组成的亚文化消费空间场所依赖理论模型。以期帮助人们更清晰的了解,具有不同身份认同的亚文化群体,在多样的文化消费模式下开展的空间实践过程,以及随之产生的空间情感联系。     

Material and cultural consumption in Cuba: new reference groups in the new millennium

Reference groups serve as markers for citizen-consumers to determine tastes and preferences about work and material and cultural consumption. These groups have evolved slowly in socialist Cuba, mostly during the post-Soviet era. This paper examines the symbolism, roles, and meanings of three such groups: the Cuban Diaspora, Cuban Gen-Yers or Millennials (survivors), and entrepreneurs. A combination of these groups is changing values about a new consumption taking hold across the island and offers insight into material and cultural consumption.     

The origins of the entertainment industry: the operetta in late nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

How does a new successful musical genre impose itself, define its audiences and repertoires and eventually replace older genres? The essay examines the case of operetta from its French origins to the specific diffusion in the Italian entertainment system. Here the popularity of the ‘little opera’ coming from France and later from Vienna grew along with a new system of theaters, politeama and café chantants. They were run by a new generation of entrepreneurs and publishers such as Sonzogno, interested in diffuse new forms of musical leisure. The rising of the Italian operetta found strong resistance from the traditional opera world at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the distinction between artistic music and music as entertainment was being consolidated and we can find a sort of passing of the baton between opera and operetta as the major popular musical genre.     

古城西安住宅消费市场满意度重要性与差异性分析

本文以古城西安为例,在第一手调查资料的基础上,构建了住宅市场消费满意评价模型,采用消费者指标选择累积统计的方法,构建了重要性与满意差异模型,进行了重要性与满意差异分析。研究结果显示:评价项目中,住房价格与中观小区空间因素满意评价较低;满意且重要区域主要集中于宏观区域因素;重要不满意区域,价格因素主导突出。     

Tourism consumption and the imagination of money

This paper supplements exisiting research on tourism consumption through a focus on money. It draws upon recent work in the geography of money and economic sociology, arguing that the understandings of money used by consumers are of importance to the social formation of tourism. Using a theoretical framework that links consumption studies and reconceptualizations of money, the paper develops a qualitative case study of British long-haul travellers. It concludes that consumers' understandings of money are integral to the ways in which tourists seek to engage with destinations, and points out some implications for the politics of tourism.     

宁波自驾车旅游现状调查及发展对策研究

随着汽车进入百姓家庭,自驾车旅游在全国各地日益成为热点旅游形式。本文通过实地调查和面对面访谈,对宁波自驾车旅游者的消费特点进行了描述性分析,揭示了宁波自驾车旅游发展所面临的问题,其中包括基础设施和企业经营两方面,从而提出了宁波自驾车旅游发展的对策。     

REALITIES OF DOING RESPONSIBILITIES: PERFORMANCES AND PRACTICES IN TOURISM

With the ever increasing popularity of tours, flights and hotels that put ethics and responsibility at the forefront of their operations, what exactly does it mean to be responsible in tourism? Is it really so easy to be responsible? What actually happens on the ground in places where one tries to be responsible? Using fieldwork primarily conducted in/on Thailand, this research aims to unpack notions of responsibility in tourism, and argues that there is a need to go beyond simplistic idea(l)s and discourses about responsibilities, and instead interrogate actual and practical aspects of doing responsibilities. Fieldwork for this article is based on interviews with key decision makers in travel‐related companies, and interviews and participant observation at two case studies, namely Exotissimo Travel based in Bangkok, and the Elephant Camp (pseudonym). It highlights several aspects of the “realities” of doing responsibilities which complicates our ideas of what responsibility is about – that doing responsibilities is not at all easy; involves a continual questioning and negotiation of who is responsible for what; and how responsibilities in tourism can in fact be done to please tourists. This article therefore argues that there is no, and possibly cannot be, a conclusive statement on what responsibility is in practice, or what should or should not be considered as responsibilities. Instead, it brings to light the importance of contextualizing responsibilities and stresses the complex and plural nature in which responsibilities play out on the ground.     

Shopping,social inclusion and the urban geographies of people with intellectual disability

In this paper, we examine the social geographies of people with intellectual disabilities. We focus particular attention on the significance of shopping and spaces of consumption as they relate to questions social inclusion and belonging in the lives of PWID. The focus on consumption offers a useful counterpoint to a prevailing policy emphasis on social inclusion through productive activities. The paper also contributes to the literature on intellectual disability within social and health geography, shedding light on the varied socio-spatial experiences of people beyond the confines of community-care facilities and other separate spaces. Our analysis draws on data collected from a participatory research project in Toronto (Canada). The project involved a small but diverse group of people with intellectual disabilities, who led academic researchers on a series of excursions designed to explore those places and routes that make up their everyday social geographies. Shopping emerged as a significant but often ambivalent theme in the context of these geographies, and the analysis demonstrates the complex interplay of autonomy and control, pleasure and restraint, care and support that shape people’s experiences of consumption. We conclude by discussing the significance of these findings for notions of social inclusion and belonging.