TY - JOUR
T1 - Between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation
T2 - self-authorizing the consumption of cultural difference
AU - Cruz, Angela Gracia B.
AU - Seo, Yuri
AU - Scaraboto, Daiane
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc.
PY - 2024/2
Y1 - 2024/2
N2 - Countervailing discourses of cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation are fueling a tension between the ethnic consumer subject, who views the consumption of cultural difference as a valorized identity project, and the responsibilized consumer subject, who is tasked with considering the societal impacts of such consumption. Drawing on an extended qualitative investigation of international K-pop consumers, this study illustrates that this tension spurs consumers to pursue self-authorization - the reflexive reconfiguration of the self in relation to the social world - through which consumers grant themselves permission to continue consuming cultural difference. Four consumer self-authorization strategies are identified: reforming, restraining, recontextualizing, and rationalizing. Each strategy relies upon an amalgam of countervailing moral interpretations about acts of consuming difference, informing ideologies about the power relationships between cultures, and emergent subject positions that situate the consuming self in relation to others whose differences are packaged for consumption. Findings show notable conditions under which each self-authorization strategy is deployed, alongside consumers' capacity to adjust and recombine different strategies as they navigate changing sociocultural and idiographic conditions. Overall, this study advances understanding of how consumers navigate the resurgent politics of marketized cultural diversity in an era of woke capitalism.
AB - Countervailing discourses of cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation are fueling a tension between the ethnic consumer subject, who views the consumption of cultural difference as a valorized identity project, and the responsibilized consumer subject, who is tasked with considering the societal impacts of such consumption. Drawing on an extended qualitative investigation of international K-pop consumers, this study illustrates that this tension spurs consumers to pursue self-authorization - the reflexive reconfiguration of the self in relation to the social world - through which consumers grant themselves permission to continue consuming cultural difference. Four consumer self-authorization strategies are identified: reforming, restraining, recontextualizing, and rationalizing. Each strategy relies upon an amalgam of countervailing moral interpretations about acts of consuming difference, informing ideologies about the power relationships between cultures, and emergent subject positions that situate the consuming self in relation to others whose differences are packaged for consumption. Findings show notable conditions under which each self-authorization strategy is deployed, alongside consumers' capacity to adjust and recombine different strategies as they navigate changing sociocultural and idiographic conditions. Overall, this study advances understanding of how consumers navigate the resurgent politics of marketized cultural diversity in an era of woke capitalism.
KW - consumer reflexivity
KW - cultural appropriation
KW - cultural diversity
KW - K-pop
KW - responsibilization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165922393&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/jcr/ucad022
DO - 10.1093/jcr/ucad022
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85165922393
SN - 0093-5301
VL - 50
SP - 962
EP - 984
JO - Journal of Consumer Research
JF - Journal of Consumer Research
IS - 5
ER -