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The new work ethics of consumption and the paradox of mundane brand resistance
Sofia Ulver-Sneistrup, Sren Askegaard and Dorthe Brogrd Kristensen Journal of Consumer Culture 2011 11: 215 DOI: 10.1177/1469540511402447 The online version of this article can be found at: http://joc.sagepub.com/content/11/2/215

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Article

The new work ethics of consumption and the paradox of mundane brand resistance
Sofia Ulver-Sneistrup
Lund University, Sweden

Journal of Consumer Culture 11(2) 215238 ! The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1469540511402447 joc.sagepub.com

Sren Askegaard
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Dorthe Brogard Kristensen

University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Abstract In terms of consumer resistance and marketplace ideologies, consumer researchers have called for a more nuanced conceptualization of consumption moralism in order to avoid the simplistic trope of inside/outside the marketplace (e.g. Arnould, 2007; Luedicke et al., 2010; Penaloza and Price, 1993; Thompson, 2004). With the aim of contributing to this quest, this article brings together two originally separate ethnographic studies on food consumption and brands in Scandinavia in order to provide new insights regarding the increasingly complex arena of consumer morality. Instead of focusing on highly pronounced consumer resistance such as activist communities or specific brand antagonists or protagonists we focus on ordinary Scandinavian consumers whose identities are not centered around resisting the marketplace. Through a pluri-methodological combination of field observations, interviews, symbol elicitation, photo diaries and artefact collections, we propose an empirically informed model illustrating the paradox of ordinary consumers brand resistance: embracing myths of craftsmanship. We show how ordinary middle-class consumers bridge bad with good brand consumption in various ways to legitimize the former, and how they make the evaluations according to traditional work ethics rather than (post)modern consumption ethics. Keywords brands, consumer resistance, ideoscape, marketplace ideologies, morality, work ethics

Corresponding author: Sofia Ulver-Sneistrup, Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Box 7080, SE 220 07 Lund, Sweden Email: sofia.ulver_sneistrup@fek.lu.se

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Indeed we have reached this absurd stage when the only activity that is granted authenticity for most of the world is that of resistance. (Miller, 2001: 240)

Perhaps it goes without saying that the topic of morality makes out a centripetal gist in contemporary philosophical conversation on consumer culture and the resistance within. The framing and target of this morality however varies substantially in content. Some moralize, in veiled terms, on the inherent traits of Modernity leading up to a never-ending desire to consume (Bauman, 2001). Some elaborate on the history of ideas that have led up to various moralizing images of the Consumer in academic texts (Campbell, 2005). Others claim that, historically speaking, the morality of consumption has evolved stepwise towards a relative demoralization and, whatever morality has been left, has been individualized in the sense that it is oriented towards the body. However, sketches of a re-emerging morality of consumption based on global inequalities (and climate issues, we might add, seven years later) are also hypothesized (Hilton, 2004). Finally, a few counter-voices moralize on academics propensity to moralize on consumption and consumers per se (e.g. Miller, 2001). As much as these contributions shed brighter light upon the origins of morality dominating academic critical discourse(s), they do not elaborate on its proliferation into everyday consumer culture, which according to various scholars (e.g. Campbell, 2005; De Certeau, 1984; Holt, 2002), in the long run, will inuence the market system through micro-tactics in pervasive everyday consumer practice. In this article we will therefore tap into the preceding philosophizing conversation by continuing the elaboration upon the complex construction of morality in the marketplace, but foremost by empirically contributing with new insights concerning consumers emic morality of consumption in general, and brands in particular. First we will argue that, in mundane consumption, the brand-inated commercial market is assumed to be inescapable, which in itself is experienced as bad. Second, in order to deal with this lack of agency, mythological and ideological resources are used to bridge the gap between legitimate and illegitimate consumer practice resulting in a paradoxical brand-resisting consumption of brands and nally, that this paradoxical brand resistance lacks revolutionary potential but quietly works to change the conditions of capitalist production. By doing this we wish to contribute to the theoretical debate on consumer morality, consumer desire, consumer movement and add practicality to prophecies regarding the future ethical consumer.

Conversations on morality of consumption

Moralizing about consumption is far from new, as is obvious from Foucaults (1985) analysis of Greek dietetics during Antiquity. In a more modern context, ranging from Veblens (1899) indignant description of the conspicuous consumption of the leisure classes via Packards (1957) and Ewens (1976) alleged debunking of the moral bankruptcy of the advertising industry, to more contemporary criticisms of the amoralities of consumer society (De Graaf et al., 2001) and its

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inuences on our personalities (Schor, 1998), there is no lack of condemnation of consumption and consumer society. The general sociology and philosophy of morality of consumption has since been discussed vividly in more specic consumer cultural literature. Bauman (2001) discusses the moralistic takes by Montaigne and colleagues on the general incapability of human kind to seek rest, to always be on their way somewhere undened the journey being more pleasurable than the actual goal. Here, in this ongoing pursuit, consumption becomes an illusive attempt to materialize the undened, and thereby give it meaning as Don Juan used women to give meaning to his undened. Pursuits for desire are distractions from the thought of the inevitable fact that we shall eventually die, and consumer desires have in this liquid modernity, as Bauman calls it, become a social construction that the whole consumer society thrives on: setting consumption free from functional bonds and absolving it from the need to justify itself by reference to anything but its pleasurability (ibid: 13). According to Bauman, the solidication of uidity that is, the condition where irrationality and perpetual change becomes the ultimate rationality came about when capitalism discovered that it could make the irrational desires into an endless cash cow, a prot-maker by reclassifying them, and then when modernity discovered how uncertainty could become the toughest construction of order. By consuming brands and nesting them into a life narrative, people thereby seek a biographical solution of systemic contradictions (ibid: 23). Brands become shelters from the insecurity of liquidity while simultaneously constituting the ubiquitous fundament of this very insecurity. We all remain consumers no matter how dierent the things and individualized oers we seek. In relation to this, Goldman and Papson (2007) elaborate on brand signs in this liquid modernity and state that one of the very purposes with branding is to through its symbols, logos and messages create a veneer of stability lacking in the volatile globalized marketplace. However, the more ubiquitous a brand becomes, the more readily it can become a media lightning rod for criticism (2007: 341). In line with Bauman, Miller (2001) claims that the alienation created by capitalist modernity is confronted by consumers exactly through consumption. However, unlike Bauman, Miller seems to believe it works (and is therefore not evasively critical), whereas Bauman believes it reproduces the alienation. Looking at academias morality of consumption, Miller concluded that the current moralism is based on: (1) a condemnation of materialism, and thereby romanticizing poverty; (2) a condemnation of capitalism in general and American brandscape in particular; and (3) an assumption that consumption is incompatible with environmentalism. Miller is critical against these building blocks in the morality of consumption, and not the least against the dominant assumption that materialism should be mutually exclusive of the desire and skill to form relations with other human beings. Instead, he means this is what materialism and objects are most of all about; to create meaningful relationships with others. Thus, Baumans veiled criticism against materialism (as the illusive dening of the undened) ts well into Millers theme of the mistaken assumption of materialism as bad, and has, according to Miller, led to a poverty of morality in western academia where it has

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condemned materialism without considering that the massive amount of people in poverty around the world would live a better life had they more material resources. Taking an historical perspective on morality of consumption, Hilton (2004) oers some thoughts on the relationship between morality and consumption over the last 200 years and identies three periods of thought. In the rst period, during the 19th century, Victorians conspicuous consumption was vividly moralized, but where liberal economics later would use the main arguments from Adam Smith when contributing to the luxury debate namely that consumption and greed is good for the economy. In line with this, Stuart Mill condemned unproductive consumption as opposed to productive consumption, applying an according to Hilton, narrow utilitarian measure of worth that of increased national wealth which denied the diversity and pluralism of human ends, talents and creativity (ibid. 2004, p. 105). In the second stage, 19th to 20th century morality of consumption, there was a reaction to the rise of the mass market where the moralizing of bad taste among the 20th century cultural elite was accompanied by a socialist, ascetic tradition. In the third and present stage, morality of consumption developed into a cultural studies debate regarding specic product categories centred around the healthy body and the climate rather than regarding consumption per se. However, according to Hilton it should be more concerned about the political systems limiting consumers agency instead of assuming that consumers negotiation, personalization and authentic customization of products has made morality of consumption obsolete. Moving into the realm of consumers morality of consumption, Campbell (2005) complements Hiltons historical overview by typologizing academias constructions of the consumer. In terms of morality, the mass consumption critique produced a portrait of the consumer as a dupe, whereas the emerging craft consumers have gone beyond the less moralizing subversive customization, personalization and appropriation practices that Hilton (2004) also touched upon, and actively taken on the role as mass consumption critics by crafting their own products for their own consumption. Botterill explains this desire for authenticity as historically emerging from philosophical ideas; such as the idea of an authentic self as seen by the German philosopher Herder, and the idea of society as a distraction to a Rousseauian true voice of nature within (2007 p. 111). Botterill draws on Taylor (1991) for explaining the success of these ideas as part of a massive subjectivist turn in philosophy. Ironically, as accounted for by Hilton (2004), this subjectivity, in the shape of liberalism, was the ideology behind morality of consumption in the 19th century. This morality then transformed into a critique against the loss of subjective liberty in the 20th century upon the emergence of mass production and mass consumption but is, according to Hilton, no longer concerned with consumption on an ontological level. In a similar vein, Miller (2001) banters academic double morals: what worries me is that this bogey of a deluded, supercial person who has become the mere mannequin to commodity culture is always someone other than ourselves. It is the common people, the vulgar herd, the

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mass consumer, a direct descendant of the older mass culture critique of the 1960s.

Morality of consumption in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT)

In the socio-culturally informed marketing and consumer research tradition of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) (Arnould and Thompson, 2005), morality of consumption has predominantly been approached in terms of consumer resistance. This has been conceptualized in a number of somewhat overlapping ways, typologized and outlined according to the historical evolutions of resistance (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995; Fischer, 2001; Fournier, 1998; Holt, 2002; Izberk-Bilgin, 2010; Kozinets and Handelman, 2004; Penaloza and Price, 1993). For example, Penaloza and Price (1993: 123) stated that there are multiple forms of consumer resistance and identied four forms along the axis of individual versus collective action and the other axis of reformist to radical goals. Inspired by the post-structuralism of Michel de Certeau, Penaloza and Price see the individual reformist as the consumer who resists through everyday activities, such as cooking homemade food or cocreative activities, that ignore the markets instructions of product use and so on. Such an individual reformist could also be seen in Campbells (2005) craft consumer as a necessary distinction from the postmodern consumer. In his view, the craft consumer diers from the postmodern consumer as s/he does not possess an overwhelming desire to gain identity, image and status (as the postmodern does), but already has a clear and stable sense of identity and rather engages in consumption out of a desire to engage in creative acts of self-expression (2005: 24). Holts (2002) postmodern and post-postmodern consumers correspond to Campbells postmodern and craft consumer, De Certeaus tactical consumer, or Penaloza and Prices individual reformist in that neither adhere to the cultural authority model of the Frankfurt school, nor to the reexive resistance model metaphorically described as an emancipated tiger (Murray and Ozanne, 1991; Murray et al., 1994) or Firat and Venkateshs (1995) liberatory postmodernism. Holts co-creative postmodern consumers and post-postmodern consumer artists historically, culturally and dialectically relate to the marketing paradigm and vice versa, more according to an Engels law than as an arbitrary urge of resistance against something unusually worthy to resist. In Holts conceptualization, consumers brand resistance has been moulded in a dialectic relationship with the branding paradigm, where initiatives by high culture capital consumers nally have trickled down to the mainstream consumer culture, whereupon the brand management paradigm has been urged to change strategies and vice versa. The dierence between the postmodern and post-postmodern consumer is that the latter not only has seen through the brand veneer but also accepted it. Instead of resisting an irresistible market (from which there is no escape) the post-postmodern consumer uses it for creative self-expression, just as Campbells (2005) craft consumer does.

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A great deal of CCT work has also engaged in exploration of specic communities built on consumer resistance (Cova and Pace, 2006; Kozinets, 2002; Moraes et al., 2010; Sandlin and Callahan, 2009; Thompson, 2004; Thompson and Coskuner-Balli, 2007) to specic brands such as Starbucks (Thompson and Arsel, 2004) or the Hummer (Luedicke et al., 2010). For example, investigating anti-discourses towards three specic anti-communities (Nike, General Electric and advertising), Kozinets and Handelman (2004) looked at activists through the lens of New Social Movement (NSM) theory, where a distinction is made between strategy-oriented and identity-oriented movements (Bernstein, 2003), and came up with oppositional themes regarding the activist identity work versus the obvious opponent; the corporate elite consisting of large corporate puppeteers as well as the weak general consumer public. This latter theme is especially interesting in our case as Kozinets and Handelmans activists dont identify with mainstream consumers but rather see them as enemies, pawns in the hands of the corporate elite (cf. Touraine, 1981; one of the main contributors to NSM theory). Furthermore, these activists even see mainstream consumers as entranced couch potatoes, wicked and selsh, slavish adherents, idiots and foolish, whereby the activists must take the leading role and responsibility to change and revolutionize this duped consumer culture rather than directly attacking the system itself. Without departing from Penaloza and Prices (1993) consumer resistance con ceptualization, Izberk-Bilgin (2010) recently oered an interdisciplinary review (including the most seminal work in anthropology, sociology and marketing [CCT]) of consumer resistance. In short, she distinguishes two distinct paradigms: one critical of consumer culture, the Manipulation and Enslavement Discourse and another more positive to consumer culture, the Agency and Empowerment Discourse. The former is emphasizing macro-strategies; how the dominant classes and culture industries execute power over workers and consumers. In contrast the latter is emphasizing everyday micro-tactics; how consumers in subtle but skilful ways use consumption to oppose the dominant order. Here, struggles between workers and capitalists (Marx), between cultural capital and economic capital (Bourdieu), and consumers versus cultural industrialists (Adorno and Horkheimer), are in line with De Certeaus view on the power of mundane tactics, seen as being resolved, not through revolution but through persistent everyday practice. Izberk-Bilgin, whose review includes many of the studies accounted for in our article, suggests that future research should engage in the impact of globalization on resistance (and vice versa) across cross-cultural contexts and developing countries, religiously motivated resistance, nationalistic resistance, resistance in relation to the marketer, and the potentiality of mundane consumption to mobilize political and cultural resistance. This latter suggestion is noteworthy for our argument, as it is exactly mundane consumption of food that is the centre of our attention.

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The inside/outside-the-Market trope

A main argument in the presented stream of research is that consumer culture research ought to go beyond the trope where distinction between market protagonists and antagonists is decided by an imaginary being-inside-or-outside the marketplace (Arnould, 2007; Holt, 2002; Kozinets, 2002; Thompson, 2004). Rather, the marketplace is viewed as ubiquitous and as a prerequisite even for market antagonists where new opportunities for localized resistance are produced in [a] matrix of overlapping discourses of power (Thompson, 2004: 173). Advocating Foucaults undecidedly unromantic view of resistance (1985); that the contestation of dominant power structures only leads to new ones, Thompson comes to the conclusion that consumers use marketplace mythology to contest other dominant ideologies, and, hence, there is no sharp line of demarcation where the inuences of the marketplace end and emancipated spaces begin (2004: p.172), In other words, there is no inside or outside the marketplace. An empirical example of this is provided by Thompson and Coskuner-Balli (2007). They empirically investigate community sponsored agriculture (CSA) consumers and farmers, and elaborate on the notion of enchantment as a conceptual frame-of-reference from which to critique and perhaps resist the rationalization of everyday life that characterizes modernity (2007: 280). This frame-of-reference is in their view a social construction, which guides ethical consumption as a subtle kind of activism. They found that no matter how much enchantment makes itself present in consumers ethical discourse, the farmers still have to compete in a commercial marketplace dominated by advertising imagery and enticingly themed servicescape settings [. . .] designed to entertain, seduce, and full desires for immediate gratication of the senses (2007: 299). Appadurai coined the notion of ideoscape referring to the globalization of a set of central ideas coming out of the Enlightenment tradition (democracy, welfare, freedom, etc.) (Appadurai, 1990: 92). Based on the abovementioned arguments, we might conclude, that the 20th century has added capitalism and the liberal market economy to the list of the global ideoscape notions. The ubiquity of the marketplace as a metaphor for understanding social relations has also paved way for an increasingly global adoption of the trope of the brand as an expression of the cultural and social value of phenomena, whether they are things, places, people, events, or something else. In line with this, Askegaard (2006) illustrates how the growing tendency to think of the value of something in branding terms makes it possible to talk about brands as a global ideoscape. One may then assume that in a global ideoscape of brands, capitalism and its many protagonists (as well as antagonisms) make out the most dominant ideologies, where branding contributes to overarching capitalist meta-narratives (Goldman and Papson, 2006: 327), in turn making it impossible for the consumer (and producer) to think outside the brand.

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From the spectacular to the mundane

However, although explicit wishes (e.g. Holt, 2002; Penaloza and Price, 1993; Thompson, 2004) for more empirical research to not fall into the trap of the inside or outside the marketplace cliche, the majority of the collected work on consumer resistance in CCT focuses on more or less overt, sometimes even spectacular (such as The Burning Man Festival [see Kozinets, 2002]) resistance from the perspective of specic consumer movements and micro-cultures in other words collectivities with a propensity to reproduce the inside/outside-the-marketplace opposition (e.g. Belk and Costa, 1993; Cova and Pace, 2006; Kozinets, 2002; Luedicke et al., 2010; Moraes et al., 2010; Sandlin and Callahan, 2009; Thompson, 2004; Thompson and Coskuner-Balli, 2007). While often at times spectacular and therefore more revealing, such research objects do not exhaust the complexities foregrounding market scepticism and consumer morality in mundane, everyday-like consumer practice, a sort of subtle kind of activism, as emphasized in various ways by Thompson and Coskuner-Balli (2007), Penaloza and Price (1993), De Certeau (1984), and Holt (2002). So how does it look among ordinary consumers whose identities typically arent constructed around the revolutionary under-dogism of iconic activism, called Beginner Voluntary Simpliers by McDonald et al. (2006), and where consumers do not necessarily blame other consumers (the jeremiad against consumerism as coined by Luedicke et al., 2010)? How do Penaloza and Prices (1993) theorized individual reformists con ceptualize the borderlines between, or blur the market and the non-market, and in what ways is the market used as a tool for establishing its own limits? By looking into more mundane consumption among mainstream consumers whose self-identity not necessarily entails the trait of resistance as such, we explore a more subtle character of moralizing consumer resistance. Subsequently, as this subtle brand resistance was quite overwhelming in our eld data, and as ordinary consumers everyday moralizing regarding brands is understudied, here we wish to contribute with an empirical interpretation of such mundane, mainstream brand antagonism and situate it in relation to previous thought and ndings within consumer culture research (1) on the morality of consumption and consumer desire, (2) on consumer resistance and movements, and (3) on the practicality of future ethical consumers. Like Thompson and Coskuner-Balli (2007) we here set out to see how ethical consumerism actually works under a specic set of marketplace conditions (2007: 2778), however, where the ethical dimensions emerged rather than worked as the outset.

Method Exploring the mundane

Exploring consumers brand meanings in food consumption, the authors of this article belonged to two originally separate research projects applying ethnographic

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methods, with the aim to interpret the ndings in an existential-phenomenological way (Thompson et al., 1989). For the Swedish exploration, six Swedish women (three from an urban area and three from a suburban/rural area) aged 3045 years were selected. These women belonged to dierent quintiles of the middle-class and diered from each other in lifestyles, type of work engagements and family constellations, but they all had children living at home. The methods used were semiparticipant observations of the women shopping for groceries. After the shopping session, long ethnographic interviews (McCracken, 1988) lasting for about two hours, were conducted at the womens homes. Each woman was given a disposable camera and a photo diary to record responses for ve days over the course of one month. In each diary there were 40 questions and a request to take pictures corresponding to every question in the diary. Each question in the diary had a complementary question, where the participant was instructed to describe what she has taken a picture of and why. All food shopping receipts and shopping lists of the household were also collected over the course of the research period. The women were instructed to send the diary, photos, lists and receipts after a month, receiving a reward of 1000 Swedish kronor (approx 100 Euros) as compensation for their work. The Danish research project was equally based on the method of participant observation including shopping trips with 26 consumers (17 women, 9 men) between 20 and 60 years of age, completed with long ethnographic interviews. The informants were recruited in dierent types of supermarkets, ranging from discount type markets to markets specializing in organic produce. Half of the interviews were conducted in Odense, a major provincial city, and half in Copenhagen, the capital. After the shopping session, interviews were carried out in the informants homes focusing on food culture, eating behaviour and life style. Later, a follow-up interview focused on health and brand symbolism was conducted with the purpose of stimulating the informants to reect more specically on brands and products. As already mentioned, the ad hoc integration of these two research projects from two dierent countries was motivated by overwhelmingly similar ndings in the Swedish and in a subset of the Danish sample. We consider the dierences in methodology, focus and sampling strength, since it contributes to the trustworthiness of the ndings.

Analysis The bridging between illegitimate and legitimate branded food consumption
The food I eat is not branded. I mean, you would never see a commercial for broccoli would you?, so . . . well, then of course it is . . . I mean, Arstiderne is a label one could say . . . it is a brand . . . apparently (Lene, 27, Denmark).

Illustrated by the quote from Lene, informants were trying, more or less successfully, to create distinctions between real brands and brands that were considered

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Figure 1. Bridges between good and bad brand consumption.

non-brands and therefore better. This paradox was what initially awoke our interest to explore the cultural contradictions and moral considerations involved in making sense of the double-edged consumer relationship to brands and branding in lay theory. First, it is important to note that food brands presumably make out a rare case among product categories in terms of distinctions made between more or less legitimate brands, and in terms of morality of consumption. That is, the mere fact that the product category is put inside ones body, digested and transformed into more or less healthy consequences for the body, should make the sensitivity for certain brand signals stronger than they would for, say, make-up. For example, the meanings of health persistently emerged as coinciding with legitimate consumption and branding in our material. We were able to distinguish between four combinations of the consumer-brand dialectic, based on various (non)craftsmanship-related mythologies. In turn, these combinations represent four distinct ways to evaluate brands as more or less legitimate to consume (see Figure 1).

Bad brand consumption: Non-craft producer and non-craft consumer

Luedicke et al. (2010) claim that moralism on consumption has now become close to synonymous with the cultural viewpoint that certain, if not most, consumption is built on greed, selshness and leads to environmental and moral destruction.

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And in fact, also in line with Thompson and Coskuner-Ballis (2007) enchantment, Botterills (2007) authenticity and in particular Campbells (2005) craft consumer, nothing caused so much verbal resistance among our respondents as brands that were perceived as coming from producers that were perceived as lacking craftsmanship and consumed by consumers who do not understand this matter of contention. In addition, we saw a perseverance of a Scandinavian consumer mythology that regards the human bodily self as authentic and pure (Askegaard, Gertsen and Langer 2002); a body that is in a constant threat of being polluted by the inuences from a capitalist marketplace that is willing to sacrice the well-being of human beings for the sake of economic prot. The market and, as we shall see, in particular the brand, is consequently inherently suspected for distorting humanness, and in Scandinavia, food is particularly seen as nutritional and healthy when it is liberated from the inuences of the production sector and left in its natural and unaltered state (Askegaard, Jensen and Holt 1999):
[points to a packet of industrial rye bread from Kornkammeret] I really nd it wrong that they can add all that sugar. I nd it grotesque that it is impossible to get a pure product, they always add lots of things; they add additives, colourings, and apparently also sugar. I nd it really grotesque. It is because it is much cheaper than doing it the healthy way (Birgit, 41, Denmark).

Our consumer accounts also echoed a common theme in the literature on consumption and morality, namely that the desire for goods is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the soul (Wilk, 2001: 247) and that real needs do not come from the market but from within:
There is so much seduction in commercials. They just want to tempt you to buy something that will not make you any happier. Ideally people should not need commercials to nd out what they need to put in the shopping basket. The horse knows from within that grass is what it needs. We should feel inside ourselves, what we really need (Christine, 28, Denmark).

Consumers who do not know from within what they need and what they ought to eat and consume, are seen as mass consumers who simply are puppets of the market, unlike a good craft consumer, like Per, 50, who says: In that way I am not for sale. No it will never get me. Due to the way it is made, or Christine, who allegedly can see through the brand veneer:
[looking at a package of Kellogs K Special ] This picture sells an idea of then you are healthy . . . . The logic is when you see this you think I can become like them. Like when a beautiful model makes an advertisement for a perfume. Everyone knows they wont become like her by buying the perfume. But they still buy it. But it is all just wrapping, and has nothing to do with the actual content. Here in my drawer

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[she opens the drawer and takes a glass of cereals] I have something, I believe it is from Ro mer. This is a product without sugar. This is just cornakes, just corn. You can see all that is in it (Christine, 28, Denmark).

In the end, such wrappings, greed, industrial processes and additives are put against the slow, the traditional, the honest and the people who are willing to move in the pace of nature:
[asked whether she would consider buying Probio, a yogurt product from major dairy company Arla] It is a thing I would never even consider buying. It is for those who want to be ecient, I believe it is sold as a quick solution for a healthy life. Like this take this and you will be healthy the rest of your life. I simply do not believe in it. It is so processed, and so marketed, it seems as though it has been through so many processes. This is not made thinking about the health of the people, but because this huge company Arla have found out that it gives prot (Christine 28, Denmark).

However, Thompson (2004) looked at mythic narratives circulating in the natural health marketplace and illustrated how such marketplace mythologies, no matter how anti-market they may seem, actually work in the hands of the market by constituting humanitys collective unconscious (2004: 162). Thompson elaborated on the Edenic mythic construction, forming the cultural relationship between nature and technology in this marketplace. In the Edenic myth, humanity has fallen from grace (like Adam and Eve) where the manipulation of modern science and technology has destroyed the holistic harmony of nature and thereby caused otherwise never-would-have-existed illnesses and suering; modern science has thrown us out of paradise. Thompson illustrates how the Edenic myth has been made mouldable in the natural health market through the Romantic tradition; the Romantic mythos. Celebrating the creative, the authentic self-expression, the holistic, the organic and mystical forces, the Romantic mythos carries almost apocalyptic undertones where nature is expected to strike back at humanity for violating its sacred order (Thompson 2004: 165). Given this prophesied apocalypse, no wonder that consumers seemingly instinctively react against brand consumption which is in danger of violating this order of nature. Hence, the worst possible dialectic interaction between consumption and market comes when a non-crafting consumer buys non-crafted brands. When the brand is so processed and neither demands crafting to produce it, nor demands a crafting consumer to consume it, thats when the brand consumption is both verbally and practically resisted among our middle class consumers.

Ideal brand (free) consumption: Craft consumer and craft producer

In contrast, products which carry minimal signs of branding, and then are properly crafted by the consumer make for the ideal food consumption. Below, Karin tags

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along the Scandinavian celebration of immersion into nature, where the hard-tolearn skill regarding where and what mushrooms to pick in the forest is a sign of cultural capital in authentic locality.
[Written in her photo diary about products she would like to buy but cant] Mushrooms I would like to buy unpacked, by weight, fresh. Unfortunately I dont trust quality and origin in shops and therefore I rather pass. My mum picks the mushrooms herself in the forests of Jamtland and shares the harvest with us LUXURY! (Karin, 38, Sweden)

In fact, in Scandinavia, the celebration of nature is in general mystied and reproduced by mythic folklores on trolls and other Nordic elemental beings, such as, the water sprite and the elves that romantically lived in the forest in self-chosen solitude. But, for those who cant immerse into the forest world of elves, the closest one can get to natures origin may be the local market where there is supposedly no, or in the worst case one, middleman between consumer and nature. The timeconsuming process and skills put into this choosing and later crafting makes out the holistic experience of ideal food consumption in its pure and brand-free state as exemplied by Gudrun below:
We really like to drive to the farm shops to see what they have, as well as to the small dairy companies. They are getting more and more popular. Then you nd a product in their shop, which makes us say this they make well. And then we gladly drive 20 kilometres frequently to get it because we have found out that it tastes so good (Gudrun 59, Denmark).

The crafting consumer is apparently based on the romantic ethos permeating modern consumption rst of all in its very emergence; that is, as the necessary answer to production, itself coming out of the ascetic protestant ethic of capitalism encouraging accumulation through production, where the romantic ethic encouraged accumulation for the individual self rather than for the family unit (Campbell, 1987). This self was relative to the nasty society outside (Corrigan, 1997: 10); constructed as a better more authentic universe of inner life, close to nature and far from Marxs dystopic alienation through wage relations and factory labour. However, if consumption in the beginning was constructed as a romantic contrast to work, as a sort of freedom and contact with ones inner soul, in late modernity it is rather contrasted against industrialization as a whole. We see in our own informants accounts that righteous consumption has been reconstructed to t with traditional life when consumption and production was not distinguishable, but rather the same thing. Of course most consumers will not be able to raise their own cows or catch their own sh, but they can get as close as possible to nature by putting in the time and eort to shop at local markets, and then engage in social communing around the food which is like a craft

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in itself:
[Diary question: To whose home would you like to be invited to dinner, and where would he/she go food shopping?] Gordon Ramsey, the British TV chef. At [the] local markets, [for] the most premium high quality products. We would of course have the best time and discuss the food in detail (Katrine, 38, Sweden).

Bridging to acceptable brand consumption: Non-craft consumer and craft producer

Most of the time local markets are not available, or the time and lust to craft the products one-self is not there. Then regular brands oered by regular retailers must come to the rescue. But to replace the ideal of not crafting the product oneself, especially if one is dealing with precious goods such as babies, buying (if one can aord it) brands from small suppliers that seemingly craft the products in a traditional way without adding the poison of industrialism, bridges, in a compensatory fashion, the bad consumption with good consumption by adding feelings of responsibility and of being a good mother:
[A photo of Bramhults Juice in the photo diary. Representing a product that one would like but does not buy] No added sugar. Healthy and tasty. However, too expensive to buy now that Im not working [maternity-leave]. Know what the product consists of? No weird additives, I guess, before I never thought about what I bought. Now I think more. On one hand cause it is more expensive nowadays, and then I guess I think there are more fun things than food to spend my money on. On the other hand its important what one eats, thats something that one really has become conscious about, what the food contains (Linda, 29, Sweden).

If the products geographical origin is considered romantic and genuine in itself, this semiotically rubs o on the product and on the almost advertising-like way the consumer describes its. The consumption is good, because the product is almost a craft in itself in its riping process, and the brand is invisible on the actual product as the packaging has been removed and replaced by generic transparent plastic for storage in the fridge:
[Diary question: A product you could not live without? Photo: a parmigiano cheese] I appreciate the complexity in a really ripe, genuine parmigiano tremendously. So tasty both to simple pasta dishes or with a glass of Italian wine. I keep it in the fridge, but the turn-over in our home is very high! (Madeleine, 41, Sweden).

Likewise, consuming brands is okay if it has a spell of the magic of the original craftsman, romanticized by the myths of the honest and righteous farmer who believes in hard work and quality. Such a righteous man is so in tune with nature

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and the craft that he does not care about the vain whims of urban society:
I have the feeling that products from Thise signals really good quality. Without having read much about it I believe I once met one from there at the farmers market. There was this man standing there . . . I said hello to him and I remember that his hand was so rough that he looked as though he had just been out to fetch the cow himself. To me that is what [Thise] signals. For this reason it is also more expensive than usual (Steen, 41, Denmark).

Hence, the real craftsman wants his job, and actually loves it. Instead of the morality of consumption these people nurture a genuine morality of labour, the kind that existed before work became equalled to industry and consumption with romanticism (Campbell, 1987). This work ethics makes the brand trustworthy, even if one doesnt even really know the brand:
Grnnegarden and Hanegal [both companies specialized in organic products] then you know that the people working there, they really want this job. It makes it more trustworthy, that there are people working that really want a good product. But I must admit, I dont actually know Grnnegarden (Christine, 28, Denmark).

The work moral of the producer hence plays a part, but also his/her moral in terms of human beings as force of labour. If the brand is non-transparent, it is probably a mass produced product infused by industrial greed, but if they dare to be transparent about their production process and supplier chain, and seem to treat their people well, then the brand is regarded as a good brand which even deserves its premium price:
I just cant help it, now that they have launched this campaign, that they who have picked the bananas, and they who have picked the coee beans, they get a decent salary, and then, because I can aord to pay more for it I gladly buy a bag of coee if it helps the people who picked the beans (Gudrun, 59, Denmark).

Bridging to acceptable brand consumption: Craft consumer and non-craft producer

The crafting and actual working with product ingredients can also wash away the nastiness from industrial processing. In other words, even basic brands can, in combination with the love of seeking, and the love of cooking, be excused as long as they are prepared lovingly enough and preferably in harmony with other products that are seen as crafted to begin with:
[Photo diary: picture and text of what symbolizes someone she wants to invite her for dinner at that persons home] A jar of ginger cookies. This year the cookies are baked after my sons God mother Beatas old relatives recipe. I would love to be invited

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home to Beata and Joakim now before Christmas, especially as she cooks such great ginger cookies and makes it so cosy. Beata shops at Netto, Domus, the market hall, in Denmark, at Ahlgrens in Lund, an eclectic mix of places. Low price and luxury mixed. She has this amazing skill to nd great combinations in a balanced style (Madeleine, 41, Sweden).

Also, ingredients can be more or less industrially branded but as long as the nishing process is one that requires crafting on part of the consumer, it is legitimate. The quote by Gudrun below illustrates how important the consumers own work put into the process is for basic brands to be okay:
I bake my own bread. I would never buy that kind of bread [industrial bread]. When I make rye bread I buy my our from Oma, where you just have to add yeast and water. It might not be particularly healthy, but I make it myself. I do not know about the rules for percentage of fat, but I still bake my own bread. I would never buy [industrially produced bread ] (Gudrun, 59, Denmark).

Karin on the other hand, who does not have the time to bake, puts in work in the choosing process at the store and sees the retailer as less commercially partial than the non-crafted brand producers:
Bread is important to me. It should be healthy and have a low level of sugar. Myself, I prefer really dark and rough bread but the rest of the family prefers lighter bread. Thats why I have to stand here for a long time to pick the right kinds. Today I got happy because one of the shelves had the label without sugar but then again, its sponsored by Pagen. I wish the shop itself made that categorization for all the bread to make it easier and more trustworthy (Karin 38, Sweden).

In the end, it is the caring food-producer who can bring the ubiquitous brand consumption back to where we were before industrialism. The myth of the warm and simple cook from a region signalling slow living, who genuinely loves primary products, has accumulated his/her knowledge slowly over time, possesses a natural interest in cooking, radiates farm-life, knows the authentic localities of the best quality products, and is simply down-to-earth, rings loudly in our consumer narratives of the dream dinner. And even if certain basic products from large branded retail chains must be added, the love for the rest compensates:
[written in diary about favorite celebrity Tina Nordstrom, (a popular TV-chef from Skane, in Southern Sweden) who should cook for her] She seems to be a down-toearth person who cooks simple but well-organized food. Good food simply! She would of course choose totally fresh primary products, for example in Feskekorka, Gothenburg. Other more basic products she would buy at ICA or Hemkop. She will probably make sh fresh today and base the menu upon that. Fine, fresh potatoes

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from Skane and some good cheese directly from the farm. She is easy to talk to, and we will chit chat about everything. And of course I will praise her for the simplicity and the tastes that this brings out! (Karin, 38, Sweden).

The work ethics of brand consumption

From what we have seen here we want to raise an aspect of the myth of craftsmanship in consumption that has not been emphasized enough, neither in conceptual (e.g. Bauman, 2001; Botterill, 2007; Campbell, 2005; Hilton, 2004; Miller, 2001) nor in empirical (e.g. Holt, 2002; Kozinets, 2002; Kozinets and Handelman, 2004; Luedicke et al., 2010) consumer culture research on morality or consumer resistance. We nd that Campbells (1987) classic distinction between work and consumption establishing itself in culture during industrialism in the 19th century, has taken on a reverse relationship among our ordinary consumers. Previous writings on consumer morality focus on the industrial process, associations made to consumption, and consumption versus this industrial work where the former is seen as good and the latter is seen as bad and not the other way around. We argue that work is at the core of this craftsmanship myth in a reverse relationship to consumption. In other words, the work ethic has permeated consumption and taken over consumption ethics. What matters is how much one will work with ones consumption, and no matter how simple the work, one must love it. This work is then characterized by romantic craftsmanship myths such as the true love invested, the handmade, the sacred of the organically emerged, the joy of the natural being, and the absence of touch by evil (industrial) hands. The consumer-held myth of craftsmanship is from this perspective primarily bound up by ethics of work rather than by the formally emphasized dichotomy of production versus consumption. The revered relationship between diligent work and an admirable outcome is presumably fairly universal. However, if we dare to make a risky leap into the historical European context, we might hypothesize that the opposition between Protestant solemnity and Catholic sensuousness plays a signicant role. For Catholics, the body is not the pitiful imprisonment of the soul but the sanctuary for the Holy Ghost. Hence, in terms of food, the point of departure may be the inverse. It is the reverence for sensuous pleasure that inspires the good work. In Northern European and Calvinist cultural history following the Protestant Ethic (Weber, 2002), frugality and hard work were signs of being obedient to God to whom one owes ones salvation. As a sign of grace, diligent work was a modied version of the Catholic idea of good works which was rather the result of ones salvation and could only come from faith alone. In contrast, the Protestant idea of diligent work was, according to Weber, a way to get salvation, in other words, the only way to be a good man. As a result, this ethos could be used as a motor in industrial capitalism. Many critical philosophers, for example, Gorz (1989), have then claimed that the alienating result of heavy and saturated

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industrialization during the 20th century has made the concept of work ethics obsolete. And, indeed, salvation must be hard to discern from the assembly line. Hence, as the idea of salvation from work got lost at the conveyor belt, and industry thereby lost its cultural legitimacy, its necessary counterpart, consumption, went through a similar journey. Representing the subordinate side of the dichotomy between work and leisure, consumption has come to be seen, also in our investigation, as a passive leisure act and production as an industrial evil producing passive consumers. Instead, manual work, pure and simple craftsmanship, so despised by Veblens (1899) 19th century conspicuous leisure class and the bourgeoisie of 20th century Europe (Bourdieu, 1984), is now the only cultural category of practice that can take romanticism, and not least salvation, back to the pacied and profane domain of consumption. The previous insights may at rst seem to be just another take on co-production, prosumerism, crowd-sourcing and open innovation, the buzz words of todays consumer and brand culture where consumers like consumer artists (Holt, 2002) or craft consumers (Campbell, 2005) create their own pop-cultural products and meanings by help of resources provided by the brands. This is a fair interpretation, but if these conceptualizations have rested upon meaning structures of consumption mainly positioned against cold industrialism, what we have seen here is an intensied focus on meanings of proud work ethics positioned against pleasure-free consumption where the only way to experience pleasurable consumption is by mobilizing traditional work ethics. Hence in relation to previous conversations on morality of consumption and consumer desire, we argue, based on our ndings, that in mundane consumption the brand-inated commercial market, the brand as global ideoscape (Askegaard, 2006) is indeed assumed to be inescapable. In relation to Baumans (2001) view on brands as the biographical solution of systemic contradictions where trying to avoid alienation through consumption only worsens the consumer experience of alienation, versus Miller (2001) who implied that consumption indeed can work against alienation, our methodologically eclectic consumer study (although in this article only illustrated by textual accounts, written or told), witness of a nuanced reality. Myths of craftsmanship are by consumers not implying mere negotiation, personalization or customization of products concepts that Hilton (2004) is afraid will fool us to think that consumer morality is obsolete. Rather, as consumers experience the market as ubiquitous, the model of consumer ethics is in itself contradictory, paradoxical, insucient and yes, in that sense obsolete. Instead another model of morality is taking over. Consumption is work, and when done right it is work to be proud of. Then rules of traditional work ethics (e.g. how much love, discipline and energy was invested in this crafting process [before and after purchase]?) set the stage, rather than rules of modern consumer ethics (e.g. Descendants of 1960s mass culture critique, How much do I really need this stu? Not at all! It is capitalism that needs me.). This way one does not have to, as Miller (2001) bantered, place the mythic bogey mannequin

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to commodity outside oneself, because there is no inside or outside the market. Rather, the experience is, right or wrong or both, that one works the market more or less properly. Active, genuine work pleasure legitimizes pleasurable consumption. Hence, to deal with the lack of agency mythological and ideological resources used to bridge the gap between ideal legitimate and actual illegitimate consumer practice resulting in a paradoxical brand-resisting consumption of brands. This adds practicality to Campbells (2005) craft consumer and Holts (2002) consumer artists, where these no longer are experienced as consumers but as committed craftsmen following another ethic than their predecessors. Thus, more than clinging to consumer myths such as economic rational hero (see Campbell, 2005) and Mills productive consumer (see Hilton, 2004), or avoiding the less attering stereotypes such as Millers (2001) bogey or the passive dupe of Holt (2002), these consumers evaluate legitimate brand consumption with the help of mythological resources concerning craftsmanship and working ethics in traditional culture. The tactical practices surrounded by these myths then further grant the reach of an acceptable minimum level of victimization in the otherwise autonomy-lacking marketplace; a marketplace which is not negotiable, it is there no matter what, one just has to work it. Alas, the mundane consumption we have elaborated on in this article reveals how various techniques, practices and orientations bridge the bad brand consumption to the good brand consumption and thereby legitimizes it. This is a subtle brand resistance which paradoxically does not exclude the very consumption of brands, as that would be an impossibility given the accepted inescapability of the Market. Rather, brands are categorized according to more or less good or bad brands according to the ethics of traditional work more than the ethics of modern or postmodern consumption (e.g. Holt, 2002). These have proliferated and become obsolete in their moral critique as feared by Hilton (2004). With this said, this is of course just another kind of morality of consumption, but with the important dierence in that it uses ideological resources from another intellectual eld; the one on work both on the producer and consumer side. Finally, this paradoxical brand resistance indeed lacks revolutionary potential, but in its quiet, proliferating form it may work to change capitalist production in the long run. If middle-class consumer desire slowly turns towards traditional work ethics both in terms of production and consumption (if there is a distinction in the rst place), the dialectic between consumer culture and brand management (Holt, 2002) will lead to a synthesis in the form of new systems of production. In other words, this will not happen through a middle-class barricade movement but rather through the more phlegmatic inuence that brand managers and consumers have on each-other. Like an inversion of modern capitalist history; now the middleclassication of the crafting citizen artist makes necessary the proliferation of the crafting industrialist.

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Soa Ulver-Sneistrup, PhD, is Assistant Professor of consumption studies at the School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden. Her research area is consumer culture with particular focus on status consumption and transformation culture within domains such as food, brands, fashion, home and retail. Sren Askegaard is Professor of consumption studies at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. His research is oriented towards investigating consumer culture, and he is currently particularly interested in globalization processes, food culture, technologies of self and lipophobia. Dorthe Brogard Kristensen, PhD, is Assistant Professor of consumption studies at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. Her research interests include consumer culture, consumption of food and health, medical pluralism, body and identity.

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Appendix Table of informants

Occupation University High-school University University College Married, two children Married, two children Single Single, one child in relationship Married, one child Education Family Status

Ulver-Sneistrup et al.

Pseudonym

Age

Sex

Site

Birgit Bodil Bernard Katrine Lene Linda

30 53 43 38 27 29

F F M F F F

University College High-school PhD High-school High-school High-school

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Jens Lars Pia Winnie Kasper Gitte Madeleine

34 36 48 33 33 42 41

M M F F M F F

Medical doctor Nurse Truck driver Student and HR practitioner Student Pre-school teacher, temporarily home with baby Falck Rescue Medical doctor Educator Nurse Key account man Typist Researcher, natural sciences Married, Married, Married, Married, Married, Married, Married,

one child two children two children one child one child one child two children

Nadine Sara Inge Per Rikke Gudrun

42 20 43 50 47 59

F F F M F F

, Malmo Sweden Odense, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Malmo Sweden Copenhagen Countryside Southern Sweden Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Countryside Southern Sweden Copenhagen, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Middelfart, Denmark Odense, Denmark Odense, Denmark Operator Student, high school Operator Educator House-wife House-wife and selfemployed Primary-school Single Single Married, Married, Married, Married,

one child one child one child two children

237

(continued)

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Appendix Continued Occupation Educator Medical doctor Student, relaxation therapy Student Journalist Self-employed University University University University High-school Primary-school University High-school High-school High-school University Single Single In relationship In relationship Married, two children Married, three children Married, two children Factory-worker Teacher in primary school Mechanic Secretary Purchase manager Homemaker Project Manager In relationship, three children Single Single Single In relationship Single, one child Education Family Status

Pseudonym

Age

Sex

Site

Jeanette Ulla Christine Anders Lene Birgit

36 50 26 28 28 41

F F F M F F

Mogens Lene Ib Henriette Steen Mona

42 33 42 39 41 44

M F M F M F

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Lisa

38

Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Countryside, outside Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Odense, Denmark Countryside Southern Sweden , Malmo Sweden

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