Consumption and Practice

how certain consumption practices develop (through habitus as internalized structure that in turn structures consumption); and how these consumption practices then serve as markers of distinction and vessels for the production and reproduction of social class boundaries (structure). But Bourdieu remains relatively silent on the composition of consumption vis-à-vis practice, because his primary interest revolves around the dialectic operation of structure (objective) and agency (subjective)—he is interested in consumption only as a site for this investigation.

Inspired by Bourdieu's work, Holt (1995) specifically approaches this gap and offers a study of 'how consumers consume'. In his research on baseball spectating he offers a range of practices that seemingly go on during consumption. He clusters these in the form of consumption metaphors (Holt 1995, 3-12) including consuming as 'experience', 'integration', 'classification', and as 'play'. Thus, Holt frames consumption as a form of meta-practice that encapsulates a variety of sub-practices. His work is particularly valuable in showing the multidimensionality of consumption by revealing the different sets of activities that are part of the consumption of baseball. Thus, his study suggests that consumption is composed of a variety of (sub)practices: Where Bourdieu sees consumption practice, Holt unfolds a variety of practices going on in consumption.

More recent thinking on consumption and practice suggests that consumption is "a moment in almost any practice" (Warde 2005, 137). Drawing on practice theorists Schatzki (1996, 2001) and Reckwitz (2002), Warde (2005) asserts that consumption 'occurs' alongside practices.³ Warde (2005) situates consumption within practices and suggests that consumption takes place as moments within them. Thus, consumption is not a practice by itself, but rather transpires within practices. His argument develops along the following lines.

First, Warde (2005, 137) offers the conceptualization consumption as practice moments as follows: "Appropriation occurs within practices: cars are worn out and petrol is burned in the process of motoring. Items appropriated and the manner of their deployment are governed by the conventions of the practice; touring, commuting and off-road sports are forms of motoring following different scripts for performers and functions for vehicles". Although

this view of consumption as a moment carries connotations of consumption as depletion, using up, and destruction of resources, he portrays at the same time the function that moments of consumption have in relation to practice. Second, he asserts that consumption takes place and is not governed and steered by the practice, adding that consumption takes place not only within, but crucially, for the sake of practices.

Warde's point of view resonates with research that demonstrate how consumption objects are utilized in and for the conduct of a specific practice (Magaudda 2011; Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 2001; 2002; Shove and Pantzar 2005; Whittington et al., 2006; Watson and Shove 2008). This means not only that the practice requires and necessitates consumption, but also that individuals engage in moments of consumption required by the practice. Consumption in this view becomes an element of practice. This can be illustrated by Shove and Chappells' (2001) study showing how water and electricity is typically consumed in the course of the routines of daily practices; and Watson and Shove (2008) demonstrating how screws, nails, and tools are consumed in the course of DIY practices. Tools, raw materials, water, and electricity are not consumed for their own sake, but their consumption is steered by routine activities of everyday life or specific practices. In other words, engaging in a certain practice necessitates the consumption of certain objects. Thus, the needs for these objects are less 'consumer needs' than practice needs (Warde 2005). In Watson and Shove's (2008) reading of Warde (2005), consumption thus is an outcome of practice.

This previous research leaves room for theoretical development of the role of consumption in relation to practices. While Holt (1995) finds that practices take place within consumption, others find that consumption takes place within practices (Warde 2005; Watson and Shove 2008; Magaudda 2011).

The indication that consumption takes place not only within practices, but ultimately for the sake of practices (Warde 2005; Watson and Shove, 2008) is important because it implies that consumption is not only a function of practice, but also has a function in practice. This in turn implies that practices do not only steer consumption (Warde, 2005; Watson and Shove 2008; Shove and Pantzar 2005), but that consumption can also steer practices. This raises further questions as to how the role of consumption on the performance of practices can be conceptualized.

This thesis seeks to further advance the conceptualization of consumption as embedded in practices: How and in what ways can consumption be considered as practice moments—in terms of its role in the performance of practice? Although Warde's (2005) introduction of the idea of consumption as practice moments is a fruitful point of departure, it lacks theoretical and empirical specification regarding those aspects.

that provide different experiences—e.g., making music versus listening to music. Although each of these activities may involve some aspects of consumption and production, conducive to the overall achievements of a concert, a record, a night in a hotel, or an online community, they are not necessarily one and the same. But within practices, such as guitar playing or online community participation, aspects of consumption are intertwined with the making of things. The guitar player consumes guitar gear and makes music. The online community member reads questions, answers or asks questions, and reads replies. How can such relationships between those relatively immediate forms of consumption and production be framed within practices?

While researchers have called attention to consumption/production linkages (Arnould 2007; Arnould and Thompson 2007), it is surprising to find such a paucity of research offering conceptual and systematic attempts to integrate consumption with production. How can we understand the entanglement of consumption with production on a practice level?

Warde (1992) argues that much of the confusion regarding the production/consumption debate stems from using different levels of analysis and the conflation of the systems of production of consumption with the roles played by individuals within them. This thesis relates to this discussion by taking practices as the level of analysis for studying consumption and its links to productive aspects.

The kind of production looked at in this thesis concerns the productive aspects of consumptive moments, as well as the productive aspects within practices. To capture the productive aspects of consumptive moments, I use the concept of performativity. To capture the productive aspects within practices, I introduce productive moments.

In this view, practices become the site for studying consumption and its entanglement with production. As Schatzki (2005, 468) puts it: “Practices are the site, but not the spatial site, of activities.” Based on this line of thought, Warde (2005) and Schatzki (2005) highlight the organization of practices as the focal point for analysis. This allows framing of both consumption and production as taking place within the site of practices. Thus, a practice-based approach suggests that a focus on practices allows a view of consumption and its entanglement with production as deeply embedded in the practices of everyday life.

Williams 2006; Toffler 1980)⁴. However, what appears at first glance to be a blending—or merging—logic derives from a fundamental underlying substitution premise.

Alvin Toffler (1980) coined the term prosumption. In his book, The Third Wave, he contemplated three waves of societal and cultural development that mark transformations from one type of society to another. He portrays technology bridging the gap between consumers and producers, a futuristic foresight that seems surprisingly accurate today. His idea of prosumption envisions that consumers turn into producers when they conduct bank transactions at a machine or on the Internet instead of the bank subsidiary, or pump their own fuel at gas stations instead of having it pumped for them by an employee. He writes: “Millions of people (...) are beginning to perform for themselves services hitherto performed for them by doctors (...) what these people are really doing is shifting some production from Sector B [the ‘visible economy’] to Sector A [the ‘invisible economy’]” (Toffler 1980, 267, emphasis added).

Here, Toffler refers essentially to substitution: Consumers produce the products and services they eventually consume, as opposed to buying them from a commercial producer. Simply put, a prosumer is a person who, for example, selects, buys, carries home, and assembles an IKEA bookshelf. These people are prosumers because they are not merely consuming but also producing by accomplishing important functions in the value chain (Normann and Ramirez 1993). But Toffler does not mention symbolic production—production cannot be understood only in terms of manufacturing a good or delivering a service. Rather, production takes also place in the making and shaping of meanings, ideas, symbols, knowledge and understanding, desires, and ideologies that is highlighted in marketing and branding activities. For example, the American Marketing Association (AMA) provides a marketing definition of production as “The creation of form utility, i.e., all activities used to change the appearance or composition of a good or service ith the intent of making it more attractive to potential and actual users” (AMA 2013). However, such symbolic production is not addressed by Toffler.

Prosumption per Toffler refers to substitution in two ways. First, prosumption represents a form of outsourcing to the consumer. On certain steps of the value chain, the commercial producer is substituted by producing

consumers—consumers take over, or are made to take over, elements of the value chain traditionally performed by commercial producers. Cova and Dalli (2009) refer to these consumers as ‘working consumers’ and, unlike Toffler, they acknowledge the symbolic production of consumers. Other researchers have raised the issue of the exploitation of such consumers (Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2009). Second, consumers produce their own products and services as opposed to acquiring them from a third party. Kotler (1986) echoes Toffler’s ideas and suggests that only very few people could be characterized as ‘arch prosumers’, or those that live a life dedicated to making ‘many things themselves’ (512). By contrast, the ‘avid hobbyists’ engage in prosumption as a meaningful form of leisure, sewing their own clothes, cooking their own food instead of going to a restaurant as meaningful activities. Toffler and Kotler argue that the ‘essence of being a consumer’ is to consume such goods and services, while the ‘essence of being a prosumer’ is to “prefer producing one’s own goods and services” (Kotler 1986, 510).

Campbell (2005) provides similar observations regarding the emergence of ‘craft consumers’—those who make products for their own consumption. Craft consumption entails the production of something “made and designed by the same person” (Campbell 2005, 31). Here, the craft consumer is simultaneously producer and consumer. Campbell envisions the craft consumer as a special type of consumer on the rise in contemporary consumer culture. However, craft consumption emphasizes that producing one’s own products is not necessarily antithetical to consumption: “the craft consumer is a person who typically takes any number of mass-produced products and employs these as the ‘raw materials’ for the creation of a new ‘product’, one that is typically intended for self-consumption” (Campbell 2005, 27-28). Thus, Campbell depicts a form of Marx-type consumption of raw materials in the production process. As a consequence, he notes that craft consumers are not so much interested in buying a finished product, but rather in products that they can employ in their own craft consumption processes. This means that craft consumers are still depicted as consumers, just as prosumers are also depicted as consumers—but both represent a type of producing consumers. Campbell differentiates this special breed of consumers from ordinary consumers based on what they do; that is, based on the specific craft procedures and activities, a distinction that gains relevance in the light of the practice-theoretical focus of this thesis.

The term prosumption has gained renewed popularity and is increasingly used in relation to the Internet in general and so-called social media in particular (e.g., Beer and Burrows 2010; Collins 2010; Comor 2011; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). Here, prosumption seems to be not a form of lifestyle choice that Kotler (1986) depicted; but the very essence of participation in online communities, forums, and social networks.

In this light, it may be easy to celebrate the arrival of such prosumption as ‘new’ or ‘on the rise’, but authors advise restraint. Ritzer (2010) notes that

people have always in one way or another produced their own products and services for their own consumption. To him, the concept of prosumption offers the possibility of correcting an 'error in the history of social theory', namely focusing either on production or consumption, when in fact social theorists should have always focused on both (Ritzer 2010; Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson 2012; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). Also Humphreys and Grayson (2008) develop a rather critical perspective toward celebrating such prosumption as new. By using Marx's distinction of use value⁵ (in their terms that is: 'consumption') and exchange value (in their terms that is: 'production'), they argue that production-by-consumers, which is concerned with the production of use value, is not 'new' or different from what people always have done. We play the guitar to make music, use the car to get from point A to point B, and create our own experiences when using goods and services. On the other hand, they note that if consumers begin to produce exchange value for firms, this does indeed indicate an important variation in the organization of economy. Thus, Humphreys and Grayson (2008) have contended that terms such as prosumption are rhetorical covers that mask a sustained split between the production of exchange value and the production of use value.

While Humphreys and Grayson's (2008) argument builds on framing consumption as the production of use value and production as the creation of exchange value, Warde (1992) challenges this line of Marxian understanding of consumption and production according to whether they create exchange or use value. Warde argues that consumption creates both forms of value. He cites the example of the consumption of a house: Living in the house provides shelter

and comfort, which creates use value—and Marx would agree that this means the house is a ‘real’ house. Holding onto the house in rising markets also creates exchange value. According to Warde (1992), living in the house (i.e., consuming it) creates exchange value. However, one does not necessarily need to live in the house for it to create exchange value. Rather, Warde’s argument can be criticized with respect that it is more ownership than it is consumption which creates exchange value in times of rising markets. For example, a property may serve as a financial investment, which does not necessarily imply that it must be inhabited to create exchange value.

A limitation to discussing the nature of consumption and production by asking whether they create use value or exchange value is that it ignores discussions on the relation between these two value types as well as other forms of value. Grönroos (2008) argues that exchange value is determined by value in use: If a good has no use value, it will not have exchange value in the long run. However, this understanding undermines the value of appreciating an object for its own sake when it has little or no use value, such as an art object discussed by Holbrook (1994; 1999). Holbrook (1999) offers a typology of the many forms of value that are created in and through consumption, including value outcomes that are more self-oriented and those that are more other-oriented. According to him, self-oriented value outcomes of consumption are efficiency (convenience), play (fun), excellence (quality), and aesthetics (beauty). Value outcomes of consumption that are other-oriented are status (success, impression management), ethics (justice, virtue, morality), esteem (reputation, materialism, possessions), and spirituality (faith, ecstasy, sacredness). Although some of these value outcomes of consumption can clearly be sorted into the category of use value, for example, efficiency, it is problematic to define aesthetic value in terms of its use value or exchange value. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and what is beautiful to some might be ugly and offensive to others. Because a beautiful thing may have a higher exchange value than an ugly thing, it could be concluded that consumption creates exchange value in the sense of Marx. Marketers frequently praise the beauty of their products. Guitar makers place emphasis on the design of their products in aesthetic dimensions, not only merely in technical dimensions. The question then becomes to consider what value is and means. I will discuss this question in more detail in section 4.3.4.

For the ontological status of consumption, this stream of literature contributes the following: First, it asks researchers to pay attention to consumption as well as production. Ritzer (2010) and Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson (2012) present prospection as the middle point on a continuum between production and consumption. That is, production and consumption remain analytical categories, as the “term prospection assumes both” (Ritzer 2010, 73, original emphasis). Assuming both represents a departure from Marx’s production-centred treatise. Where Marx focused on production and saw consumption as well, proclaimers of prospection begin with both consumption and production. That is, they focus on some process or activity

and acknowledge that they may be characterized more by production, or more by consumption. This resonates broadly with Marx's consumptive production and productive consumption. Further following Ritzer (2010) and Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson (2012), 'pure' prosumption, however, is the exact middle point between consumption and production. Thus, both consumption and production can be seen as constituting elements of prosumption.

But questions remain. Prosumption as originally envisioned by Toffler essentially adopts a linear value-chain model and substitution logic. It is conceived from a production focus, as Ritzer (2010) dramatizes with his thought exercise of 'conduction' as the blending of the terms consumer with producer rather than producer with consumer (=prosumption). If we place consumption and production on a continuum, with prosumption as its middle point, how are we to conceptualize a relation of consumption with production beyond the describing term prosumption? How can we be sure that the exact middle point between consumption and production is studied, rather than deviations to the left and right?

The term prosumption emerges as more descriptive rather than analytical. At the core of this literature is the idea that the concepts of consumption and production, and consumer and producer are less meaningful labels than the notion of prosumption, as they have lost their discriminating power to differentiate between things that eventually would be one and the same, prosumption. Yet, proclaimers of this stream use the concepts of consumer, producer, consumption, and production to define what prosumption is. This indicates that production and consumption are meaningful categories after all, because they are needed to explain what prosumption is. This raises questions on the analytical value of the concept of prosumption. It does not suggest or specify dynamics, relations, oppositions, enabling and/or constraining forces of the two 'ends' of the continuum, its ingredients. Conceptual blind spots remain on how prosumption can be conceived of in terms of—or mediated by—consumption and production, as Marx suggested. How and in what ways is consumption equal to production in prosumption?

Yet, and this is important with regard to the ontological status of consumption, I argue that the largest contributions of this stream of literature are as follows: First, it is an influential suggestion to deal with the productive aspects of consumption, as it calls for attention to both consumption and production. It questions profoundly the study of consumption in isolation from production and a singular treatise of consumption. Not everything should be considered prosumption, as Ritzer (2010) points out with his continuum, but production should be considered in the study of consumption. Although some conceptual blind spots remain on the constitution of prosumption as (=) consumption + production, it calls for anyone that engages in the study of consumption to attend to production as well. Second, it incites to focus on processes or activities in which consumption and production take place. In this thesis, practices provide the context for studying these issues.

only in a definitional sense and is the input for more production. The SDL, however, emphasizes consumption as a key facet of the creation of value and that value does not reside in a commodity, but derives from consumption of the co-created service. Thus, this stream of literature is relatively close to a twisted form of Marx's suggestion—namely that consumption needs to take place so that (co-) production (of value) occurs.

Grönroos (2011) offers a critical analysis of this body of literature and its use of concepts. Although he agrees with the fundamental idea of the SDL, he raises some points of concern and questions: he wonders what is meant by value creation, and specifically, whether it refers to the value creating activities of consumers (value-in-use), or to some larger process in which consumers' creation of value is merely an element. Thus, he addresses the limitation of the theoretical development and empirical study of the co-creation concept and process due to lack of clarity regarding value and the process of its creation. It has to be said, however, that value is one of the most problematic concepts in marketing and consumer research (Karababa and Kjeldgaard 2013; Sánchez-Fernández and Iniesta-Bonillo 2007).

Grönroos (2011) agrees with Vargo and Lusch (2004; 2008) that "consumers are by definition value creators". But he separates value creation from value co-creation. He suggests defining "value creation strictly as the customer's creation of value-in-use, and all other actions leading to value for the customer as value facilitation" (Grönroos, 2011, 296). Thus, value is always created by consumers. Consumers become co-producers in firms' production processes only if they engage in direct interaction with firms concerning the production processes. The production processes he refers to typically take place within companies (to which he refers as design, development, production and delivery, and back-office and front-office phases). Only if consumers engage in direct interaction with companies concerning one or several of these production phases do they become co-producers. This is particularly evident in media contexts, where 'citizen journalists' participate in the production of news and where co-creation has become a pillar of consumers' media usage, experience, and expectation (Banks and Deuze 2009; Banks and Humphreys 2008; Bruns 2008; Deuze, Bruns, and Neuberger 2007; Jenkins 2006). Here, media consumers engage in co-creative labour and participate in the production process of media organizations such as the BBC (Wardle and Williams 2010). However, examples of the use of Internet technologies for such co-creation are not unique to the media setting, but range across various industries (e.g., Fuller, Jawecki, and Mühlbacher 2007; Jawecki and Fuller 2008; Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006; Sawhney, Verona, and Prandelli 2005). Thus, the practices revolving around the development of new products are increasingly fuelled by Internet technologies shaping innovation as collaborative processes between firms and consumers, but also between consumers and consumers (e.g., Hemetsberger 2003; O'Hern and Rindfleisch 2009; Von Hippel 2005).

However, this is somewhat different from Vargo and Lusch's (2004; 2008) suggestion that consumers are always co-creators, but more in line with Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) who argue for a similar shift in how value is created between firms and companies. They suggest an alternative conceptualization of value—not in terms of service like Vargo and Lusch (2004), or innovation of products like the open-source software stream, but in terms of co-creation experiences. They contend that the locus of co-creation lies in the interaction between consumers and companies; but they note that this means co-creation is “neither the transfer or outsourcing of activities to customers, nor a customization of products and services” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004, 10). This also represents a point of departure from the blending logic. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004, 13) argue that such value is neither produced exclusively in-house in firms, nor exclusively formed in consumption, but created at “multiple points of interaction” between firms and consumers. Thus, they conceive of the marketplace as a forum in which consumers and companies interact.

Returning back to Grönroos' (2011) argument, Prahalad and Ramaswamy's (2004) argument is built on similar grounds: that direct interaction between firms and consumers is needed for co-creation of value to take place. And so Grönroos (2011, 290) notes that “if there are no direct interactions, no value co-creation is possible”.

If, however, direct interaction of the kind described above between consumers and firms takes place, Grönroos (2011) suggests that firms and consumers operate within each other's processes. For example, a consumer participates in the design of a product, or helps with the process of developing a product. Then, this consumer operates within the firm's production process; however, the firm is also an influential resource within the consumer's value-creation process. Thus, in value co-creation, Grönroos portrays the merger of the two processes in which consumers and producers are involved into one single process, because firms and consumers operate within each other's processes. In his view, consumers and producers are distinct entities that operate inside one another's processes to the extent that these processes merge into one process. His analysis suggests that the two separate processes he depicts are production (the firm's operation) and consumption (the consumer's operation). Thus, his refinement of the SDL suggests that in co-creation, production and consumption merge into one process, while at the same time maintaining the distinct categories of producer and consumer. This also implies that if no direct interaction between firms and consumers takes place, consumption and production continue to be separate processes. As for the ontology of consumption, this stream of literature holds several implications regarding the ontological status of consumption.

First, there are parallel developments of thoughts on the intersecting roles of consumers and producers in the co-creation of value. Vargo and Lusch (2004; 2008) propose that the basis of value is service, which is always co-

created. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) propose that experience is the basis of value. Grönroos (2011) views consumption as the basis of value creation.

Second, while Vargo and Lusch (2004; 2008) propose that consumers and producers are always co-creators and thus suggest a blend of the roles of consumers and producers as default, Grönroos (2011) implies that direct interaction is needed in order to speak of intersecting roles between consumers and producers. In contrast to the SDL as proposed by Vargo and Lusch, consumers in this view are not always co-producers, but are always value creators—and in some instances co-producers. This is an important difference. Grönroos's (2011) idea of value facilitation referring to all other actions that influence consumers' creation of value is interesting, but with all other actions, he refers exclusively to those actions by firms. Thus, he excludes other forms of value facilitation, and he does not specify the different forms facilitation may take. Paper 4 has a particular focus on an alternative conceptualization of such idea of facilitation and the merging processes of consumption and production in practices.

Third, although this body of literature seeks to answer the question of 'how' value is created, its answers revolve mostly around the 'who'. For example, Grönroos (2008, 303) asks: "If customers are value co-creators, what is the role of the firm? Are firms the main creators of value, or what are they?" In other words, researchers in this stream so far have directed attention to the way value is created in the space between firms (as producers) and customers (as consumers) and what roles the firms and consumers have in this space. Nevertheless, interactions of some sort between consumers and producers have been identified as crucial for value co-creation to take place, but consumers and producers remain separate parties (Grönroos 2011). Grönroos (2011) offers some interesting points of departure by framing consumption and production as processes that merge in value-co creation. But he describes production as a process that firms perform, and consumption as a process that consumers perform. He focuses much on the interplay between firms and consumers, but leaves the territory of the process of consumption as being related to production relatively uncharted, other than stating that direct interaction needs to take place. Most importantly, however, this stream neglects answers related to the understanding of consumption as such a process.

A synopsis of this research stream and its development is that consumers become (co-)producers if direct interaction between firms and consumers takes place during the firm's production phases. However, this literature does not specify any other links of consumption to other forms of production. In focusing on how value is (co-)created between firms and consumers, this literature revolves around who is creating value, but gives indications of how this takes place only in terms of direct interactions between consumers and firms on a conceptual level. In focusing exclusively on interactions between firms and consumers, it does not explicitly consider consumption to be productive other than in the sense of value. However, this logic provides a good starting point

for contemplating interactions between consumption and production, not as consumers and firms, but in terms of practice. Papers 1 and 4 focus on this issue.

(Geertz 1973, 4-5). This suggests that movement of meaning works the other way (bottom-up), too: Not only are “our ideas our values, our acts, even our emotions (...) cultural products” (Geertz 1973, 52), but our ideas, values, acts and emotions are what essentially forms culture. Consumption, then, can be portrayed as being a thread in the weaving of such ‘webs of significance’.

How consumers and their consumption produce culture becomes evident specifically in research on various forms of marketplace cultures—such as subcultures of consumption (e.g., Schouten and McAlexander 1995), consumer tribes (e.g., Cova 1996; Cova, Kozinets, and Shankar 2007a), or brand communities (e.g., Cova and Pace 2006; Luedicke and Giesler 2007; McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig 2002; Kozinets 1997; 1999; Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001; Muñiz and Schau 2005). The notion of tribes in a consumption context derives mainly from the works of authors like Maffesoli (1996) and Cova (1997) and originates from the diagnosis that in their quest for the social link, people gravitate toward and build their own social aggregates that provide them with a sense of belonging, social cohesion, and identity. The word ‘tribe’ is a metaphor that aims to describe these fragmented social arrangements or communities. What becomes particularly interesting is the observation that consumers utilize the market and its palette of symbolic resources and use brands as a kind of social glue and common denominator to connect with others in these specialized consumer tribes. Here, research demonstrates how shared consumption practices or shared interest in a consumption object are grounds for the formation of social collectives and cultures; members develop their own rituals, codes, symbols, values, and languages, which offer identity and distinction: Thus, as Cova, Kozinets, and Shankar (2007b, 4) note, such consumer collectives “produce a range of identities, practices, rituals, meanings, and even material culture itself”. Thus, while consumers gravitate toward such social collectives based on consumption, in turn, these social collectives are social factories producing various facets of consumer culture.

The emphasis on the productive aspects of consumption and consumers as producers of various aspects of culture are not limited to such marketplace cultures, but transcends more generally from CCT-inspired work. For example, previous research has demonstrated—more or less explicitly—that consumers produce symbolic (brand) meanings (e.g., Arnould and Price 1993; Brown, Sherry, and Kozinets 2003; Holt 2002), lifestyles (e.g., Holt 1997), identity and self (e.g., Belk 1988; Elliott and Wattanasuwan 1998; Goulding, Shankar, and Elliot 2002; Schau and Gilly 2003), consumption experiences (e.g., Carù and Cova 2007; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982), social class (e.g., Bourdieu 1984; Holt 1998), their own realities and interpretations (e.g., Cova and Rémy 2007; Elliott 1997), social relationships (e.g., Schouten and McAlexander 1995), rituals (e.g. Wallendorf and Arnould 1991), resistance (e.g., Giesler 2008; Kozinets and Handelman 2004), and brand-related artefacts (e.g., Muñiz and Schau 2007).

Such production, however, is not at all independent of firms, marketers, advertisers, retailers, or any other important commercial or non-commercial

stakeholders. Just as Holt (2004, 359) notes that brands are ‘intertextual constructions’ to which a variety of market players contribute, the same formulation can be transferred to consumer culture. Consumer culture, with all its facets, could be viewed as an intertextual construction between market forces, consumption processes, and various facets of culture in terms of values and symbols (Arnould and Thompson 2005).

This is because CCT does not envision products, services, and brands as being produced in factories, offices, and marketing agencies, but rather it regards them as ‘market-made’ (Arnould and Thompson 2005, 869). That is, they are made and shaped in markets, not in factories. This implies that when viewing consumers and consumption as part of the making of such market-made commodities consumption is an important part, but it remains a part. To consumers, the marketplace offers a rich palette of resources they use for their own purposes, for example to construct their identities. The consumption of these resources, and specific ways of consuming them, offers meaningful ways of being and living (e.g., Campbell 2005; Holt 1997; 1998). Firat and Dholakia (1998, 144) dramatize this by elaborating on how consumption for members of New Age, punk, and grunge subcultures has become their production, as they “construct and signify new and alternative forms of being, in and through their consumption”. Consumption, thus, has been framed as a form of production (Mackay 1997), or ‘a productive process’ (Firat, Dholakia, and Venkatesh 1995, 52), because it is an ‘inherently transforming process’ (Curtin and Gaither 2005, 101).

But these examples of forms of production, lifestyle and identity, depend on symbolic and material resources that can be found in the marketplace and their consumption; as these resources are consumed in certain ways, the lifestyles and identities that result from these processes are market-mediated (Arnould and Thompson 2005; Slater 1997).

Thus, consumers are portrayed as being more than clever ‘readers’ of marketing messages and assimilators of the meaning that marketing managers seek to infuse into their brands. Consumers are active interpreters that shape, transform, re-work, and produce meanings; they work in co-productive ways with marketer-generated resources (Arnould and Thompson 2005). In consumption, consumers engage in a process of symbolic appropriation of objects produced in industrial production, personalizing the ‘things’ they possess and use; that is consumption can be seen as transforming alienable objects into inalienable commodities (e.g., Østergaard, Fitchett, and Jantzen 1999). Therefore, as Arnould (2007; 2008) points out, similarities exist between Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) SDL and CCT. Both regard consumers as co-creators. While SDL regards consumers and firms as co-creators of service, CCT portrays various aspects of culture as co-created in acts of production and consumption by a variety of market players.

On this basis, Arnould (2007) and Arnould and Thompson (2007) call for research that explicitly addresses dialectic consumption/production linkages.

However, few studies have elucidated such linkages in systematic ways. These are described in the following.

First, the study by Hogg, Folkman Curasi, and Maclaran (2004) on the configuration of production and consumption in empty nest households is relevant. These authors find that the major change in households where children move out—hence the term empty nest—brings with it a different configuration of production and consumption to construct ‘family’ and ‘motherhood’. During periods where children are present in the household, production activities—such as making meals and washing clothes—are important vessels of meaning for creating family life. When children move out, the emphasis changes to consumption, such as purchasing and sending ‘care packages’, and consumption of technologies facilitating ‘keeping in touch’—as main methods for constructing ‘family’ and ‘motherhood’. Their study is interesting in the light of the production/consumption debate for the following reasons: First, it suggests that different constellations of production and consumption activities can exist in practicing ‘motherhood’ and ‘family’. Second, both consumption and production activities can serve as carriers of meaning to construct important social categories, such as ‘family’ and ‘mother’; and in that way the activities create specific forms of value. Third, the study demonstrates that although production and consumption co-exist, shifts in emphasis can occur. In this particular study, it is the major change in household members that seemingly triggers the shift from more production-like activities to more consumption-like activities, affecting their relevance for constructing important social categories. Thus, relations between consumption and production may not necessarily have to be equal. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, this study points to the indication that consumption and production are embedded in something people do, in actionable contexts, for example their life circumstances and their understandings of motherhood and family.

Second, Roberts et al. (1988) study on craftsmen who gain intrinsic rewards from their work offers the notion of ‘production as consumption’. They refer to these craftsmen as the ‘fortunate few’ because “Work for its own sake and the experiential aspects (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982) of the production process (...)” are their life (Roberts et al. 1988, 430). In their proposed process model of production and consumption, they envision the craftsman as “selecting and combining various inputs destined to become finished products which will have value for both public and private consumption” (Roberts et al. 1988, 432). Their study is relatively close to Campbell’s (2005) depiction of the craft consumer. But Campbell’s account of the new type of consumer, as well as other studies in the related domain of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) phenomena (e.g., Watson and Shove 2008), emphasize the consumption of the finished products or the resulting experiences of those who are part of the production process, e.g., the craft consumer producing for his or her own consumption. For craftspeople, production activities become the object of consumption,

offering autotelic consumable experiences. Watson and Shove (2008) find that DIY activities are more about enjoyment and meaning than about saving money, and Moisio, Arnould, and Gentry (2013) reveal how such activities can be relevant for identity work and the construction of class-mediated masculinity, offering sites for ‘class-tourism’. In this sense, the productive activities become consumable experiences for those engaged in them, supporting Carù and Cova’s (2007, 7) note that “consumers are not passive agents reacting to stimuli but, instead, the actors and the producers of their own consuming experiences”. But as Moisio, Arnould, and Gentry (2013) point out, these experiences also serve also as sites for the construction and reproduction of social class. This element adds to the interrelatedness between consumption and production in a different way from that portrayed in the blending logic (prosumption). Roberts et al.’s (1988) study acknowledges this type of experience, but the authors explicitly state that finished products may have value not only for the makers’ own consumption, but for public consumption as well. That is, the finished product may also be consumed by other parties.

Third, prior research approaches the entanglement of consumption and production as a process of interagency. Kozinets, Sherry, Storm, Duhachek, Nuttavuthisit, and DeBerry-Spence (2004) find that in the ESPN Zone consumers produce producers’ products at the same time and as much as producers consume consumers’ consumption. Thus, they suggest that both consumers and producers, as entities, are embedded in processes of interagency. This connects back to the idea of firms and consumers operating in each other’s processes (Grönroos 2011).

Fourth, Holt (1995, 3-12) reveals some links of consumption to production in his consumption metaphors. Specifically his ‘consuming as integration’ metaphor—referring to those methods that consumers use to ‘break down the institutional distancing between consumer and consumption object’—highlights the entanglement with production. Here, he identifies three practices: assimilating (perceiving the “baseball world framework as a natural way of thinking and acting”), producing (helping to construct the consumption object), and personalizing (“altering the baseball world to assert the individuality of their bond with professional baseball”). Moreover, his ‘consuming as classification’ metaphor refers to the construction and reproduction of social class boundaries through actions and objects.

These studies emphasize the role consumption has in the fabrication of central facets of culture and thus points to the ‘production in consumption’ or ‘productive consumption’ (de Certeau 1984). To de Certeau (1984), everyday life is productive consumption, encompassing all its seemingly trivial facets. For example, his analysis of walking in the city portrays walking in both consumptive and productive terms (de Certeau 1984, 97-98): “The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered. (...) It is a process of appropriation of the topographical

system on the part of the pedestrian (just as the speaker appropriates and takes on the language); it is a spatial acting-out of the place (just as the speech act is an acoustic acting-out of language); and it implies relations among differentiated positions (...)”. Thus, walking transpires as productive consumption of the city, it constitutes a ‘here and there’ (de Certeau 1984, 99). In walking, walkers take on and act out place.

Consumption is productive in the sense that it produces various forms of outcomes—such as social class, identity, and experience—but also in the sense that consumptive activities seemingly involve productive activities as specifically Holt’s (1995) producing practices entail. The CCT logic configures a specific ontology that treats consumption as the site for the creation of social and cultural reality. Consumer culture theory deals with the relation of consumption and production in various ways, because its central premise is that consumers and consumption are the producers of culture. Thus, the notion of consumer culture does not discount the role of production, but rather ascribes productive aspects, to varying degrees, not only to the spheres of consumption, but also to consumptive activities.

Schatzki and Knorr-Cetina (2001), and from there shaped also by Reckwitz (2002), Warde (2005), Schau et al. (2009), and Magaudda (2011).

The following motivates a practice-theoretical approach on the basis of the review of the entanglement of consumption and production. From the above review, three implications for the study of consumption emerge.

First, studying consumption implies recognizing relationships to production. Consumption holds an analytical category, but shall not be treated singularly and in isolation of production. Most prominently, this is indicated in literatures of prosumption, which highlight the need for paying attention to the spectrum of consumption and production (e.g., Ritzer 2010). As Campbell's (2005) craft consumption highlights, consumption still takes place but is embedded within productive activities. This resonates broadly with Marx' (1971) work suggesting that dialectical relations of consumption and production can be found not only on levels of theoretical abstraction but also on the level of actual processes. While co-creation literature frames such processes in terms of actions of and interactions between firms and consumers, a practice-theoretical perspective introduces the idea of framing such processes as practices. Thus, it shifts emphasis away from the individual subject, or role, but rather suggests viewing production and consumption as being entangled with practices. This speaks to Warde's (2005) practice moments of consumption as embedded within practices, but also recognizes relations to productive aspects of practices. In the context of consumption and production, this means appreciating the dyadic linkages between consumption and production as previous literature has suggested (e.g., Arnould 2007; Arnould and Thompson 2007; Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson 2012; Warde 1992)—but without the necessity of collapsing consumption and production into one category (Firat and Venkatesh 1995). The idea introduced by Schatzki (2005) of regarding practices as 'sites' translates here into practices becoming the site for studying consumption and its entanglement with productive aspects. As an implication, production and consumption must be defined in the light of the site in which they take place—the practices. In other words, consumption and production are not defined as universal categories, but must be understood in terms of the practice in which they take place. Marx recognized the many forms production can take, referring to different sectors of production. However, his reasoning on the entanglement of consumption with production was on a highly abstract level. Regarding practices as the site for consumption and production means paying attention to the relatively immediate forms of consumption and production taking place within this site.

Second, studying consumption involves incorporating mutually constitutive, but not necessarily equal, relations of consumption and production. Ritzer and colleagues (Ritzer 2010; Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson 2012) propose a continuum of consumption and production, which implies that deviations from prosumption to the left and right are possible. Hogg et al.'s (2004) study on the configuration of consumption and production indicates that such shifts of

emphasis of consumption and production can take place. Thus, while recognizing a relationship between consumption and production, this relationship does not necessarily have to be equal. For example, craft consumption involves different activities in which more consumption or production feature prominently.

And third, studying consumption involves acknowledging the role of consumption for the fabrication of social life. Literature within the stream of consumer culture demonstrates how various facets of social life and culture are fabricated through consumption. That is, consumption is portrayed as a productive category in the sense that it is in and through consumption that a variety of aspects of contemporary (predominantly Western) cultures are created and shaped—as reviewed in section 2.1.4. Thus, as dramatized by Arnould and Thompson (2005), consumption can be seen as productive, and consumers are, through their consumption, producers of culture. A practice-theoretical perspective is conducive to this perspective, because it presents a kind of cultural theory through which such culture and its elements can be studied (e.g., Reckwitz 2002; Swidler 2001). Practice theory can be understood as a specific form of cultural theory, because practices resemble collective cultural templates that structure and direct routinized activities and interconnected complexes of behavioural acts that feed into local performances of such templates (Reckwitz 2002; Swidler 2001; Warde 2005). This way, practices resonate with blueprints and an infrastructure for how to do things, and how to understand the things that others do. Practices then serve as the research objects of culture (Swidler 2001). A practice-theoretical perspective hosts the role of consumption for the fabrication of social life and culture through the concepts of performativity and telcoaffectivity (as detailed in section 4.1.1).

A practice-theoretical approach emphasizes how the conduct and enactment of everyday activities is guided by routine practices and implicit know-how and rules, rather than by intentional actions (Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 1996; 2001a; 2002; Turner 2007). The essence of a practice-theoretical lens is to focus on the practices as unit of analysis (Giddens 1984; Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 1996). While this may seem obvious, it is not trivial. In treating practices as the unit of analysis, a practice-theoretical approach de-emphasizes, but does not degrade, the individual subject. A practice-theoretical approach is not about

Specifically the practice-theoretical interest in the ‘how’ of things can be traced back to the ethnomethodological research program (Garfinkel 1967; Holstein and Gubrium 1994)⁷. Ethnomethodology is concerned with the analysis of the procedures people use for achieving different matters of everyday ordinary life (Garfinkel 1967). In this view, ‘reality’ is seen as a social accomplishment and the focus is on the processes by which meanings are socially created, negotiated, maintained, and altered within a specific context of action. The emphasis lies on the practices and actions and how which methods are used for creating, sustaining, and managing a sense of daily life, along with the ways social structures are locally created, sustained, and experienced (Holstein and Gubrium 1994)—rather than considering who performs the practices. Ethnomethodology is of interest, specifically because it shares a common interest with the practice-theoretical approach: Both are perspectives that foreground how elements of social life are organized. For practice theorists, a central question revolves around the organization of a given practice and its organization vis-à-vis other practices (interconnectedness), rather than in the individual subject as such. This thesis is concerned with the question of how consumption operates in relation to practices and productive aspects.

Translating these thoughts to the study of consumption means shifting the focus away from the consumer—as an individual or social role—and toward consumption. The distinction between the consumer and consumption is not trivial, as Warde (2005, 146) notes: in the practice theoretical perspective and its focus on the organization of practice and the embedded moments of consumption, the consumer ‘evaporates’.

What this means is that a practice-theoretical approach to consumption de-emphasizes the consumer as a figure, individual, or social role, but rather takes interest in consumption as it is embedded in practices. This does not mean that the term consumer is to be deleted from academic vocabulary; it still makes

This approach, in turn, implies that to understand consumption one must understand the organization of practices in which it takes place. Practices are “forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (Warde 2005, 133). Practices are the contexts in which routinized actions are carried, things are used and desired, things and actions are understood and may involve a multitude of different actions and patterned activities that interconnect in practices (Schatzki 2001a; Reckwitz 2002).

Schau et al. (2009) analyse practices in terms of their anatomy and physiology. A practice’s anatomy entails understandings in terms of knowledge and tacit cultural templates, procedures in terms of explicit performance rules, and engagements in terms of emotional projects and purposes. The physiology of a practice then describes the ways in which these anatomical parts relate and function together. Practice theorists generally describe bodily routines and skills, rules, understandings, material arrangements, and teleoaffective structures as the core elements interconnected in practices (Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 1996; 2001b; Warde 2005).

Schatzki introduced the notion of teleoaffective structure to account for the fact that the bodily activities comprising practices are not merely linked by certain social rules and understandings, but are also linked and guided by specific ends and emotions. In short, the term teleoaffective structure aims to describe the ends and aspirations of practical activities. Schatzki (2001b, 52-53) defines a teleoaffective structure as “a range of acceptable or correct ends, acceptable or correct tasks to carry out for these ends, acceptable or correct beliefs (etc.) given which specific tasks are carried out for the sake of these ends, and even acceptable or correct emotions out of which to do so”.

Therefore, practice theory accounts for human behaviour as neither exclusively directed by subconscious scripts—as Bourdieu’s habitus suggests—nor as exclusively steered by the free will and intentions of goal-directed individual subjects (Schatzki 1996). Practice theory suggests both. Practical activities are guided by shared templates of doings and understandings, but also by certain acceptable aspirations of their carriers, who strive to achieve certain acceptable ends in and by performing practices.

Essentially, practices involve a tripartite structure. They are constituted in the nexus of objects—doings—meanings (Arsel and Bean 2013; Magaudda, 2011; Schatzki 1996; Shove and Pantzar 2005).

Practices involve objects. Objects are necessary elements in many practices. Carrying out a particular practice oftentimes involves using particular objects in particular ways. Therefore, objects are things to be handled within practices and can be regarded as resources for performing practices. Objects can be physical (e.g., tennis racket) or abstract (e.g., sounds). Consumption is essentially intertwined with objects. Consumption necessitates some material or immaterial consumption object: that which is consumed (an idea, experience, desire, story, product, brand, service, or any other object). Because previous research has demonstrated that the use and appreciation of objects is entangled with practices (Arsel and Bean 2013; Epp and Price 2010; Hui 2012; Magaudda 2011; Shove and Pantzar 2005; Truninger 2011; Warde 2005; Woermann 2012), a practice-theoretical perspective is a promising route for the study of consumption.

Practices involve doings. Practices encompass routinized bodily activities (such as bodily movements, handling things in certain ways), as well as routinized mental and emotional activities (such as talking, reading, and writing). Practices are thus sets of routinized bodily performances that involve mental patterns including know-how, competences, particular ways of interpretation, certain aims, and emotions.

Practices also involve meanings. Meanings arise within the context of a practice. For example, objects gain meaning in the light of the practice (e.g., Epp and Price 2010; Truninger 2011). But practices also produce meaning for their carriers. It is through participation in practices that individuals develop a sense of the world and the self (Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005; Woermann 2012).

All of these elements are co-constitutive of practices and guided by teleoaffective structures. Treating practices as the sites of consumption implies accounting for the different forms of consumption defined in the light of the practice in which it takes place. What this means is that consumption may well be something we do, but it takes various different forms and shapes depending on the context in which these doings take place.

Magauda (2011), Watson and Shove (2008), as well as Reckwitz (2002) and Warde (2005) highlight how material objects are interwoven with the conduct of practices. In most practices, some material object is involved. However, prior literature also indicates that some practices are more about handling objects, while other practices are more about handling subjects. In other words, almost all practices require some object, but a difference arises in how the practice operates with regard to whether that object is a human object or a non-human object or subject (Schatzki 2005; 1996). This distinction is implicitly apparent in Schau et al.’s (2009) analysis of brand community practices. They classify brand-use practices (including grooming, customizing, and commoditizing practices), vis-à-vis, for example, social networking practices (including welcoming, empathizing, and governing practices). Brand use practices are more object-focused, whereas social networking practices are more subject-focused. To dramatize, the act of welcoming an object is different than welcoming a person. Although Østergaard (2011; 2013) indicates that people do perform welcoming as well as grooming rituals to recently acquired brands in sacralisation processes, the welcoming practice as depicted by Schau et al. (2009) operates differently for persons.

Therefore, I propose defining an object-focused practice as a practice that involves a non-human object at the core of the performance. Such practices include, for example, hand-knitting (Hui 2012), brand-use practices (Schau et al. 2009), eating practices (e.g., Cheng et al. 2007), DIY practices (e.g., Watson and Shove 2008), but also motorcycling (e.g., Schouten and McAlexander 1995). In all such practices, an object takes centre stage as the doings are performed on and with non-human objects. Papers 3 and 4 look at electric guitar playing and

I propose defining interpersonal practices as those practices that are performed between human individuals as carriers of that practice. Such practices include Schau et al.’s (2009) community practices of social networking, Arsel and Bean’s (2013) apartment therapists, or Holt’s (1995) socializing practices. The performance of interpersonal practices is directed toward human subjects, and in fact, takes place between at least two individuals. For example, helping a member in an online community by offering advice on a specific problem resembles a specific empathizing practice (Schau et al. 2009) that is directed to the empathizee. Interpersonal practices may also involve non-human objects, but the doings are teleoaffectively directed to individuals rather than to non-human objects.

The practice of gift-giving, for example, is a complex interpersonal practice that has cultural-specific rules, doings, understandings, and teleoaffective structures that not only guide the often ritualistic ways in which gifts are handed over, but also what is deemed appropriate and acceptable as a gift on which occasion. Gift-giving often involves a non-human object, such as a nicely wrapped present, but the practice essentially happens interpersonally—except for the phenomenon of self-gifts where gift-giver and recipient are united in one person (Mick and Demoss, 1990).

The gift as object is part of the performance of gift-giving and serves as a site for negotiating and signifying status, the importance of the relationship between gift-giver and recipient, and so forth. But essentially, gift-giving is about the interaction between gift-giver and gift-recipient. As such, it is tempting to conceive of gift-giving as more ‘social’ than, for example, lawn mowing, but this is misleading because object-focused practices are also social. In fact, for practice theorists, all practices are social (e.g., Schatzki 1996; 2002; Reckwitz 2002). But there are different dimensions to social when it comes to the centrality of the social in terms of interpersonal activities. As Schouten and McAlexander (1995) point out, riding a Harley Davidson has important subcultural and communicative (and hence interpersonal) dimensions that offer shelters for the creation and negotiation of identity; so that motorcycling as an object-focused practice is interwoven with interpersonal community practices.

In other words, in object focused-practices, interaction with some sort of object is at the centre of the practice, while in interpersonal practices the interaction between individuals is the focal point of the practice. This does not stand in conflict with the considerations above (section 2.2.2) outlining that material arrangements are integral parts of practices. As Schatzki (2005) notes, human beings are simply one entity and a specific form of material arrangement:

“By material arrangements, meanwhile, I simply mean set-ups of material objects. Whenever someone acts and therewith carries on a practice, she does so in a setting that is composed of material entities. The material arrangements amid which humans carry on embrace four types of entity: human beings, artefacts, other organisms, and things.”

(Schatzki 2005, 472)

Thus, interpersonal practices are those practices in which human beings are foregrounded as providing the material arrangement as one type of entity. Naturally, blends of various constellations between more object-focused and more interpersonal practices can occur. For example, Holt (1995, 3) structures the actions involved in consumption (practices) with regard to ‘object actions’, and ‘interpersonal actions’. In doing this, he refers to the ways in which people engage directly with consumption objects—which resonates here with the object-focused practices discussed above—and to the ways such objects, or object-focused practices, provide the platform for interacting with other people, referred to here as interpersonal practices. He demonstrates this with baseball spectators engaging in the appreciation, evaluation, and accounting of the baseball game as a consumption object, but also in interpersonal actions of communing and socializing. Similarly, electric guitar playing can be seen in terms of its object-focused dimensions as well as its interpersonal dimension, which become evident in band rehearsal rooms, teaching lessons, and live gigs.

According to this understanding, interpersonal practices can be seen as interaction practices; they are practices of interacting. Like actions, interactions are also integral parts of many practices. Although some sort of interaction is likely to take place in object-focused and discursive practices as well, I refer to interpersonal practices as those practices that are essentially practice templates underlying interaction, such as a specific way of welcoming, conversing, arguing, and so forth.

Interpersonal practices, as argued below in paper 1, are particularly pertinent in (online) social collectives, such as communities and tribes, because they provide the backdrop for members’ interactions. Such social collectives form around a shared interest (see section 2.1.4) that is often a practice, for example, motorcycling, football, cooking, travelling, fitness, guitar playing, and gardening. These social collectives can develop their own specific rules, understandings, and ways of seeing things. They can form their own cultural scripts that may posit the rules of the game of how to consume what in the right way.

It is essentially the performance of interpersonal practices that continuously creates a social collective into existence and that forms such a structured set of social relationships among its members (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001) along with its own rules and cultural scripts. All practices are social, but interpersonal practices are about the social in a different way than object-focused practices. Often, more object-focused practices are surrounded by more interpersonal

As noted by Reckwitz (2002), discursive practices are one specific type of practice.

"In discursive practices the participants ascribe, in a routinized way, certain meanings to certain objects (which thus become 'signs') to understand other objects, and above all, in order to do something."

Reckwitz (2002, 255)

Foucault's (1971; 1972) use of the notion discourse refers, on the one hand, to material and linguistic features that originate from history. But on the other hand, he refers to discourse as a particular way of speaking. Accordingly, discourses are what establish certain fields of culturally and historically situated meanings, orders of truth, or put simply: discourses construct the social world in meaning or what is accepted as 'reality' in a society. A discursive practice then, refers to the process through which such meanings are produced, understood, maintained, challenged, and negotiated.

Discourses can be understood as systems of rule-bound and meaning-giving statements (Fairclough 1995) which construct objects and subjects, produce and reproduce power relations, maintain institutions, and have ideological effects (Parker 1990; 1992; Phillips and Jorgensen 2002). Thus they can be seen "as rhetorical strategies in order to establish their accounts of the world as solid and objective and competing accounts as false and subjective" (Phillips and Jorgensen 2002, 170).

Thus, discursive practices involve linguistic, verbal, and rhetorical patterns and habits (doings); objects and subjects; and meanings in the form of, for example, power and sexuality (Foucault 1971; 1972). Discourses represent ways of handling an object that constructs the handled object. For example, Ahl (2002) shows how the female entrepreneur is discursively constructed in research texts. Here, the specific patterns of writing about female entrepreneurs represent the doings; the female entrepreneur represents the subject of discourse; and the specific identity and positioning of female entrepreneurs versus male entrepreneurs created through this represents the meaning. Thus,

discursive practice constructs, shapes, and reinforces identities and subjectivities through linguistic doings on specific objects and subjects. As Foucault (1972, 49) notes, discourses are thus “practices which systematically form the object of which they speak”.

Where Berger and Luckmann (1966) focus on conversation as the most momentous vessel of accomplishing and maintaining reality, Foucault (1972) regards not only statements brought about through verbal language, but also other forms of statements resulting from a variety of discursive practices, including material and object-focused practices. Specifically Hirschman and Holbrook (1992) suggest treating consumption as such a discursive text. Although in this light, almost any practice may have discursive elements, because it is in and through practices that the social world is accomplished. In particular, I find it helpful to regard verbal and rhetorical discursive practices as one specific type of practice. This is because rhetorical strategies and meaning-giving statements are about handling an object—which may be a brand, product, or person—in a certain (that is rhetorical) way, and in this process culturally specific rules are applied. Although it is possible to ‘read’ the performances of practices as ‘text’, which implies that all practice performances can be discursive, in this thesis I focus on the use of language as discursive practice.

Discursive practices have some sort of outcome—they have (symbolic) consequences for the object involved—which can be a subject-category like the female entrepreneur like Ahl (2002) depicts or an object such as an institution or brand. Discourses portray the object or subject as being involved in specific ways of producing and reproducing particular identities or relationships of power (Foucault 1972). Here, the conception of the author of discursive text is similar to the concept of the carrier of practice described above. Individual authors draw on already existing patterns and rhetorical strategies; they feed from the system of discourses, but they also tweak and alter them, feeding back to the system of discourse. Thus, carriers of discursive practice do not choose entirely freely, but are guided by pre-existing patterns (Foucault 1972). Because discourses involve a set of specific rules, they resonate with the notion of practice. But as Reckwitz (2002) pointed out, in a practice-theoretical approach, discursive practices as linguistic and rhetorical practices are not overruling the material practices (as suggested by Berger and Luckmann 1966); they remain one type of practice.

As mentioned above, the indication that consumption takes place not only within practices, but ultimately for the sake of practices (Warde 2005; Watson and Shove 2008) implies that consumption is not only a function of practice, but also has a function in practice. This suggests further that practices do not only guide consumption as stated by Warde (2005) and others (Shove and Pantzar 2005; Watson and Shove 2008), but that consumption may also take a guiding role in the performance of practices. Consumption objects often serve as resources necessary for the performance of practices and can be both enabling and constraining. This means that on the one hand, consumption can be seen as a form of outcome of practice; but at the same time it can be seen as an important actor within the performance of practice. One way to conceptualize this would be to declare consumption as playing an ambidextrous role vis-à-vis practices. However, based on the implication of previous research (Holt 1995; Watson and Shove 2008), it makes sense to unfold such consumption in terms of its two dimensions: function in and function of practice. This implies also that the notion of consumption as practice moments exceeds the notion of consumptive moments as a temporal reference, such as given by the conception of a moment as a specific point in time.⁸

The indication that consumption is not only an outcome of practice but also plays a vital role in the performance of practice speaks to a performative quality of consumption. As for practice performances, consumptive moments are prone to exert influence on the ‘doings’ (as Schatzki 2010 refers to practice performances). This can be illustrated with the range of studies demonstrating how consumption that takes place within practices is a necessary ingredient of doings—for example free-skiing (Woermann 2012), DIY (Watson and Shove 2008; Moiso, Arnould, and Gentry 2013), or Nordic Walking (Shove and Pantzar 2005)—and can enable and constrain the performances of practices. This suggests that moments of consumption have performative effects on practice performances.

In other words, this understanding of consumption conceptualizes consumption as performative. Here, it is important to note that performativity is different from performance. Practices are entities that are performed by their carriers—these enactments of practices are performances (Schatzki 1996; Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005). “The action is what is done, whereas the performance is the doing of it”, Schatzki (2010, 170) writes. Performativity on the other hand, refers to the capacity to make a difference, to act onto something, and thus to exert influence. Writing in the areas of linguistics and feminism, Judith Butler (1990; 1993; 1997) uses the term performativity to

Traditionally, cultural products can be understood in terms of those products that the (commercial) cultural industry cultural is concerned with, such as literature, films, art, music, and any combination thereof. The players in the cultural production process can typically be understood to be in three camps: producers of cultural products, intermediaries diffusing those cultural products, and finally consumers experiencing cultural products (Lash and Urry 2002; McCracken 1988; Kozinets 2001; Venkatesh and Meamber 2006; Wright 2005). Fiske (1989), however, distinguishes between those cultural products created by the cultural industry as a capitalist society—which he calls mass culture—and those cultural products that transpire from consumers employing mass cultural products as resources in their own meaning-creation processes, which he calls popular culture. Here, particularly, these meaning-creation processes on the consumer side come to the fore in fandom, which has been ascribed productive qualities, with fans reworking and twisting meanings (Fiske 1992). This is especially observable in and facilitated by Internet media (Taalas and Hirsjärvi 2013; Kozinets 1999). In their analysis of an Internet forum on science fiction and fantasy literature, Taalas and Hirsjärvi (2013) show how the afterlife of cultural products living in fandom subcultures can be understood as a mode of 'second production'—a form of production that is not merely production in terms of a system of reworked and twisted reproduction of commercially produced cultural products (popular culture), but a form of post-production as a productive network of exchange. However, this analysis still assumes a divide of cultural production into primary versus secondary production, or the separate spheres of the commercial producers and the producing audiences, fans, readers—or consumers.

This thesis deviates from this understanding. Where Fiske (1989; 1992) treats mass culture and popular culture as sites of ideology, power and resistance, this thesis takes a practice-based account of production: neither as the grand narrative of popular culture, nor in terms of fandom. Rather, in this dissertation project on consumption and practice, I am interested in production in so far as to understand how and in what ways production can be understood on the level of practices as well—as argued above, this interest in production emerges from the interest in consumption. Because it is only in its relation to production that consumption can be understood, this interest is conducive to understanding consumption.

If consumptive activities are embedded as moments in practices, then it is plausible also to contemplate that also productive activities can be embedded in practices. In other words, there are productive aspects inherent in practices. Consider hand-knitting (Hui 2012) or DIY (Watson and Shove 2008). These practices are essentially about shaping and making something. They result in a knitted object, a kitchen, bathroom, a roof, and so forth. Production does not only entail the creation of something; it also includes a ‘change in form’, as Vargo and Lusch (2004) note.

Thus, just like some forms of consumption take place along practices, some sorts of production also take place along the lines of practice performance—if the end result, or product, is some change in form or artefact. To Miller (1987, 112) an artefact is the product of human labour. If hand-knitting and DIY (and craft consumption, for that matter) are practices that result in artefacts and shape in forms, then it is reasonable to conceive of production as taking place in and through performances of the practices of hand-knitting and DIY. Or, more precisely, that these practices involve some sort of productive human labour embedded within them, practical procedures and doings. Although paper 4 explicitly departs from this notion of production as productive labour, the point is: Although Warde (2005) introduced the notion of moments of

consumption, a corresponding notion for moments of production is currently underdeveloped. This is surprising in so far as literature has called for considering consumption not as singular but as entangled with production.

Although hand-knitting and DIY could be seen as more producerly practices, as they are about making and shaping things, productive aspects also are evident within other practices such as free-skiing. As Woermann (2012) points out, in the free-skiing subculture he studied the making and sharing of films is deeply interwoven within the free-skiing practice. Here, the making of video is not simply about making the video; producing video is a part of the practice. Such production, however, cannot be compared with the production that Alvin Toffler envisions in his depiction of the rise of the prosumer, because as mentioned above, he refers to substitution. But this does not quite capture the production going on in, for example, the free-skiing practice (Woermann 2012). Here, free-skiers do not produce these videos to avoid purchasing commercial skiing videos. In other words, they do not substitute. Rather, the making of videos appears as a meaningful portion of the practice's teleoaffective structure and as such becomes part of the performance of free-skiing. Production takes place alongside the performance of free-skiing and is needed for the practice as such, as Woermann (2012) points out.

Furthermore, Chaplin (2001) demonstrates how holiday homeowners work on their houses as a form of vocational leisure, consuming their 'productive activities' as an appreciated variation of ordinary life. Thus, these activities appear as vessels of meaning and forms of leisure. As Deci (1975) notes, carrying out an activity can provide intrinsic satisfaction in itself—that is, it can offer autotelic rewards. Consequently, DIYers derive satisfaction from both, doings and end results (Chaplin 2001). In this sense, the productive activities, or work, become consumable experiences. Similarly, Meamber (2000) frames artists as simultaneous producers and consumers of their art, touching upon the notion of 'production as consumption' as put forward by Roberts et al. (1988).

This previous research pinpoints the interrelatedness between consumptive and productive moments: In this specific case of an object-focused practice, the productive moments become autotelic consumption experiences, offering a more fine-grained resolution to the notion of consumers as the producers of their consumption experiences (Carù and Cova 2007b). The idea of complementing consumptive moments with productive moments on the level of practices poses questions regarding the composition of practices with respect to their entangled consumptive and productive moments.

Here, Schatzki's (2005) illustration of educational practices, which can be seen as a form of interpersonal practice, gains relevance. Schatzki (2005, 472) notes that such interpersonal practices contain chains of actions and reactions:

"A teacher poses a question, students raise their hands, the teacher calls on one or more of them, answers are ventured, the teacher or other students respond — this chain occurs entirely within education practices. It also transpires as part of these

generate more money from the advertisers, and the owners aim to keep existing members happy, attached, and engaged. Because this community media business model is built around the idea of providing a technological infrastructure that then is filled with content entirely from its members, this can be seen as a case of the 'working consumer' (Cova and Dallì 2009).

The question of how to ensure that the community experience is so valuable that people chose to become members (membership is free), produce content regularly, and decide to maintain their membership is crucial for operating a sustainable business in the form of community media. But, as argued later on, community experience is not made up entirely out of productive moments. Naturally, for consumers to join, stay, and participate, some form of value must be at play, also in terms of consumptive moments. We received great support from the two community owners, who had a genuine interest in a study within their community to better understand the processes in the community ('what is going on how') as well as the interplay and mix between different aspects of community participation.

deal with constructing both the original 'old' product as well as the 'new' product, appearing in the same suit as the original product.

The formerly Swedish brand Hagström provides a rich example. Hagström relaunched their brand after a 20-year hiatus through licensing to a third party, and relocated manufacturing from Sweden to China. The commonly accepted business practice of licensing and outsourcing manufacturing to cheaper parties and locations triggers rich discursive struggles in the marketplace over the consumption object, the company's guitars.

being where the practice takes place, because they transpire in different locations.

Although practical understanding and teleoaffective structures are prescribed by the practice, they are inscribed and embodied in their carriers and their activities. Thus, a practice-theoretical endeavour has to draw on multiple sources to collect empirical material that represents the organization of a practice. In the simplest terms, this means studying what practitioners do, what they say, and what they say they do (Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005). A qualitative approach is particularly suitable for this endeavour (Halkier and Jensen 2011; Halkier, Katz-Gerro, and Martens 2011).

Thus, the studies in this dissertation adopt a combination of a variety of qualitative approaches including participant observation (Atkinson and Hammersley 1994), interviews in practice contexts (Arnould and Wallendorf 1994; Bengtsson and Östberg 2006; Thompson 1997; Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989), netnography (Kozinets 1997; 1998; 2002b; 2010), diary study (Bolger, Davis, and Rafaeli 2003), and the study of documents—as outlined in the individual papers. Thus, I researched practices through observation of their local performances and through their carriers' linguistic constructions, representations, and explanations. This means observation is a good means to move toward the activities and procedures, bodily movements, and the handling of objects; meanwhile, listening in and asking questions reveals particular insights into practical understandings and teleoaffective structures. In the case of discursive practices, the practice is linguistic practice. These considerations resonate with an ethnographic way of knowing as an epistemological stance that relevant knowledge can only be created from within contexts.

When talking about practices, their carriers construct and reproduce practices and their performances. This speaks to Berger and Luckmann (1966), who stress the importance of language as a vessel of the social construction of reality. But in a practice-theoretical approach, these linguistic constructions and reproductions of practices are paired with attention to bodily doings. Specifically, interpretive consumer research has developed the tendency to overemphasize language and consumption narratives as the major tool to assess and understand consumer behaviour, resulting in calls for a more balanced approach to ethnographic consumer research. For example, Peñaloza and Cayla (2006, 287) note that “we must go beyond the fetish of the narrative as the ultimate measure of consumer behaviour”. The research approach taken in this study is generally embedded in this line of argumentation. But the benefits of narrative experiences and textual representations are also recognised. The practice-theoretical flavour seems to balance the need for attention to the material and the symbolic as well as activities and understandings of them. I found interesting guidance in Ruth and Otnes' (2006) etiquette of qualitative research for practical matters.

The overarching motivation for selecting a particular approach, or combination of approaches, is grounded in the necessity of capturing and constructing relevant empirical material on the organization of the practice under investigation and in being where the practice is. Thus, the selection of contexts follows the idea of utilizing contexts as a means of facilitating relevant insights (Arnould, Price and Moisio 2006). These considerations are briefly outlined in the following.

For studying consumption and its entanglement with productive aspects within online community practices, I employed a netnographic non-participant approach to gain insights into the mode of operation of the gardening community through practices. Netnography is essentially ethnography on the Internet (Kozinets 2002b; 2010). Because the nature of my research interest resonates with the agenda of ethnography, this approach served as a starting point for investigating consumptive and productive moments in online community practices. Here, the technological infrastructure of the community was particularly helpful because of its transparency: Everything is publicly archived in the categories of 'forums', 'individual member profiles', 'questions', and 'latest ideas'. Because everything is archived on an individual member profile, it is possible to trace what person X wrote in forum B on a specific day, and how person Y responded to person X's question. This means that the interactions between members (action inter action) can be observed. In the context of interpersonal practices, initiating an episode of conduct or participating in it through writing (or talking) represents the productive moments, as explained in paper 1. Thus productive moments are readily observable in everything that is visible on the community sites, and in its contents.

In order to capture the lived experience of the carriers of community practices, a diary approach is useful. Having carriers of practices describe what they do how and why, and also how they feel, allowed to gain insights into the mental properties of practices (understanding, teleoaffective structures) and the effects they have on carriers (performativity). The diary approach is particularly useful, because it facilitated capturing specifically the consumptive moments of interpersonal practices. In interpersonal practices, consumptive moments are experiences of interaction (see paper 1). In their diaries, study participants reflected on their teleoaffective (and value-laden) experiences of interaction by constructing introspective narrative accounts of their participation and engagement in the online community practices of the gardening community (an overview of respondents is provided in table 2 in the appendix).

During the next 4 weeks, please make an entry into this diary after every time you visited ██████████ or every time you came to think about the community, its members, or its content.

Please feel free to use as much space and as many pages as you need to express your experiences and reflections in any way. Please focus on the following:

To study consumption and its entanglement with productive aspects within electric guitar playing, I opted for an ethnographic-inspired approach. As Thompson (1997, 451) notes, ethnographic analysis is suitable for marketing research that aims to “analyze the social scripting of consumption through rituals and other types of collectively shared practices”. My ethnographic approach is detailed in paper 3. It involved participant observation in band rehearsal rooms, studio recording sessions, sound-checks, live gigs, and retail settings—hanging out and asking questions—as well as 20 in-depth interviews with guitar players (an overview of respondents is provided in table 3 in the appendix).

To study these issues within the gardening community, I utilized the material collected for paper 1. That is, I mainly relied on rich diary material and netnographic observation of the gardening community, as detailed in paper 4. I supplemented the netnographic material collected for paper 1 with netnographic material that explicitly focused on gardening. The analysis focused

For studying consumption and its entanglement with productive aspects in discursive practices, I used a combination of netnographic inquiries in forums relating to guitar gear, in-depth interviews with guitarists and a manager, participant observation, and document study for the following reasons. In discursive practices, the productive moments are inherent in the rhetorical and discursive 'constructing' the nature of an object or subject (which is in the studied case the nature of the Hagström/Hagstrom retro brand). Thus, an approach is needed that provides access to such meaning-giving systems of statements, or discourses. Here again, the Internet provides an advantage: Discussions in forums and blogs are occurring without researcher stimulus and are self-transcribing—in the sense that discursive statements and discussions are available as written text. Thus, a netnographic approach is suitable for capturing and immersion into these discussions. Unlike the online community practices studied in paper 1, which are bound to the online sphere, the

discursive practices under investigation here are not naturally limited to online forums and blogs.

Thus, I conducted complementary in-depth interviews with guitarists to allow for triangulation with the material collected online. To understand the realm of the discursive practices, and help facilitate researcher sensitivity to the discursive issues, disputes, and negotiations at hand, it was necessary to immerse into the marketplace in which these discourses are embedded. However, the quotes from ‘consumers’ presented in paper 2 are netnographic material, to pinpoint the collective nature of this discursive re-enchantment.

Through participant observation at a Swedish guitar fair—a guitar fest with hundreds of brands exhibiting their products—my co-author and I familiarized ourselves with the marketplace and learned about the guitar marketplace culture—what is deemed ‘normal’¹⁰ and ordinary, but also extraordinary. Here, we paid specific attention to brands’ presentation of their country-of-origin and references to specific manufacturing techniques. This allowed us to contextualize the specific discursive processes we studied in relation to the guitar marketplace (culture). Because these discursive processes revolve around the brand Hagstrom/Hagström, we collected relevant documents that informed us on the historical trajectories of the brand in order to contextualize these processes.

All in all, the empirical approach was set to study the process of discursive authenticating re-enchantment practices and to allow for triangulation between different materials. The focus on processes and ‘how’ means including relevant carriers of the discursive practices, no matter ‘who’ they are (in this case: retailers, brand owners, ‘consumers’/guitarists, and reviewers).

quantitative approach shares the ontological assumptions of the diary study, but presents a different epistemological route toward acquiring knowledge on these subjective experiences.

Although a qualitative approach is more suitable for studying the nature of consumption and its relation to production within practices, a quantitative approach presents different opportunities. First, it allows an overlooking view on the phenomenon under investigation because of its capability to present aggregated results. Second, it allows studying the phenomenon over a larger number of respondents. In the specific case of study I, a diary study with $n=205$ handwritten diaries would not have been possible. A large sample size is not valuable by itself, as generalizable results do not indicate automatically that

the approach suits the purpose of study. Third, a quantitative approach allows insights specifically into the differential effects of different forms of consumptive moments of community practices.

The quantitative approach opted for in paper 1 is an explorative quantitative approach. This means it contributes to theory building rather than theory testing. At the heart of most quantitative approaches is the formation of hypotheses, which are incrementally deducted from theory, and their successive testing for significance. In an explorative quantitative approach, however, there is no up-front hypothecation, or deduction. Of course, questions have to be formulated, which is a form of deduction, but that holds true also for many forms of interviewing, such as structured and semi-structured interviewing. In technical terms, the explorative quantitative approach uses a different estimator for modelling results than more mainstream SEM techniques.

Diary respondents were recruited on a voluntary opt-in basis and informed about the research purpose and the procedure, with the possibility of opting out in any stage of the research process, and the purpose of the study, as it would result in the use of the provided material for conference presentations,

As for the survey study, respondents were also recruited on a voluntary opt-in basis via the community's home page, similar to the procedure concerning diaries. In the survey, participants could choose not to answer questions revealing personal or potentially sensitive information, such as age, while other questions regarding purely the experience of participation required answers in order to proceed with the next set of questions. The results were used on an aggregated statistical level and no personal-level information was used in the quantitative analysis. Participants could voluntarily choose to participate in a drawing to win one of the gardening vouchers and for that, they had to provide an email address to allow for communication in case they won.

For the interviews conducted with twenty guitar players and one manager, I obtained informed consent. Interview respondents were informed about the nature of the research subject, purpose, and procedure and the use of the material for academic purposes, including conference presentations, research articles, and dissertation writing; they were given the option to opt out during any stage of the research process. I offered all interviewees anonymity and a pseudonym, but the majority (16 out of 20) of guitar players declined this offer, saying it was not necessary. Three guitar players did not have an opinion on this topic, and only one asked for anonymity in the beginning of the interview. But when I asked the respondent to pick a pseudonym, this person declined anonymity. This indicates that the nature of the research topic is not a sensitive one, and is unlikely to harm respondents if identities are revealed. Since no one requested or insisted on being cited with their real name, I chose to provide pseudonyms for all respondents. As for the manager, no name pseudonym was used—this respondent is only referred to as 'manager', which emphasizes the interest not in the human subject, but as a carrier of practice. Later, when

writing the article, I contacted the manager and sent the particular excerpt of the transcribed interview that I would like to use in the article and asked for permission to quote this specific part. Although the manager had agreed earlier to allow his interview to be published, I felt that the nature of the excerpt justified a double check with the manager, who granted permission to use that specific excerpt.

In participant observation in band rehearsals, studios, sound checks, and concerts, I introduced myself as a researcher crafting a dissertation on the topic of guitar playing, gear, and sound to the people that were present. I usually met up with a guitar player, or established contact beforehand via mail or phone explaining the research nature and procedure, so that these contacts informed their band members and other people present about my role as a researcher, or introduced me to the others present. During concerts, in the observation of a guitar fair, and during the observation in musical instrument stores, it was more difficult to reveal my role as a researcher. However, whenever I chatted with respondents and told them I was writing a dissertation on guitar playing, the topic served well to get into a conversation and evoke interest. I had the feeling that most respondents were quite intrigued by the idea of explaining their perspectives, understandings, and procedures of guitar playing; explicating their thoughts and reasoning about the 'perfect' sound; and elaborating on their own guitar gear. In short, most respondents seemed happy to talk to me, also for an extended time period. Several guitar stores did not allow taking photographs or recording, but were happy to allow me to talk to their customers, as long as it did not interfere with potential purchases.

The study of documents involved collecting publicly available information in publication outlets including newspaper articles from a Swedish newspaper database offered by the university library; press releases available through the Hagstrom websites; and images, advertisements and retailer websites available on the Internet. No sensitive information was collected or used in terms of financial, accounting, and marketing/sales data. As for the magazine review articles excerpted in paper 2, I contacted the editors-in-chief of the respective magazines to ask permission for quoting excerpts from the articles in question. I formulated an email explaining that I was writing a dissertation article for publication, the research topic, and the specific excerpt as well as the way it would be cited in the article and in the reference list. The editors-in-chief granted permission to use these excerpts.

Ethical considerations in netnographic work are considered to be rather complex (Kozinets 2002b; 2010; Markham and Buchanan 2012). Even though recommendations are constantly in the making, for example by the Ethics Working Committee of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), there is no universal set of official rules for Internet research ethics (Markham and Buchanan 2012). Rather, a case-based approach considering the particularities of the nature of the research and the collection and use of internet-based material is recommended (Markham and Buchanan 2012). Kozinets (2002b; 2010) identifies four key considerations regarding the ethics of netnography: 1) the question of whether online communities should be considered public or private places; 2) informed consent; 3) avoiding potential harm to participants; and 4) the representation of empirical material.

However, these four considerations are related. According to Eysenbach and Till (2001), the question of whether informed consent is needed or not is determined by the nature of the Internet community as public or private. They state that collecting communication that is considered private necessitates obtaining informed consent, whereas the collection of communication that is considered public does not (Eysenbach and Till 2001). So how can it be determined whether communication can be considered private or public?

Eysenbach and Till (2001) suggest considering three characteristics of the researched online community: 1) The communications within an online community can be considered as private if there is some form of log-in, registration, or subscription needed in order to gain access to the communications. If the community is such a closed group, members are likely to consider their community as a private space. 2) The quantity of actual or projected members, users, or lurkers in a community indicates how private a community can be considered. The more members, users, or lurkers there are or can be assumed to be present, the more public the community can be considered. In other words, someone who comments on a video that has already had 15 million views and 3,000 comments must assume that their comment is likely to be seen by others. 3) Local community codes and norms, which are often described in site documents, can give clues about whether or not the community is intended as a private or public space.

According to Eysenbach and Till (2001), informed consent is not necessary if the research incorporates non-intrusive and merely passive analysis (observation and download) of postings and communication, given that the material is made anonymous in the research process.

This thesis mobilizes netnography for several purposes in papers 1, 2, and 4, but uses a non-participant unobtrusive and purely observational approach: in paper 1 for becoming familiar with the online community, its cultural codes and values—to get an idea of how the community works and what is generally going on; to look at what gardening community members write and publish (productive moments); in paper 2, reading statements and conversations in

forums revolving around guitars, brands, and Hagström/Hagstrom in particular; and in paper 4 analysing representations of gardening practice. No community used in this collection of empirical material required a log-in, registration, or any other form of subscription in order to view this material and no community stated in their terms of service that the communities' contents are not to be seen by the world. Further, following Kozinets' (2002b) advice, only those communities with a large number of members were considered, as these are likely to be more interesting due to a corresponding higher number of conversations and topics—there is more going on. Therefore, members of these communities are likely to assume that they do not operate in private spheres. The names of the communities are not mentioned and pseudonyms for members were used as early as possible in the analysis and in subsequent representation of empirical material in an effort to prevent community members from potential harm.

Whereas the material collected in papers 1 and 4 take an interest in the content of communication, the material collected for paper 2 takes an interest more in the form of communication, i.e., discourses as rhetorical patterns and strategies. According to Ess and the AoIR ethics working committee report (2002, 8), "in either case (i.e., whether it is the form or content that is most important for the researcher), if the content is relatively trivial, doesn't address sensitive topics, etc., then clearly the risk to the subject is low." Because the contents of the material used in this thesis—gardening, communication about gardening, guitar playing and communication about guitar brands—can be considered to be relatively trivial and not sensitive (e.g., Langer and Beckman 2005), this should reduce potential harm to community members of this research. I have been in contact with some community members, for example to follow up on questions and answers, and I was met with great support. Similarly, the owners of the studied gardening community provided me with generous support and permissions.

electric guitar playing. Guitar players employ certain consumptive constellations as means to the end of achieving a 'good' (desirable, acceptable) practice performance. It is 'acceptable' to be influenced by the types of objects used and to employ them as actors in the overall performance. Thus, the performativity of such consumptive moments—appreciating and using objects for the (enabling) influence they exert—is engrained in the teleoaffective structure. This is particularly evident in the position I characterize as 'sound comes from the gear' and the enabling agentive qualities of the consumption constellation as specified in paper 3. In paper 4, the moments of consumption relating to facilitation come with the teleoaffective understanding of helping improve practice objects in their capacities as carriers of productive moments.

On the other hand, performativity is also engrained in procedures; consumptive practice moments are nested within practice performances as procedural elements of the overall organization of practices as doings—objects—meanings (Magauda 2011). In other words, their performative qualities originate from being procedural parts of the organization of practices. This is particularly evident in the discursive processes analysed in paper 3. As Foucault (1972) and Butler (1993) point out, discursive practices have symbolic consequences for the objects involved as they portray the objects or subjects involved in specific ways. In this sense, they are by definition performative. In other words, it is the organizing template of the discursive practice that shapes and forms the consumption within it, but also determines the 'effects' on other objects involved.

This slightly modified understanding of performativity put forward here thus regards practices as not only being performative, but also the enjoined moments of consumption within practices. Moments of consumption are capable of making a difference, exerting influence, and acting onto other entities. Such entities include carriers of practice (e.g., community members in paper 1), meanings (e.g., authenticity of the Hagstrom brand in paper 2), doings (e.g., guitar playing in paper 3), and objects (sound and garden in paper 4).

Schatzki (1996) asserts that practices have effects on their carriers; their performances act on the actions, thoughts, and sense of self of their carriers and create teleoaffective experiences. Consumptive moments taking place within practices appear as mediators enjoined with this performativity not only for practice carriers, but also for doings, meanings, and objects.

Combining these two dimensions maps four conceptualizations of consumption as practice moments as ingredient, momentum, transformation, and consequence. These conceptualizations derive from taking on different perspectives or viewpoints on consumptive moments. Each conceptualization foregrounds certain qualities of consumptive moments useful for describing the operation of consumption in relation to practices and productive aspects. Thus, it is important to note that these consumptive moments are not mutually exclusive, but represent a change of perspective. Certain aspects of consumption as ingredient, momentum, transformation, and consequence may

be specifically foregrounded in certain practices, variations of performances, or different practical understandings of the same practice. Specifically, papers 3 and 4 highlight that within electric guitar playing, different practical understandings exist with regard to the creation of sound. On the one hand, the strand 'sound comes from the fingers' places less importance on gear as acceptable means to the creation of sound than attention it pays to bodily skills. On the other hand, the camp of 'sound comes from the gear' particularly appreciates the material arrangements within guitar playing as acceptable and desirable means to that end. Thus, in the purist practical understanding, the consumptive moments enjoined with electric guitar playing are more procedural ingredients, while in the gear-head practical understanding, the consumptive moments enjoined with electric guitar playing resonate more with momentum.

In the following, I elaborate on this conceptualization of consumption as moments in practices based on the findings of all four papers. I explicitly engage here also with productive aspects from which these consumptive moments cannot be isolated—or better, they have to be understood in relation to productive aspects. Like Daniel Miller's (1987) idea that objects and subjects are defined through their relation, similarly, consumptive moments cannot be separated from the productive aspects entangled with them. But, as I will show below, these different conceptualizations present an opportunity to engage with such linkages in various ways.

example when a member browses the archives, or reads a personalized note; these are vicarious and direct consumptive moments essential to community practices. Participation in such online community practices would not be possible without writing or reading. Thus, writing, which is more of a producerly action, and reading, which is more of a consumerly action, take place in the performances of community practices—as Schatzki (2005) illustrates with his example of educational practices. Thus, engagement with an online community is structured by participation in community practices (Schau et al. 2009), but participation in community practices is composed of consumptive and productive moments. Paper 1 foregrounds how specifically the consumptive moments enjoined in community practice performances are crucial, value-creating ingredients of practices, even if it is a simple ‘thank you’ note that matters to carriers of community practices.

In the discursive practice studied in paper 2, consumption can also be understood as a procedural ingredient. The paper reveals how the rhetorical strategies of re-enchanting craft discourses use other brands (such as Volvo and Saab, but also competitors such as Epiphone), countries (such as Sweden, with a focus on the specific handicraft cultures of the Swedish region in which the traditional Hagström brand was located), artists (such as celebrity guitarists and bands but also celebrity models such as Christina Lindberg), professions (such as the luthier in general and Jimmy D’Aquisto in particular), and elements of popular culture (such as the classic rock anthem ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin) as consumptive moments in the discursive practice. That is, this form of consumption is an ingredient that takes place in the performance of the discursive practice.

Discursive practices are not only inherently productive in the sense of producing or transforming the ‘reality’ of some object or subject (see transformation). But within the performances of discursive practices, text is produced. This text may be speech, but also as the case in paper 2, blog posts, community forum entries, promotional text, retailer descriptions, reviews, or statements in and responses to videos. Without such productive moments, there would not be discursive practice. These productive moments are entangled with the consumptive moments depicted above that are conducive to the performance of discursive practice. This means that consumptive as well as productive moments are inherent parts of the discursive practice that helps compose it. In the context of the production and consumption of medieval events, Taalas (2006, 298) refers to the production process not only being about “the production of the organizational end product, good or service; it is also referring to employing cultural practices in making a cultural event”. In this light, practices are employed for the making of events. In paper 2, this is illustrated in a similar but different way. Here, in discursive practices, ‘craftsmen’ and ‘luthier’ practices are employed as purely symbolic resources in the discursive production or making of the Hagstrom brand.

In paper 3, the consumption of gear is an ingredient of guitar playing. Even those guitarists who subscribe to the purist camp consume a minimum amount of gear in order to perform the practice, but they also consume the idea of not consuming too much gear. This form of anti-consumption or the rejection of consumption connects back to Baudrillard's (1998/1970) statement quoted in the beginning of this thesis, that such rejection of consumption is very much about consumption at heart. Specifically here, consumptive moments can be understood as a necessary ingredient of practice performances for both the 'purist' and 'gear-head' camp. Thus, these aspects are in line with prior conceptualizations of consumption as embedded in practices—as taking place within practice performances (e.g., Shove and Pantzar 2005; Warde 2005).

Consumptive moments are ingredients of practice performance. As such, their performativity is more procedural and a function in practice. Therefore, consumptive moments are functional within practice, as ingredients in the procedures that practice performances entail.

The momentum that consumption can give to the performance of practice is particularly illustrated in paper 3. Here, guitarists form specific consumption constellations with the shared understanding that the consumption of specific material arrangements matters when it comes to the creation of sound, creativity, playing, and the construction and communication of desirable artistic images and ideas. Thus, the consumption of objects is performative in the practice of electric guitar playing, because it has the power to both enable and constrain playing, creativity, and communication. Consumption is not only an ingredient of the practice, but a decisive protagonist in the practice that is capable of shaping, and moulding guitar playing. In this way, consumptive moments as momentum resonate broadly, but differently, with Latour's (2005) mediators. Latour mainly writes about the social processes that shape and form practices in terms of practice templates. I borrow his idea of mediation, not to refer to social processes and actants that shape and produce social order, but with regard to the performances of practices. Thus, this foregrounds the more empirical and local aspects of practices—that is, their performances. Here, the formation of consumption constellations is an acceptable—yet negotiable and not undisputed—means to the end of playing electric guitar. The findings in paper 3 allow for understanding consumption constellations as mediators between consumptive moments and productive aspects of guitar playing, because of their power to give momentum to the producerly aspects of guitar playing (crafting sounds, recording, playing concerts, songwriting, and so forth). This understanding is nested within the teleoaffective structure of electric guitar playing and the formation of consumption constellation in the pursuit of this practice. The consumption here holds not only functional qualities (Boyd and Levy 1963; Levy 1978) enabling and constraining the crafting of certain sounds, but it also holds symbolic qualities in this practice in terms of communicative ends.

Paper 4 foregrounds how consumptive moments are directed toward assisting objects as carriers of productive moments through a structure of facilitation. Thus, these consumptive moments have the function in practice to aid productive moments. For example, guitar players turn to the marketplace and consume the experience and judgement of luthiers, who assist not only in improving playability of instruments, but also in shaping ingredients of the total material arrangements in which the instruments are embedded. This was demonstrated specifically when one respondent exchanged his amplifier for an amplifier recommended by a luthier. The practical understanding of consumptive moments revolving around skill, judgement, and commitment is hosted by the teleoaffective structures of both electric guitar playing and gardening, as described in paper 4. These consumptive moments include the appreciation of objects for the purposes of providing momentum to the performance of practice. In the teleoaffective structures of guitar playing and gardening, consumption is anchored not merely as an ingredient—rather, consumption emerges specifically as an appropriate means to provide

momentum to the performance of practice in terms of delivering desired results, resonating with Sennett's (2008) understanding of craftsmanship as the desire to do well for its own sake. Here, paper 4 notes how consumptive moments have re-vitalizing and fuelling effects for deepening the teleoaffective engagement to assist objects in their role as carriers of productive moments—striving for improved overall practice performance and outcome. In this way, consumptive moments provide momentum.

badging/milestoning and social empathizing fosters positive emotions of pride, affection, positive self-esteem, and delight. Community members actively seek such desirable direct consumptive moments with an understanding that they provide such gratification.

That is, community members as carriers of community practices are aware of the value-creating effects of such consumptive moments. This is explicitly foregrounded in instances where members reflect on the benefits of productive moments for other members. The statement made by one member “I tend to add something, as it must be tough not to receive anything at all” indicates how members are aware that productive moments potentially create value on the consumer side of the performance. Because these direct consumptive moments ultimately have the ability to transform members’ level of attachment to the community, paper 1 illustrates the transformative qualities of consumptive moments.

Paper 2 demonstrates how enchanting craft discourses operate with regard to the use of signs and symbols as consumptive moments in the discursive practice and how these elements are appreciated as objects and used for the transformation of the Hagstrom brand. Essentially, this paper presents a case of the co-production of brand meaning to which a variety of market players contribute—in the intertextual making of the Hagstrom brand, more precisely its authenticity brand meanings. This production of brand meaning is about transformation in two ways: First, it is about the transformation of (old) Hagstrom into (new) Hagstrom. And second, it shows the transformation of Hagstrom from a disenchanting and rationalized mass producer to an enchanted craft producer. But crucially, the paper shows how this transformation takes place via consumption. These kinds of consumption, which take place within discursive practices, have been underemphasized in prior literature. The signs and symbols employed in the discursive making of Hagstrom are not only ingredients of discourse, but are used to produce re-enchantment, and this re-enchantment contributes to transforming brand meaning through re-authentication. Thus, this paper makes the case of authenticity as a social production that is achieved through practices, and pays attention to the transforming nature of consumptive moments of this practice. A discourse is performative, because it contributes to the constitution of the ‘reality’ of an object or subject that it describes. It is through discourses that meanings are reworked and objects and subjects are created and transformed, but the use of consumptive material in this process is conducive to this transformation. However, the performativity of these consumptive moments is a function of the discursive practice. Paper 2 demonstrates this transformation of inauthentic to authentic, of mass production to craft production, that is carried out by many carriers of the discursive practice—including retailers, brand owners, consumers, and other important stakeholders. The point here is that it is the discursive practice that transforms the brand meaning of Hagstrom brand, but that consumptive moments brings transformative cards to the table.

In paper 4, consumptive moments as transformation are also evident, but in a slightly different understanding. It demonstrates the transformation that is intertwined with consumptive moments—for example, the transformative qualities of consumptive moments are evident in the case of experiencing the commitment of fellow gardeners which can have transformative effects on practical understanding and teleoaffective engagements. Here, one gardening community member states how reading another member's blog post and experiencing the commitment and devotion another member puts into gardening has changed his “whole gardening ethos”. This indicates how particular consumptive moments have the ability to transform not only intra-practice teleoaffective engagements (“so inspiring to read this level of commitment”) but also as a function of practice, “changed the way I think about living here”.

consumers act as resource integrators of the resources provided by firms. In this view consumers create value because they integrate market offerings as resources in their own value-creation activities. However, the conceptualization of resource integration requires something into which the resources can be integrated. This would be the practice. This means that as a consequence of participation in practices, the carriers of practice act as resource integrators—that is as consumers. And through this, carriers of practice act as producers in the sense portrayed in SDL literatures.

Consider the momentum-giving qualities of the gear deployed in electric guitar playing (paper 3). For example, respondents explain that "your playing absolutely sucks when you have a shit sound" and that "Good sounds make you want do something. That's what it's about. That's why we play around with this... all this stuff", with 'stuff' being the guitar rig or, in theoretical terms, the consumption constellation. The agentic qualities of the formation of the material arrangements depicted in paper 3 pinpoint the importance of consumptive moments in the practice of electric guitar playing and their abilities to 'make or break' a performance. However, consumptive moments are not to be seen in isolation—consumption of a guitar rig alone is not productive in practice-theoretical terms. But as a moment within practices, the use and appreciation of the rig gains relevance in terms of its abilities to provide momentum to the practice. The consumptive moment is performative in the practice of guitar playing and it is in this way that it participates in making the performance. This includes not only the 'sound' element, as the excerpted statements above allure to, but also the production of meaning. The teleoaffective communicative end of the formation of consumption constellation suggests that a range of particular objects does not only influence

Turning to transformation, consider the symbolic production of Hagstrom, which takes place through the deployment of consumptive moments in this process (paper 2). As such, these consumptive moments can be considered as productive in the sense of making the Hagstrom brand, more specifically brand meanings relating to authenticity and the manufacturer as a craft producer (see transformation). But they can also crucially be seen as productive in the sense of unmaking the disenchantment and its effects that result from the brand's rationalization process. Again, the consumptive moments are not productive in and of themselves, but they are deployed as discursive means in the production of meaning. Here, they are performative, but not in the sense of giving momentum to the performance of discourse. The teleoaffective roots of using symbols, images, and ideas in the discursive re-enchancement practices depicted in paper 2 are not on similar grounds as the deployment of consumption constellations in electric guitar playing. They do not serve primarily to enhance

the performance of discursive practice—but they serve essentially the transformation of the Hagstrom brand that takes place through the discursive practice. As a performative function of this discursive practice, the ‘reality’ of the Hagstrom brand is transformed through the deployment of consumptive resources in this process. The physical guitars are still produced in a factory by Hagstrom; but the semiotic production looked at in paper 2 is the productive consumption of authenticity and brand meaning. In the case of the Hagstrom brand, a variety of market participants—as carriers of discursive re-enchantment practice—desire the authentic brand, and collectively deploy the consumption of symbolic resources in this process to unmake the disenchantment and the disauthenticating effects. In other words, they desire Hagstrom to be an authentic brand and engage in the discursive negotiation processes of re-enchantment that eventually serve to re-authenticate the Hagstrom brand. Thus, popular culture and mass culture (Fiske 1989) are somewhat connected as carriers of the same discursive practice involving shared engagement in deploying transformational consumptive moments.

Consumptive moments are productive in a transformative manner also in the interpersonal community practice processes analysed in paper 1. Here, they are transformatively productive of various value types; they are transformative in terms of identity (social recognition value), competence (use value), community vitality, and community membership without accumulating on community level. Consumptive moments are, however, accumulatively productive of these issues on an individual level. The specific questions asked in the quantitative proportion of the study (study II) revolved around asking how much respondents subjectively experienced an incident to take place in the community. For example, typically the more a member experienced task empathizing, the more he or she discerned use value. Thus, on an individual level, consumptive moments are accumulatively transformational and are capable of shaping the form of matters of identity, competence, and ultimately, community attachment. On the community level, however, such consumptive moments do not accumulate and crystallize as productive moments do. Nevertheless, it is because consumptive moments are capable of producing identity, competence, and community membership, consumptive moments are creating and forming productive moments in turn.

Consumption is not productive in isolation, but within practices consumptive moments of momentum and transformation gain productive qualities. Within practices, consumption lurks particularly into production in the form of the consumptive moments here depicted as momentum and transformation. Where an outsider of practice may see an amplifier as a ‘trivial thing’, a carrier of electric guitar playing appreciates the consumption of this ‘thing’ in terms of its momentum-giving productive aspects in the practice of electric guitar playing. This is particularly shown in papers 3 and 4, which pinpoint the productive aspects of consumptive moments as key ingredients of practice performance.

hand, the practice of electric guitar playing, specifically, is laid out so that a variety of objects is consumed in this process, including the rig but also ideas and images of anti-consumption. Guitarists need consumption constellations or gear to play electric guitar. Because a practice theoretical approach shifts emphasis away from the individual, both consumption and production can be conceived of as being built into the practice of electric guitar playing; they are moments that belong to the practice. Thus, my findings on the formation of consumption constellations through exploration of their teleoaffective properties invite productive consumption from a consumption constellation informed view. Although playing electric guitar, as a whole, may appear on the surface to be an act of prosumption, the formation of the material arrangements in and through the practice follows different routes when it comes to foregrounding more producerly and more consumerly practice moments. That is, the consumption constellation as a material arrangement with agentive qualities mediates a dyadic interplay between consumptive and productive moments in the guitar-playing performance. Thus, the findings presented in paper 3 allow a more fine-grained understanding of the consumption constellation as it is situated between consumption and production: it is neither about consumption generally, nor it is generally about production.

In paper 4, facilitation emerges as the interplay between consumptive and productive moments by carriers of practice. Here, this practice-level structure of facilitation organizes consumptive moments in relation to productive moments. Both consumption and production transpire as moments in practices that are linked and organized through one specific guiding principle that transcends procedures, practical understanding and teleoaffective structures of practices—facilitation. Whereas paper 1 makes similar points, the asynchronous nature of the chain of actions depicted in paper 1 carves out the relation of consumptive and productive moments as episodes of conduct. Paper 4, on the other hand, focuses more on the synchronicity of consumptive and productive moments, not in terms of temporal synchronicity, but in terms of teleoaffective synchronicity. That is, the link between consumptive and productive moments not in terms of a chain of events, but in terms of synchronizing the purposes of consumptive and productive moments as speaking together in practice performances.

The conceptualizations of practice moments presented above allow unpacking productive consumption as a dyadic relationship of specific consumptive moments with specific productive moments. What this suggests is that consumptive and productive moments are paired within practice performances, but that the weight and role they take is not necessarily equal. While in one practice performance, consumptive moments may be foregrounded, in another practice performance, productive moments may be more accentuated. This is because as moments of practice, both consumption and production are interwoven with the practice's teleoaffective structure. This

means also that variations in the teleoaffective structure of a given practice may result in a different emphasis on consumptive or productive moments.

practices (Schau et al. 2009). Individuals perform these practices as carriers, but essentially it is the performance of practices that creates the community. Breaking down the performance of community practices into producerly and consumerly elements implies that individuals can be engaged as carriers not only of practices, but they appear as carriers of consumptive and/or productive moments within these performances.

Outside the practice as the unit of analysis, however, an individual engaged as a carrier of a direct consumptive moment (such as reading personalized advice) may be seen indeed as a 'producer' of online community. This is because the individual is contributing to the performance of the community practice as a consumer. Thus, this person could be seen as 'producing' online community through his or her consumption, which resembles broadly the notion of productive consumption. But it is important to note that this understanding stems from applying two different levels of analysis: on the practice level we see consumption, and on the community level we see production. Understanding every individual who logs on to the community as a 'producer' even though he or she may be simply lurking or observing (one may call them consumptive producers), does not, however, capture the difference from those 'producers' who write posts, give advice, help members, offer emotional support, and engage in governing. Should one call these individuals 'productive producers'? How can this difference be captured? The suggestion advanced in paper 1 is that within the practice, this form of consumption (reading the personalized advice) is not production, but a specific consumptive moment within the performance of practice.

Thus, in the case of interpersonal practices, a practice performance is co-created between productive and consumptive moments and it is the practice performance that is conducive to the production of online community. Thus, all members who participate in the online community as carriers of distinct moments of community practices partake in the production of community. In other words, for interpersonal practices, a practice performance can be seen as a system of production and consumption, a meeting point between offerings (such as a welcoming note) and the experiential consumption of this note (understanding it as such and not as an ironic joke). Interpersonal practices are about interaction and exchange with other members.

Even though any member, whether creating content (producer) or merely lurking (consumer), may be conceived of as a 'producer' as discussed above, applying the notion of prosumer to describe community members here is not straightforward. As outlined above, prosumers are producers of that which they consume. Consider the following example: Individual A responds to individual B's question and explains how and when to plant tomatoes. In this case, individual A's advice is 'produced' for 'consumption' by individual B. Although there might be an autotelic dimension of enjoying writing advice for its own sake, interpersonal practices operate across moments of production and consumption, which are mostly carried by different individuals (A and B).

Within the unit of analysis of practices, individual A is not producing content (the detailed description of advice on planting tomatoes) most likely for his or her own consumption, but for direct consumption by individual B and with the awareness of possible vicarious consumption by lurkers C and D. Here, on a practice level, individual A is not the producer of that which he or she consumes. But there is still a link between production and consumption when focusing on individual A as the unit of analysis. As shown in paper 1, the participation in the online community is guided by regimes of reciprocity. Individual members may not produce content which they consume, but they produce content for consumption by others with the understanding of generalized reciprocation. That is, they 'work' not for the community owners (Cova and Dalli 2009), nor for the mere pleasure of other members, but they engage in productive moments of community practices with the understanding that their favours will be returned. This may appear as work outside the site of practices, as a function of practice so to say. In other words, participation in interpersonal practices is guided by an understanding of 'give and take'. Thus, on the level of a specific community practice, such as task empathizing, individual A may be a producer of that (advice) which he or she consumes—however not simultaneously, but mediated by generalized reciprocity. For example, individual A may later become a consumer of another piece of advice given by a different member. Interestingly, as illustrated in paper 1, a different version of this logic is also apparent: Individuals become the producers of that which they have consumed previously. For example, paper 1 finds that individuals become carriers of productive moments of those practices they have been previously engaged with as carriers of consumptive moments. On a practice level, individuals become carriers of consumptive and productive moments of the same practice, but not necessarily of the very same practice performance—and not necessarily simultaneously.

With regard to a community-level analysis, however, community members may well be described as prosumers; as producing that (community) which they consume. Individuals participate in online community through engaging in community practices, involving both productive and consumptive moments. If both producing content and consuming content are conducive to the production of online community, then all individuals who engage in online community practices in one form or another simultaneously produce and consume the concept of online community; they emerge as community prosumers. But as maintained earlier, prosumption at its core implies paying attention to both consumption and production; that is, it essentially means using production and consumption as analytical categories. The analytical leverage gained by classifying community members as prosumers, without dwelling on the operation of production and consumption within such prosumption, is rather limited, however.

Thus, by de-emphasizing the individual as being consumer, producer, or prosumer, this dissertation offers an alternative resolution to the concept of

prosumption. While the thesis offers consumption with production as an analytical category, the findings in this thesis foreground that if anywhere, prosumption occurs on practice level (e.g., Woermann 2012). This means that the individual should not be regarded as the prosumer, but the practice would be where prosumption takes place. This is because both consumptive and productive moments are conducive to the performance of practices. This, in turn, foregrounds still a certain liminality of practices in the space between consumption and production.

The specific context of online community practices brings to the fore a central critique to the idea that production and consumption happen simultaneously in social media (Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson 2012; Chia 2012). Because the interaction in this (and most other) online community is asynchronous, production and consumption do not necessarily occur simultaneously, as argued for example by Firat and Venkatesh (1995), but are distinctive empirical incidents. Consumption and production are social processes that are centrally mediated by practice moments.

Thus, this dissertation contributes to existing research on the relation between consumption and production by presenting this alternative perspective. It complements Warde's (2005) previous argument that consumption is a moment of most practices with the idea that production is also inherent in most practices as dramatized in Holt's (1995) 'producing practices'; Woermann's (2012) study on the production of mediatized representations of free-skiing; Arsel and Bean's (2013) research on how doings performed with objects produce a taste regime; Schau et al.'s (2009) grooming and customizing practices; and Watson and Shove's (2008) study on DIY practices. Although these studies document the ways in which practices are inherently productive, they remain relatively silent on how the producerly qualities of practices relate to their consumerly qualities.

Therefore this thesis connects to previous literature on the relation between consumption and production (e.g., Warde 1992; Arnould 2007; Humphreys and Grayson 2008; Toffler 1980) by offering a conceptualization of inter-momentary operation of the production/consumption dialectic. Rather than conceiving of interaction in the space between firms and consumers (e.g., Grönroos 2011; Vargo and Lusch 2004), this thesis considers the interaction between consumptive moments and productive moments. Both consumption and production emerge as co-constitutive moments of practices. And both firms and consumers can perform practices. By considering this relationship, the thesis connects to previous literature discussing the relationship between consumption and production (e.g., Firat and Venkatesh 1995), stating that there can be no production without consumption. However, this thesis departs from the idea that consumption and production have to be one and the same, but demonstrates how both production and consumption are moments of practice performances. Treating the organization of practice as a constellation between consumptive and productive moments, as I suggest in this thesis, implies

appreciating the relationship between these moments, while at the same time preserving them as analytical categories.

This thesis therefore offers a granular account of how practices operate through consumption and its productive aspects. It has utilized practices as shells for the study of consumption and its productive aspects within them. As demonstrated above, the matter of levels is important in shaping the understanding of consumption and its entanglement with productive aspects.

in electric guitar playing. The teleoaffective structures of guitar playing are inscribed in the formation of consumption constellations and the performance of electric guitar playing does not only involve skilful bodily movements of fingers and arms (and it may be added, appropriate discursive 'guitar-player movements') as well as mental musical patterns (notes, chords, song structures) but also the use and appreciation (alternatively, non-appreciation) of the agentive teleoaffective properties of the consumption constellation, enabling and restraining electric guitar playing. As Miller (Miller 1987; Borgerson 2009) points out, objects are not agents because they enable or constrain. The attempt to tagline the teleoaffective performativity of the consumption constellation in terms of agentive qualities strives to do justice to this thought. Rather, as paper 4 demonstrates, the guitar player (and gardener for that matter) exists at the intersection of consumptive and productive moments, both of which are crucial elements in the performance of practice.

Fourth, this thesis offers implications for the conceptualization of 'carriers' in practice theory in three ways. First, it demonstrates not only that individuals can be understood as being 'carriers of practice' (Reckwitz 2002), but it also specifies the ways in which individuals can be understood as being carriers of productive and consumptive moments. That is, it provides an analytical perspective to specify the ways individuals are engaged as carriers in practice performances. For example, paper 1 shows how members of an online community can participate in community practices purely as carriers of vicarious consumptive moments, browsing the community forums. Second, this thesis suggests that and specifies how objects—and not only individuals—can be conceived of as carriers of such moments (paper 4). Third, this thesis offers development of the conceptualization of practices as 'carriers of value' (Schau et al. 2009). The introduction of consumptive and productive moments to this notion of practices as carriers of value allows refining the understanding of the way in which practices are carriers of value (see section 4.3.4).

Fifth, this dissertation adds to the theorization of the performativity of and in practices by specifying two dimensions, procedural and teleoaffective performativity, which relates to discussions of practices as 'carriers of value' (Schau et al. 2009) but in terms of performativity; and to discussions on practices as entities through which we develop an understanding of the world (Warde 2005). Not only are practices performative, but so are the moments enjoined within them.

Sixth, this thesis includes a first effort to measure practices and the value-laden experiences of engaging in them. Thus, it offers a point of departure from the epistemological tradition of practice theorists and allows us to learn about practices and their consequences on the practice level by offering a measurement instrument for the study of interpersonal online community practices in terms of subjective engagement with their practice moments. This is useful not only for future research, but also for managers in the area of

online community, because the measurement of practice moments allows for deriving value-laden practice topographies across different communities.

Seventh, this thesis indicates that and how practice-level structures organize and shape consumption in relation to production as moments in practices. Specifically, paper 4 presents an analysis of how a practice-level structure arranges consumptive and productive moments so as to facilitate practice performance and its desired outcomes.

constellations corresponds with more widely held beliefs and discursive positions in consumer culture. Paper 4 contributes to recent consumer cultural research interested explicitly in production with an attempt to conceptualize emic understandings of production.

With regard to illuminating the operation of consumption in consumer culture, these findings show how moments of consumption are mediated by practice-level structures (paper 4), how they matter for and within the performances of practices (paper 3), how they contribute to shaping brand meanings (paper 2), and how they create value (paper 1).

The conceptualization of consumption as practice moments based on performativity as well as the introduction of companioning productive moments, offers a response to calls for systematic attempts of specifying the entanglement of consumption and production in consumer culture (Arnould 2007; Arnould and Thompson 2007; Beer and Burrows 2010). Overall, this thesis offers insights that attend to understand the operation of consumption in consumer culture, by aiming to illuminate consumption in relation to practices and in relation to production. The conceptual development of consumption as practice moments proposed in this thesis situates consumption deeper within the practices that comprise consumer culture.

The focus of the following discussion lies on the modalities of how value is created. Here, Karababa and Kjeldgaard (2013) provide an interesting synthesis of value in marketing. In viewing these discussions from a sociocultural perspective, they draw on Graeber's (2001) anthropological account of value and note that "the notion of value creation is moving from a linear value chain perspective toward a view of value co-creation through the interactions of a multiplicity of actors" (Karababa and Kjeldgaard 2013, 5). The findings offered in this thesis contribute to this line of thought, but also provide some points of departure.

To begin with the notion of actor, paper 2 offers an empirical illustration of the interactions of a multiplicity of actors; the process through which the authenticity (brand) value of a commodity (Hagstrom guitars) takes place through discursive practices in which a range of networked actors participate as carriers of discursive re-enchancement practices. Thus, in the discursive practice analysed in this paper, firms, guitarists, retailers, and other important stakeholders of the Hagstrom brand appear as actors in the sense of being carriers of practice.

Turning to interactions, this thesis suggests looking not only at interactions between actors in the sense of market participants or in the sense of carriers of practice—but also to appreciate the interactions between practice moments. As papers 1 and 4 show, consumptive and productive moments interact with each other as protagonists of practice performances. It is through this interaction that value springs forth. Further, the accounts of production offered in paper 4 suggest conceiving also of practice objects as carriers of productive moments. Because these productive moments are interconnected with consumptive moments through the practice-level structure of facilitation, this touches specifically on the interactions between these moments. Consumptive moments that facilitate objects as carriers of productive moments are entangled with teleoaffective purposes of transforming practice objects so they provide better momentum to the performance of practice. Thus, consumptive moments provide some of value within practices.

In order to move forward the conceptualization of such value, it is useful to turn to Graeber's (2001) work on value. He synthesizes conceptualizations of value in social theory. He finds that value comprises three seemingly different forms (Graeber 2001, 1): social values ("conceptions of what is ultimately good, proper, or desirable in human life"); economic value ("the degree to which objects are desired, particularly, as measured by how much others are willing to give up to get them"), and what can be called semiotic value (which he derives from work on structural linguistics). Graeber (2001) proposes that these can be traced back to one and the same principle: To him, all three conceptualizations of value in social theory comprehend value as consisting of meaningful difference (in the social, economic, and semiotic sense). Further, they conceive

Returning back to the idea that consumptive moments provide some form of value within practices, Graeber's (2001) work allows conceiving of such value as meaningful difference. Thus, value can be seen as conditional of action and interaction, which creates meaningful differences. Warde (2005, 142, original emphasis in bold) provides support for consumptive moments creating such meaningful differences:

“The practice is the conduit and raison d'être for the gratifications which arise from its component moments of consumption. Consumption rarely occurs purely for its own sake, but contributes to the delivery of a range of varied rewards.”

The various gratifications and rewards arising from the consumptive moments within practices are tied to the performance of the practice in which

consumptive moments occur. In papers 3 and 4, the meaningful difference induced by consumptive moments has not been framed explicitly as value. However, it is possible to trace the meaningful differences these consumptive moments encourage on the performance of practices. Specifically, the teleoaffective properties that guide the formation of consumption constellations in paper 3 prescribe not only agentive means and ends of the 'right' arrangement of guitar gear, but also communicative purposes and aspirations. The formation of consumption constellation can make a difference in the performance of electric guitar playing, as these constellations are formed, altered, and modified to give momentum to guitar playing. Paper 2 shows how brand meanings (which can be seen as significant difference in terms of 'authentic' and 'craft producer') emerge from discursive practice. In paper 4, the meaningful difference that emerges from within practices can be seen as springing from consumptive moments facilitating productive moments. Here, these consumptive moments help advance the overall practice performance of electric guitar playing and gardening by assisting objects as carriers of productive moments. In paper 1, the meaningful differences that spring from direct and vicarious consumptive moments are depicted as use value, social recognition value, and through these, community attachment and community vitality.

Further following Graeber's (2001, 14) line of argumentation, then, "objects are defined by the meaningful distinctions one can make between them. To understand the meaning (value) of an object, then, one must understand its place in a larger system." In the practice-theoretical perspective, the practice is the larger system in and through which value is to be understood. Connecting back to the papers, this implies the following:

In paper 1, the value created by the consumption of comments and imagery offered by participation in community practices (which resemble consumption objects in this context) can only be understood as value-creating within this context—that is, within the realm of online gardening community practices. These objects are consumed in the course of community interaction and their consumption creates various types of value for community members. That means to understand the value of consumptive moments, one must understand them within their system, which is, in this case, community practices. Value emerges from within practices as the frames in which actions and activities are organized.

If value springs from actions (Graeber 2001), and actions and activities are organizing elements of practices (Schatzki 1996), then practices become carriers of value (Schau et al. 2009), because they are the resources that organize and support action and interaction. This implies conceiving of value as transpiring in the nexus of doings, meanings, and objects. This perspective frees the discussion on value creation from the scope of firm-consumer, because both

Appreciating the sites of practices as the resources in and through which actions and interactions take place, then, has value residing in the interaction of elements of practices: Value exists in neither in the object, understanding, doing, nor meaning alone but rather in the interaction between these elements. Value springs from the interactions within the constellations of consumptive and productive practice moments. In particular, the practice structure of facilitation depicted in paper 4 emerges as one force that aligns consumptive moments in relation to productive moments. Here, although objects can be understood as carriers of productive moments, they do not create value in and for the practice performance by themselves. Moreover, the productive moments of interpersonal community practices (paper 1) represent mere value offerings and it is first in interaction with consumptive moments, direct or vicarious, that value is created. Paper 3 can be read with regard to foregrounding how value emerges from significant difference and action as a function within electric guitar-playing practice. Paper 4 lurks into value in the sense that it portrays the meaningful difference of consumptive moments in facilitating practice performances.

It is in these nuances that this thesis has implications for the development of theorizing practices as the site of value creation. Although practices can be regarded as carriers of value, if we look at what is going on within practice performances, inter-momentary dynamics between consumption and

productive aspects shape and form the basis for practices to create and carry value.

Thus, this thesis connects to literature on value co-creation in that it specifies how practices are the sites of value co-creation and how value co-creation operates through linkages between consumptive and productive moments of practices, rather than linkages and interactions between firms and consumers. What this suggests is a contextual approach on value creation by linking Graeber's (2001) conceptualization of value as meaningful difference and emerging through action; Schatzki's (2005) emphasis on the site of practices (in which actions, and thus value emerges); and the unfolding of Warde's (2005) moments of consumption as well as the addition of productive moments as practice-level companion.

This thesis suggests that practices can be understood in terms of consumptive moments and entangled productive aspects. Understanding practices in this way, offers opportunities for developing market offerings that resonate with practices.

Essentially a practice-oriented marketing approach suggests to marketing managers that appreciating practices in which their customers engage as a

One area in which this is particularly evident is the area of community 'management'. Although I believe the idea of managing communities is problematic in itself, the practice of marketing management is infused with community marketing fetish (see also Fournier and Lee 2009). Brands install Facebook pages, and want consumers to 'like' them, and fill the pages with content and comments. They create online communities and hope consumers will join, interact, and stay—eventually hoping for increased positive branding outcomes. Media are, more than ever, important platforms in which marketing happens; not only by marketers but also by other relevant interest groups who also become carriers of marketing practices.

Entrepreneurs form entire business models around communities. These relatively new community media business models follow the credo of offering a technical platform for consumers to interact, and for owners to earn a profit from selling members' attention to the advertisements placed on the site. In this vein, community managers strive for growth of the community (more members means more attractiveness for advertisers) but also engaged members who regularly visit the site and post content (more clicks means more potential views of the ads and firms hope more content will result in a more interesting community, keeping members and attracting new members). However, Moran, Gossiaux, and McClure (2009) found that 80% of such commercially sponsored communities cease to exist after three years. This begs the

managerial question of how to get consumers to join, engage with, and stay in the community. Managing communities is a delicate manner (Fournier and Lee 2009), and that is why it is so important to understand how community participation operates. I propose that the relevant answers to these questions are grounded in taking the perspective of practices.

The community media business model prescribes a certain constellation of production and consumption in the participation in that community. Community members provide the content. That is, they produce content on and for the community, and ultimately for their owners. But members also want to indulge in consuming the contents available in the community. They want to read what others wrote and posted and be part of the interaction in the community. Community owners and managers, thus, need to understand the relation between the consumptive and productive moments of community participation as prescribed in their business model. For the area of media management, there is something that can be learned from this. As shown in paper 1, community members use the specific community under investigation in this thesis as a substitute for magazines and books; a magazine that you can ask directly and that would respond. A magazine that allows certain experiences that can only be achieved through community practices.

For example, online community managers can learn from analysing the community practices, how important the experience of what kind of consumptive moments is to community members. Paper 1 offers a detailed portrayal of how community attachment and vitality are created through direct and vicarious consumptive moments of these practices. Thus, consumptive participation is important for shaping the relation members have to their community. Naturally, community managers put emphasis on inciting members to produce more content for the community, because then it might be perceived as more vital and attractive. Paper 1 shows however, that the experience of certain consumptive moments can trigger certain productive moments. Thus community managers might place emphasis on supporting such consumptive moments. An understanding of which practices and their moments are important for community members offers insights for managers striving to foster community attachment and vitality. For example, insights from an analysis of which consumptive moments of what practices are important in a particular community could imply using moderators who answer members' questions, reward positive governance, mark milestones, or merely comment on blogs/photos, if no one else does, in order to avoid feelings of disappointment resulting in detachment from the community. Other interventions are possible depending upon which productive and consumptive moments of performance loom large in the community in question. Moreover, mere observation, or vicarious consumptive moments, shall not be seen as residual participation. Paper 1 shows how such pure observation creates valuable experiences for members. Thus, community managers might encourage vicarious consumptive moments for example through introducing a

A practice-oriented marketing approach suggests striving for marketing that resonates with practices. Paper 3 highlights how the analysis of the teleaffective properties of the consumption constellation has revealed two different processes in which consumers form their consumption constellations: inductively and deductively. Each route has different implications for marketing promotion and communication decisions, either foregrounding meaning or doings. Promotional marketing activities of musical instrument brands can specifically foreground and detail the enabling qualities of their promoted product or brand—not in isolation, but with respect to the momentum-giving qualities of the entire constellation and how their product or brand fits into this. Because the practice-based investigation has also revealed how the consumption constellation is constraining in practice performance, this example offers another point of departure for tweaking promotional marketing activities in a way that resonates with the variations of practical understandings that are evident in the object-focused practices studied in this thesis. The two different logics underlying the appreciation of consumption constellations—‘sound from the fingers’ versus ‘sound from the gear’—offer important insights when crafting marketing and advertising messages that resonate with these positions.

The insights developed in paper 4 offer further implications. Practices hold organizational structures that guide the consumption going on within practices in relation to the production that takes place in practices. Therefore, specifically the notion of ‘facilitation’ presents opportunities for marketers to understand how consumption is governed and practice-induced, and on this basis, engage in marketing activities that resonate with this practice-level structure. Marketing efforts might be directed towards deeply nesting the consumption of a brand or product within this structure.

Most classical marketing textbooks, particularly in the area of consumer marketing, present the firm as producer and the customer as consumer. Although the marketing philosophies that emerged over the last decades have moved closer toward sensitive marketing to consumers in their consumer-oriented approaches, the notion of production happening outside factories is notably de-emphasized. Although the phenomena of tribal marketing, consumer-generated content and advertisement, and the theoretical perspectives of co-creation and Service-Dominant-Logic are present in many textbooks, they tend to be found on the last pages. Most marketing education continues to present marketing as being produced by marketing managers.

However, as illustrated in paper 2, marketing is achieved in and through practices that can house many carriers. The re-authentication of the re-launched Hagstrom brand, for example, involves many carriers, but is ultimately shaped and formed by discursive practices. An empirical implication for students of brand management that derives from this paper is to target not only consumers, but also the discursive practices that make and shape a brand. By understanding the discursive practices carried by a variety of market participants, opportunities arise as to joining the conversation in a way that resonates with a specific discursive practice, rather than attempting to impose elements to that practice that would seem artificial and alien. Further, students of marketing need to understand how the practical and strategic decisions, such as brand licensing or re-locating production, have symbolic consequences for their brands. An investigation of the discourses in the marketplace surrounding such decisions a priori might offer opportunities for informing about the symbolic consequences such decisions might have.

This dissertation adds to the line of education but suggests that one important facet in marketing research can be found in the practices which are performed in marketplaces. If consumption and production take place in practices, future marketers need to understand this entanglement in order to craft relevant market offerings with regard to the whole marketing mix, a notion that becomes increasingly problematic in the light of a practice-theoretical approach.

findings from this thesis may be contrasted with studies on other types of practices that specifically foreground an autotelic dimension such as hiking, climbing, or diary writing. Specifically such studies could contribute to furthering the relation between consumption and production, and therefore contribute to the development of the consumption/production debate.

This dissertation offers four different conceptualizations of practice moments that need further specification in terms of practice sites, but also with regard to their operation across practices. Because practices are related and feed into each other (e.g., Reckwitz 2002) future research that explicitly addresses how a consumptive moment of one practice relates to another consumptive moment or productive moment of another practice can produce interesting insights needed to advance knowledge on the operation of moments across practices.

This thesis has drawn mainly upon the practice-theoretical perspective as advanced by Schatzki. Its findings of how consumption and production occur in and through practices invite future studies that utilize different stances of practice theory. For example, an Actor-Network inspired study on the assemblages of consumptive and productive moments—or a study specifying the ways in which consumption and production operate in terms of an actor-network with a particular focus on mediators and intermediaries—may produce further insights that can further develop the debate of the entanglement of practices—consumption—production.

The indication of the role of practice-level structures in shaping consumptive and productive moments in practices offers grounds for future research. For example, further research might explore other practice-level structures shaping the organization of practice elements, including consumptive and productive moments, or other elements foregrounded in different practices. Research that specifies further the dynamic interplay between practice-level structures and practice elements might produce valuable insights on the operation of practices. Moreover, research is needed that expands on the market-mediated nature of practice-level structures—how they are shaped, maintained, and change in market-mediated processes.

Future research that addresses further the temporal dimensions of practice moments might contribute further to mapping the operation of the interplay of practices, consumption, and production. Although paper 1 indicates how the constellation of consumptive and productive moments has temporal aspects, temporal dimensions of practice moments are not further mobilized as a way of theorizing the relation of consumption, production, and practices in this thesis. However, the findings of the individual papers implicitly involve temporal aspects of consumptive (and productive) practice moments. Paper 1 addresses consumptive and productive moments as episodes of conduct in an asynchronous communication setting. However, papers 2, 3, and 4 address more the teleoaffective synchronicity of consumptive and productive moments. Understanding such practice moments in terms of a temporal dimension offers

opportunities for elucidating further the operation of the entanglement of consumption and production in relation to practices.

Specifically the above discussion (section 4.2) unfolding the entanglement of consumptive moments with productive aspects provides grounds for future research to investigate the makings and unmakings of consumption. Specifically, the notion of consumption as a productive category through unmaking deserves further attention. For example, future studies that focus on how and in what ways consumptive moments are unmaking 'things' might provide additional insights not only into the productive qualities of consumptive moments, but also into their potentially value-destroying qualities. Particularly the latter notion has been de-emphasized in this thesis. If consumptive moments can be understood as productive, how can we understand them in terms of being unproductive or even as being value destroying? Studies that elucidate the value-destroying qualities of consumptive moments might render insights that are conducive to understanding consumptive moments as productive by adding the valence of value into this debate.

Studies are needed that further investigate the productive dimensions in consumer culture with specific attention to technology. For example, the diffusion of inexpensive home-recording software, video-editing and cutting software integrated in smartphones, apps relating to productive and consumptive moments in practices, or phenomena such as 3-D printing technologies that allow carriers of practice to design and literally print out material objects at home.

More research is needed on production. Future research that further expands the study of production vis-à-vis practices, its emic instantiations and practice-theoretical consequences might provide interesting and relevant insights into the operation of production in and through practices in consumer culture, and inform a subsequent practice-based conceptualization of production. Specifically paper 4 offers insights that may guide future studies on the operation of production in practices. A provocative reflection is given by the idea to study further how and in what ways production may also be understood in similar terms of the conceptualized moments above. The conceptualization developed here stems from a primary interest in 'consumption with production'. This needs to be contrasted with future research that addresses this issue with a perspective of 'production with consumption' which may create interesting results as to paving the way for understanding practices entirely in terms of moments.

Particularly the performativity of consumption invites further research. In this thesis I have elucidated the performativity of consumptive moments within practices. Future research might investigate other forms of the performativity of consumption within and outside the theoretical and empirical context of practices. The findings of this thesis foreground how performativity in practices is primarily entangled with a practice's telcoaffective structure or primarily with

a practice's procedural template. Future research that investigates other roots of performativity might contribute to further specifying the performative nature of practices and their enjoined elements.

Finally, future research that addresses further the discursive and market-mediated dimensions of consumptive and productive moments might offer insights into the operation of consumer culture with regard to how consumption and production as moments in practices are established, maintained, and altered in collective negotiation processes in which a variety of market participants as carriers of practice participate.