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Full-Text Articles in Business
Paradox And The Consumption Of Authenticity Through Reality Television, Randall L. Rose, Stacy L. Wood
Paradox And The Consumption Of Authenticity Through Reality Television, Randall L. Rose, Stacy L. Wood
Faculty Publications
We position reality television within the broader category of consumer practices of authenticity seeking in a postmodern cultural context. The study draws on relevant perspectives from consumer research, literary criticism, sociology, and anthropology to argue that viewers of reality television encounter three elements of paradox in the process of constructing authenticity. The negotiation of each paradox exceeds the process of coping with or resolving their inherent contradictions to encompass the creation of new values. We argue that consumers blend fantastic elements of programming with indexical elements connected to their lived experiences to create a form of self-referential hyperauthenticity.
Credit Cards As Lifestyle Facilitators, Matthew J. Bernthal, David Crockett, Randall L. Rose
Credit Cards As Lifestyle Facilitators, Matthew J. Bernthal, David Crockett, Randall L. Rose
Faculty Publications
Credit cards are an increasingly essential technology, but they carry with them the paradoxical capacity to propel consumers along lifestyle trajectories of marketplace freedom or constraint. We analyze accounts provided by consumers, credit counselors, and participants in a credit counseling seminar in order to develop a differentiated theory of lifestyle facilitation through credit card practice. The skills and tastes expressed by credit card practice help distinguish between the lifestyles of those with higher cultural capital relative to those with lower cultural capital. Differences in lifestyle regulation practice are posited to originate in cultural discourses related to entitlement and frugality.