A Cultural Framework of Lifestyle : Lived Meanings of Women's Everyday Consumption.

Hashim, Haslinda (2010) A Cultural Framework of Lifestyle : Lived Meanings of Women's Everyday Consumption. PhD thesis, UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates women consumer's lifestyle through the meanings they give to their everyday consumption experience from an interpretivist researcher point of view. Nine women life stories are presented which were collected through in-depth phenomenological interviews. The emic cultural approach taken in conducting this research has uncovered rich and contextualised account of women's consumption experienced which elucidates the nuanced differences in women's lifestyle, they are Hands on Lifestyle, , Idealistic Lifestyle, Pragmatic Lifestyle, Prudent Lifestyle, Climber Lifestyle, Entrepreneur Lifestyle, Survivor Lifestyle, Easygoing Lifestyle and Devoted Lifestyle. These various genres of lifestyle reflect each woman's self-identity in relation to their existential concerns and social contexts. This is in stark contrast with many studies on (married) women lifestyle in consumer research which portrays women's lifestyle as only concentrating on the problematic concern of 'juggling' between their work and family (Casey & Martens, 2007; Thompson, 1996). This study has been able to empirically illustrate lifestyle as a concept and space for consumer's to construct their self-identity as was very much suggested conceptually in the consumer research literature (Featherstone, 2007 [1991]; Giddens, 1991; Slater, 1997). The study saw women consumer's creatively construct their identity by negotiating their way in the consumer culture, for example consumption and non-consumption was important to the sense of being, life themes were significantly driving these women's construction of lifestyle and women were reflexively using lifestyle as a dynamic space in an effort to realize their personal goal for and also in relations to their significant others. Three snapshots of lifestyle emerged from this study which further categorises these women's different genres of lifestyle into three pattern, they are Adapting Family into Lifestyle, Changing Lifestyle to fit Family's and Settled Lifestyle. These lifestyle snapshot demonstrates women's different dimension's of 'caring self (Gilligan, 1982; Meyers-Levy, 1989; Stem, 1990) which differs from the unilateral information that currently informs the consumer literature (Casey & Martens, 2007; Thompson, 1996) with regard to this feminine identity. In addition the cultural framework established through this women's account which are the Caring Framework, Cultivating Piety Framework and Bilateralism Framework, further shed light on the contextual differences that may inform and influence consumer's consumption practice. This reinforces the need for consumer researchers to move away from the straitjacket of conducting lifestyle research using the 'behaviourist' or the 'universalist' model that is unable to capture the nuance differences underlying consumer's action. It also goes to show that by taking an emic approach; looking from the inside rather than relying on using universalise models to establish lifestyle framework in investigating consumer's lifestyle, contributes to much more thicker insights on the knowledge about consumer's consumption practices. Equally important is that this lifestyle studies have illuminated that being women and practicing the same religion doesn't mean applying the same monolithic consumption practices, instead these women consumers carry out creolised consumption practices - they carefully appropriate and select suitable consumption by juxtaposing from the traditional and modem, local and foreign sources in their daily lives to articulate their self-identities.