UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES
SOLVAY BRUXELLES SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
THREE ESSAYS ON HOW SHARING AND CONSUMING SUPPORT HOME PLACE RECONNECTION IN CONTEMPORARY LIQUID TIMES
Thesis presented for a PhD in Management Science Pilar Rojas Gaviria By
December 2012
MEMBERS OF THE PHD JURY
Thesis Director
Dr. Christian BLUEMELHUBER, Professor in Marketing at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management SBS-EM, holder of the Inbev-Baillet Latour Chair of Euromarketing, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Internal Members
Dr. Alain Eraly, Professor at Institut de Sociologie and at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, past president of Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management SBS-EM, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Dr. Manuel Hensmans, Professor in Strategic Management at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles
External Members
Dr. James Fitchett, Professor in Marketing and Consumer Research at University of Leicester, UK
Dr. Nil Ozcaglar-Toulouse, Professor in Marketing at Université Lille Nord de France (ex-Lille 2) – IMMD, France
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time”
T.S. Eliot, from Little Gidding
Para Olivier, Arturo y Astrid, Mi norte y mi sur!
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ABSTRACT
The notion of deterritorialization occupies a central role in contemporary interpretations of immigrants’ home-related consumption engagements. Through their work on home maintenance, consumer researchers have unveiled a remarkable set of insights related to consumption patterns immigrants develop with the purpose of maintaining previous home-ties. Consumer researchers have for instance demonstrated how immigrants transform and get transformed by the home-related consumption goods available in host countries. The notion of home maintenance has been largely applied with the meaning of immigrants “keeping up” with a past life context they can no longer enjoy in contemporary home places.
Yet, less attention has been devoted to migrants’ willingness to preserve existential connections with places of origin and/or childhood.
Drawing on the stories of 14 Latin American migrants living in Belgium, this doctoral research relativizes this deterritorialized perspective through the means of the philosophical notion of narrative identity. This philosophical point of view puts forward the open link that exists between current life stories and past experiences. Individuals reconfigure their own personal narratives by integrating both past and present experiences. Accordingly, there is a continuity of narrative that contrasts with frequent disruptions in life, implying a perpetual interpretation
ii and re-interpretation of one’s life. This exercise is not a self-reflecting process of an individual that is distinct from his or her cultural references. The construction of a personal narrative identity is also a dialogue with many others and their past and future stories. In the case of migrants, even many years after “successful”
experiences of migration, they can experience recurring tendencies to return, homecoming tendencies. These tendencies, which are not necessarily aimed at a final and long term return, reflect the notion that preserving affiliations to one’s place of origin or childhood is not only a matter of consuming resources available in receiving contexts, but also of consuming and sharing with many others in places of origin. While Home maintenance relies heavily on migrant’s willingness and or capacity to remember home places as they were before they migrated. The homecoming tendencies notion, here proposed, is oriented towards migrants’
eagerness to constantly re-discover home places in their contemporary situations and towards their active goal for avoiding disappearing from view back home.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
INTRODUCTION 2
1. Background 2
2. Foreground 9
2.1. Looking for a Place Called Home: a Brief Review of the Notion of
Home-Maintenance 9
2.2. Research Questions 16
2.3. Method 17
2.4. About the participants 27
3. Summary of the Three Sections 47
3.1. Decorating the Gap 47
3.2. Homecoming Tendencies 47
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3.3. Childhood Muses 48
FIRST SECTION: DECORATING THE GAP 49
1. Poem: A Twist of Past 50
2. Consumers’ Transformations in a Liquid Society: Introducing the Concepts of Autobiographical-Concern and Desire-Assemblage 54
2.1. Introduction 54
2.2. From Existential Hermeneutics to Narrative Identity 57
2.3. Autobiographical-concern and desire-assemblage 62
2.4. Discussion and practical implications 77
SECOND SECTION: Homecoming Tendencies 83
1. Poem: You, at home, Once in a While 83
2. Poem: The ‘Homecomer’ 83
3. Homecoming Tendencies: The Art of Preserving One's Existence in Places of
Origin 91
3.1. Introduction 91
3.2. Literature Review 93
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3.3. Research Context 98
3.4. About the participants 100
3.5. Method 101
3.6. Findings 103
3.7. Discussion 116
THIRD SECTION: CHILDHOOD MUSES 121
1. Poem: Childhood Muses 121
2. Childhood Muses and the Construction of the Self for Another 121
2.1. Introduction 127
2.2. Literature Review 130
2.3. Method 133
2.4. Participants profile 135
2.5. Findings 137
2.6. Discussion 163
FOURTH SECTION: SUMMARY OF MAIN FINDINGS 167
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FIFTH SECTION: IMPLICATIONS 170
1. Theoretical Implications 170
2. Practical Implications 172
SIXTH SECTION: POSSIBILITIES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 182
1. Diaspora Communities 182
2. Migrants transforming home-places, home-markets 184
3. Sense of urgency and the moral debate on cosmopolitism and patriotism185
4. The Poetic View 186
REFERENCES 190
APPENDIX 209
