Light selves: where (and what) are the politics in consumer culture theory?

ABSTRACT

This commentary on Craig Thompson’s ‘Towards an Ontology of Consumers as Distributed Networks’ moves beyond his emphasis on the need for CCT to embrace material-semiotic theories to reflect our dynamically interconnected world. We argue that this restates the objectivity and apoliticality of academic practice, and critique the implied ‘light’ versus ‘heavy’ selves dichotomy, arguing instead for emphasising scholars’ responsibility to recognise their own heavy situatedness within the socio-cultural phenomena they study. We propose a ‘heavy’ CCT scholarly self, (re)integrating the political dimensions of material-semiotic theories often denuded in translation. This suggests a paradigmatic shift from ‘praxeomorphic’ (the observing/theorising of light academic selves) to ‘praxeomorphing’ (the active engagement of heavy academic selves), guiding socio-economic transformations towards equity, sustainability, and transformative change in a more politically-conscious scholarship.

KEYWORDS:

• Belk
• ontology
• self
• praxeomorphic
• praxeomorphing
• political theory
• CCT

Introduction

‘The history of philosophy is also a story about real estate’ (Haraway in Weigel, 2019, n.p.)

This is a commentary on Craig Thompson’s ‘Towards an Ontology of Consumers as Distributed Networks (or the End of “Consumer Research” as We Know It?): Retrospective Insights from the Praxeomorphism of Russell Belk’s “Extended Self”’. You are, of course, free to journey through this piece without having read that first; it may be a disorienting experience, however (though potentially delightfully so). We delve further into Thompson’s exploration, moving beyond his emphasis on the need for CCT to embrace material-semiotic theories like actor-network and assemblage to reflect our dynamically interconnected world. We argue instead for moving beyond a debate that we think restates the objectivity and apoliticality of academic practice and critique the ‘light’ versus ‘heavy’ selves dichotomy. Our commentary advocates instead for a politicised, embedded approach in consumer research, emphasising scholars’ responsibility to recognise their own heavy situatedness and political imbrication within the socio-cultural phenomena they study. We propose this heavy CCT scholarly self, who integrates the political and ethical dimensions of actor-network and assemblage theories, that we argue is denuded in marketing translation. Our commentary suggests a paradigmatic shift from ‘praxeomorphic’ (the observing and theorising of light academic selves) to ‘praxeomorphing’ (the active engagement in transformative practices of heavy academic selves). This shift aims to address societal challenges more effectively, advocating for a politically imbricated and nuanced understanding of the self within an embedded proactive, interventionist stance, guiding socio-economic transformations towards equity, sustainability, and transformative change in a more engaged and politically conscious CCT framework.

In Thompson’s critique of Belk’s conceptualisation (and reconceptualisation) of the ‘extended self’ metaphor is very insightful and thought-provoking. Its praxeomorphic approach attends to the ways in which contemporary digital and network ‘realities’ alter how theories are received (or not) by wider publics, for instance, by making once-esoteric metaphors like ‘networks’ part-and-parcel of everyday life. In short, whereas actor-networks and assemblages were once the preserve of continental philosophers, now everyone is networking online and talking about assemblages on Radio 4 (or perhaps that is a uniquely Anglo-aural-assemblage?). However, such an analysis risks positioning academia as an objective, detached observation deck, high above or otherwise separate from the external world. Academics, therefore, are objective, detached observers.

While undoubtedly useful, the commentary does not sufficiently grapple with scholars’ embeddedness within the very phenomena they study. Immanent, fundamentally constitutive embeddedness is an epistemic theme, if not an ontopolitical foundation (Law, 2009), of the aforementioned actor-networks and assemblages. Although these terms have become easier to understand (and perhaps already out-of-date, as Thompson argues), their lessons of embedded knowledge work (and the politics thereof) have either been accidentally elided or forgotten, perhaps strategically overlooked. If Thompson is right that the practical morphology of the world is moving onto new, post-network, after-assemblage models of reality, then perhaps now is the time to pause and comment on the opportunity costs.

Further, while Thompson’s paper suggests new technologies necessitate new ontologies, it is also worth noting that notions of decentralised networks and assemblages emerged decades ago when these new technologies had yet to emerge. We suggest, therefore, that given the political nature of many of these original works, the more interesting critical question is why these approaches have emerged in the manner that they have in our discipline. This gap cannot be attributed merely to a lack of real-world examples, for there are certainly many empirical cases where consumption technologies are acutely political in impacting social hierarchies, interpersonal dynamics, and other manifestations of power and powerlessness (e.g. Bettany et al., 2014; Hietanen et al., 2022; Kozinets, 2008). Rather, we suggest it likely reflects rigid disciplinary assumptions and institutional, even macropolitical, constraints – a politics that many critical scholars have sought to investigate (Thompson included) – yet remains persistent regardless (Bettany, 2016; Coffin, 2021; Coffin & Egan-Wyer, 2022; Tadajewski, 2008, 2016). Why? As Tadajewski (2023a) recently argued, part of the problem is that we do not draw enough critical lessons from history, including our own.

Thompson’s paper’s language of ‘light’ versus ‘heavy’ selves runs the risk of floating over the politics of identity – not to mention those powers denied the entitative status of having an identity, such as agentic waves of stigma (Bettany et al., 2022). Actor-network and assemblage theories originally carried significant political connotations about decentralising power (Latour, 1999; Law, 2009), connotations largely stripped away in CCT work (although not necessarily by the authors themselves, but rather the processes of publication that we all work through and find ourselves reworked by). Rather than explore the radical political roots of these theories, Thompson’s commentary focuses on the use (or misuse?) of these theories as esoteric resources for academic publication, producing a (mis)match between etic and emic understandings that his commentary seeks to address. Thompson’s commentary explores how emic worlds have not only caught up with this etic imaginary but have sped past and left CCT scholars in the proverbial dust. Our commentary explores how the world might meet in a very different way. Consumer research continuously reinvents existing theoretical concepts, using these as enabling or enfolding theories whilst disabling or folding away their radical potentialities. These tendencies have been critiqued for their lack of originality (Belk, 2020; Belk & Sobh, 2019), as well as defended (Dolbec et al., 2021), but here we wish to return to radical roots (Botez & Hietanen, 2017) before they are torn out by the next conceptual whirlwind.

Specifically, even while advocating ‘light’ selves, consumer research largely remains grounded in disciplinary politics that typically avoid heavier societal engagement. In other words, even the heaviest forms of consumer research have a relatively light touch on reality. Sticking with the extended self theme, Pavia’s (1993) study of consumers with a terminal illness shows how the weight of morality can make the loss of possessions seem far lighter. Most consumer research focuses on cases where gaining and losing possessions (or, nowadays, sharing and accessing resources or struggling to) is highly significant (Bardhi et al., 2017; Belk, 1988, 2010, 2013). We do not deny that a family heirloom or even a favourite shirt can be hugely consequential, and not just for the individual consumer. The increasing turnover of smartphones is often theorised as a move towards lightness via digital consumption, ephemerality, and less concrete extensions of selfhood (Bardhi et al., 2017; Belk, 2013). Yet, this same turnover is imposing a heavier impact on wider systems of exchange, including those within the ecological biome (Arnould, 2022). As such, the experience of lighter selves should continue to be a topic of theorisation, but we should also question whether we have been sufficiently engaged in ‘heavy’ topics (Pavia, 1993).

In a similar vein, it could be argued that terms like assemblage have often been enrolled to help theorise phenomena and challenge earlier conceptualisations on a number of fronts, without their potential to produce meaningful engagement with (and theory-led implications for) the difficult things going on in the world ever being fully developed or achieved. This is not due to a lack of effort. For many decades consumer researchers have called for, and discussed the difficulties with, making research more transformative, impactful, relevant, and so forth (most recently, Schmitt et al., 2022). Yet, notwithstanding the persistence and passion of individual scholars, journals, and other organisations, the institutional juggernaut of academia remains more like a zeppelin than a tanker ship; both are difficult to turn, but the latter at least makes waves. More prosaically, our commentary argues that political detachment from the world will be (at least in part) rectified by reconnecting to the political origins of the theories we are now all familiar with reading and using.

To be clear, Thompson’s call for conceptual reframing is welcome, especially as it encourages scholars of consumption to rethink their relation to the world and their social responsibilities, with social here taken in the broadest sense (Latour, 2005), including nonhumans and non-entities also (Bettany et al., 2022; Maclaran & Chatzidakis, 2022). Latour (1993) once used the metaphor of a parliament of things, stressing how ontology and politics are always inexorably intertwined. Nonhumans still lack political representation in the formal sense (i.e. rights for sentient animals or AI) (Coffin, 2022), but if we focus on consumer research, it may be said that the growing representations of nonhumans in theory (e.g. assemblage approaches) do not come with a full representation of the politics of nonhumanity. The nonhumans amongst us – indeed, within and interpenetrating us as bacteria, cyborgian implants, and xenotransplants (R. Belk et al., 2020; Campbell & Deane, 2019; Lima & Belk, 2023) – may require a move beyond ontological speculation, moving towards more public roles shaping the ethical contours of marketing systems and consumer society.

What does this mean in practice? We are most inspired by the politics of feminist material-semioticians, who evaluated the quality of conceptualisation not in terms of its accurate representation (re-presentation) of reality, but rather in terms of affective reproduction (re-production) of reality. It is this precise point, largely tacit within Thompson’s commentary, that we wish to prise open and discuss in more detail. While Thompson laments how the premature adaptation of assemblage by academics was subsequently overtaken by empirical events (what we might call a tortoise-and-hare understanding), we lament how consumer researchers have not been as keen to develop purposively non-empirical theorisations, consciously deviating from reality as-is in order to create conditions for reality to be realised differently. This potentiality can be discerned from Thompson’s commentary, especially when he makes alternative suggestions for future consumer research. However, we wish to be much more explicit on this point of creative divergence.

The Thompson commentary thesis

At the risk of retelling a well-known story, Russell Belk’s highly influential 1988 Journal of Consumer Research article ‘Possessions and the Extended Self’ marked a major conceptual shift in consumer research. R. W. Belk (1988, p. 160) proposed that: ‘Self-extension occurs through control and mastery of an object, through knowledge of an object, and through contamination via proximity and habituation of an object’. The ‘self’ emerges through ongoing relationships with valued consumer objects that become psychologically and symbolically integrated into one’s identity (Stone et al., 2017). Bringing these theoretical threads together, Belk (1988, p. 160) argued, ‘we are what we have and that this may be the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour’. However, the Thompsonian commentary posits that Belk’s original theoretical conceptualisation retained remnants of a ‘core self’, which serves as the primary agentic force driving the process of ‘extending’ itself by investing emotional significance and identity into external objects. This lingering notion of a core agentic self, it is argued, is more than a metaphor. The idea of a core that orchestrates self-extension carried over dualistic assumptions that Belk was otherwise attempting to firmly reject and overcome. Thompson’s commentary traces how Belk has progressively tried to further ‘lighten’ and decentralise his original conception of the extended self over subsequent decades. In 2014 and 2016, for example, Belk acknowledged the need to update the concept of the extended self in the digital age, exploring the dissolution of boundaries between material and virtual and self and other. To enable this, Belk dispensed with the notion of concentric circles spatially representing levels of self-extension radiating out from a centre and later by more explicitly disavowing any concept of a distinct ‘core’ agentic self altogether. However, Thompson argues that these modifications still theoretically imply that there must be some singular, essence-like self that is being ‘extended’ outward. For example, Thompson argues that ‘Tian and Belk (2005) recognise some of the conceptual incompatibilities that arise from this betwixt and between ontology but do not fully redress them, as their modification still presumes that there is a core self who is managing the various boundaries that define a consumer’s extended home and work selves’ (2024, p. 559).

To complete the conceptual shift towards a fully decentralised network notion of self, Thompson’s paper suggests that contemporary theories such as assemblage theory and actor-network theory offer sociologists and consumer researchers valuable metaphors and analytical tools. These perspectives provide means to distribute agency across networks of human and non-human actors, where no one element exerts centralised control. Building on this broad base of theory, the paper proposes re-envisioning consumers as ‘distributed selves’ and compellingly analogises this dispersed notion of self to an open distributed ledger or blockchain that dynamically tracks relations and changes over time rather than possessing any static essence. In the commentary’s view, Belk’s evolving theorisation of the ‘extended self’ has served as a transitional concept bridging consumer research from traditional assumptions of a single stable core agentic self towards contemporary paradigms recognising selves as complexly interrelational, socially constructed, and performatively enacted. Of course, following this single line of theoretical narrative means stripping away many other complications, momentary ruptures, and deviations over the last century or so, where alternative understandings of the consumer are developed but then buried, atrophied, or lost (Tadajewski, 2022, 2023b; Tadajewski & Higgins, 2023). Still, as this commentary is based on Thompson’s work and his focus on Belk, we will also delimit our discussion to this historical thread.

However, Thompson argues that exponential progress in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and related digital infrastructures are destabilising established cultural notions of human uniqueness and are now providing the metaphors and experiential templates needed to fully realise the radical decentralisation of self implied by Belk’s network-oriented revisions. The commentary speculates we may be entering a period where, seemingly, common-sense divides between humans and technological actants begin dissolving, completely transforming the field of consumer research with the human ‘consumer’ as its central figure, whether manifest as a theoretical-ideological belief resistant to critique (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014) or a more consciously employed epistemic device worth rehabilitating (Schmitt et al., 2022). What contemporary AI and digital networks provide are new metaphorical models and experiential templates through which these formerly abstract, academic notions of decentralised subjectivity can now be rendered culturally tangible and self-evident in everyday practice. The paper therefore makes the nuanced case that we may presently be crossing a threshold into an era where fragmented, fluid network selves become taken for granted as common sense rather than merely hypothetical thought experiments. As Thompson puts it, ‘Our digitalised cultural epoch is now one where assemblages and de-centred agency are no longer abstract, philosophical ideas used to dislodge sedimented cultural beliefs and philosophical outlooks’ (2024, p. 560).

Critique and response

In emphasising dramatic paradigm changes as changes in theoretics, Thompson’s commentary risks positioning academia as a community of external observers, simply tracking external developments rather than recognising those scholars’ embeddedness within the very phenomena they examine. While the paper suggests new technologies require new ontological paradigms, theories of decentralised networks and assemblages emerged decades ago, long preceding current digital infrastructures – as Thompson notes himself. This raises more important questions regarding why consumer research has not already fully embraced such perspectives despite their conceptual foundations being laid forty-plus years before. The lag likely reflects rigid disciplinary assumptions and institutional constraints beyond just lacking perceived real-world manifestations. Critically examining the politics hindering the acceptance of more relational, decentralised ontologies could prove more illuminating, we suggest, than arguing for an emic-driven reading of a shift away from one set of concepts to another in an academic sub-field.

It might be argued that this implies valorisation of etic-emic matching (or isomorphism). However, reading deeper into a broad range of inceptive material-semiotic works (Braidotti, 1994; Haraway, 1985; Law, 1999), the approach is quite different. The purpose is to come up with an emic term or discourse that is different from the emic, to challenge the emic and to change it. It is more activist, proactive, and interventionist. In short, the framing of material-semiotic approaches as abstract, philosophical ideas is counter to much of the material-semiotic work that has been done in parent disciplines of science studies, feminist studies, and so-called ‘after ANT’. The symbolic language, and conceptual metaphors underpinning network theories particularly, often carried anti-hierarchical political connotations in their early formulations, emphasising the diffusion of power across integrated socio-material networks combining diverse human and nonhuman elements. However, in migrating into marketing literature, the radical decentralist implications have frequently been stripped away or ignored, reducing complex terms like ‘assemblage’ to interesting alternative lenses rather than channels for impactful societal intervention. For instance, assemblages have helped Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) scholars and others to rethink markets and consumption as co-constitutive relational processes of mutual becoming between meanings and materialities, and authors in this area have been keen to acknowledge power as an issue or phenomenon to analyse from an assemblage approach (Canniford & Bajde, 2016); however, conceptual contributions have largely focused on moving theoretical conversations forward, rather than reshaping how non-academics think, act, and interact. Critical scholars may claim that the impact of assemblage has been (to draw on Thompson’s terminology) rather ‘light’, challenging how consumer researchers and marketing academics write about phenomena but not delving into heavier, more uncomfortable topics like distributive ecological justice (Tadajewski, 2008), at least until recently (Arnould, 2022). Of course, a considerable part of the problem is that institutional restraints and incentives mean that academic work is oriented towards interventions in academic outlets that influence other academics. We hold that this is valuable and should continue – changing the world will certainly require changing those who research and teach others about the world – but that consumer researchers with transformative, critical, or impact-driven ambitions should also challenge themselves to craft conceptual interventions that resonate with wider publics. This is a well-worn, often-made argument. Our addition here is that being inspired by the radical roots of assemblage approaches and actor-network theory should not mean finding metaphors or figurative handles that match isomorphically to emic developments but rather involve creating constructs that can take the emic in new directions that might not otherwise occur. The goal should be to redirect, not reproduce, to present differently, not represent accurately.

While calling for freeing consumers’ identities from the constraints of ‘heavy’ industrial selves, consumer research as a discipline continues avoiding substantive grappling with ‘heavier’ societal issues and involvement. Thompson seems more intent on saying that based on contemporary external developments, consumer scholars can no longer ignore networked and assemblage ways of thinking that have been available all along. However, the eagerness to push ‘new’ ontologies still also reflects publishing strategies for claiming novel insights over capturing difficult world changes. In reality, experiences of selfhood have always involved complex tensions between continuity/change, integration/fragmentation, heavy/light. Dichotomising these dynamics into dual paradigms obscures nuances. Relatedly, the paper portrays the dominance of ‘heavy’ selves as an outdated residue rather than acknowledging ongoing cultural concerns with authenticity, meaning, and moral and material anchors amidst flux (see, for example, work on consumer prepping, Kerrane et al., 2021, 2023). While identities seem less fixed today, the desire for coherence persists. The appeal of ‘light’ deterritorialised selves should not be overstated. Additionally, the commentary’s sharp distinction between the material/technical and the cultural downplays their deep entanglement. Prevailing technologies don’t just provide new metaphors – they actively reshape relational possibilities. At the same time, technologies are themselves embedded within complex social worlds and power relations. Greater attention to this co-constitution would strengthen the analysis. Furthermore, the article focuses extensively on abstract ontological shifts in conceptualising selves and subjectivity. But it often overlooks how this plays out concretely in shaping consumers’ lived experiences, everyday practices, and sense of identity. We would argue for more nuance regarding consumers’ enduring quest for meaning, fuller recognition of the socio-material entanglement of technology and culture, greater empirical grounding, and cautiously tempered speculation. The impact of contemporary digital mediation on selfhood deserves careful analysis, particularly for those selves ‘made heavy’ by structural inequality or discrimination.

Perhaps the more apposite commentary on the shifting philosophies of self could focus instead on exploring why material semiotics has never really succeeded in consumer research; it did not make things better (however defined). If we accept that material semiotics emerged as simply a way of achieving the same through slightly different means, simply describing things differently, changing consumer research slightly, and then, caught up (but now overtaken) by events beyond the ivory tower means we have given up on key opportunities. Big corporations and AI coders are shaping the world with little critical consideration (or concern?) about the consequences. Though there are some counterexamples (e.g. Buolamwini, 2024; Kraft, 2016), these tend to be in extreme and publicly controversial cases. Marketing and consumer research must continue to ask and answer difficult ethical and political questions as often as possible, especially if other market actors are less inclined to do so on an ongoing basis. Similarly, if ANT-assemblage had been more critical and achieved critical mass at critical junctures, might it have made networks and assemblages into more equitable, inclusive image?

Scholars’ inextricable situatedness – from praxeomorphic to “praxeomorphing”

The Thompson commentary appears to rest upon an assumed positionality of academic researchers as objective observers analysing external market developments and consumer technologies. This depiction conflicts with feminist material-semiotic perspectives that foreground scholars’ inescapable embeddedness within the very sociocultural worlds they investigate (Haraway, 1985). As thinkers like Haraway, Braidotti, and Barad argue, researchers exert political impacts through the questions asked, terminologies deployed, explanatory frameworks espoused, and dissemination choices. Academia can never operate as a neutral recorder passively interpreting realities existing independently outside itself and employing new theories to account for this.

Thompson’s commentary focuses extensively on accurately tracking ontological shifts in conceptualising consumer identities and subjectivities. However, feminist materialists would challenge assumptions that scholarly responsibility resides primarily in producing ever more precise mappings of external changes. Descriptive accuracy means little if inquiries fail to challenge oppressive assumptions behind profit-driven business models, consumption orientations and marketing infrastructures impacting consumers’ lives. Beyond just diagnosis, researchers hold obligations to help reshape realities and reform underlying ideological gradients influencing political trajectories. This is not necessarily a novel argument, nor one that is unique to scholarship described as interpretive, critical, or transformative (Tadajewski, 2010), but it is one that remains pertinent and unfulfilled (Casey & Tadajewski, 2023). This demands moving from ‘praxeomorphic’ theorisation narrowly aimed at mirroring practices towards more proactive ‘praxeomorphing’ approaches deliberately working to transform realities by seeding cultural ecosystems with new conceptual metaphors and explanatory logics (Bauman, 2018). For example, terms like assemblage and distributed networks carry anti-hierarchical connotations about decentralising power. Widespread incorporation of such vocabularies into public discourse could help engender alternative ideological terrain more conducive for egalitarian reforms. This first requires following that eternal feminist scholarship quest – untangling externally-focused, detached, ostensibly apolitical academic positionalities.

Further scrutinising the Thompson commentary itself through this non-dualist understanding of research embeddedness exposes its limits. Belk’s extended self-concept did not arise independently from broader cultural shifts in technologies, market logic and identity meanings. As a renowned scholar, his writings reciprocally helped co-constitute understandings of consumption and selfhood through decades of teaching, reviewing, mentoring, and publishing that disseminated assumptions, valorised discourses and legitimated theoretical evolutions (Brown & Schau, 2008). Papers like Thompson’s that frame scholars as outside observers subtly perpetuate beliefs that marketing knowledge merely reflects, rather than actively shapes, socio-material worlds. According to Fitchett et al. (2014), Consumer Culture Theory exhibits wider tendencies to position business on the one hand and researchers on the other, obscuring how academics occupy in-between positions within institutional political economies they critique. This demarcation has been challenged frequently (Giesler, in Harris, 2014) and recently (Schmitt et al., 2022), though much more work is plainly needed. For example, terms like prosumption, value co-creation, open-source branding and others entered marketing already stripped of initial sociopolitical change motivations from originating domains, partly through repeated scholarly translations disconnected from original reformist objectives (Tadajewski & Jones, 2020; Zwick et al., 2008). Now that these theoretical resources have been imported and integrated into our canon, is it possible for us to return to the sources and layer on something more radical? Or, are these ideas now irrevocably cast in the forms that have been established as legitimate? Might it be best to look elsewhere for our interventions?

Escaping this compromise-laden middle ground requires first acknowledging it. Future consumer scholarship must more consistently recognise scholars as simultaneously constituted by and shaping the developments they analyse, with responsibilities extending far beyond descriptive accuracy and theoretical novelty into proactively steering change. As Tadajewski (2023a) argues, looking historically or beyond the Global North can provide many sources of inspiration. These demand rethinking assumed binaries between internal/external, theory/phenomena, and observation/intervention. Beyond merely speculating on digital era impacts, researchers need public-facing roles leveraging insider positions to shape corporate and public policy directions. Some have been very successful at this in the past (Wilkie et al., 2013), though arguably the role of theorising with real-world relevance is increasingly oriented towards the social, ecological, political, and ethical (Schmitt et al., 2022), that require new ways of thinking and working (Arnould, 2022), not to mention reworking (with) others (Helkkula & Arnould, 2022). Some movement towards the governmentality of the impact agenda in the UK signals an important directional shift. Similar moves in the dominant USA academy are scant, so perhaps instead of valorising the holy trinity of JCR/JM/JMR, a more democratic approach might include journals from other regions, disciplines and political purposes in the conversation. Indeed, most of the more exciting, often experimental conversations on critical material semiotics have, after all, taken place outside this triumvirate. Being a little provocative, rather than renaming the JCR to the Journal of Distributed Consumption Networks as a suggested praxeomorphic move, we might instead instigate the praxeomorphing move of intervening in the dominant philosophy of our field that ‘if a tree falls in the forest and it isn’t reported in JCR, did it actually happen?’ Re-presenting JCR is one solution, certainly, but creating new directions and promoting more outlets for research in addition to JCR (or JDCN) is another.

Praxeomorphing the consumer theory translation

While the Thompson paper suggests that today’s digital transformations necessitate new ontological paradigms – indeed, they make them commonsensical – philosophical perspectives on decentralised networks, distributed agency, and socio-material assemblages considerably predate current technological shifts. Thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari (1987) were theorising ideas of assemblage and rhizomatic interrelationality decades before the widespread societal diffusion of social media, AI and blockchain that the paper cites as concrete instantiations (although see Cluley & Brown’s (2018) suggestion that the early uptake of network technologies may have given these philosophers an empirical head start of sorts).

Approaches like assemblage thinking and actor-network theory often carried significant anti-hierarchical political symbolism within their early social theory formulations. For example, Manuel DeLanda’s (2006) articulation of assemblage thinking aimed to fundamentally challenge linear causality assumptions behind positivist science as well as problematise reductive part/whole logics underpinning functionalism. Likewise, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory sought to replace modernist divides between nature/culture with hybrid co-constitution. The main aim of ANT was to expose the inner workings of scientific processes using multi-site, multi-agentic ethnographic methods to shed light on the way certain ideas became scientific ‘facts’. Both approaches emphasise fluidity and decentring human exceptionalism – importantly – for radically reimagining possibilities. As Law and Singleton (2000) state, this type of research unpicks taken-for-granted articulations and sedimentary politics and highlights and performs the idea that ‘it could be otherwise’. However, in migrating into marketing and consumer research literature, the radical political valences pervading these nonlinear, non-anthropocentric theories have frequently been stripped away. Their incorporation often ignores founding aims to completely reshape ontological terrain.

This pattern reflects a broader trend of repeatedly neutering original political intents when theories migrate into marketing subfields. Approaches emphasising ethics, sustainability and social justice in originating domains translate into largely apolitical lenses for describing contested market developments once adopted within consumer scholarship. Discourses indirectly perpetuate assumptions needing interrogation. For example, concepts like prosumption and value co-creation premised on empowering consumers’ capacities for resistance get framed as newly optimised techniques for driving brand participation, obscuring underlying critiques of capitalist extraction logic (Cova et al., 2013; Zwick et al., 2008). Similarly, actor-network approaches underscoring corporations’ dependence and vulnerabilities transform into methodological vocabularies celebrating more savvy network management for harnessing stakeholder agency to fortify market positions. Sociomaterial theories shift focus from material lives endangered by environmental harms towards the visions of greener versions of business growth and consumerism (Fuentes, 2015). Systemic change imperatives dissolve into pleas for more ethical forms of commerce, disconnecting scholarly concepts from original revolutionary demands to completely transform political-economic foundations.

Underlying these diluted iterations, consumer research as a discipline persists in avoiding substantive grappling with ‘heavier’ societal power issues and struggles. The Thompson commentary invokes notions of freeing consumers’ identities by shifting to more open, multidirectional paradigms. It highlights restrictedness within older models grounded in internal coherence and narrative stability. However, these fluid ontologies it celebrates were developed for more radical societal liberation purposes than retheorizing academic consumer conceptions (Braidotti, 2013). Their initial aims targeted escaping the oppressive constraints of capitalist subjectivities, disciplining individuals as both producers and buyers adhering to institutional demands and incentives. Early proponents envisioned processes of turning established constructions inside out and upside down as methods for finding alternatives. In subtle ways, the paper domesticates the disruptive force of network/assemblage challenges to dominant hierarchical orientations by framing decentring ideas as natural extensions within intellectual progressions of the field itself. For example, it positions these concepts as advancing from R. W. Belk’s (1988) foundational work on the extended self rather than arising independently from wholly different traditions. It also implicitly benchmarks their significance based on the ability to update consumer identity understandings rather than the capacity to unsettle ingrained disciplinary assumptions. In these patterns of framing, marketing adoptions extract radical terminology from original contexts and accumulate significance. Polemic battles fought on pages bypass arenas where people feel material-semiotic consequences.

So, what to do about it? Imperative to reconnect concepts back to intended transformations

As digital mediation accelerates, marketing scholarship stands at a crossroads. Pathways beckon, either doubling down on descriptive accuracies, terminological evolutions and intellectual elegance or embracing obligations to help guide trajectories of change towards more equitable, sustainable horizons. A choice looms between praxeomorphic tracking of developments or avant-garde praxeomorphing focused on manifesting alternative preferable worlds. If consumer research is assessed based on practical efficacy enabling positive ethical change rather than the explanatory revelation of ontological shifts, critical gaps appear. Global algorithmic infrastructures interlace with rising populism, climate instability, weaponisation capacities and wealth divides, configuring new matrices of vulnerability and control. Corporate and state interests exert a dominant influence on sociotechnical contours and priorities, contrasting with founding aspirations of approaches like actor-network theory seeking to highlight the multiplicity of agencies. Yet, marketing inquiry largely remains a spectator sport rather than a vehicle for reformist mobility.

The window for proactive steering narrows as accelerating innovations lock in potentially oppressive assumptions before critics can respond. But openings persist for scholarship that recognises its inextricable embeddedness within fluid phenomena increasingly ensnaring humanity’s trajectories. Scholarly interventions still stand possible. This demands rejecting stale knowledge development boundaries that cordon the strident creativity required today. Marketing currently orients innovation around better meeting consumer needs through advances enabling businesses to iterate strategies. This praxeomorphic mirroring binds understanding to emic commercial logics. Escape means channelling avant-garde imaginaries that subvert clientelist assumptions on where progress arises. The most profound breakthroughs frequently start outside dominant frames. If creative scholars reconnected fluid assemblage ideas back to original social justice yearnings, what bold sociotechnical systems might they inspire? Visionary concepts like open value networks, platform cooperatives, data dignity, common fare, and cosmopolitical marketing suggest radical repositories await activation if thinkers trade conservative reporting roles for trailblazing leadership. Progress demands rejecting mythologies of detached expertise and embracing courageous action across old borders. The present summons marketing scholars towards their better angels – and bolder dreams.

Conclusion

The network-assemblage ship has sailed, as Thompson suggests. Even emergent techno-metaphors are probably going to be out-of-date by the time academics work out what to do with them. We are accelerating towards something nonhuman, but it may not be for the best. Returning to natural-human-technological works like those of Haraway or Braidotti, who do not draw nature/technological distinctions or celebrate AI at the expense of other (e.g. animal or aboriginal) intelligence(s), maybe we need figurations (and other techniques) that try to intervene. Put differently, rather than worry about how accurate and epistemically rigorous our conceptualisations are, we should be worried about how effective and real-world-effective they are.

So, if there are metaphors of selfhood (and otherness) that we can devise that help us to live more sympathetically, symbiotically, and selflessly (but still with self where relevant), that’s what we should be working on. Our ideas should be crafted in such a way that they are easy to use, easy to share, perhaps even easy to meme. To take but one example, nudge theory circulates the simple concept of using defaults and other choice architectures to make the best option the easiest option (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), yet this is based on years of sophisticated empirical and conceptual work (Kahneman, 2011). Nudging is an etic construct that created new realities in government policy, retail design, healthcare, and more, though it arguably works because it leverages an accessible metaphor to masquerade as an emic term. The point about the self-being an illusion of assemblages is interesting and something that ANT-assemblage in CCT never really followed through on (Bettany, 2016; Coffin, 2021; Thompson, 2024), and we’d celebrate Thompson’s attempted rebranding of consumer research as consumption worlds or something similar. Yet, we would (constructively) critique his tacit axiology and praxeomorphic theorisation. Rather than trying to be praxeomorphic (practice-isomorphic), we should all be aiming to be praxeomorphing (practice-shaping).

The urgent situation summons embrace of riskier, avant-garde roles that throw academic prestige behind novel experiments leveraging insider positionality to enact creative counter-programmes diverting deterministic forces. The task today is not novel buzzwords but renewed commitment to original aspirations. If thinkers claiming a decentralist mantle ignore previous generations’ cries for equity and sustainability over profit maximisation and possessive individualism, they will have failed. But possibilities await in linking today’s flux back to liberatory hopes that always stirred beneath surfacing waves.

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Notes on contributors

Shona Bettany

Shona Bettany is a consumer ethnographer, focusing on consumer culture in all its guises but more specifically on material-semiotic approaches to consumption. These approaches have illuminated such topics as gender and sexuality, business transformation, contemporary family consumption and animal-human relations.

Jack Coffin

Jack Coffin teaches marketing theories to fashion students at the University of Manchester. In turn, they teach him about the latest trends. His scholarly style mixes theories of unconscious processes, posthuman ethics, and ideological infrastructures, applying this admixture to real-world problems like climate change and the treatment of animals.