Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2008
Exploring the Conceptual Boundaries of Sharing
Co-Chairs:
Julie L. Ozanne
Department of Marketing
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540) 953-3994; jozanne@vt.edu
Lucie K. Ozanne
Department of Management
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
64-3-364-2987 (ext 3068); lucie.ozanne@canterbury.ac.nz
Paper 1 “Yours, Mine, and Ours: Owning, Extended Self, and Sharing”
Russ Belk
Schulich School of Business
York University
Toronto, Canada
416-736-2100 (ext 20852); rbelk@schulich.yorku.ca
Paper 2 “Building Community within a Toy Library: The Pleasures of Sharing”
Lucie K. Ozanne
Department of Management
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
64-3-364-2987 (ext 3068)
lucie.ozanne@canterbury.ac.nz
Julie L. Ozanne
Department of Marketing
Pamplin College of Business
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540) 953-3994; jozanne@vt.edu
Paper 3 “Consuming Together and Apart: Sharing as Being a Family”
Amber M. Epp
Linda L. Price
Marketing Department
Eller College of Management
University of Nebraska
University of Arizona
Lincoln, NE 68588
Tucson, AZ 85721
(402) 472-0612; aepp@unlserve.unl.edu
(520) 626-3061; llprice@eller.arizona.edu
Discussant: Lucie K. Ozanne
Rationale for Special Session
Exploring the Conceptual Boundaries of Sharing
The majority of consumer research examines the purchase and consumption of
private goods. While many public goods exist, such as parks, museums, and art galleries,
little research examines the nature of consumption when the good is shared or collective.
One context in which sharing is widespread is the Internet and increasingly consumer
researchers are seeking to understand altruistic behaviors in this context (Belk and
Tumbat 2005; Giesler 2006).
Some of the pressing global problems, such as pollution and over-consumption,
might be alleviated if people chose to ride together in private cars or increased their use
of public transportation. For example, Paris encourages bike-sharing by distributing bikes
throughout the city and does not charge for the first half-hour of rental making short trips
free. Similarly, carsharing, in which a fleet of cars is collectively owned and used, has
grown to 600 cities worldwide.
Sharing is a learned behavior that arises within and is sanctioned by a culture
(Belk 2008). As such, in this session we seek to explore the nature of sharing as it arises
and is socialized within the family and across various life stages. The three papers
provide a sustained examination of the nature of sharing. Russ Belk’s paper builds upon
his conceptual work on sharing (Belk 2008). To better understand the concept of sharing,
he analyzes a wide range of sharing experiences including contrasting sharing across the
life stages of childhood and adulthood, as well as across marital status. The next two
papers take a more focused look at sharing within the family. Lucie Ozanne and Julie
Ozanne examine a more public form of collective consumption. They interview parents
who frequent toy lending libraries and examine the pleasures of borrowing as it affirms a
broader sense of community. Finally, Amber Epp and Linda Price examine the dynamic
tensions between sharing and not sharing within the family as it relates to individual,
relational, and family identities. All authors will present empirical work that is already
collected and they have all agreed to attend.
Lucie Ozanne will be the discussant. But rather than taking the traditional role of
discussant who critiques the papers, she will lead a discussion with the audience on the
nature of sharing. Little research exists on sharing and we believe that audience members
will be motivated and interested to participate in such a dialogue. This session should be
of particular interest to scholars of materialism, gift giving, consumer socialization, and
family studies.
“Yours, Mine, and Ours: Owning, Extended Self, and Sharing”
Russell W. Belk, York University
Both marketplace exchange and gift-giving emphasize private ownership. Rather
than distinguishing mine and yours, sharing defines something as ours. Sharing includes
joint ownership, voluntary lending and borrowing, pooling and allocation of resources,
and authorized use of public property. Although production units may share in producing,
my focus is on shared consumption.
Twenty-four students constructed accounts of their childhood and adult
experiences with sharing in both abstract moral terms and concrete experiential terms.
They also reacted to various sharing proposals such as participating in a car sharing
group, sharing a pool of designer handbags, and sharing a lawn mower with a neighbor.
After completing their sharing accounts, the students were trained in depth interviewing
techniques and conducted a total of 48 depth interviews using a similar agenda of sharing
topics. This presentation focuses on recollections of early childhood sharing experiences
in contrast to later dating and marriage experiences, during which the boundaries of
you/me/us and yours/mine/ours are formed and reformed.
As children, informants first had to learn that some spaces and things within their
home belonged to someone and that others were shared and available to everyone in the
household. They were taught by parents, teachers, religious figures, and media that
sharing is good. Sometimes these lessons were reciprocity-based (if you share with others
they will share with you) and sometimes they were based on absolute moral principles
(sharing is caring; it is selfish not to share). The injunction to share sometimes conflicted
with lessons about responsible care of possessions. Parental modeling was also seen as
important and sharing with siblings was an early arena of sharing and conflict.
In school, participants shared food, clothing, self-revelations, and more. For some,
traumatic experiences in such sharing were cited as demonstrating that sharing outside
the family is fraught with danger. This led to narrowing the boundaries within which
honesty, integrity, and fairness were expected and also helped shape notions of social
justice, friendship, and deservingness.
Three-fourths of those studied were either married or living with a significant
other. Becoming a couple marked a substantial redefinition of the boundaries of
extended self, involving new people, possessions, and places. For the couple, pooled
common possessions usually included bank accounts, credit cards, and debt. This was
seldom true of those cohabiting. At the same time, couples became very possessive of
their joint possessions. Willingness to share homes and vehicles with others was largely
restricted to close kin. Patterns of sharing were also reported among roommates, but
were restricted. None of those with roommates pooled income, but sharing of small
appliances like hairdryers and irons was common.
Within both the family of early childhood and the re-formed family of romantic
couples, the sharing ethos dominates the private property ethos. The extent to which
these familial boundaries are permeable and sharing is extended to others is influenced by
notions of aggregate self, purity, danger, contagion, greed, transgression, order, and
control. Implications are discussed.
“Building Community within a Toy Library: The Pleasures of Sharing”
Lucie K. Ozanne, University of Canterbury and Julie L. Ozanne, Virginia Tech
Toy lending libraries operate similarly to book libraries by making toys available
to children for a nominal fee (Brodin and Bjorck-Akesson 1992). While the first toy
library is thought to have begun in Los Angeles in 1935, relatively few libraries exist in
the United States as compared to Canada, Europe, or New Zealand (Moore 1995). Brodin
and Bjorck-Akesson (1992) identify three major types of toy libraries: 1) communityoriented toy libraries, 2) the Swedish ‘Lekotek’ that provides toys for children with
special needs, and 3) toy libraries with social and cultural programs. Despite these
differences, toy libraries are unified by their belief in the importance of childhood play.
Childhood developmental theorists argue that play is a crucial activity of
childhood because through play we communicate our shared cultural ideas (Vygotsky
1978). In the imaginary world of play, children use physical tools (i.e., toys) and cultural
tools (i.e., language and norms) to detach themselves from the physical world and enter
into figured social worlds. The regular use of these toys shapes thought over time
(Holland et al. 1998). For example, a meta-analysis of forty studies of play linked play to
creative problem solving, cooperativeness, and intelligence (Fisher 1992).
In this study, we examine community-oriented toy libraries in New Zealand,
which has one of the highest numbers of toy libraries per capita. Using in-depth
interviews with parents who frequent toy libraries, the initial dozen interviews offer
insight into the relationship between sharing and community.
Across all informants important cultural values are enacted when the families
share gently used toys. Specifically, the parents believed that over-consumption fuels
many important social problems including pollution, materialism, consumerism, and
global injustice. But the most important value affirmed by the act of sharing was
community. Meeting new friends and seeing old friends was a crucial part of the visit to
the toy library. Parents seek out other parents with same age kids and freely exchange
advice as well as toys. This sense of community was strengthened by the parents’
volunteer work that keeps the library running. The children are mentored to understand
that the nature of collective goods. The children experience that you can enjoy things that
are not yours: “everything doesn’t have to be brand new and your’s and fabulous.”
Despite the children taking immense pleasure in the toys that they check out every
two weeks, throughout this social ritual, people take precedence. The visit to the library is
an eagerly anticipated outing, a special time for parents and children to be together.
While the parents occasionally try to nudge their children’s selection away from toys too
large for the car boot or toys with too many parts, children are given tremendous latitude
to select toys they desire. Since borrowing involves little commitment, children take
greater risks. For example, greater experimentation occurs with traditionally genderbound consumption, such as girls enjoying pirate ships and boys trying out cooking and
beauty salon toys. But social bonds are affirmed throughout this process as children play
with others at the library, select toys for younger siblings, select toys that friends will
enjoy, or remember that they must take care of these collective goods. The presentation
concludes with thoughts on the nature of culture in New Zealand that promotes this
institution and reasons for the failure of this institution to flourish within the U.S.
“Consuming Together and Apart: Sharing as Being a Family”
Amber M. Epp, University of Nebraska and Linda L. Price, University of Arizona
Whereas models of individual ownership dominate in many consumer domains,
families share duties and responsibilities, information, time, technologies, spaces and
objects (Allan and Crow 1989; Cheal 1988, 1991; Benkler 2004). To set aside objects as
“not to be shared,” spaces as “private,” or time to “be alone” within a family is essential
and common, but may threaten what it means to “be a family” (Miller 1995; Schor 1998).
Moreover, practices of sharing, such as spaces for couples or where the children play,
constitute other relational identities (Daly 2001; Epp and Price 2008). Hence, tensions
between sharing and not-sharing are fraught with complexity in the context of family and
bound up with the quest for identity. In particular, because material objects shape what
families do and who they are (Czikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Douglas and
Isherwood 1996; McCracken 1988), sharing and not sharing things creates division,
position, and identity within the home (Daly 2003; Kochuyt 2004; Miller 2001). We
uncover how the consequential sharing and not-sharing of household objects and spaces
contributes to individual, relational, and family identity performances (Epp and Price
2008).
Based on depth interviews with 26 intergenerational family dyads, we illuminate
four perspectives on sharing that extend from underscoring individuals to foregrounding
collectivities: 1) not sharing, 2) limited resource sharing, 3) sharing as parallel sociality,
and 4) sharing as being. Further, we demonstrate how each perspective maps to different
outcomes for individual, relational, and collective identities within the family. Finally, we
explore the boundaries of these perspectives and examine what happens when family
members’ perceptions of sharing objects and spaces differ.
Private spaces within the home and objects designated as belonging to a certain
person often reflect and constitute family members’ individual identities. Families in our
study sometimes emphasized the importance of not sharing (i.e. giving kids their “own”
space), despite its potential interruption of relational and/or collective identity practices.
Similar to the sharing of public goods within a community, we observe resource sharing
within families. For instance, families described some objects and spaces that all family
members might use, but for different purposes. Thus, families must determine rules for
when and how each member gets to use the object that often prioritize certain individual,
relational, or collective identity practices over others. As a result, our study explains the
voluntary displacement of identity practices. Limited resources also can inspire
competition among family members such as when parents and children disagree about
how spaces should be used or when members “capture” certain objects or spaces for their
own use. Sharing as parallel sociality occurs when family members share objects and
spaces for the same behaviors (i.e. reading at the kitchen table), but they are not
interacting together during these performances. In this case, the family builds collective
identity through joint, parallel enactment. The most intense form of sharing involves
collective spaces and objects the family used together. Unlike parallel sociality, in which
sharing is sometimes forced through joint occupancy, sharing as being creates a new
unit. Families constitute identity in shared objects and spaces.
Selected References
Allan, Graham and Graham Crow (ed.), (1989), Home and Family: Creating the
Domestic Sphere, London: Macmillan.
Belk, Russell (2008), “Why Not Share Rather than Own?” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, forthcoming.
Belk, Russell and Gulner Tumbat (2005), “The Cult of Mac,”Consumption, Markets and
Culture, 8: 205-18.
Benkler, Yochai (2004), “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of
Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production,” Yale Law Journal, 114
(November), 273-358.
Cheal, David, (1991), Family and the State of Theory, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Cheal, David, (1988), The Gift Economy, London & New York: Routledge.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981), The Meaning of Things:
Domestic Symbols and the Self, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Daly, Kerry J. (2001), “Deconstructing Family Time: From Ideology to Lived
Experience,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 63 (May), 383-294.
Daly, Kerry J. (2003), “Family Theory versus the Theories Families Live By,” Journal of
Marriage and Family, 65 (November), 771-84.
Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood (1979), World of Goods, New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Epp, Amber M. and Linda L. Price (2008), “Family Identity: A Framework of Identity
Interplay in Consumption Practices,” Journal of Consumer Research, (June),
forthcoming.
Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift System: Netnographic Insights from Napster,”
Journal of Consumer Research, 33, 283-90.
Holland, Dorothy, William Lachicotte, Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carol Cain, ed. (1998),
Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCracken, Grant (1988), Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic
Character of Goods and Activities, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Miller, Daniel (2001), “Possessions,” in Home Possessions, (ed.) Daniel Miller, Oxford:
Berg Press, 107-21.
Miller, Laura (1995), “Family Togetherness and the Suburban Ideal,” Sociological Forum,
10 (September), 393-418.
Moore, Julia E. (1995), A History of Toy Lending Libraries in the United States since 1935,
Kent State University.
Schor, Juliet B. (1991), The Overworked American, New York, NY: Basic Books.
Vygotsky, Lev S. (1978), Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological
Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.