Russell Belk
Biographic Data
| ID | 75500 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Russell Belk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Russell |
| FAMILY NAME | Belk |
| SIGNATURE | BELK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 288 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Marketing in a Digital World: Exploring Immersive Experiences, Innovation, and Cultural Dynamics of Consumption
Marketing in a Digital World consists of nine essays on how the digital revolution has affected marketing theory and practice. Leading marketing scholars, including several editors of premier academic journals, provide fresh insights for both scholars and managers seeking to enhance their understanding of marketing in a digital world
Yes, but: Technology, netnography, and futures
Doing (and Using) Research in Arts and Cultural Management
This book offers a rich, critical, and engaging exploration of cutting-edge methods for studying arts and cultural management in a digital age. The content will appeal to those who seek to study these topics by employing the latest data gathering and analytical methods. It is an informative resource for academics, including advanced masters’ and PhD candidates, as well as professional arts managers seeking to understand the changing landscape. Th…
The Routledge Handbook of Identity and Consumption
A Very Good Year for Ijba
This analysis of articles published in the International Journal of Business Anthropology during 2024 offers a glimpse of the research methods, contexts, and findings of the journal. Although the methods and content differ somewhat from the journal’s stated methods and focus, the articles provide a rich variety of studies of largely Asian and primarily Chinese anthropology which is now rebounding following the 1952-1979 silencing of anthropology …
Ethnography, netnography, and observation
Bodies as machines. Machines as bodies
From early Greek philosophers to Descartes' machinic metaphors of humans-as-machines, to the emergence of physical machine-like humans, the intersections of the human body with machines circle back through hundreds of years of debates on human-technology relationships. We live in an age when robots are becoming increasingly human-like with artificial intelligence that mimics and sometimes exceeds our own. At the same time, we humans are adopting …
The American Stamp: Postal Iconography, Democratic Citizenship, and Consumerism in the United States
Metaverse marketing: How the metaverse will shape the future of consumer research and practice
The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transf…
Money, possessions, and ownership in the Metaverse: NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Web3 and Wild Markets
Decolonizing marketing
In January 2021, the ETHOS Research Center at Bayes Business School, along with the CRIS Research Center at Royal Holloway University of London, hosted an event entitled Decolonizing the Business School. Over 500 attendees participated, from all business disciplines, testifying to the strong levels of interest in this topic. Marketing was particularly active, with over 100 participants. In this article, I (Giana Eckhardt, one of the organizers of…
Routledge Handbook of Digital Consumption
Consumer Reception of New Technologies
At a subconscious level, many of us revere our favorite internet search engines and would be lost without them. We experience Google, Baidu, Naver, and Yandex as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, very much like a god. We greet many other technological innovations with a similar sense of religious awe and reverence. However, we greet other new technologies with fear and foreboding. They take on monstrous proportions in the popular imaginati…
The Body as (Another) Place: Producing Embodied Heterotopias Through Tattooing
While previous research has mobilized sociological and psychological readings of the body, this study considers it ontologically as the ultimate place we must live in, with no escape possible. A phenomenological framework and a four-year, multimethod, qualitative study of tattoo recipients and tattooists substantiates the conceptualization of the body as a threefold articulation: an inescapable place (topia), the source of utopias arising from fl…
Thin-slicing Tremé as a subjective sashay: Heretical pilgrimages to St. Augustine Catholic Church
Five heretical field researchers celebrate human subjectivity in a fractured journey toward St. Augustine Catholic Church in the heart of Tremé in September 2015. They populate their diverse pentagonal thoughts with Mary Douglas’ negotiated concepts of purity and pollution, rituals and symbols as a counterweight in their backpacks. Some are inspired by the theatrical mythologies of the guides who take them there, others are stopped in their track…
Luxury consumption and luxury brands
This chapter identifies the current state of knowledge regarding luxury consumption and luxury brands, tracing their origins from antiquity through the present trend of Western conceptions of luxury taking root in emerging economies in China and India. It explores the seldom-investigated fundamental concept of consumer dreams of luxury products and experiences. The chapter provides a scholarly perspective on past and extant research on the concep…
Consumer culture theory
Sharing without caring
I examine sharing in the context of gated communities. Sharing among family, friends and neighbours is the oldest form of mutual distribution and involves inclusionary “sharing in”, which tends to build caring interpersonal ties and a sense of community. Public goods sharing involves more exclusionary “sharing out”, and creates only weak ties and a limited sense of community or caring. The same is true of the so-called “sharing economy”. Gated co…
A history of global consumption, 1500-1800
The historic period covered by this book is generally taken to be the crucible of contemporary consumer culture. It was a time in which large populations of people began to want superfluous things
You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online
Collaborating in Visual Consumer Research
Collaborative research is both a pragmatic and a moral choice for the ethnographic consumer researcher. It often produces better insights as well as strives to overcome issues of representation in anthropology. This review looks at both traditional collaborations and collaborations enabled by digital technologies, with a focus on visual collaborative methods, benefits, and difficulties. I review a variety of such consumer research methods and con…
Mimicry and modernity in the Middle East: Fashion invisibility and young women of the Arab Gulf
Prior consumer research has addressed the encounter between global brands and styles versus local cultures through the concepts of glocal hybridity, post-assimilationist resistance, and the de-stigmatization of local practices in the face of competition from global consumer culture. Based on fieldwork with college women in the Arab Gulf states we detect two other practices involving highly conspicuous consumption that act to create a space for id…
The Naomi Klein Brand
I should make clear at outset that I am a professor of marketing and hold a chair endowed by Kraft Foods Canada. This is already two strikes against me from Naomi Kleins perspective, although I am thankfully not author of one of those soul-destroying business she refers to in new introduction to No Logo (Klein 2009). My research is focused on consumers, materialism, gift-giving, sharing, meanings of possessions, and global consumer culture. My st…
Sharing: Table 1
Sharing is a fundamental consumer behavior that we have either tended to overlook or to confuse with commodity exchange and gift giving. Sharing is a distinct, ancient, and increasingly vital consumer research topic that bears on a broad array of consumption issues ranging from sharing household resources versus atomized family possessions to file sharing versus intellectual property rights. This theoretical review distinguishes between sharing i…
Why Not Share Rather Than Own
Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies. Yet outside of our immediate families, we do little sharing. Even within the family, there is increased privatization. This article addresses impediments to sharing as well as incentives that may encourage more sharing of both tangible and intangible …
Sharing: Table 1
Sharing is a fundamental consumer behavior that we have either tended to overlook or to confuse with commodity exchange and gift giving. Sharing is a distinct, ancient, and increasingly vital consumer research topic that bears on a broad array of consumption issues ranging from sharing household resources versus atomized family possessions to file sharing versus intellectual property rights. This theoretical review distinguishes between sharing i…
Why Not Share Rather Than Own
Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies. Yet outside of our immediate families, we do little sharing. Even within the family, there is increased privatization. This article addresses impediments to sharing as well as incentives that may encourage more sharing of both tangible and intangible …
The Cult of Macintosh
In this study, we introduce the notion of a brand cult in an effort to better understand the extreme devotion consumers have toward certain brands. We use historical images plus interviews and observations with current Macintosh computer users to explore the cultic quasi‐religious aspects of this consumption. We find several key sustaining myths, including a creation myth, a messianic myth, a satanic myth, and a resurrection myth. The accompanyin…
The Body as (Another) Place: Producing Embodied Heterotopias Through Tattooing
While previous research has mobilized sociological and psychological readings of the body, this study considers it ontologically as the ultimate place we must live in, with no escape possible. A phenomenological framework and a four-year, multimethod, qualitative study of tattoo recipients and tattooists substantiates the conceptualization of the body as a threefold articulation: an inescapable place (topia), the source of utopias arising from fl…
Dirty Little Secret: Home Chaos and Professional Organizers
Accumulation of possessions is a common phenomenon in an affluent society such as the United States. People increasingly share a common ideology that more is better, thus legitimizing acquiring ever more stuff. The dramatic accumulation of possessions and the limitation of organization skills among individuals create frustration and panic in managing time and space, resulting in home clutter and chaos. In this study, we collaborated with a profes…
May the farce be with you: On Las Vegas and consumer infantalization
(2000). May the farce be with you: On Las Vegas and consumer infantalization. Consumption Markets & Culture: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 101-124
Children's Recognition of Consumption Symbolism in Children's Products
The development of children's abilities to recognize consumption symbolism has been examined using adults' products, but not using children's products. The present study examines children's perceptions of the users of children's products and tests hypotheses concerning the effects of age, sex, social class, and sibling influence. As expected, the greatest differences are found among children of different ages. Results are interpreted as due to pr…
Sharing without caring
I examine sharing in the context of gated communities. Sharing among family, friends and neighbours is the oldest form of mutual distribution and involves inclusionary “sharing in”, which tends to build caring interpersonal ties and a sense of community. Public goods sharing involves more exclusionary “sharing out”, and creates only weak ties and a limited sense of community or caring. The same is true of the so-called “sharing economy”. Gated co…
Consumer Ethics Across Cultures
Consumer ethics are an understudied but important counterpart of business ethics. In this study we use qualitative methods and video ethnography to examine consumer beliefs and behaviors in eight countries, including both affluent and poor nations in Europe, North America and Australasia. Using depth interviews and projective methods, informants address three different ethical choices of products involving harm to the environment, poor labor cond…
Mimicry and modernity in the Middle East: Fashion invisibility and young women of the Arab Gulf
Prior consumer research has addressed the encounter between global brands and styles versus local cultures through the concepts of glocal hybridity, post-assimilationist resistance, and the de-stigmatization of local practices in the face of competition from global consumer culture. Based on fieldwork with college women in the Arab Gulf states we detect two other practices involving highly conspicuous consumption that act to create a space for id…
Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization
Products and services promoted on a global scale raise issues of globalism that are more superficial than the issues raised by the globalization of world holidays. It is one thing to have an Ikea and a KFC in the city, and conceivably quite another thing to have Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Holidays like these have more complex cultural ideologies behind them. They threaten to displace traditional local holidays. And they offer a si…
Preferred Solutions to the Energy Crisis as a Function of Causal Attributions
Results of two studies support the hypotheses that those accepting personal responsibility for the energy crisis favor and report adopting the personal “solution” of voluntary energy conservation, and those making attributions to nonpersonal causes (OPEC, oil companies, U.S. government) are most likely to favor nonpersonal solutions. Implications are discussed
Resonant Representations 2
Thin-slicing Tremé as a subjective sashay: Heretical pilgrimages to St. Augustine Catholic Church
Five heretical field researchers celebrate human subjectivity in a fractured journey toward St. Augustine Catholic Church in the heart of Tremé in September 2015. They populate their diverse pentagonal thoughts with Mary Douglas’ negotiated concepts of purity and pollution, rituals and symbols as a counterweight in their backpacks. Some are inspired by the theatrical mythologies of the guides who take them there, others are stopped in their track…
Introduction to the Resonant Representations Issue of Consumption, Markets and Culture
I Shop, Therefore I Am
The Shopping Experience. Pasi Folk and Colin Campbell eds. London: Sage, 1997. 212 pp.. Theory of Shopping. Daniel Miller. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 180 pp.Shopping, Place and Identity. Daniel Miller. Peter Jackson. Nigel Thrift. Beverly Holbrook. and Michael Rowlands. London: Routledge, 1998. 214 pp
The Naomi Klein Brand
I should make clear at outset that I am a professor of marketing and hold a chair endowed by Kraft Foods Canada. This is already two strikes against me from Naomi Kleins perspective, although I am thankfully not author of one of those soul-destroying business she refers to in new introduction to No Logo (Klein 2009). My research is focused on consumers, materialism, gift-giving, sharing, meanings of possessions, and global consumer culture. My st…
Preferred Solutions to the Energy Crisis as a Function of Causal Attributions
Results of two studies support the hypotheses that those accepting personal responsibility for the energy crisis favor and report adopting the personal “solution” of voluntary energy conservation, and those making attributions to nonpersonal causes (OPEC, oil companies, U.S. government) are most likely to favor nonpersonal solutions. Implications are discussed
Is there a generalized energy conservation ethic? A comparison of the determinants of gasoline and home heating energy conservation
Children's Recognition of Consumption Symbolism in Children's Products
The development of children's abilities to recognize consumption symbolism has been examined using adults' products, but not using children's products. The present study examines children's perceptions of the users of children's products and tests hypotheses concerning the effects of age, sex, social class, and sibling influence. As expected, the greatest differences are found among children of different ages. Results are interpreted as due to pr…
I Shop, Therefore I Am
The Shopping Experience. Pasi Folk and Colin Campbell eds. London: Sage, 1997. 212 pp.. Theory of Shopping. Daniel Miller. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 180 pp.Shopping, Place and Identity. Daniel Miller. Peter Jackson. Nigel Thrift. Beverly Holbrook. and Michael Rowlands. London: Routledge, 1998. 214 pp
May the farce be with you: On Las Vegas and consumer infantalization
(2000). May the farce be with you: On Las Vegas and consumer infantalization. Consumption Markets & Culture: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 101-124
Eating Alone and Other Experiences
This innovative Handbook draws together and reflects on the specific methodological challenges that an international business scholar is likely to face when undertaking a qualitative research project.
Artificialization
Consumer Ethics Across Cultures
Consumer ethics are an understudied but important counterpart of business ethics. In this study we use qualitative methods and video ethnography to examine consumer beliefs and behaviors in eight countries, including both affluent and poor nations in Europe, North America and Australasia. Using depth interviews and projective methods, informants address three different ethical choices of products involving harm to the environment, poor labor cond…
The Cult of Macintosh
In this study, we introduce the notion of a brand cult in an effort to better understand the extreme devotion consumers have toward certain brands. We use historical images plus interviews and observations with current Macintosh computer users to explore the cultic quasi‐religious aspects of this consumption. We find several key sustaining myths, including a creation myth, a messianic myth, a satanic myth, and a resurrection myth. The accompanyin…
Introduction to the Resonant Representations Issue of Consumption, Markets and Culture
Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization
Products and services promoted on a global scale raise issues of globalism that are more superficial than the issues raised by the globalization of world holidays. It is one thing to have an Ikea and a KFC in the city, and conceivably quite another thing to have Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Holidays like these have more complex cultural ideologies behind them. They threaten to displace traditional local holidays. And they offer a si…
Collectors and Collecting
Why Not Share Rather Than Own
Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies. Yet outside of our immediate families, we do little sharing. Even within the family, there is increased privatization. This article addresses impediments to sharing as well as incentives that may encourage more sharing of both tangible and intangible …
Dirty Little Secret: Home Chaos and Professional Organizers
Accumulation of possessions is a common phenomenon in an affluent society such as the United States. People increasingly share a common ideology that more is better, thus legitimizing acquiring ever more stuff. The dramatic accumulation of possessions and the limitation of organization skills among individuals create frustration and panic in managing time and space, resulting in home clutter and chaos. In this study, we collaborated with a profes…
Resonant Representations 2
The Naomi Klein Brand
I should make clear at outset that I am a professor of marketing and hold a chair endowed by Kraft Foods Canada. This is already two strikes against me from Naomi Kleins perspective, although I am thankfully not author of one of those soul-destroying business she refers to in new introduction to No Logo (Klein 2009). My research is focused on consumers, materialism, gift-giving, sharing, meanings of possessions, and global consumer culture. My st…
Sharing: Table 1
Sharing is a fundamental consumer behavior that we have either tended to overlook or to confuse with commodity exchange and gift giving. Sharing is a distinct, ancient, and increasingly vital consumer research topic that bears on a broad array of consumption issues ranging from sharing household resources versus atomized family possessions to file sharing versus intellectual property rights. This theoretical review distinguishes between sharing i…
You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online
Collaborating in Visual Consumer Research
Collaborative research is both a pragmatic and a moral choice for the ethnographic consumer researcher. It often produces better insights as well as strives to overcome issues of representation in anthropology. This review looks at both traditional collaborations and collaborations enabled by digital technologies, with a focus on visual collaborative methods, benefits, and difficulties. I review a variety of such consumer research methods and con…
Mimicry and modernity in the Middle East: Fashion invisibility and young women of the Arab Gulf
Prior consumer research has addressed the encounter between global brands and styles versus local cultures through the concepts of glocal hybridity, post-assimilationist resistance, and the de-stigmatization of local practices in the face of competition from global consumer culture. Based on fieldwork with college women in the Arab Gulf states we detect two other practices involving highly conspicuous consumption that act to create a space for id…
Sharing without caring
I examine sharing in the context of gated communities. Sharing among family, friends and neighbours is the oldest form of mutual distribution and involves inclusionary “sharing in”, which tends to build caring interpersonal ties and a sense of community. Public goods sharing involves more exclusionary “sharing out”, and creates only weak ties and a limited sense of community or caring. The same is true of the so-called “sharing economy”. Gated co…
A history of global consumption, 1500-1800
The historic period covered by this book is generally taken to be the crucible of contemporary consumer culture. It was a time in which large populations of people began to want superfluous things
Luxury consumption and luxury brands
This chapter identifies the current state of knowledge regarding luxury consumption and luxury brands, tracing their origins from antiquity through the present trend of Western conceptions of luxury taking root in emerging economies in China and India. It explores the seldom-investigated fundamental concept of consumer dreams of luxury products and experiences. The chapter provides a scholarly perspective on past and extant research on the concep…
Consumer culture theory
Thin-slicing Tremé as a subjective sashay: Heretical pilgrimages to St. Augustine Catholic Church
Five heretical field researchers celebrate human subjectivity in a fractured journey toward St. Augustine Catholic Church in the heart of Tremé in September 2015. They populate their diverse pentagonal thoughts with Mary Douglas’ negotiated concepts of purity and pollution, rituals and symbols as a counterweight in their backpacks. Some are inspired by the theatrical mythologies of the guides who take them there, others are stopped in their track…
Sociology (20 works) · Art (14 works) · Aesthetics (13 works) · Business (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Advertising (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Economics (7 works)