TY - JOUR
T1 - A community psychology of object meanings
T2 - Identity negotiation during disaster recovery
AU - Baker, Stacey Menzel
AU - Hill, Ronald Paul
N1 - Funding Information:
This article is dedicated to the current and former residents of the Black Gold community. We are indebted to the editor, associate editor, three reviewers, and numerous colleagues for their constructive, generous assistance with our work. The financial support of the University of Wyoming Department of Management & Marketing and the Naclerio family is warmly appreciated.
PY - 2013/7
Y1 - 2013/7
N2 - What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of "we"), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on "me"), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the "we" that speaks for "me" and "us" versus "them"). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.
AB - What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of "we"), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on "me"), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the "we" that speaks for "me" and "us" versus "them"). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jcps.2013.01.007
DO - 10.1016/j.jcps.2013.01.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84878901585
VL - 23
SP - 275
EP - 287
JO - Journal of Consumer Psychology
JF - Journal of Consumer Psychology
SN - 1057-7408
IS - 3
ER -