Countless forms of consuming do not involve the purchase o f objects or tangible services but are instead premised upon an experience during and after which nothing material is 'taken home' - only an experience held subsequently as a memory. Even shopping, the form of consuming seemingly dearest to many theorists - presumably because it is what they do most often themselves - is at least partially constituted through social processes in which the purchase o f objects is actually secondary to the thrill o f the throng. Shopping in an empty shopping centre, for example, would for most be as strange as not shopping at all. Yet, few attempts have been made to extend this recognition into less obvious or perhaps methodologically more
problematic areas or modes o f consuming^^. In particular, few attempts have been made to explicitly look at the active creation of the consuming experience by the consumers themselves, although an increasingly significant exception to this paucity is w ork by Nicky Gregson and Louise Crewe on car boot sales, thrift and charity shops (Crewe & Gregson, 1998; Gregson & Crewe, 1994; 1997a; 1997b; see also Gregson, Crewe & Longstaff, 1997).
This general absence is perplexing. An increasing emphasis on consumer reflexivity and the associated growth in both identity politics and individuation processes that have accompanied what Glennie & Thrift (1996: 234) call this "reflexive turn" have resulted in a heightened role for the practices constituting sociality, the role of
identifications and the sites and spaces of social centrality that promote them ^. Thus, while the processes and practices o f many forms o f socialised and group consuming -
N otew orthy exceptions include w ork on the consuming television audience by Livingstone (1998); Moores (1993); M orley (1986; 1992; 1995); Morley & Silverstone (1990); and Nightingale, (1996); and W illis' (1990) contribution towards an understanding o f the "lived experience" of young people at play.
A p o in t made in much greater depth by: Beck (1992); Giddens (1991); Glennie & Thrift (1996); Hetherington (1994; 1996; 1997); Lash & Urry (1994); and, Maffesoli (1995).
Part O n e - Beginnings 36
holidaying, the leisure centre, shopping, cruise ships, sports spectating, Centerparcs,
wine tasting, bingo, gambling, 'dangerous' sports, paintballing, snowboarding, working out at the gym, and e r ... clubbing (to name just a handful) - are seemingly more popular then ever, and at the least are o f heightened prominence in society, this popularity is not reflected in research agenda^^.
From their relative absence one might assume that these forms and spaces of consuming and their constitutive practices are either less easily accessible to the researcher, and / or unworthy o f or unsuitable for study. Colin Campbell (1995) appears to concur with the latter o f these assumptions in voicing his concern over the extent and boundaries of current work on consumption. Campbell proposes that the consumption of "spectator sports" and the "arts" are steps too far: "[...] the suspicion must arise that in attempting to encompass so large and diverse a range of topic areas, the sociology o f consumption may lose whatever meaningful or distinctive character it is in the process of developing" (1995: 111). Yet, only a few pages further on,
Campbell presents his case study o f tourism - which he suggests is "modern
consumption illustrated" (ibid: 11 7) - in extending his theory that modern consumption is about the consumption o f "novelty", with the "essential activity o f consumption" being the "imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image lends itself [...]" (ibid: 118; emphasis added). This would seem a confusing contradiction. For example, conceptually how different are 'tourist' experiences of France on the one hand, and W orld Cup football fandom in France on the other? O r going to an art gallery to view pictures and then going to the gallery shop to purchase a print?
Campbell contends that modern consumption might best be understood as a form of imaginative hedonism (see Campbell, 1987), in which anticipation is the main source of pleasure and actual consumption is likely to be "a literally disillusioning experience" (1995: 118). Yet Campbell's thesis fails to recognise the value of, practices
constituting, and pleasure gained through, experiences as varied as drug use (including the use o f alcohol), dancing, eating, and hill-walking. W hile the power o f the
imagination in contributing toward the allure of certain forms o f consuming cannot be denied - and in fact, as I argue through the Night Out, must be central w ithin our
The literature on fairs and exhibitions has already been mentioned as an exception to this general trend. Further exceptions to this general lack o f research and w riting upon consuming crowds or groups and the social rituals through which they are constituted can be found in the literatures on Christmas and gift-giving/shopping (Fisher & Arnold, 1990; Otnes, Lowry and Kim, 1993; Sherry & McGrath, 1989); theme park visits (O 'G uinn & Belk, 1989); the experience of river rafting (Arnould & Price, 1993); sports spectating (Flolt, 1993); and, rock climbing and forms o f 'dangerous' play (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975a). Belk (1995) notes how research on consumer behaviour and the practical constitution of consuming experiences remains focused
predom inantly upon the American consumer (a contention w hich the above sample o f studies clearly supports), and largely through the annals o f the journal o f Consumer Research.
Part O n e - Beginnings 3 7
conceptualisations - the actual practices of consuming themselves are surely also
implicated as fundamental? O n a very basic level, for example, the imaginative
construction o f consuming is inextricably tied into the practical constitution of consuming through the use of the body.
Ignoring the imaginative and practical constitution o f many consuming experiences has meant that these experiences have often remained disembodied, decontextualised and bereft o f emotions, imaginations and sensations. One result of the empirically-
restricted boundaries around studies of contemporary consuming has thus been a rather limited conceptual understanding of how and why people consume what they do, where, w ith whom, and how this intersects with other facets o f their lives. I am, of course, not attempting to comprehend all the various forms of collective, experientially- based consuming. Rather, I am highlighting one form - the practices and spatialities of clubbing - in a quest to progress and give texture to a number o f current
understandings o f consuming more generally.
A t the centre o f consuming experiences such as clubbing, in which nothing material is purchased, are the practices o f sociality - how the cultures of clubbing are actually constituted. These practices o f sociality may be conceptualised through a performative lens. These tw o points together comprise my third starting point.