Consumer Economic “Calqulation”: What Is Exchanged around a Supermarket Trolley
Cochoy, Franck
Consumer Economic “Calqulation”: What Is Exchanged around a Supermarket Trolley - 2011.
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“Is studying consumption studying the consumer?” While the sociology of the consumption and consumer research answered up to now positively this question, by both positing the consumer as the focal point of their analyses, this article suggests rather answering negatively, by virtue of a double argument. On the one hand it intends to show that paradoxically, to understand consumption, it is sometimes preferable to turn away from the consumer, and be rather interested in the objects which he mobilizes and indicates, as well as in the technical and human mediations which define and move closer the objects and subjects of consumption. See for instance a simple supermarket trolley: this vehicle, by facilitating the aggregation of a small collective which is not reducible to the only person who drives it, transforms the consumer into a collective consumer, and thus the conversion of calculation into “calqulation.” This latter neologism refers to the French “calquer,” i.e. drawing with a tracing paper. As well as to draw with such a device consists in adjusting your own line to the outlines of the model, “calqulating ” consists, for the members of a collective unit of choice, in adjusting their choice to the expressions of their partners, even if the success or the convergence of this adjustment is far from guaranteed.
Consumer Economic “Calqulation”: What Is Exchanged around a Supermarket Trolley - 2011.
19
“Is studying consumption studying the consumer?” While the sociology of the consumption and consumer research answered up to now positively this question, by both positing the consumer as the focal point of their analyses, this article suggests rather answering negatively, by virtue of a double argument. On the one hand it intends to show that paradoxically, to understand consumption, it is sometimes preferable to turn away from the consumer, and be rather interested in the objects which he mobilizes and indicates, as well as in the technical and human mediations which define and move closer the objects and subjects of consumption. See for instance a simple supermarket trolley: this vehicle, by facilitating the aggregation of a small collective which is not reducible to the only person who drives it, transforms the consumer into a collective consumer, and thus the conversion of calculation into “calqulation.” This latter neologism refers to the French “calquer,” i.e. drawing with a tracing paper. As well as to draw with such a device consists in adjusting your own line to the outlines of the model, “calqulating ” consists, for the members of a collective unit of choice, in adjusting their choice to the expressions of their partners, even if the success or the convergence of this adjustment is far from guaranteed.
Réseaux sociaux