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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Managing Collective Effervescence
T2 - 'Zomsumption’ and Postemotional Fandom
AU - Cronin, James Martin
AU - Cocker, Hayley Louise
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article will be published in the Journal, Marketing Theory, 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at http://journals.sagepub.com/loi/mtq
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - Based on an analysis of the YouTuber-fan community, we theorise the “living dead” nature of collective effervescence under postemotional conditions. We introduce the concept of zomsumption whereby “dead” emotions are carefully synthesised, governed, and presented as “living” throughout the communal consumption of a totem. Here, we explore fans’ efforts to ensure the stability and longevity of their community through the lifelessness of their emotional behaviour. By forfeiting genuine and unfiltered emotions in favour of their rationalisation and governance, fans access the illusory potential for more manageable forms of sociability and totemic worship. This outlook prompts us to reconsider the nature of the relationship between consumption communities and dominant structures of feeling. We suggest that consumption communities should not be presumed liberatory retreats from such structures as, contrarily, some may function as microcosms for reflecting and even incubating the wider postemotional order.
AB - Based on an analysis of the YouTuber-fan community, we theorise the “living dead” nature of collective effervescence under postemotional conditions. We introduce the concept of zomsumption whereby “dead” emotions are carefully synthesised, governed, and presented as “living” throughout the communal consumption of a totem. Here, we explore fans’ efforts to ensure the stability and longevity of their community through the lifelessness of their emotional behaviour. By forfeiting genuine and unfiltered emotions in favour of their rationalisation and governance, fans access the illusory potential for more manageable forms of sociability and totemic worship. This outlook prompts us to reconsider the nature of the relationship between consumption communities and dominant structures of feeling. We suggest that consumption communities should not be presumed liberatory retreats from such structures as, contrarily, some may function as microcosms for reflecting and even incubating the wider postemotional order.
KW - Postemotionalism
KW - YouTube
KW - Fandom
KW - Community
KW - Zombie
KW - Collective effervescence
U2 - 10.1177/1470593118787589
DO - 10.1177/1470593118787589
M3 - Journal article
VL - 19
SP - 281
EP - 299
JO - Marketing Theory
JF - Marketing Theory
SN - 1470-5931
IS - 3
ER -