TY - JOUR

T1 - ‘Clap for “some” carers’

T2 - Problematizing heroism and ableist tenets of heroic discourse through the experiences of parent-carers

AU - Higgins, Leighanne

AU - O’Leary, Killian

PY - 2023/3/1

Y1 - 2023/3/1

N2 - Marketing scholarship has commonly demonstrated how consumers assemble heroic identities as a means to facilitate forms of empowerment and emancipatory consumption. Although some insight into more troubling aspects of heroic discourses has been shared, prioritisation of the positive potentialities of heroism remain privileged. We invoke social heroism as an interpretive lens to study the lived experiences of parent-carer’s to children with impairments, employing paradoxes of heroism as heuristics to explore how heroic discourses disempower parent-carers. We find that parent-carers do not identify with the heroism surrounding care. Instead, they view themselves as unessential due to the ableist tenets that underlie heroic discourses. We uncover three problematizing and subtle practices of ableism; purification, micro-aggressions and responsibilized-commoditization. Such insight, (i) advances marketing theory’s understanding of the socio-political structuring of heroism, (ii) advances discourse on consumer vulnerabilities and ableism and (iii) begins to meet the calls for research into care politics and justice.

AB - Marketing scholarship has commonly demonstrated how consumers assemble heroic identities as a means to facilitate forms of empowerment and emancipatory consumption. Although some insight into more troubling aspects of heroic discourses has been shared, prioritisation of the positive potentialities of heroism remain privileged. We invoke social heroism as an interpretive lens to study the lived experiences of parent-carer’s to children with impairments, employing paradoxes of heroism as heuristics to explore how heroic discourses disempower parent-carers. We find that parent-carers do not identify with the heroism surrounding care. Instead, they view themselves as unessential due to the ableist tenets that underlie heroic discourses. We uncover three problematizing and subtle practices of ableism; purification, micro-aggressions and responsibilized-commoditization. Such insight, (i) advances marketing theory’s understanding of the socio-political structuring of heroism, (ii) advances discourse on consumer vulnerabilities and ableism and (iii) begins to meet the calls for research into care politics and justice.

KW - Heroism

KW - ableism

KW - social heroism

KW - parent-carers

KW - consumer research

KW - consumer vulnerability

U2 - 10.1177/14705931221123991

DO - 10.1177/14705931221123991

M3 - Journal article

VL - 23

SP - 11

EP - 32

JO - Marketing Theory

JF - Marketing Theory

SN - 1470-5931

IS - 1

ER -