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Discourses of Technology Consumption: Ambivalence, Fear ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Discourses of Technology Consumption: Ambivalence, Fear, and Liminality Margo Buchanan-Oliver , University of Auckland, New Zealand Angela Cruz , University of Auckland, New Zealand What makes technology frightening? To explore this question, we present the concept of liminality, within which key liminal tensions between bodies/machines, human/nonhuman, past/future, and here/not-here are articulated in interdisciplinary discourses of technology consumption. These represent fundamental tensions, ambivalences, and fears concerning technology consumption – valuable knowledge for crafting deeply resonant communications. [to cite]: Margo Buchanan-Oliver and Angela Cruz (2011) ,"Discourses of Technology Consumption: Ambivalence, Fear, and Liminality", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 39, eds. Rohini Ahluwalia, Tanya L. Chartrand, and Rebecca K. Ratner, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 287-291. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1009170/volumes/v39/NA-39 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. Discourses of Technology Consumption: Ambivalence, Fear, and Liminality Margo Buchanan-Oliver, University of Auckland, New Zealand Angela Cruz, University of Auckland, New Zealand ABSTRACT significant impact on consumers’ lives as they infuse and inform the Why are consumer narratives of technology consumption wider circuits of meaning (McCracken 1986) which shape the way fraught with ambivalence (Mick and Fournier 1998), identity ten- consumers imagine and interact with their technologies. sions (Schau and Gilly 2003), anxiety (Meuter et al. 2003; Mick and While previous studies have examined visual representations of Fournier 1998), and even fear (Clarke 2002; Helman 1988; Virilio posthumanism as represented by the figure of the cyborg (Campbell 1997)? What is it about technology consumption, an arguably ev- et al. 2005; Schroeder and Dobers 2007; Venkatesh et al. 2002), our eryday experience in the context of increasingly ubiquitous digital, approach is more theoretical. We present the concept of liminality as biomedical, information and communication technologies in today’s a recurrent theme within interdisciplinary theoretical discourses of “technology-intensive” markets (John, Weiss, and Dutta 1999, 78), technology consumption and explore its key thematics in terms of that evokes such primal reactions in consumers? In the seemingly ba- four liminal tensions: bodies/machines, human/nonhuman, past/fu- nal act of consuming technology, what exactly comes under threat? ture, and here/not-here. We consider the implications of this concept To explore these questions, we turn to the emerging discourse for extending the paradigm of posthuman consumer research and un- of posthumanism as articulated by Campbell, O’Driscoll, and Saren covering fundamental ambivalences, tensions, and fears concerning (2005), Giesler (2004), Giesler and Venkatesh (2005), Schroeder and technology consumption. We argue that marketers and advertisers Dobers (2007), and Venkatesh, Karababa, and Ger (2002). Signifi- need to reflect on such concerns in their communication of technol- cantly, posthumanist discourses challenge the underlying assump- ogy products in order to pierce the heart of what technology means tions of the predominant information processing paradigm, which to consumers and achieve deep resonance with their target audience. frames the majority of research on technology consumption (e.g. Bettman 1979; Bettman, Luce, and Payne 1998) and focus on how METHODOLOGY consumers mentally process the functional benefits of technology We carried out a wider project seeking to explicate the range products. Within this paradigm, the following metaphors of consum- and complexity of theoretical discourses which shape narratives and ers and their technologies remain unquestioned: firstly, technology practices of technology consumption. In doing so, we followed an is a positive enabler, secondly, the consumer is a disembodied con- interdisciplinary approach to theory development. We sourced key sciousness, and thirdly, technology is extrinsic to human identity. interdisciplinary conceptual works lensing technology consumption In challenging these prevailing metaphors, the emerging posthu- using keyword searches in ACR proceedings and ABI/Inform, and man paradigm instead acknowledges multiple and complex framing further expanded our list of source texts through reference list and views around technology consumption which are already widespread Google Scholar searches. Applying a discourse analysis methodol- in popular imagination and other academic disciplines. In particular, ogy situated within hermeneutic interpretivism (Crotty 1998), main the concept of liminality provides a potent deconstruction of these concepts and key themes were induced from each source text and metaphors. Liminality refers to a hybrid condition characterised by categorised into broader themes. A “hermeneutical back and forth ambiguity, indeterminacy, contradiction, incoherence, and blurring of between part and whole” (Spiggle 1994, 495) was facilitated through boundaries. Within popular culture, the genre of science fiction sees constant comparison between the literature sources and the emerging classic literary texts (e.g., Gibson’s (1986) ‘Neuromancer’, Asimov’s theoretical framework. This enabled the development of provisional (1967) ‘I, Robot’, Huxley’s (1955) ‘Brave New World’) and popular categories for subsequent exploration, thereby aiding the induction films (e.g.,‘The Terminator’, ‘Blade Runner’, and ‘The Matrix’) rep- of broader, underlying themes from these sources. resenting a liminal vision of human-machine interactions alongside We found the concept of liminality to be a recurrent central their psychological and socio-cultural repercussions. These rich dis- theme in the academic literature examined. We further found two courses are similarly well-entrenched in academic disciplines rang- main discursive strands of body-machine liminality and space-time ing from media and communications studies (Turkle 1984, 1997) liminality, within which key liminal tensions between bodies/ma- to cognitive neuropsychology (Clark 2003), to cultural studies and chines, human/nonhuman, past/future, and here/not-here are articu- critical theory (Balsamo 1996; Shilling 2005; Stone 1996). lated. Drawing on exemplary source texts, we discuss these findings These liminal visions, however, are fraught with pervasive anxi- in the following section. eties and tensions. Virilio (1997, 20), for instance, in his account of the social destruction wrought by information technology and global FINDINGS: LIMINALITY IN TECHNOLOGY media, vividly articulates a fear of technology in depicting CONSUMPTION the catastrophic figure of an individual who has lost the capac- The Concept of Liminality ity for immediate intervention … and who abandons himself for Liminality refers to a hybrid condition characterised by am- want of anything better, to the capabilities of captors, sensors biguity, indeterminacy, contradiction, incoherence, and blurring of and other remote control scanners that turn him into a being boundaries. Originally theorised by Turner (1967) as a key charac- controlled by the machine. teristic of the second stage of ritual involving a passage between two states, liminality refers to “a state of transition between two or more In a similar vein, Woodward (1994) writes that “most of us fear boundaries” (Campbell et al. 2005, 346). In anthropological concep- the future prospect of frailty as a cyborg, ““hooked up” … to a ma- tions (Turner 1967), the liminal moment is seen as a temporary state chine.” Even though such texts often draw on spectacular imagery in between, which is eventually resolved through a boundary cross- to underline the implications of technology consumption, they have ing or role transition. Advances in Consumer Research 287 Volume 39, ©2011 288 / Discourses of Technology Consumption: Ambivalence, Fear, and Liminality However, liminality can also describe an underlying condition standably absent in aspirational marketing communications which which pervades all aspects of consumers’ reality, being and experi- position technological offerings as infallible. ence, in that all dichotomies, boundaries and ‘states’ of being are par- At the same time as our understanding of technology is informed tial and transitional. A liminal view of consumer experience asserts by our understanding of the human body, the increased adoption of that consumer meanings, identities, and experience are transitional these technologies into the everyday means that the opposite also and dynamic rather than absolute and natural. This perspective as- happens: our understanding of machines come to structure the ways serts the essential unsustainability of traditional dichotomies such as in which we understand ourselves (McLuhan 1967; Turkle 1984, human/machine, mind/body and real/virtual, which are revealed to 1997). The human body is increasingly seen as a machine – an as- be artificial constructions. semblage of multiple parts and systems whose parts can be replaced The theme of liminality plays a key role in Haraway’s (1991) when broken and whose
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