Dr Lydia Martens
I was at the University of Antwerp earlier this month, where
I had been invited to be a member of the academic jury, at the public defence
of the PhD thesis of Jeremi van Gorp. The subject of the thesis was
consumption, identity and young people (Its Dutch title is: Consumptie als
Bouwsteen en Communicator van Identiteit bij Tieners), and Dr van Gorp had
conducted a quantitative study to find out what role consumption plays in the
social lives and personal identities of young people aged 12 to 18 (those of
secondary school age). The study investigated consumption attitudes and
practices, and examined money, expenditure on goods, shopping, gift giving and
saving, as well as materialism, happiness derived from consumption, and influences
of the peer group.
The original findings from the work were reached from a data
set of a staggering 3200 cases - all the hard craft of one single researcher
visiting secondary schools across the Flemish counties. Reading the study, one
thing that was very apparent is how challenging it is to translate sociological
theories and concepts into measurable entities, also known in ‘the trade’ as
operationalisation. In this study, the researcher had thought hard about how to
measure ‘identity’, and was fully aware of, and spoke at length about, the
limitations of the choices he had made. In making these choices, he had in fact
reached beyond sociology, drawing on influences from psychology and marketing
& consumer behaviour. He had thus chosen to include some pre-existing
scales in his questionnaire that examine the sense of self (which he
conceptualised as elements of a personal identity) and the sense of one’s
standing and connectedness in the peer group (which he conceptualised as elements
of a social identity). This is something sociologists do not often do when
designing questionnaires, at least, not in UK sociology! One of the assumptions
made in the thesis was that the peer group is a salient part of the social
identity of young people, and the concern in these social science disciplines
in, for instance, materialism, was reflected in the focus of the thesis.
The analysis proceeded from bivariate analysis through to
regression analysis, and suggests that there are some interesting variations in
what, how and why young people consume. Interesting gender patterns in the data
included, and this may not come as a surprise, that the young women in the
study on average had access to less money than the young men. Belgium parents
clearly believe that their daughters can do with less pocket money than their
sons. I wonder whether we might find a similar pattern in the UK, were we to
conduct a similar survey here? Young women also spent more on clothes and beauty
products than young men, they bought more presents, and they saved less. There
were also age variations, which suggested that young people do grow into the
consumer culture as they get older, and start spending money on ‘necessities’,
like transport.
Another set of findings related differences in relation to education
pathways. The Belgium education system has different streams for young people
doing ‘A-level’ education that prepares them for higher education, and those who
do vocational training routes. Dr van Gorp, who has worked in secondary schools
for some years, described the youth culture in the vocational education sector
as ‘harder’ than elsewhere, and here, young people had more money and they also
used consumption more as a means for building and maintaining social peer
relationships and standing. Interestingly, the same was the case for young
people from migrant backgrounds! Van Gorp also concluded that those who are
popular amongst their peers have more money, and spend more money, suggesting
that popularity is costly.
Given the size of the sample, and the wealth of insights
created, I would have liked to see Dr van Gorp take his analysis a little further.
As a researcher who is well versed in social science research on children and
consumer culture, I believe it would be very interesting to think further about
what the consumption attitudes and practices of young people can tell us about
what it is that makes young people, as a cohort and ‘location’ in the life
course, stand out from other people, and what that tells us about theories of
consumption, social connectedness and identity. In addition, rather than
assuming that the peer group is the only, or most salient, aspect of young
persons’ social identity, I would have liked to see further discussion on how
different elements of social identity relate to each other. Whilst Dr van Gorp
explained how, at the pilot stage of the study, it had become apparent that a
large proportion of young persons do not know about their parents educational
qualifications and employment – typical indicators of class location, some
insight into social influences and background could be read through the study’s
various socio-demographic variables, where educational streaming could be said
to say something about class, and gender difference about gender as a social
and cultural phenomenon. Even so, the study’s achievements should not be
underestimated and the database is a solid resource with the potential to make
a good contribution to the fields of young people and consumption in the future.
The thesis was promoted by Dimitri Mortelmans, Professor of
Sociology at Antwerp University, who was the lead supervisor of the research. The
other members of the jury were Professor Michel Walrave, Dr Walter Weyns, and
Dr Karolien Poels, all from the University of Antwerp and working in the
Departments of Sociology and Communication Studies, and Dr Christine Delhaye,
who works in the Department of Arts, Religion and Culture at the University of
Amsterdam. The defence started with a presentation by the candidate on his
work, followed by discussion and questions from the jury. After the jury’s
deliberation, the candidate was passed, and the Promotor concluded the event
with a personal and warm afterword. For me, the public defence offered insight
into how universities in different countries vary in the way they promote the
people they train to take up roles in the Higher Education sector. I was
witness to an eloquent, and also heartfelt, tribute to the tribulations of this
project, and the resilience of the researcher.
