Becoming Nature: Classifying Encounters in Interspecies Contact Zones ANNETTA GRANT ROBIN CANNIFORD AVI SHANKAR Nature affords transformations to consumers’ social, embodied, and temporal experien- ces. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human–fish interactions as encounters in interspecies contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering proc- esses of interspecies becoming that transform both species. We discuss how these transformations are ordered by power relationships that classify roles for entities enrolled in consumption assemblages. Often, humans exert power over other living entities by classifying them as resources for consumption. Yet, we also discover more reciprocal expressions of power between humans and other species. With consumption as a major contributor to the decline of wild species populations, we discuss theoretical and practi- cal implications of our work that are intended to stimulate further research. Keywords: nature, contact zones, assemblage, embodiment, multispecies eth- nography, power N ature is a popular site for experiential consumption. Yet, despite the numerous studies of consumers’ expe- riences in river canyons, mountains, oceans, and deserts (Arnould and Price 1993; Belk and Costa 1998; Canniford and Shankar 2013; Kozinets 2002; Tumbat and Belk 2011), consumer research pays little attention to the other species that call these places home. To address this omission, we examine what happens when consumers encounter wild spe- cies during consumption experiences, asking: how are inter- species relationships established, and how are consumers and non-human species transformed as a result? To answer these questions, we theorize data from a multi- species ethnography of fly fishing as interspecies encoun- ters in contact zones (Haraway 2008). Our findings identify encounters through which humans and fish experience transformations, and become classified with different roles. We discuss how these classifications reveal power relation- ships that order multispecies consumption assemblages, and we assess the implications of consumers becoming classi- fied as stewards of other species and natural environments. Finally, we conclude with directions for further study into the roles of non-human species in consumer cultures. CONSUMPTION IN NATURE We begin by reviewing consumer research that shows how nature is used as a resource for consumption Annetta Grant (annetta.grant@bucknell.edu) is assistant professor of markets, innovation, and design at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Robin Canniford (robin.canniford@universityofgalway.ie) is professor of market- ing at the University of Galway, Galway, Ireland. Avi Shankar (as330@bath.ac. uk) is professor of consumer research at the University of Bath, Bath, UK. Please address correspondence to Annetta Grant. The authors wish to thank Jay Handelman, Tim Hill, Joonas Rokka, Diane Martin, David Pilkington, and col- leagues at Concordia University, Dalhousie University, EMLyon Business School, Kedge Business School, University of Adelaide, University of Edinburgh, University of Galway, University of Ottawa, University of Southern Denmark, and attendees at the Bucknell River Symposium for very helpful com- ments on earlier versions of this article. The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in this study. Supplementary materials are available in a web appen- dix accompanying the online version of this article. Editor: Markus Giesler Associate Editor: Zeynep Arsel Advance Access publication May 13, 2024 # The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com � Vol. 00 � 2024 https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae032 1 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr/ucae032/7671103 by University of Bath, Library user on 13 June 2024