Re-Inquiries The Politics of Consumption: A Re-inquiry on Thompson and Haytko's (1997) "Speaking of Fashion" JEFF B. MURRAY* This article explores Thompson and Haytko's (1997) interpretation of fashion dis- courses by bringing together two opposing perspectives on consumers' use of objects as signs. The first perspective assumes that the consumer has free reign in the play of signs (i.e., the consumer is constituting). The second assumes that the consumer is imprisoned by the signs and codes of the historical moment (i.e., the consumer is constituted). The dialectical and discursive tension between these two perspectives is used as an orienting framework in the hermeneutic analyses of 14 phenomenological interviews. Thompson and Haytko's (1997) findings/claims remain pertinent in a professional, middle-class context. In addition, this research contributes to their lived hegemony premise by emphasizing the dominating ten- dencies of marketing systems. T hompson and Haytko (1997) proposed that the plurality of fashion discourses results in a diverse combination of interpretive positions, enabling consumers to find mean- ing by contrasting opposing values and beliefs. These "coun- tervailing meanings" are used by consumers in their eve- ryday lives to mediate tensions arising from their efforts to develop a sense of individual agency (i.e., distinction) and perceptions of social prescription (i.e., social integration; Thompson and Haytko 1997, p. 15). This idea is important in that it suggests that the traditional meaning transfer model (McCracken 1986) is more dynamic and consumer centered than originally conceptualized. Thompson and Haytko (1997) conclude: "the meaning transfer process is a diffuse, transformative, and consumer-centered undertaking. In these terms, consumers' appropriation of cultural meanings is a *Jeff B. Murray is associate professor of marketing in the Department of Marketing and Transportation, Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701 (jmurray@comp.uark.edu). The author would like to thank Deborah J. Evers, Scott Keller, and Anne Vel- liquette for helping with the data collection and Jennifer Christie for helping with the table. The author would also like to thank David Mick, Kent Monroe, and three reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. The Center for Retailing Excellence provided summer funding for this project. dialogical process in which individuals are continuously engaged in an interpretive dialogue, not only with those in their social spheres but also with the broader sociocultural history that is encoded in culturally conventional ways of talking about fashion and other distinct domains of con- sumer culture" (p. 38; emphasis added). Given the fundamental significance of McCracken's (1986) theoretical account of meaning transfer, Thompson and Haytko's (1997) conclusions have notable implications for consumer research. Thus, in the spirit of learning more about what Thompson and Haytko (1997) call a "dialogical process," this article first constructs an orienting conceptual framework that is useful for interpreting the dialogic inter- play between individual consumers and consumer culture. Then, using this framework, a re-inquiry of "Speaking of Fashion" (Thompson and Haytko 1997) was carried out, and two variations of Thompson and Haytko (1997) were emphasized.' First, the orienting conceptual framework was explicitly constructed to reflect the dialogical process be- tween life worlds and social systems (with a more critical 'The original drafts of this article were positioned as a phenomenological study of the politics of style. The current positioning as a Re-Inquiries article emerged over the course of the review process. 427 © 2002 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH. Inc. • Vol. 29 • December 2002 All righis reserved. 0093-5301/20O3/2903-0010$l0.0O