Consumer Culture Theory Conference
July 7-9, 2022 | Corvallis, OR USA
CH2M HILL Alumni Center at Oregon State University
plus virtual Working Paper Session on Gather Town, June 30
About
CCT 2022: Disruption for a Better World
The 2022 Consumer Culture Theory Conference will be held from Thursday, July 7 to Saturday, July 9, 2022 at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center that is located on the beautiful Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, Oregon. CCT 2022 is a hybrid conference: an in-person event with remote participation options for those who are unable to travel to Oregon State University.
Oregon State University and the College of Business are excited to host the 2022 Consumer Culture Theory Conference and are looking forward to welcoming you to our campus and to the beautiful state of Oregon.
Click the icon below to learn about our theme, Disruption for a Better World.
Consumer Culture Theory
The term Consumer Culture refers to the system of commercially produced images, signs, discourses, experiences, and material objects that social groups use to make collective sense of their environments and to orient their identities and social experiences.
Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is an interdisciplinary field of research oriented around developing a better understand of why consumers do what they do and why consumer culture takes the forms that it does. Theorists focus on understanding the interrelationships between various material, economic, symbolic, institutional, and social relationships, and their effects on consumers, the marketplace, other institutions, and society. Researchers typically draw from and build on theories rooted in sociology, anthropology, media studies and communications, history, literary criticism and semiotics, gender and queer theory, cultural studies, and marketing.
Location
Welcome to Oregon State University
There is much to do in Corvallis, Oregon located in the Pacific Northwestern United States. In less than an hour you can visit the spectacular Oregon Coast or go on an adventure in Central Oregon.
City of Corvallis, Willamette Valley, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest are full of attractions for visitors of all ages. We encourage you to spend extra days at your own convenience to visit the area.
Information
Plan to Attend CCTC 2022
Key Dates
(All times given are Pacific Time. The international time zone identifier is Los Angeles.)
- Submission deadline: 11:59pm Pacific Time on January 9, 2022 (firm)
- Deadline for reviews: February 6, 2022
- Notification of accepted works: March 1, 2022
- Announcement re. decision for hybrid or fully-remote conference: March 15, 2022
- Announcement re. specifics for remote participation: April 24, 2022
Registration
Check here for complete registration details, pricing, and link.
Accommodations
Choose from local accommodation options including Oregon State University’s headquarters hotel.
Contacts
Questions about registration, facilities and the conference program can be directed here.
CCT 2022: Disruption for a Better World
Disruption – rapid and drastic upheaval – has been a focal theme since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. It forced swift changes to the routines, welfare, economic position, and possibilities for citizens and market actors the world over. Other contemporary disruptions are salient and have interrelated impact on societies around the world: climate disasters, including hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires, and related refugee crises; social, environmental, and legal injustices that spur protests and activism; technological innovations, including COVID-19 vaccines; cultural and geo-political disruptions such as Brexit.
Some disruptions can be successful – they effectively interrupt, impede, or reorient the status quo in cultural and market systems. In summer 2021, individuals and institutions in some countries shifted rapidly to normalize and make widely accessible rapid COVID-19 testing. Other disruptions can fail to achieve their intentions; Theranos’ innovative technology launch and subsequent implosion spurred enormous disruption in the Silicon Valley. Further, disruptions can be aimed at and result in change that creates the conditions of a better world: the shift to remote work during COVID-19 made conditions and feasibility of remote work more equitable for people with disabilities. And, in summer 2021 after years of pressure from stakeholders, Harvard University effectively divested from fossil fuels.
CCT researchers are well equipped to study such disruption – to establish phenomenological, conceptual, theoretical, and practical links between disruption and the condition of a better world. Our collective expertise can illuminate the cultural and market actors, processes, conditions, politics, dynamics, and phenomena implicated in or affected by disruptions, and identify possibilities and paths forward to mitigate disruption’s negative effects and harness their positive effects.
The CCT 2022 conference – the first gathering of the global CCT community since pre-pandemic times – is oriented to the opportunity and responsibility of CCT scholars to examine how disruption can foster a better world. By embracing research and researchers with diverse ontological, methodological, and substantive orientations; employing a new track, Focused Forums, dedicated to discussion and interactive knowledge-sharing; and offering an accessible, hybrid platform, this conference should inspire the CCT community to contemplate the ways that disruptions are or could ultimately result in improvements in society and consumer well-being.
Suggested topics for submissions of original research, discussion forums, and artistic modes of representation include work at the micro, meso, or macro levels oriented to how embodied, material, discursive, or experiential cultural conditions and practices shape or are shaped by disruptions, and CCT work in any of the following areas:
- Power: who has it, how it is (mis)used, how it sustains social, economic, and environmental inequities, how it can be challenged
- Activism: how consumer movements, consumer or organizational activism, or protests are orchestrated, how they can disrupt the status quo
- Politics: how regulation, policy, political ideology are or could be used to disrupt cultural and market systems, practices, responsibilization, or patterns of behavior
- Inequity and social justice: conditions and dynamics related to inequities in race, gender, class, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, etc., and intersections therein
- Media & technologies: how mainstream, niche, or social media shape consumer practices, culture, and markets; how health, finance, entertainment, educational, or assistive technologies are used to understand or guide well-being
- Problems: social, economic, political, environmental, legal, and/or technological harms, and how consumer culture and market systems could intervene or mitigate the harms
- Knowledge: how non-Western knowledge-holders and ways of knowing, such as Indigenous teachings and knowledge, can inform or guide disruption
- “A better world:” who determines or could determine what constitutes “a better world,” and how morals intersect and feature in cultural and market systems
Past CCT Conferences
2006: University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN (USA), co-chairs Russ Belk and John Sherry
2007: York University, Toronto, Canada, co-chairs Eileen Fischer, and John Sherry
2008: Suffolk University, Boston, MA (USA), co-chairs Anders Bengtsson and Giana M. Eckhardt
2009: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (USA), co-chairs John Branch, Markus Giesler, and David Wooten
2010: University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (USA), co-chairs David Crockett and Craig Thompson
2011: Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill (USA), co-chairs Kent Grayson, Al Muñiz, and Hope Jensen Schau
2012: University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, co-chairs Søren Askegaard and Linda Scott
2013: University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (USA), co-chairs Lisa Peñaloza and Linda Price
2014: Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland, co-chairs Diane Martin and John Schouten
2015: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AK (USA), co-chairs Jeff B. Murray and Anastasia Thyroff
2016: Skema Business School, Lille, France, co-chairs Diego Rinallo and Nil Toulouse-Ozcaglar
2017: University of California-Irvine, Anaheim, California, co-chairs Samantha Cross, Cecilia Ruvalcaba, and Alladi Venkatesh (conference site was the Disneyland Hotel)
2018: University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, co-chairs Domen Bajde and Dannie Kjeldgaard
2019: Concordia University, Montréal, Canada, co-chairs Marie-Agnès Parmentier and Zeynep Arsel
2020 (cancelled): University of Leicester, Leicester, UK, co-chairs AJ Earley, George Patsiaouras, James Fitchett
Land Acknowledgement
Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary’s River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855 (Kalapuya etc. Treaty), Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (https://www.grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians (https://ctsi.nsn.us)