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International Journal of Socioloand Social Pol

Vol. 27 No. 3/4, 2pp. 175-

# Emerald Group Publishing Limit0144-3

DOI 10.1108/01443330710741

Autopoiesis and thehome-confined consumerThe role of personal communities

Hilary Downey and Miriam CatterallSchool of Management and Economics,Queens University Belfast, Belfast, UK

AbstractPurpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the consumption of a personal community and itsrole in the everyday life of the home-confined consumer.Design/methodology/approach Using a Radical Constructivist approach, three cases of homeconfinement were explored in depth over a period of two years. Ongoing conversations captured theconsumption experiences with personal communities.

Findings In relation to the home-confined context, the ability to attain individuality, empowermentand creativity are all heightened as a result of personal community construction. An underlyingconcern for home-confined consumers is their removal from independent living to institutionalizedliving, and, as a result the need to construct, manage and maintain a personal community is of majorconcern.Research limitations/implications Although the study addresses a home-confined context, it isnevertheless reflective of concerns that are significant to all consumers, namely the attainment of individuality and independence irrespective of marginalization or not.Practical implications The importance of a personal community in terms of both self-empowerment and self-identity with respect to marginalized groups and vulnerable individualsshould not be underestimated. The supporting role of a personal community provides, in times of uncertainty, a framework to maintain self-identity and independence.Originality/value This paper provides a better understanding of the role of a personal communityin the consumption experiences of those consumers marginalized and vulnerable as a consequence of

context. Home-confined consumers are invisible in the marketplace and the personal community isa means of redressing this imbalance by empowering such individuals.Keywords Disadvantaged groups, Communities, ConsumptionPaper type Research paper

You know that I care what happens to you, And I know that you care for me, So I dont feelalone of the weight of the stone, now that Ive found somewhere safe to bury my bone, Andany fool knows a dog needs a home, a shelter from pigs on the wing (Animals 1977, PinkFloyd).

IntroductionThe word community is derived from the word common (Sanders, 1994) and is

conventionally defined by such markers as race or income usually bounded by acertain geographical space. Sanders (1994) suggests that belonging to a certaincommunity involves multiple interactions and embracing shared values and goals.Although new radical forms of community such as symbolic communities (Gergen,1991) and virtual communities (Rheingold, 1993) are not bounded geographically, theyare characterized by the capacity of their members for symbolic exchange.

Within consumer research there has been a move away from focusing purely on theindividual level of experience to address the broader communal nature of humanexistence and meaning (Fischer and Arnould, 1990; Fischer and Gainer, 1995; Holt,1995; Mehta and Belk, 1991; Penaloza, 1994; Thompson, 1996). In particular, consumer

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0144-333X.htm

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researchers have recognized the importance of community in relation to self-identitythrough sustained social interaction.

Current social and economic issues concerning the care of the elderly, disabled andchronically ill suggest that communities of care and care support structures may be an

important area for future consumer research. This paper focuses on the personalcommunities of consumers confined to the home through disability or long-term illness.Specifically, it explores their experiences of personal communities and, in doing so,provides insight into the roles and relationships offered by family, friends andothers. Wellman (2001, p. 227) suggests that personal communities are networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belongingand social identity. Personal communities are the closest we can get to postmoderncommunity life, as Calhoun (1998, p. 391) states a Community, thus, is not a place orsimply a small-scale population aggregate, but rather a mode of relating, variablein extent. The home-confined consumers explored within this paper are active inconstructing their personal communities, which are managed in such a way as tofacilitate ongoing independent living within their own homes as well as offeringopportunities to maintain and develop their sense of self and self-identity.

The paper begins with a review of the literature on personal communities, both fromconsumer research and sociological perspectives. The literature on intimacy and carewill also be discussed as these concepts underpin personal relationships and areessential to a fuller understanding of the autopoietic (self-produced) communities of home-confined consumers. A brief discussion of the research methodology employedfollows before the findings and discussion of the personal communities of three casesof home-confined consumers are presented.

Literature reviewIn consumer research literature community has typically been conceptualized in thetraditional format where emphasis is centred on sustained social interaction and theexperience of communitas (Arnould and Price, 1993; Schouten and McAlexander,1995). One of the major consequences of consumption based on market exchanges hasbeen the socialization and communalization of the consumption experience (Firat,1987).

The proliferation of consumer lifestyle options, the increasingly narrow focus of target marketing, and the ethos of expressing individuality through consumptionsymbols are said to undermine the formation of enduring communal ties (Firat, 1995).Gergen (1991) feels the search for community is more an ideal than a practical realitygiven the fragmented, privatized, individualistic quest of consumers in postmoderntimes. Thus the attainment of community demands ongoing creative consumersolutions, which include the construction of a sense of community from privatized

consumer activities. Consumption activities have long been viewed as potent,symbolically charged practices that play a central role in the development andmaintenance of community. Rituals of eating (Douglas, 1971), collecting (Belk et al.,1991) and celebrity fan clubs (OGuinn, 1991) are but a few of the consumptionactivities that create bonds and a sense of shared purpose.

Key characteristics of postmodernity are that social relations and self-identity arecentred on consumption and consumption increasingly provides a locus of communityrelationship (Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). Consumers in brand communities andsubcultures of consumption are, by their very choices, focused on brands orconsumption (Kates, 2004). Consumers join these communities only if they are

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interested in the focal brand (Muniz and OGuinn, 2001). Communal relationships, bycontrast, are those in which people take care of others needs and have a genuineconcern for their well-being. In such relationships, people take a perspective thattranscends an emphasis on self-interest alone (Aggarwal and Law, 2005). The

sociology literature, in the review that follows, offers insights on such relationships.

Communal relationshipsPahl and Spencer (2004) point out that there is some blurring of boundaries betweenfriends and family. Indeed there is a complex process of suffusion between familial andnon-familial relationships. It is important to remember that personal communities varywidely in the extent to which family and friends play distinct or overlapping roles.Where friends and family do play distinct roles, this often, though not always, involvesfriends specializing in confiding and companionship, and family specializing inproviding practical help and support (Pahl and Spencer, 2004).

The 21st century has heralded a transition in the thinking on the family as asociological concept. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002, p. 203) have recently describedthe family as a zombie category . . .dead and still alive. In relation to this thinkingBudgeon and Roseneil (2004) have considered the increasing failing of the family toaddress the multiplicity of practices of intimacy and care that, traditionally, has beenits prerogative. Their study focused on individuals who live outside the conventionalfamily and how they receive and give care. They identified an increasing diversity of relationship practices resulting in a range of personal relationships providingintimacy, care and companionship in an individualizing world, and that theserelationships are central to peoples core values (Budgeon and Roseneil, 2004, p. 128).

There is a need for research that focuses on the cultures of intimacy and careinhabited by those living at the cutting edge of social change. In this respect, the home-confined consumer offers rich opportunities to explore such cultures of intimacy and

care. Forms of communality that emerge from these living arrangements can reveal thepotential for long lasting significant ties. Budgeon and Roseneil (2004, p. 130) considerthat Central to the emergence of these ties is the institutionalized (quasi-communes) of friendship through a shared domesticity. To illustrate, Staceys (1998) study focusedon the enduring friendships and couplings that often ensue from the cultures of gaymen. Her research highlights the diversity of all living arrangements, including paidcarers, who are essentially family. For the home-confined consumer such diversity of living arrangements may be essential for ongoing identity construction, independentliving and avoidance of institutional care. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002, p. 22) arguethat the ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerfulcurrent in modern society. The belief that the desire to be a deciding, shaping, humanbeing who aspires to be the author of his/her own life is giving rise to the shift in familylife away from being a given to that of a matter of choice. Indeed Beck-Gernsheim(1998) suggests we are moving into a world of the post familial family.

Identity and personal communityIdentity formation as a consequence of relationships of intimacy and care, is, asKellerhals et al. (2002, p. 224) suggest, a maieutic logic and It is through frequent,serious exchanges among individuals that a specific family culture and a specific modeof identity transmission take shape. The underlying theme of the maieutic logic isconversation where the emphasis is on the self, on self-realization, but obviously

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through interaction with those chosen people who are deemed important with respectto personal meaning in ones life.

These interactions in which identities are formed are very personal, individual andintimate processes, where the home-confined consumers family may be responsible

for displaying their distinctiveness and uniqueness. The interests at stake in identitytransmission and in helping to construct a social identity are ultimately confined to thedomestic, intimate, private sphere of the home-confined consumer. As Kellerhals et al.(2002, p. 225) state, It is through the internal, relational dynamic, the management of aprivate space, and the way in which the group recognizes and assigns a distinct placeto the person that the processes of identity construction take place. Essentially then,the art of conversation with those individuals that form the family of choice forthe home-confined consumer may provide the basis for identity transmission andassociated identity construction. The emotional level attained through deeply feltexchanges with persons who count in the individuals daily life go some way indefining their family boundaries and, ultimately, their existence.

Care and personal communityCaring, as a combination of feelings with tasks, has been conceptualized in two ways,as caring about the feeling part of caring; and caring for the practical work of tending for others (Parker, 1981). As Williams (2001, p. 468) asserts, care as a practiceinvokes different experiences, different meanings, different contexts and multiplerelations of power. At some point in all our lives we will require or give care. Thegiving and receiving of care is imperative to human existence but is experienceddifferently at various points in the life course. The context of the family is often the firstand the last location in which care is given and experienced. Finch and Mason (1993)highlight the complex nature of care and support in families. Rather than caring beinga consequence of relationships, they have asserted that the act of providing care,especially if repeated routinelyover time, in fact, creates a relationship.

For many disability researchers and activists, the term care is value-laden,contested and confused (Shakespeare, 2000, p. 9). It is also located in the privatedomain of life (Thomas, 2001, p. 55) and, thus, largely invisible. For these reasonsthere is potential for exploitation and disempowerment in caring activity. Care isoften associated with institutional confinement, limited social engagement, partialcitizenship, disempowerment and exclusion. To be cared for is to be in deficit and tohave ones competence as a social actor denied or questioned. Disabled recipients of care live tragic lives (Oliver, 1990), ontologically doomed by a reduction of agency interms of personal autonomy, power and control. Of course, the meanings that areattributed to caring work are never given but are variable, mutable and contextbound. The context is contingent upon the biographical and present resources of the

people in the caring relationship and by the public ideologies that bear upon them(Chamberlayne and King, 2000).Personal communities offer a means of exploring the processes of identity formation

as it is produced by discourses of care. Fox (2000, p. 338) points out that while care mayembody masculine and custodial technologies of domination, it is also a gift and assuch saturated with positive properties such as generosity, trust, confidence, love,commitment, delight and esteem. It is however, the possessive, disciplinary element inthe caring relationship that has dominated the experience of disabled people, and it isagainst this backdrop that disability activists propose the transformation of care intohelp or assistance (Shakespeare, 2000). Disability activists seek to control care by

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transforming it into a formal contractual relationship in which the disabled personacquires control over the caring relationship.

The marginalization of caring is evident in the metaphors of waste that constituteits practices and help to define and invalidate the subjects involved in it.

Furthermore, impairment is also represented as a deficit and a disabled life ischaracterized universally as an invalidated or wasted existence (Hughes, 1999). Themedical distinction between the normal and the pathological provides a discursivestarting point that confirms the wasting or broken body with the wasted life. Thepolicy of the confinement of disabled people, for the best part of modernity, has left alegacy that constitutes impairment as a tragedy deserving a charitable response(Oliver, 1990), and a burden on the tax-paying community.

The individual case studies explored within this paper address varying degrees of disability and, as a consequence, offer multiple perspectives in relation to feelings of agency and their ability or need to construct a personal community or family which isreflective of the self and its ongoing identity.

MethodologyGiven the challenges in understanding personal communities and identity creationamongst home-confined consumers, there was a need for a methodology that wassensitive to the research agenda of discovery and the research context. The approachadopted stems from the understanding that human beings have the ability to createunderstandings that help them navigate life, regardless of whether or not these matchan external reality. Radical constructivism emphasizes such ability. Von Glasersfeld(1995) asserts that human perception is adaptive; it evolved to help people survive.Humans sense of continuity is preserved because we construct, and manage to believein a relatively smooth narrative of events. To the radical constructivist, discontinuitiesin action are to be expected at every level of social living, from the individual to thecommunal. Furthermore, the self as a locus of experience is an active agent rather thana passive entity.

The term intersubjective denotes the highest most reliable form of experientialreality (Von Glasersfeld, 1984). This level arises through the corroboration of otherthinking and knowing subjects. The introduction of others might seem in flatcontradiction of the constructivist principle that all knowledge is subjective. Althoughthe others are the individual subjects construction, they can nevertheless providecorroboration of that subjects experiential reality. The individual has a need toconstruct others and to keep these models of others as viable as possible because onlyviable others can lend the highest level of support to the subjects experiential reality(Von Glasersfeld, 1995).

In order to build knowledge of the experiential reality of the home-confined

consumer, a small number of research subjects were selected for in depth study over along period of time. To date, two years into the field research, this has involved weeklyinterview sessions with each research subject. The term interview is used loosely todescribe what would otherwise be considered conversations. Usually, the subjectmatter of these ongoing conversations originates with the home-confined consumer.Given the context of their situation and so as not to exacerbate their vulnerability, itwas important to allow the research subjects to identify and discuss their consumptionexperiences and issues important to their everyday lives. This is an interpretativeapproach and rather than seeking to answer a set of questions that will providegeneralisable results, it seeks to add to the debate on individuality, consumption and

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community by identifying issues from the differing individual perspectives of theresearch subjects.

Radical constructivists also understand something that objectivists miss thatsocial conditions, no matter how harsh and unyielding, do not automatically and

inevitably produce a single invariant set of experiences in all who are exposed to them.Everyones positioning is a little different, and each person couples with elements of thesocial and natural environment in unique ways (Efran and Fauber, 1995). The personal,subjective perspective adopted by radical constructivism parallels the interest andfocus embraced by Consumer Culture Theory (Arnould and Thompson, 2005) as thekey to bringing the consumers perspective back into consumer research. In keepingwith radical constructivism, Consumer Culture Theory highlights the importance of experience, individual self-experience, or self-construction as Maturanas (1988)process of autopoiesis suggests.

Radical constructivism nurtures and supports the consumers perspective and assuch provides an invaluable source of information that can extend, support or build onprior understandings in relation to societal consumer consumption behaviour. It is onlythe consumers experiences that can build the reality, the personal way of knowing andas such the role of researcher as interpreter is even more justified in relation to thisapproach. There is a pressing need to address consumer behaviour that combineshistorical, sociological, cultural and political analysis (Murray and Ozanne, 1991).Indeed Denzin (2001) believes that a more radical consumer research agenda canadvance this perspective where individuals freely determine their needs and desires(Harms and Kellner, 1991). Bazerman (2001) suggests that the researcher should makerecommendations concerning specific consumption practices and consumer choicesthat embrace lines of action that maximize consumer autonomy.

FindingsThe three cases of home-confined consumers discussed here offer a diverse set of contexts in terms of physicality and in their ability or need to construct a personalcommunity. The situations of Jay, Barbara and Gloria and David are explored andinsights into their personal communities of intimacy and care aid in the understandingof the autopoietic process of these home-confined consumers and of the roles of theirpersonal community members.

Case 1: Jay Jay was left a quadriplegic as a result of an automobile accident 26 years ago. He liveson his own in his own home. Jay requires an ongoing level of functional medical care tosustain independent living, and even survival. As such his personal communitymembers fall into distinct groups, namely, functional carers appointed by those in

charge of his medical care, functional carers who have crossed the boundary to becomepersonal friends, family members and friends. Most of the latter group were friendsbefore his home confinement. These members of Jays personal community providediffering levels and types of emotional support and functional care.

Those in charge of his medical care set the number and nature of visits of hisfunctional carers and Jay has little control over these. This functional level of careattends to the physical needs associated with severe non-abelism. Indeed Jays survival,in its basic sense, is dependent on his ability to address inner and outer bodily concernsin conjunction with these functional carers. Ultimately, they provide the basis forself-production or autopoiesis.

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Other community members visits are at Jays discretion in terms of times andfrequencies and are arranged strictly by appointment. Over the years, Jay hasestablished the days and times that individual family members and friends will visit.This even extends to telephone calls, which are also subject to a similar degree of

pre-planning and routine. Similarly, individual family members and friends are eachentrusted with specialist responsibilities and tasks, such as the purchase of gifts forother community members. Although personal community members are aware of eachothers existence and many are known to one another, Jay manages his community insuch a way as to keep individuals separate and answerable only to him. Retainingsuch control over the levels of interaction and communication between members is, in Jays view, vital to realizing continued independent living. Specifically, he would beconcerned that community members were discussing his situation without hisparticipation in the discussion.

Within the medical caring part of Jays community there have been particularindividuals that have transcended the boundary to become more than functionalparticipants. These community members, whose levels of intimacy and care mirrorsthose typically associated with kin, are representative of Jays ability to establishexchange relationships and self-select a community that reflects and corroborates hisself and his self-identity. These chosen individuals undertake personal tasks thatwould usually be considered outside their functional duties. This ability to determinethe strength of and choice of such relationships illustrates that this is essentially arelationship borne out of care and the interaction associated with caring (Finch andMason, 1993). Jay will say Oh Lola (a medical carer) is away on her holidays for afortnight, I dont know who Ill get to cover for her. I hate it, especially over theweekend because Lola would always stay on after her time and we have a good chatand I am able to get a good nights sleep. This relationship has gradually extendedsuch that the receipt of care by Jay has now developed into the giving of care to Lola.Im really worried, Lola has had a lot of stomach pains lately and I feel that somethingis really wrong. I have asked her to go to the Doctor just to make sure everything isokay. For Jay this concern is not momentary but encompasses other issues pertinentto his well-being and his long-term welfare. His concerns are inextricably linked toLolas ability to remain an important member of his personal community.

Lola is not the only one to have crossed the boundary. Wallace, for example, is aneven longer established member of Jays medical care group, but he is also a valued andtrusted member of Jays self-selected personal community. Initially, this relationshipwas forged through a common interest in football but has developed over the years.In other words, a non self-selected medical carer can become as important, and asemotionally close, as a self-selected personal community member.

Jays personal community comprises of members of choice and those essential to

survival but who are not self-selected. These two interlinking forms of communitymembership reflect direct marketplace interaction and a socialization process deemednecessary for autopoiesis. The intimacy and care that is built up over time throughinteraction in the special space affords the opportunity for Jay to have an indirectmarketplace socialization process. The differing levels and forms of care experiencedby Jay provide him the opportunity to select those individuals who will becomesignificant members and whose presence is conducive to his own, on-going identityconstruction. These significant others, as Maturana (1988) suggests, are representativeof third order coupling or interaction between the self and significant others. Byextension, these significant others can diffuse the identity that belongs to Jay back into

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the external marketplace. This reinforcing of ones self, to oneself, and to the externalenvironment is accomplished by the interactions with these significant personalcommunity members.

Case 2: Barbara and GloriaBarbara and Gloria are sisters in their late 50s. Over a period of five years theygradually withdrew from the external world and confined themselves to their ownhome. They view the external world as a dangerous and contaminating placedetrimental to their ongoing welfare and well-being. Although confined to the home,the sisters have a certain degree of physicality that renders them abelist within theirown special space and they require only limited medical care provided through homevisits. Their personal community is devoid of carers in the functional sense and ismade up of family and friends that Barbara and Gloria feel they can trust to interactwithin their autopoietic reality. It is also a small community comprised of two familymembers, a niece and a cousin, both of whom are female and a neighbour of over30 years (also female), who lives close by. The local pharmacist, John, has become aregular visitor to the household to deliver the sisters medication and is also someonewith whom they can discuss personal medical issues. The sisters were regularchurchgoers before home confinement and they have also retained a few members of their church as friends.

A history of caring for homebound parents over a 25 year period has created acontextual situation in which the sisters have become self-sufficient to a certain extent.However, their level of dependency on each other is high. Barbara and Gloria provideeach other with emotional caring and functional caring and have each other to supportongoing autopoiesis through the many transitions that home confinement can bring.They are disciplined in their approach to many aspects of their lives, such as keepingtheir home spotlessly clean, and this is no less apparent in the regulation of theirchosen community.

The personal community is heavily managed and controlled in terms of itsmembership, interaction between members and the roles performed by each member. Itis only at their request that personal members can visit; indeed they can be abrupt anddogmatic in the rigid and disciplined approach they maintain. On many occasionscommunity members have called on them when passing, just to check if they are welland whether they needed anything, only to be met with a rebuff. You will have to comeback later we are just sitting down to lunch. Our lunch is at 1 (pm) every day so wecant have anyone in. Other situations have arisen where food items purchased at theirrequest have not met their specific requirements. Personal community members thatundertake such tasks are in no doubt about the outcome of incorrect purchases.Barbara, in particular, will ensure that the offending product is returned Oh we

couldnt eat that; youll have to take it back. I told you the one we eat, its Gloriasstomach we have to be careful of. I dont want her to be up all night in pain. If theyhavent the one we like just get the money back. As the personal community membersare concerned for the sisters well-being they will change the product and try to ensurethat they purchase exactly what Barbara and Gloria want.

The sisters overriding anxiety in relation to consumption of food products, which,where possible, are high quality whole-foods, is focused on the need to maintain aconsistent level of healthcare to support optimal inner body maintenance. Anyrelaxation of their dietary regime might result in a decline in health, and ultimatelytheir physical survival. Since this is so important to Barbara and Gloria, it is

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understandable that personal community members must also take their dietaryconcerns seriously to the extent that their behaviours reinforce and support thedisciplined regime the sisters have adopted. Like Jay, a key concern for the sistersis to sustain their emotional and physical independence and to continue living

independently in their own home. In contrast to Jay, Barbara and Gloria are more likelyto direct, and even dictate, the roles of their members. Although their community is in asense more disciplined in terms of its cohesion, it nevertheless reflects the attendanceto detail that enables a level of care sufficient to sustain autopoiesis.

Case 3: David David, like Jay, is single and in his 40s but his level of abelism is sufficiently high toafford him physicality in his own home. David has been confined to the home for aperiod of three years. At one time David was in full time employment, but agreed to avoluntary redundancy. This provided the resources and time to engage in foreigntravel. He returned home to unemployment and there followed a period of gradual self-withdrawal from the world outside his home. He requires no ongoing medical care.

David has a large personal community of friends that offer emotional and physicalsupport. This community is largely comprised of former boyhood friends who havecome to accept his decision to confine himself to the home. Initiallyefforts were made atencouraging David out at weekends, but over time they have had to accept his positionon this issue. As life-long friends they have a strong sense of loyalty and try toaccommodate Davids wishes by rallying round and providing him with an indirectsocialization process in his home.

In direct contrast to Jay and Barbara and Gloria, David is less disciplined in themanagement of his community. Davids community members are all known to oneanother and interact socially; they are also permitted, and even encouraged, to visit hishome in groups. Indeed, parties and musical evenings are held in his special space andthis brings David into contact with new people. A continuous flow of new indirectmembers of Davids community provides fresh interaction and information, whichmirrors direct marketplace socialization processes that are important to ongoingidentity construction. Some of the extended members (friends of chosen personalmembers) come to be members of choice after ongoing interaction.

Unlike the other two cases discussed above, David has not adopted a disciplinedapproach or regime of care deemed essential to survival. He is reliant on hiscommunity to bring the basics of life, food, heat and companionship to his space. Hisoldest friend, Neil, brings David supplies of home prepared food for his freezer. Davidis full of praise for these connoisseur dishes and other personal community memberswill drop by at meal times when they know that Neil has delivered. David certainlyfeels no sense of inadequacy or impoverishment in receiving such gifts and Neil is

appreciative that his culinary skills are so much in demand. The two way flow of caring is evident in this personal relationship and both parties enjoy a sense of companionship borne out of intimacy and care (Beck and Katcher, 1983).

Even though David is not socializing in the external marketplace, he is able tointeract in the normal sense of socializing through his avant garde dinner parties. AsDavid will admit, When Neil brings his special pheasant curries I have loads of dinnerguests. It is really hot, Neil knows the way I like it. No-one has ever tasted anything likeit; his fame is growing every day. Although David is not the cook, by extension hefeels involved in the gift of gastronomical delights to other members of his personalcommunity. David enjoys the consumption experiences that are afforded by the

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unexpected events or situations that present themselves. You wouldnt know whowould arrive at your door at any time of the night, bringing gifts of wine and fancybiscuits and chocolates, all the things I love.

One can see that David enjoys reminiscing over many such occasions and

consumption memories are particularly important to him and his portrayal of self.The times we all used to have. Sundays lying around drinking wine, sliding down thebanks on cardboard, those were the days. Everything is changed now, I cant standbeing in a bar anymore and I used to love it. Its the noise, all that talking it does myhead in. Davids consumption experiences are not all positive ones but they are anessential part of his self and his self-production. Like nostalgia, the bittersweetelements of consumption present special aspects of self that carry the identity forwardthrough different transitional phases and maintain abelism in the visible sense as aconsequence of such consumption experiences. Even though David is constrained inhis physical space he is certainly not restricted in his socialization processes.Autopoiesis and therefore ongoing identity construction is not inhibited by the absenceof an external marketplace.

DiscussionThese very individual personal communities represent the changing consumptionbehaviour associated with transitional phases encountered in ones autopoietic system.The forms of life, or special spaces, explored here draw from the social autopoiesisconstructed of existentially meaningful social interaction. The conversations orlanguage provides sophisticated landscapes of socially significant meanings orpractices that get shaped and reshaped to fit the current reality, but also at every point(re)form it. The personal community of the home-confined consumer represents aninternal socialization process and offers the ability to connect and evolve through third-order coupling (Maturana, 1988), and this is played out in the personal communities of Jay, Barbara and Gloria and David.

It should be noted that the development, creation and evolution of the personalcommunities explored within this study primarily stem from the context of theindividual concerned, and as a consequence of such creative activities, home-confinedconsumers are both enabled and constrained in aspects of their social structure(Giddens, 1990). The potential of social structures for both constraining and enablinghuman action is realized in the experiential reality of the home-confined consumer inrelation to their personal community. Maturanas (1988) autopoiesis takes on board thenature of the knowing subject, which is the focus of this paper. The consumerexperience as it is lived highlights the ability and creativity of the home-confinedconsumers to establish personal communities of care. Although the case of Jay showsthat some personal community members may not be self-selected, the autopoietic

social system of Jay is not diluted as a consequence of this, but derives its strengthfrom the ability of Jay to manage this diverse personal community. Home-confinedconsumers construct a sense of community through their consumption behavioursand as a consequence of their privatized consumer activities are able to establishindividuality and on-going self-identity.

The ability for autopoiesis is heightened in relation to the consumption of a personalcommunity. The personal community affords such consumption behaviour deemednecessary to maintain a self-identity and is instrumental in realizing and maintainingindividuality. Personal communities allow for fruitful exchange relationships to becreated and developed, and the self-identity is strengthened and extended as a

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consequence of such consumption behaviour. Communities, as possessions can beused to satisfy psychological needs such as creating ones self-concept, reinforcing andexpressing self-identity, and allowing one to differentiate oneself and assert onesindividuality (Belk, 1988; Kleine et al., 1995). Recent research indicates that consumers

construct their self-identity and present themselves to others through self-imageassociations (Escalas and Bettman, 2005).

ConclusionThe home-confined consumers explored in this article exhibit competency to maintaina self and a self-identity through the consumption of private consumer activities inrelation to their personal community. Consumer agency, in terms of empowerment,creativity and control highlights the significance of others in the realization andattainment of individuality, expressed within personal community construction. Inabsence of direct marketplace interaction, autopoiesis can be a tenable outcomethrough the mutual exchange processes of intimacy and care inherent in the dynamicsof personal community membership.

Personal communities can help empower the individual especially in periods of uncertainty and vulnerability by providing a supporting framework for ongoingconstruction of self and of identity. The personal community reflects ability for self-choice, ability for creativity, and ability for individuality. Autopoiesis is reinforced bythe consumption of a personal community. Indeed those deemed marginalized, sociallyexcluded and often invisible, are seen to benefit from the construction of a personalcommunity in terms of well-being, welfare and feelings of empowerment. Of course anunderlying concern for home-confined consumers is their removal from independentliving to institutionalized living, and, as a result the need to construct, manage andmaintain a personal community is undoubtedly of major concern.

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Further reading

Roseneil, S. and Budgeon, S. (2004), Cultures of intimacy and care beyond the family: personallife and social change in the early 21st century, Current Sociology, Vol. 52, March,pp. 135-59.

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About the authorsHilary Downey is a PhD candidate at the School of Management and Economics at QueensUniversity of Belfast. Her research interests lie in consumer research, marginalized consumers(home-confined consumers and disability), identity construction and companion-animalconsumption. Hilary Downey is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: h.downey@qub.ac.uk

Miriam Catterall is a senior lecturer in management at Queens University Belfast, where sheis responsible for marketing and research programmes. Her research interests lie in consumerresearch, feminist issues in marketing and in qualitative market research, particularly in focusgroup theory, methodology and practice.

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