The emergence of new digital technologies makes gambling more accessible than ever before. Whilst problem gambling is known to be a gendered issue predominantly impacting men, how young men use and understand gambling apps is not well understood. Most gambling research is conducted from a psychological perspective that does not account for gambling as a social practice, or the digital aspects as part of broader processes of financialisation and ‘everyday’ forms of indebtedness. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with young men in the Hunter region of Australia, we explore the role of ‘bet with mates’ features on gambling apps in the social lives of young men, especially in relation to their participation in sport. In this article we seek to break with approaches that have focused primarily on problem gambling to instead consider the role of gambling in young men’s everyday lives and socialities, which are described by participants as offering opportunities for banter, connection, and friendship. The affordances of digital technologies extend the capacity for gambling and betting beyond traditional spaces such as the betting parlour, racetrack or casino into more intimate spaces through the continuous and ever-present smartphone. We pay attention to how gambling apps are used as part of mundane social and digital practices for young men during the course of their everyday lives – both alone and with friends. We show how betting apps are entangled with the particular socialities of young men’s lives, embedded in hetero-masculine norms associated with sporting and drinking cultures in Australia.

This study examines the following of European soccer leagues within the United States as a manifestation of emerging cultural capital and cosmopolitan dispositions. Utilizing Bourdieu and neo-Bourdieusian frameworks of cultural capital, it investigates how the consumption of European soccer leagues by Americans signifies new forms of social distinction, influenced by factors such as socioeconomic position, age, political orientation, and social attitudes towards openness and diversity. Using unique and highly recent survey data, results of regression modelling reveal that engagement with these leagues is significantly associated with higher educational attainment, age, and cosmopolitan values of openness and diversity, although not liberal politics, challenging traditional notions of cultural capital and suggesting a reconfiguration of social stratification within the context of global sports consumption while raising compelling questions for further research.

The article presents research around the mediatisation of sports through the lens of production and consumption of tennis media. Contemporary accelerated culture pushes for the proliferation of digital media technologies and reshapes cultural practices for audiences, institutions, and athletes alike. The rise of prosumer media and user-generated content (UGC), exemplified by platforms like YouTube, has challenged traditional media narratives. It has reoriented discourses around authenticity, and framed tennis as a sped-up, gamified, accessible entertainment by-product in the digital age. While elite athletes gain global media stardom, aspiring professionals and semi-professional athletes balance their careers by attempting to become notable content creators and producers in this new media ecosystem. The concept of the ‘post-athlete’ connects to reflexive modes of existence, where athletes navigate the political economy of sports media through the interplay of athletic labour, digital media labour, and lifestyle. My study focuses on this emerging athlete prototype, for whom media labour influences career success as much as on-field sporting performance does.

Ethical consumption can take different forms, each with its own justifications and underlying rationales. While countries in north-western Europe have well-established mechanisms for promoting ethically labelled products, the situation is different in many other regions across the world. This paper examines ethical consumption in Sweden and Iran to identify the societal factors that influence the phenomenon. Employing social practice theory and a multilevel perspective, the empirical study explores the assumption that ethical consumption develops in an interplay between different levels and between different social actors, which can both challenge and rely on existing capacities. Data was generated from 34 semi-structured interviews with citizens in both countries. Expanding beyond micro-level factors, this study makes a dual contribution to the field of ethical consumption. First, it offers insights into the diverse ethical perceptions related to consumption across societies, broadening the understanding of various aspects of the phenomenon. Secondly, it sheds light on the role of societal regimes in the emergence and adoption of ethical consumption.

Studies on sustainable consumption have predominantly focused on first-hand consumers, whereas research on second-hand consumers has been centered on the act of purchase. This has involved investigations into specific venues such as second-hand markets and thrift shops or the motivations, barriers, and meanings behind such acquisition behaviors. This article strives to enhance the understanding of second-hand consumption within the framework of sustainable development in peripheral countries and in contexts with a limited access to new products. Through interviews conducted in different households across the Metropolitan Region of Chile, we delved into the diverse channels through which used items are exchanged –including waste picking, inheritance, and sharing–. The findings underscore the pivotal role these objects play in numerous households and highlight how certain spatial and social factors –such as urban density, social networks, land use, family structure, and emotional attachment to belongings– are crucial in promoting the sustainable exchange of second-hand goods outside of the market economy.

Food consumption is being reconfigured as a consequence of consumers’ ethical concerns. While preferences and tastes may be influenced by broad ethical positions, constructions of social identity also reflect shifts in food consumption. Important tools within this nexus are ‘future foods’, produced through novel technologies such as artificial intelligence or genetic editing, supporting consumers in the construction of identity markers. Through 24 ( n = 121) focus groups in rural and urban Australia, we explore to what extent future foods contribute to alleviate tensions between broader ethical principles and consumer identities. We argue that the collective discourse around future foods has the potential to shift the culture of food ethics in the future, enabled through three moral identity markers. Specifically, identities of citizen-consumption that view ethics as ‘eating for change’; nationalism as a form of patriotic morality that encourages the consumption of national brands and protectionism; and nostalgic knowledge and historical identities of the past to reconfigure ethical ideals for the future. These discursive identity constructions shed light on how consumers may redefine food ethics in the future, legitimising citizenship through demonstrating virtue, patriotism as loyalty to social groups, and nostalgic capturing of history to ‘ethicise’ the future.

Practice theoretical approaches in consumption studies centre practices over practitioners, the material and mundane over the symbolic and embodied skill over individual choice. Pointing to practice theory’s neglect of the role of intersubjectivity and the deeply interactional character of performances in practice formation, this article relies on interviews with young urban consumers in China and Romania to explore dress practices in the two postsocialist locales in consumers’ pursuit of ‘the good life’. We reflect on the intertwining of consumption with this moral project grounded in both the materiality and sociality of dress. By centring performances, we rearticulate the relationship between normativity and accountability in materialising the everyday consumption norms. We tease out the meaningful role of interaction in maintaining and altering the boundaries of dress practices, and subjecting postsocialist consumers to processes of self- and mutual-monitoring on the way to attaining ‘the good life’. This comprehensive approach fruitfully complements the oft-criticised epistemological monism and theoretical imprecision of practice theory.

An iconic characteristic of Hong Kong’s social unrest in 2019 was the establishment of the so-called “yellow economic circle”—a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by shared political values. Movement sympathizers chose to consume products from retailers perceived as supporting movement aims and boycotted retailers thought to be in favor of closer ties with China. This research focuses on the challenges of the yellow economic circle through the lenses of class and consumer nationalism. Drawing on social media posts and interviews with pro-democracy individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds, we highlight challenges to the sustainability of the “yellow economic circle.” Class-based purchasing power represented an obstacle to the success of the yellow economic circle; however, it was not the biggest challenge. Instead, an inherent incompatibility between the movement’s aims and the means for achieving these aims posed the biggest hurdle. Navigating this incompatibility represented an opportunity for movement participants to develop innovations in thinking about consumer nationalism and the role purchasing power may play in participation. We conclude that the way participants defined consumer nationalism determined whether the yellow economic circle could be understood to engender a shared “Hong Kong identity” and eliminate existing class differences.

This paper adds to the literature on cultural stratification by revisiting cultural voraciousness, nearly two decades after it was first introduced as a measure of cultural participation designed to capture inequalities in the pace and variety of cultural activities. Specifically, using the UK 2014–15 Time Use Survey, we compare measures of cultural voraciousness in the UK in 1998 and 2015, focussing in particular on the way cultural voraciousness is associated with both gender and class. We find continuity over time in the patterns of relationship between cultural voraciousness, gender and class, which are not explained by income or hours worked. While women at the bottom of the class scale are still the most disadvantaged in terms of unequal access to cultural participation, high level managerial women now equal equivalent men in their voracious cultural participation. We conclude that not only is cultural voraciousness still useful in depicting cultural inequalities delineated by gender and class, and not only do gender and class gaps in cultural voraciousness persist over time, but also that there is evidence for accentuated class inequality over time in cultural voraciousness among men and among women.