Social exclusion is usually considered in relation to the world of work. Here, we consider it in relation to consumption. To do this, we introduce the notion of the ‘excluded consumer’. In order to understand who defines themselves as excluded from normal consumption practices and how, the...

Reflecting the broader ‘cultural turn' in retail studies, recent surveys of do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers have emphasised human agency rather than economic constraints when explaining their motives for purchasing DIY products. The aim of this paper however, is to evaluate critically this...

To evaluate critically whether under a market system, monetary exchange is always and everywhere based on profit-seeking behaviour, this article examines cash-in-hand work, a form of activity conventionally conceptualised as low paid employment heavily imbued with profit motivations on the part...

The view that alternative retail channels (i.e., informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition) are used out of economic necessity by disadvantaged consumers has been recently opposed by cultural theorists who instead read such channels in agency-orientated terms as places of fun,...

The starting point of this paper is that the shift from a producer to a consumer society necessitates that social exclusion is investigated not only in relation to production but also consumption. To do this, case study evidence from interviews with 350 households in rural England is reported....

With the cultural turn/s in urban studies, participation in alternative retail channels (i.e. informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition) has been reconceptualised as motivated more by the search for fun, sociality, distinction, discernment, the spectacular and so forth rather than...

In the past few years, the view that participation in informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition results from economic necessity has been contested by an agency-orientated cultural reading that views such engagement to be about the search for fun, sociality, distinction, discernment,...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting policy approaches towards undeclared work. To do so, evidence is reported from 1,000 face-to-face interviews conducted in Croatia during 2013. Logistic regression analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the...

To evaluate how undeclared work is being tackled in Croatia this paper reports an e-survey and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in Croatia. It is revealed that, compared with the European Economic Area countries, Croatia has a weak institutional infrastructure for tackling undeclared...