The role of teleoaffective profiles in practice adaptation

Abstract

Consumer research is interested in the way consumers navigate consumption in the face of disruption, often using practice theory to focus on how practitioners creatively realign practice elements in order to carry on. Although recognising their significance, this research undertheorizes the significance, role and characteristics of 'meanings' in practice adaptation, presenting them as constraining and yet easy to adapt. We explore and theorize meanings in practice adaptation by mobilising the theoretical leverage of Schatzki’s (2002) concept of ‘teleoaffective structures’. Through our empirical material, we illuminate how multifaceted teleoaffective components constituent of teleoaffective structures are integrated differently into routinised practice performances in relatively stable ways; incorporated via ‘teleoaffective profiles’ that are unique to practitioners but properties of practices. Furthermore, we propose that teleoaffective profiles have different characteristics that condition practice adaptation, as teleological orientations and affective engagements afford different pathways towards integration with available materials and competences. We use our empirical material, based on interviews with loyal gym-based resistance training practitioners during COVID-19 gym closures, to illuminate our argument that practitioners can have ‘rigid’, ‘elastic’ or ‘fluid’ teleoaffective profiles. The characteristics of these profiles, which are unique but remain the properties of the practice, mean that adaptation processes and experiences unfold differently. This perspective advances from accounts of adaptation that are centred on binary outcomes of success or failure. Furthermore, our theorization advances from practice-oriented consumption adaptation research that foregrounds practitioner creativity and fails to adequately incorporate understandings of how practice elements condition adaptation processes. Yet, we retain practitioner experiences in our analysis. Teleoaffective components, profiles and properties provides further theoretical leverage to the practice turn in consumption research and advances the burgeoning focus on the significance of teleoaffective structures in the topographies of practices