Marketing Lancaster University Management School | the place to be Don't be a bad influencer 16Exploited and abused daughters 4Danger for sale in Rio 12 FIFTYFOUR DEGREES Exploring our research and expertise from problem gambling to social media influencers, online witches to dark tourism
2 | Discover more of Lancaster University Management School’s world-leading research at lancaster.ac.uk/fiftyfour In this issue... 4 Danger for sale Running an enterprise in a stable environment can be hard enough. Operating in a favela – a Brazilian slum or shantytown where drug gangs are dominant and shootings are an everyday reality – is something else. 8 Gambling with Public Health Dr Carolyn Downs outlines her work looking at the extent of problem gambling in Lancashire. 12 Don’t be a bad influencer Social media influencers can have audiences in the millions, and they use their sway over followers to promote and endorse products. 16 Exploited and abused Dr Chih-Ling Liu’s work highlights the plight of daughters in Chinese families where ‘son preference’ means female children suffer exploitation 20 It’s Witchcraft Take a trip into the world of modernday online witches with PhD researcher Sophie James. 24 Mother knows best Attitudes towards gender equality and stereotypical gender roles have changed greatly since the 1950s. Why then, asks Professor Margaret K Hogg, are women still presented as experts of the household first and of anything else second in popular magazines? 28 Come over to the Dark Side Dr Beatriz Rodriguez Garcia examines dark tourism sites – where tourists visit places linked with death, trauma or disaster. Building barriers, opening doors With economic and political migration high on the agenda across much of Europe, Dr Emre Tarim examines the key issue of how migrants integrate into the labour market. 32 36 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Business Dr Mike Ryder asks: what can science fiction tell us about the future? When we watch Star Trek, Blade Runner or Star Wars, or read the works of Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke or Ursula Le Guin, do we see what lies decades or centuries in the future? Be the best brand that you can be In the digital age, brands must approach the task of building their prestige in a whole new way. 40
Professor Alex Skandalis Head of the Department of Marketing lancaster.ac.uk/lums/marketing Welcome to Marketing at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS). In these pages, I am delighted to introduce you to our department and showcase some of the great work that my colleagues are doing, highlighting just why the subject is so often at the forefront of business and public engagement. Our Marketing department is a proven world leader. Lancaster is ranked in the top 50 worldwide for the subject in the latest QS World Rankings by Subject (2024), and third in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2024. We are the longest-established Marketing department in the UK and our research remains at the cutting edge. It is one of the six subject areas that contribute to LUMS’ status as number one for research power among all UK business schools. Our expertise that covers the whole range of the Marketing discipline, from consumer research to market dynamics, social media and digital marketing to sustainable innovation and health inequalities, amongst others. You can find examples of this work across the diverse articles in this special edition of our Fifty Four Degrees magazine. From witchcraft to gambling, from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to the outer boundaries of the universe centuries in the future, we will take you on a whirlwind tour of our staff and their skills, many of whom teach the same subjects on our undergraduate and/or postgraduate programmes, bringing their real-world experience and theoretical insights into the classroom for the benefit of our students. Josi Fernandes starts our journey on the streets of Rio, where entrepreneurs have made a business of marketing danger. Josi brings first-hand experience of the favelas and their people to her work, and shows how marketers can make something others may view as a negative into a commercial opportunity. Digital marketing is a key area for almost all businesses in the present day, and is an area where our students are keen to develop their skills and knowledge. Among the community here in Lancaster we have experts in social media influencers – showing the types of behaviour they need to avoid if they are to keep followers on side, and how online witches are using social media platforms to create a marketplace for themselves. More traditional marketing methods can be seen in the work of Margaret Hogg on how brands sell products to women; in the words of LUMS graduate JP Kuehlwein, an expert on luxury brands; and in how tourist organisations market dark tourism sites to visitors in a variety of ways. Within LUMS, our researchers try to make a positive and tangible impact on society. This is brilliantly illustrated in the work of Carolyn Downs on gambling here in the North West of England. By working with public health bodies and other organisations, Carolyn looks at how best to combat problem gambling. This drive to help vulnerable groups in society can also be seen in the work of Chihling Liu on son preference in China. Chihling shows how daughters in some Chinese families are treated poorly compared to male siblings, and suffer throughout their lives because of it. The potential to change attitudes and policy can be seen within her findings. Beyond this, Mike Ryder takes you into the world of science fiction, and Emre Tarim to the darker realms of refugees looking for work in their new homelands. Our research informs our teaching, and likewise our lecturers gain much from teaching that drives forward their research. This takes students beyond standard textbook learning to investigate and tackle issues that employers value and that are at the heart of modern society. I hope you enjoy discovering our work; and if you would like more information then please do not hesitate to contact us. Welcome FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 3
DFOARNGER SALE Running an enterprise in a stable environment can be hard enough. Operating in a favela – a Brazilian slum or shantytown where drug gangs are dominant and shootings are an everyday reality – is something else. How can it be possible to run a business that actually makes money? Dr Josi Fernandes went to meet some of the world’s most resourceful entrepreneurs in Rio. 4 |
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When I told Brazilian friends I was planning to research the microenterprises in the favelas, they all gave me the same advice: don't do it. It’s not safe, day or night, to go into the higgledy hilltop settlements made up of homemade houses, forming their own separate and unregulated cities. They’re a place of poverty, misery and murder. Even Google omitted these vast communities from its maps. But the problem with relying on these kinds of views was that none of them had actually been into a favela themselves. It was all perception based on mainstream media reports. So I went to Rocinha (which translates as ‘Little Farm’), the biggest and most famous of the favelas, stretching up a steep hill to the south of the centre of Rio de Janeiro. More than 200,000 people are believed to be living there, with those who do earn any money are thought to be living on just $2 a day. I made sure I didn’t go at night, and didn’t just wander. I was always on my way to somewhere in particular, to an arranged appointment with a member of the community. First referred to in formal Building Law in 1937 as “illegal constructions”, the Rio favelas grew rapidly in the 1970s as people from poorer, rural areas of the country moved into the cities. Despite their unofficial status and lack of state organisation, all kinds of informal associations have come together over the years, allowing areas to organise access to key services like water and electricity. There are well-organised religious, social and arts groups. But most of all, the biggest organisations are involved with drug trafficking, run by what are known as the comandos. In theory the favelas have been under the control of ‘Pacifying Police Units’, first introduced at the time of the 2014 World Cup (but since my research was carried out, have become practically non-existent), rather than any local government. But this was more a case of occasional raids and interventions rather than constant patrols, and inhabitants of the favelas associate the police mostly with bringing violence and prejudice. You know when a confrontation between Special Operation Battalion police and drug gangs are going to happen, with the possibility of gun battles, because the drug gangs will set off fireworks as a warning. The problems with sanitation, pollution and poor diets mean that mortality rates are high; even without the regular gang shootings. Despite this extreme context, people were making money. Not by going into the city centre – which is really another universe to a favela, home to the super wealthy and a large proportion of affluent middle class families – but using their own wits and networks of people. In my first visits I wasn’t sure what to expect, and went without any preconceptions about how enterprises were being formed and run. I ended up spending a number of weeks of my visits into Rocinha getting to know fascinating entrepreneurs and being referred on to other people, learning about their lives and how they manage to keep going, and the research snowballed. 6 |
POP-UP TOURISM In Rocinha, many legitimate entrepreneurs have been able to make a fairly regular income from tourism, from taking visitors into their own different kind of world and showing them how they work, the different kinds of properties, the nurseries and schools, the shops and services being offered, and the voluntary projects going on. Tourists are taken to the main streets and often have the chance to walk around and meet with locals, before being taken to a cafe or restaurant, and to local arts and craft stalls; all connected to the shared enterprise. The great majority of Rocinha tourism customers come from outside of Rio, from other parts of Brazil or overseas. Tours highlight the practical challenges of living in an underprivileged community, but also their humanity, resilience and character. The businesses rely on being able to sell tickets to visit some of the most dangerous places in the country: a favela where they don’t know when Special Operations are going to be carrying out raids, and when there might be gang-related killings anytime. TripAdvisor reviews make such associations explicit, describing favelas as both “dangerous places” as well as “safe places to visit on supervised tours”. The stigma associated with somewhere like Rocinha is strong, but the entrepreneurs manage to cleverly balance the danger with reassurance about the low level of actual risk involved. It’s a sexy alternative to the overfamiliar, conventional tourism offerings of Rio, for those who don’t just want to visit Christ the Redeemer and see the views over the bay; it’s different, there’s potential danger there, but actually, it’s not going to be a problem if you stick together in the right places, they say. An urban safari: the wild places are out there, but kept at arm’s length. The evidence of the drug gangs is always there; but you don’t have to see that if you don’t want to. URBAN SAFARI The favela tour operators are very informal – have to be very informal – but run in sophisticated and highly resourceful ways. They can’t run every day because when there have been deaths the night before there’s too much police presence, maybe some grisly evidence left behind. So the networks of people involved use word of mouth, often via WhatsApp messaging, to let each other know the situation. When there’s been no trouble the members of the business spring into action and come together very quickly, the driver, the guide, the cooks and the craft stalls. The next day the operation might need to dissolve again. There’s no formal structure or organisation, it’s all temporary. They are the kinds of businesses that work in the ultimate form of VUCA environment (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), and are a model for how many more firms may have to work in future. In terms of marketing and sales, social media is essential in making the seemingly inaccessible feel a possible place to be. Despite the levels of poverty, everyone involved in the tours has a smartphone and internet access. Social media platforms are used to alert potential customers to the alternative tours, and also to provide a sneak preview of what they’ll get from the tour. The platforms provide that allimportant assurance of where they will go and what they will see, that there’s knowledge, experience and some organisation involved. In this way the microentrepreneurs assemble methods to provide planned and safe navigation and engagement with favelas. They provide links to the infrastructures that exist, whether by internet and websites, trains, mototáxis, the alleyways of Rocinha themselves; and present exciting knowledge (maps, timetables, photos, historical and contemporary favela stories). Other things include the rules (web details of how to engage with the tour), practices (tour collection, conduct and drop-off, shopping, café stops), and the specific roles and competences of the entrepreneurs themselves (as tour guides, shop keepers, café managers, residents). Photos of visitors taking a tour around Rocinha are posted on social media, with connections to virtual tours in the streets via Google and positive reviews on Facebook and TripAdvisor. The offerings are also tailored and made flexible to meet different needs and customer groups, with walking tours for some, and others solely driven up to the top of Rocinha and down. The biggest challenge for the favela operators is competition from formal businesses, who have more resources to draw on for advertising and facilities, moving in from the city because of the revenue potential. This is seen as unfair to locals, for the wealthy to drain money from Rocinha while exploiting its reputation. As for me, I can vouch for the safety of spending time in a favela. The only time I had any trouble was in the centre of Rio, when someone stole my phone. In Rocinha I met lots of people and they looked after me. Just once did I hear explosions. The fireworks were going off, the signal for the police to arrive. I braced myself for what might be coming. But nothing appeared to change, just ordinary members of a community, getting on with their lives, working together and trying to keep businesses going for another day. Dr Josiane Fernandes is a Lecturer in Marketing. Her work is focused on finding out how people living in extreme conditions – settings of violence and institutional and social ‘voids’ – manage to overcome barriers and find motivation to shape the world around them. j.fernandes@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 7
8 | A new project in Lancashire is shedding light on the prevalence of problem gambling. Dr Carolyn Downs explains how gambling remains an underestimated and underfunded addiction, and how she hopes her research will lead to a better understanding of the scale of the issue, and a more active approach to helping problem gamblers. GAMBLING WITH PUBLIC HEALTH
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According to official government figures, there are around 450,000 problem gamblers in the UK. The government estimates problem gambling costs the country £1.27bn per year. If we accept the government figure, that is 450,000 individuals with an addiction that causes them stress and anxiety and individual harms. Each of those individuals affects around three to five other people (family members, employers, their wider community). However, problem gambling is not evenly distributed through the population, meaning some communities are more severely affected than others. Unlike drug and alcohol addiction, current NHS (National Health Service) systems are not set up to capture data on problem gambling. Since the last full national survey of the issue in 2010, UK government data has been gathered from a bolt-on to public health work, with fewer questions. The limitations in current data collection mean there are grounds for believing the actual number of problem gamblers is underrepresented, and anecdotal evidence from professionals suggests numbers might be significantly higher. GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM The Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust were picking up that a greater proportion of people with mental health problems than they would expect also had an issue with gambling. There was no way for them to establish how many people were affected, as the NHS had no agreed way of recording it. It was apparent that we needed to find out more about these anecdotal findings. The initial plan was to work with the Trust on a small pilot study to test whether a brief screening tool would help identify patients experiencing problem gambling. As other organisations heard about the project, they asked to take part. We are now working with Blackburn Foodbank and Blackpool Citizens Advice Bureau, alongside the Trust. This project will provide a snapshot of the situation in Blackpool and Blackburn districts. Our aims are three-fold: • To establish if there is a bigger gambling problem than previously thought. Once we have an idea of the scale in two regions of Lancashire, we want to look across the whole Northwest of England. • To devise a unified way for help- seeking organisations to record problem gambling. This would cover health services, police, voluntary services, advice services such as Citizens Advice Bureaus, and foodbanks. It would give them an agreed definition of what they are looking for, and an agreed way of recording it. • To bring this invisible addiction into the light. It needs to be discussed more in public. Often the first time a family member realises there is a problem is when the bailiffs are knocking at the door. We are using a short set of questions to assess key markers for problem gambling. These are a combination of two existing screening tools plus an additional question based on the findings of my Gambling and Debt project. The questions are designed to notice when an important line has been crossed – when gambling is no longer a bit of fun, but starts to take over all aspects of life. Our study encompasses people seeking help for mental health, with debt, or from foodbanks. People seeking help from foodbanks or for debt tend to be more representative of the general population, while people experiencing poor mental health may be more likely to have some sort of underlying addiction issue. This means we should expect rates of problem gambling identified to be around the national average in the population using the foodbank or seeking debt advice, but a little higher in the population experiencing poor mental health. The initial data is concerning. As we suspected, prevalence rates are much higher than they should be according to government figures, even when you consider that some of our figures come from those groups where you would expect slightly higher rates. The headline rate, according to the government, is 0.2% of people are problem gamblers. Our initial findings suggest a rate some 10 to 20-times higher. Sadly, this does not surprise me, as it is a consequence I predicted when gambling regulations were relaxed in 2005. WORRYING EFFECTS Gambling is a hidden addiction. If a family member or close friend drinks, you notice that they are intoxicated. If they are using drugs, you can notice they are ill. With gambling, the signs can be less obvious. Somebody can have their phone in their hand, and you do not know if they are playing on a gambling site or checking emails. Usually, problem gamblers can hold down a job, unlike many alcoholics or drug users. People stop spending money on alcohol or drugs when they pass out, but people can and do carry on gambling 24/7, only stopping when they run out of money. This means people can rapidly build up vast amounts of debt. Problem gamblers have an extremely high suicide rate compared to other addictions. As with other addicts, they may turn to acquisitive crime to fund their addiction. Problem gamblers also experience physical health problems. They suffer from anxiety, often present with digestive problems, raised blood pressure, and so on. There are cases of intimate partner violence, because of 10 |
the frustration around losses; betting shop staff are quite often at risk, because problem gamblers become angry when they lose. You have massive ripple effects that are currently not addressed at policy and practice level. If the numbers we are finding hold true across the whole of the UK, then problem gambling is having an impact on far more people than official figures suggest. IN NEED OF A SOLUTION I would never want to ban gambling. I do not think you could, nor would it be a good idea. People have gambled for millennia, and most gamblers do not come to any harm. You can get a rush; it can be enjoyable; you can (although most people do not) win a lot of money. There are safer forms of gambling. The People’s Postcode Lottery and other charity lotteries that do not have scratchcards or rapid online play games are much safer than the National Lottery, which has both; bingo in a bingo club is a lot safer than online, and a lot less likely to produce addiction. Unfortunately, gambling companies make most of their money from those people with a problem; the industry is not regulated effectively; and we do not have an easily accessible treatment service. In the 2005 Gambling Act, the UK government decided on a polluter-pays principle. The gambling companies are causing the damage, and therefore pay towards treatment. But they do this through a voluntary donation to Gamble Aware, and a lot of gambling companies give very little money. Overall, the UK gambling industry makes around £14bn a year in profit. Between April 2022 and December 2022, the charity received a total of £13,209,805.12 to fund treatment, research and gambling awareness education. I have said in evidence to Parliament, that we need about £2.6bn to run an effective gambling treatment service. The companies can afford that, but it would have to be through a levy, the government would have to make it the law. Finally, with the release of the Government White Paper in April, it appears that might come to pass – with the proposal for a 1% levy being imposed, which would amount to around £140 million. It remains to be seen if this becomes law, as the White Paper itself was delayed so many times that there is no guarantee of when legislation will come to pass. If £2.6bn is eventually raised, that amount would mean spending roughly what is spent per year on treating a Class A drug addict on each gambling addict. I do not think that would be an unreasonable amount. First, we need to establish the extent of the problem. Hopefully, our project will lead to larger-scale research, and we can do just that. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 11 Dr Carolyn Downs is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing. Her research expertise encompasses the gambling industry and problem gambling. Dr Downs is part of the Implementation of Modified Lie/Bet Gambling Screen in Blackpool and Lancaster Mental Health Referral Settings project, funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Sciences Research Council) Impact Acceleration Fund. She is working alongside colleagues in Lancaster University Management School and Lancaster University Psychology Department, as well as the Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust mental health teams, the Blackburn Foodbank, and Blackpool Citizens Advice Bureau. c.downs@lancaster.ac.uk In the UK, GamCare and Gamblers Anonymous offer help, support, and advice for people with a gambling problem. More information can be found on their websites: GamCare: www.gamcare.org.uk Gamblers Anonymous: www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk In the North of England, the following NHS Gambling Clinics are available: NHS Leeds and York Partnership (NHS Foundation Trust). Merrion House, Merrion Way, Leeds, LS2 8PD. Sunderland. Beacon of Light, Stadium Park, Sunderland, SR5 1SN. NHS Northern Gambling Service. HQ, Hamill at the Quays, Clippers Quay, Salford Quays, M50 3XP. The service can be contacted across England by telephone on 0300 300 1490.
12 | Don’t be a ba
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 Social media influencers can have audiences in the millions, and they use their sway over followers to promote and endorse products. But Dr Hayley Cocker finds that both brands and influencers face potential backlash if they fail to abide by community rules. ad influencer
The increasing popularity of social media has given rise to new breeds of celebrity – the social media influencer among them. It is hard to miss social media influencers (SMIs), even – perhaps especially – during Covid-19 and the resultant lockdowns. Some provoked ire with trips to Dubai and claims to be ‘key workers’. The media storm surrounding visits to sun-kissed beaches of the Arabian Peninsula saw SMIs claiming celebrity endorsements meant they ‘had’ to be there. The resultant negative publicity demonstrates the difficulties in promoting brands without damaging their own profile or that of the endorser. Companies are investing growing sums on these online influencers, looking to reach their large followings through endorsements on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or whichever social media platform they use to speak to often millions of followers. Their influence is especially great among younger generations of consumers – in February, it was revealed that British American Tobacco are planning to spend £1bn on influencers to help boost sales of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches among younger users. Global expenditure on ‘influencer marketing’ is predicted to reach $15bn by 2022, be it through traditional celebrities whose fame transcends and predates their social media presence or through SMIs, whose fame derives entirely from that presence. SMIs regularly use their platforms to promote brands to followers – sometimes in return for free samples, sometimes for free trips to exotic destinations for product launches (the Maldives, anyone?), sometimes for plain old cash. Advertorial content, brand ambassador roles, gifts and experiences all contribute to brand exposure as SMIs become prominent and influential celebrity endorsers. But as the furore around lockdown trips to Dubai demonstrates, there are risks for both parties – for their image, for their sales, for their brand. Many SMIs started out in online communities, gaining celebrity status and exhibiting significant influence over the consumption behaviours of their large following. It is when they commercialise that influence with celebrity endorsements that difficulties arise. These activities are not something they can hide. Advertising Standards Authority regulations introduced in 2015 and 2019 require SMIs to disclose paid advertorials, brand partnerships or ambassadorships, as well as the receipt of complementary or discounted products and experiences. Initial concerns surrounded the contradictions between receiving incentives and providing unbiased product recommendations. SMIs were accused of ‘selling out’, putting their own interests and that of the endorser above the interests of the community, showing a lack of loyalty to fellow community members, provoking anger and contempt. But SMIs justified their actions by explaining they provided free video content and needed to monetise their activities to continue doing so. Communities became more open to endorsements, but bound SMIs to moral responsibilities – breaches of community norms are taken to heart, a personal betrayal to the community. We studied the YouTube beauty community (YTBC), which revolves around beauty vloggers, for three years. A large number of members have become SMIs and celebrity 14 |
endorsers, many with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, and some featuring on the covers of leading women’s magazines and on primetime TV shows. These SMIs have turned vlogging into a lucrative career, and a significant portion of their social media content includes celebrity endorsements – through paid advertorials, brand ambassador roles, or the inclusion of gifted PR products or experiences. Our YTBC study of 12 SMIs with a high number of followers, and a history of both celebrity endorsements and of YouTube uploads, revealed five recurring celebrity endorsement transgressions, with a range of consequences for both the SMIs and the brands, affecting the SMI’s credibility, how the brand is perceived and the purchase intentions of the community members to varying degrees. UNDERHAND ENDORSEMENTS These are endorsements made in a secretive or dishonest manner, with the SMI not disclosing its nature to the community. Community members would often cite UK regulations to justify their views, but their expectations often went beyond legal requirements, expecting SMIs to operate to their standards, not just within regulatory boundaries. OVER-ENDORSEMENT This is when the community sees the SMI as having a moral responsibility to ensure the majority of their content is organic (not featuring endorsements), thus continuing to provide unbiased reviews and comment. One SMI saw her credibility brought into question for posting too many endorsements. One community member said: “I feel like you have lost so much of that originality to brands taking over and you selling something video after video.” And another: “It makes us question which products you genuinely like.” In other media, whether a celebrity actually uses a product they promote is seen as relatively unimportant, here it is an important consideration. OVER-EMPHASIS SMIs have a moral responsibility to provide valuable content for the community and to ensure endorsements do not detract from audience enjoyment. Overly-scripted or staged endorsements, or videos where the endorsed product is the sole focus are quickly identified as transgressions. OVER-SATURATION When brands partner with multiple SMIs, commissioning them to post similar endorsements in quick succession. OVER-INDULGENCE Community members accept that SMIs need to engage in endorsements, but they expect them to be for products they genuinely use and like. When they are seen as having received excessive incentives, they risk the perception of bias. UK regulations mean the scale of gifts is more easily seen, and the allexpenses paid trips and PR packages – such as cosmetics brand Benefit flying SMIs to a luxury Maldives resort to launch a new mascara, and Nars taking them to Ibiza and Bora Bora for product launches – jeopardise SMIs’ perceived objectivity and credibility. Community members engage in both situational attribution – reducing the responsibility of the SMI for breaches, instead placing blame on the endorsing brand – and dispositional attribution – blaming transgressions on the celebrity’s personality, character or disposition. While some transgressions – underhand endorsement, overendorsement – are blamed on the SMI, others are put squarely at the feet of the brand – over-emphasis, oversaturation, over-indulgence. If it is the former, the community often clarify their expectations in a polite, friendly manner – supporting the SMI and their content at the same time – and suggest the breaches were the result of a mistake or a misunderstanding of expectations. Repeated breaches lead to SMIs being branded as ‘sly’, ‘greedy’, ‘dishonest’ and ‘inauthentic’, with community members often saying they will avoid the endorsements and only watch organic content. This can still affect the brand, as the SMI’s credibility is called into question. For over-emphasis, over-saturation and over-indulgence, brands were often held responsible. Be it that they were portrayed as having too high a level of control over videos (over-emphasis), or that the repetition of their promotions is sees as ‘overkill’, with SMIs among the victims (over saturation), community users were put off. Brands are not community members, but they are considered culpable for transgressions, even if the SMI is not, with the community often more forgiving of SMIs seen as being forced into transgressions. Consequences include brand fatigue, negative sentiment building towards the brand, or community members avoiding and not buying their products. NO EASY SOLUTIONS So what can SMIs and brands do to avoid these issues? More effective communication during the planning stages – considering the effects of multiple endorsements in a short time for both parties, allowing the SMI more creative control, clearly disclosing endorsements – and studying community expectations can lead to more favourable reception to endorsements. Not all of this is easy, but it could help avoid the very audience you are trying to engage with from turning against you. Dr Hayley Cocker is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing. The paper Social Media Influencers & Transgressive Celebrity Endorsement in Consumption Community Contexts, coauthored with Dr Rebecca Mardon and Professor Kate Daunt, of Cardiff University, is published in the European Journal of Marketing. h.cocker@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 15
16 | We may like to believe parents treat all their children equally – but that is not always the case. Dr Chih-Ling Liu’s work highlights the plight of daughters in Chinese families where ‘son preference’ means female children suffer exploitation – and can be left contemplating suicide. Exploited and abused
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If you have two children, you treat them equally. Older or younger, sporty or academic, boy or girl – no matter what, you show them the same love and affection, do not discriminate, do your best for them both. That is how modern western society would like to view the world. It is not the case. Son preference is pervasive in patriarchal societies, where families place greater value on sons than daughters. It happens more often than we think. While my work focuses on China, a preference for sons is common in countries in South and East Asia, as well as the Middle East and North Africa. In traditional Chinese households, men are the head of their houses. Women should be working inside; men should be working outside as breadwinners. This is where son preference is significant, and you find it a lot in rural areas. But even among modern urban families in Shanghai, you still see it. I have had many conversations with Chinese women about their experiences of son preference, and quite a few friends have suffered from it. It even affected my mum in Taiwan. My research builds on these conversations, examining posts on webpages such as zhihu.com and bilibili.com. Here, women articulate their sufferings of growing up in families where they experienced son preference. The posts I studied are from 2016 onwards – the year in which Chinese TV shows such as Ode to Joy featured plots around son preference that prompted renewed attention to the family discrimination and abuse many female children continue to endure in modern China. In these families, sons are favoured over daughters when it comes to childcare, educational investment, and inheritance. Daughters are expected to make substantial financial or labour contributions to their parents, often subsidising the schooling or living expenses of their brothers. This is sustained exploitation, and the victims encounter profound self and social alienation as a result. THE DESTINED GIVER Through sustained exploitation, daughters can be shaped into a ‘destined giver’, someone socialised into believing she is bound to shoulder the role of giver in a family. Lifelong differential treatment promotes a selffulfilling prophecy, whereby daughters act in accordance with preconceived gender roles they grow up with. They are raised to believe they have an obligation – a duty – to give, that they have been raised for the purpose of supporting their parents and male siblings in particular. One of the posters I came across, Zhaodi, spoke of the moral obligations her mother placed on her to be an old age security blanket, and to support her younger brother. Zhaodi ‘never felt loved’, wrote of being ‘insecure’ and having ‘very low self-esteem’. She wanted to commit suicide so she could ‘finally be happy’ – the only escape she could envision from the financial exploitation she faces in the coming years. 18 |
UNWORTHY RECEIVERS Alongside ‘destined givers’, there are ‘unworthy receivers’ – daughters disqualified from receiving not because of what they have done, but because they are born female. These daughters are treated as worthless or contemptible, not worthy of receiving anything substantial. This happens from birth with everything from food provision to education and to inheritance. Sons are the ‘haves’, daughters are the ‘have-nots’. They are explicitly marginalised; told they should be grateful for all they receive – even if their brother gets 10 times more; and expected to repay what they receive with greater reciprocity. They might receive similar resources when it comes to entertainment, or education, but for key items such as housing, which is extremely expensive in places like Shanghai and Beijing, daughters almost never inherit. Parents will tell them, ‘I have never mistreated you; I have always been fair; you have received the education from me; you have received goods and clothes. So, you should not ask for more. You are being greedy.’ Men in that situation are not greedy if they ask for more. Daughters are told to treat their brothers well, because the male sibling is the one who will inherit everything – they carry forward the surname and the bloodline – and daughters are treated as a guest, an outsider, in their own homes. These same parents will ask their daughters to look after them when they get older, but the resources all go to the son. They expect the daughters to do this with little to no resources offered. MARTYR GIVERS Finally, there are ‘martyr givers’, daughters made to feel so indebted to their families that they must repay their debts and more – the debt of receiving life, an education, food etc. They are expected to endlessly give. They endure a stressful, thankless role as the provider for their families, sacrificing their own wellbeing to improve everyone else’s. These demands can continue well beyond when a daughter leaves home and has a family of her own, with profound negative consequences for their social relationships. Constantly being pestered for money, they often lose their friendship circles or significant relationships, as they are labelled a ‘Fu Di Mo’ – a ‘monster of younger brother worshipping’. This is a term used to ridicule sisters who selflessly devote themselves to supporting their younger brothers at all costs because of early family socialisation. One of the examples I came across was a girl who received spending money from her boyfriend, and she felt she had to give it to her mother. But the mother still felt it was not enough. Some of these women were made to borrow money from friends, from boyfriends, from husbands, to continue satisfying their own natal families. When they are married, some might even bring their families with them into the marital home and use the husband’s resources to raise their siblings. They thus obtain a bad name in the marriage market. That is another reason they face difficulties in breaking out of the cycle. There is an urban saying in China. Girls should not marry a “Male Phoenix” – a man from a rural area who has moved to one of the big cities, but his family still has rural attitudes; and men should not marry a Fu Di Mo. The view is these women will drain your resources to provide for their natal family. HARD TO ESCAPE Most, if not all, daughters feel helpless and frustrated by the tradition of son preference. They might have the chance to escape, but often they do not. They feel they have no choice but to stay in the family relationship. They have been subjugated for years, decades, living with overwhelming internal pressure that demands them to give more than they can reasonably afford. Sustained family exploitation does not just happen. It is an ideological process of becoming that starts in early childhood with constant reminders of debts, obligations, and normalising exploitation. Only by exposing these practices can we start to transform them with relevant public and social policymaking and advocacy. In sum, sexism is like racism. It has not really gone away despite of years of campaigning and improved education (e.g., the Black Lives Matter Movement) but by continuing to shed light on the issues, we can keep making progress at tackling social inequality in contemporary societies. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 19 Dr Chih-Ling Liu is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing. Her research investigates the intersections of consumption, self, and identity. This article is based on The even darker side of gift-giving: Understanding sustained exploitation in the family consumption system by Dr ChihLing Liu, of Lancaster University Management School, published in the journal Marketing Theory. chihling.liu@lancaster.ac.uk
Witches are not merely figures from history or myth. Centuries after the Pendle Witch Trials took place a handful of miles from Lancaster University, and far from the pages of fantasy and fiction, they are alive and well on social media. PhD researcher Sophie James investigates the WitchTok phenomenon, and discovers how the marketplace has managed to commercialise such practices outside of the norm for hundreds of years. 20 | It’s Witchcraft
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21
What comes to mind when you think of a witch? Green skin? A warty nose? Women in black cackling over cauldrons as they cast an incantation? Or perhaps innocent, mostly female, victims burned at the stake or hanged from scaffolds by religious zealots of centuries past? Depending on your age, you might conjure up images of the Wizard of Oz – or more recently Wicked – Willow and Tara battling demons in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina and her talking cat, or the chaotic coven of teenagers in The Craft. What you may not associate with witches is the rapid, content-obsessed world of social media, its algorithmic structures, domination by influencers, and the consumerist desires they invoke. For many, witches and witchcraft have become synonymous with TikTok and the sub-identifier “WitchTok”. WitchTok is part subculture, part aesthetic category, part viral trend, and refers to a section of magical themed video-based material on TikTok that includes, but is not limited to: tarot reading, spellcasting, charm-making, astrology, astronomy, divination, and potion making. The WitchTok phenomenon has been around for several years, but its popularity increased sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic. Over a period punctuated with seemingly endless social lockdown measures, collective faith in scientific truths was eroded, allowing the fallibility of expert systems to become a catalyst for interest in holistic and dissident forms of self-care. Life during the pandemic gave way to curiosity about alternative forms of entertainment that fed directly into WitchTok. Although specialist witch websites and forums dedicated to the Occult have been accessible since the 1990s, TikTok’s shortform video format provided the impetus for mass revival and widespread participation in DIY magic. Consequently, a global audience of predominantly young women have created a platform to reboot witchcraft as a means for making sense of and militating against the anxieties of 21st century life. Though seemingly whimsical at first glance, WitchTok serves as an experimental space for seeking out and building alternative perspectives on a range of issues, not least existential threats including pandemics and global warming, but also questions of social justice, politics, and lifestyle. Interest in WitchTok has amassed considerable attention and, at the time of writing, has more than 40 billion views of all its content. WitchTok has established itself as more than a social media ‘trend’, with the witch aesthetic migrating offline and becoming a cradle to various lifestyles and interests. A KIND OF MAGIC My interest in WitchTok emerged from a larger investigation into the history of witches over the course of modernity, and how witchcraft has become marketised as part of global consumer culture. My investigation has brought me into conversation with self-identifying witches. For many I have spoken with, magic provides an important and compelling means of cultivating a more just and equitable relationship with nature, contrary to the more extractive and unsustainable relations modern consumer culture tends to rely upon. Magical thinking is often underpinned by a sense of ecological reflexivity and environmental obligation reflected in 22 |
practices as diverse as integrating natural, sustainable ingredients and the medicinal properties of herbs into personal diets and celebrating nature and its cycles, to more collective actions like raising awareness of global warming, and casting spells for protecting conservation efforts. Magic also intersects closely with personal empowerment and individuals’ entrepreneurial goals, as reflected by the popularity of manifestation. Based on a kind of “magical voluntarism”, manifestation dominates much of the WitchTok activities online and promotes the idea that as a witch, you can manifest your goals. Through practising affirmationinspired “spellcasting” – whether around money, love, relationships, selfcare, or career goals – manifestation reflects and reinforces an ethos of selfconfidence and thinking that it is within every witch’s power to become and to achieve anything they want to. The hashtag #moneyspell has upwards of 223 million views. A MARKET HISTORY To get a handle on the resurgence of witchcraft today, it is important to turn the dial back a few centuries to see where the practice first intersected with markets and consumer culture. During the early modern period (15th to early 18th centuries), witches were perceived as evil seductresses, leading to judicial prejudice and spirited witch hunts. Although early modernity is characterised by the introduction of the printing press, intercontinental trade, and the increasing emphasis of rationalism in business, commerce, medicine, and politics so necessary for liberal society, this period was also a time of patriarchal and industrial domination of women. The witch became a source of moral panic, a social archetype to suppress women’s influence over commerce and land, police their reproductive function in society, and legitimise male-centred systems of exploitation. One of the ways women were restricted to the nuclear family, excluded from the waged-workplace, and made economically dependent to men was through a popular culture that portrayed witches as sexually licentious and fiercely disobedient women in league with the Devil. The social reproduction of witches as promiscuous and unruly devilworshippers was achieved through anti-witch pamphlets, fine art, and pornified woodcuts, creating a flourishing market demand for witch erotica. Although more recent centuries saw the dissolution of cruel laws that legitimise belief in and violence against witches, the idea of the witch remained a compelling figure for popular culture. Whether as a seductive aesthetic category that exotic dancers of the early 20th century could tap into for their personal brands, or as a symbol of female rebellion to protest the patriarchal military-industrial complex, the witch has remained drawn upon for various purposes. The advent of British Wicca and goddess spirituality throughout the 1950s and 1960s carried a remarkable influence on the marketisation of witchcraft. Later in the 20th century, the commercialisation of the witch intensified through the proliferation of new, alternative media and music. By the 1990s the witch became more benevolent and glamorous with the likes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy, The Craft, and other media. MAGIC: A MARKET FRONTIER Magic, as a wide-ranging system of practices and beliefs, is interwoven with diverse lifestyles and variegated value systems. The kinds of magical thinking we see play out on WitchTok provide a creative and participatory space where individuals can display their talents, curate for themselves particular identities, and accrue charismatic authority among likeminded others on a global stage. The revival of witchcraft in the 21st century has been made to function as a therapeutic play zone that is perhaps more compelling, interactive, and relevant for younger audiences than much of what is available to them through organised religion. There has been a surge of witch entrepreneurs and celebrity witches, with many building lucrative careers from personal branding efforts. Today’s witches are capitalising on the public’s fascination with esotericism and the supernatural. Beyond WitchTok, witches have weaved their way into many industries, with some speculating that “witchcraft” is a billion-dollar industry. Cosmetics companies are launching magical thinking-inspired beauty and personal care products, including ‘sacred’ goods supercharged by certain energies, crystals, and other mythic ingredients. You only need to switch on Netflix to see content underpinned by witchy, spooky, gothic elements, such as Tim Burton’s Wednesday. Many of the witches I have spoken with, whether identifying as pagan, hedge witches, Christopagan, neopagan, wiccan, or others, do not take issue with the marketisation of their craft. They wholeheartedly embrace its mainstream growth, recognising they are a religious-spiritual group who are extremely easy to market things to. For them, witchcraft in the marketplace plays a vital role in destigmatising alternative mindsets and removing negative tropes and stereotypes attached to witches. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 23 Sophie James is a PhD researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Marketing. Her research draws upon consumer interest in witches and witchcraft in the contemporary marketplace. She is recruiting selfidentifying witches and those interested in the Occult more broadly for her research. s.james7@lancaster.ac.uk
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Mother knows best Attitudes towards gender equality and stereotypical gender roles have changed greatly since the 1950s. Why then, asks Professor Margaret K Hogg, are women still presented as experts of the household first and of anything else second in popular magazines? FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25
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