'Expected to Fix the System: Parental Responses to Responsibilisation in the Swedish School Market', a seminar by Dr Susanna Molander (Stockholm Business School)

Expected to Fix the System: Parental Responses to Responsibilisation in the Swedish School Market 

by Dr Susanna Molander

Through an ethnographic study in a Swedish municipality, this working paper offers a rare glimpse into how the same consumer responsibilisation demand—primary school choice—addressed within one geographical area but across different neighborhoods, generates complex socio-demographic but yet classed responses. By examining the interplay between neighborhood-level socio-geographic factors (such as socio-demographic composition and school makeup), parents’ neighborhood orientations (ranging from centripetal to centrifugal), and their willingness and perceived capacity to engage (from low to high), our analysis generates conceptual model that identifies four responses to responsibilisation which, in different ways, reproduce classed inequalities. Inspired by the P.A.C.T. routine (personalization, authorization, capabilization, transformation) used to responsibilise consumers, these include: the Strategists, fully transformed subjects: willing and able consumers acting in line with P.A.C.T.-defined self-interest; the Activists, counter-transformed subjects: willing and able, but acting against P.A.C.T.-defined self-interest; the Resigned, partially transformed subjects: willing but unable to act in line with P.A.C.T.-defined self-interest; and the Hands-Off, non-transformed subjects: able (or unable) and unwilling to act in line with P.A.C.T.-defined self-interest. 

About the speaker: Dr Susanna Molander  

I am an associate professor in the marketing section, Stockholm Business School (SBS), Stockholm University. I am an affiliated researcher at the Center for Arts, Business and Culture at the Stockholm School of Economics Research Institute and was a visiting scholar at City University of New York, the Graduate Center 2017-2019. In my research, I study how we use consumption as a symbolic resource to express our understanding of the world, including our identity, and belonging. I am mainly interested in everyday life and the meaning-making that permeates our routines, not least those that characterize parenting. This also includes how political projects shape consumption as a symbolic resource. Recently, I have also explored how brands must adapt to consumer cultures in constant change. Methodological issues are another major interest. My research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research; Qualitative Market Research an International Journal; Marketing Theory; Consumption, Markets and Culture; Research in Consumer Behavior; Advances in Consumer Research and international anthologies.

More about Dr Molander