This volume presents a selection of competitive papers submitted to the 13th
Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Conference held in Odense, Denmark, June
28 to July 1. This year’s conference witnessed a very strong set of submissions.
Despite being persistently interrupted by quothful ravens, we managed to select a
dozen papers to feature in this volume. Given the conference’s thematic emphasis
on storytelling we aimed to select chapters that would tell stories that open our
eyes and minds to new ideas, theories, and contexts.
The papers selected for this volume are presented along three narrative lines
that were prevalent during the conference, and which to some extent also reflect
the tradition of CCT inspired research in Odense. The first thematic part, Objects
and Their Doings, reflects a research theme in CCT and elsewhere, that has developed over the last decade or so, namely, research on materiality and object agency informed by the traditions such as Actor-network theory, assemblage theory, and post-humanist perspectives.
We open this part with a chapter on ritual doings. Borraz investigates a romantic ritual in which material objects and sites (i.e., locks, bridges, and railings) play a central role. His study of love-lock pilgrimage unravels how love becomes enacted as a sacred and enduring reality through variable, yet patterned and
loosely scripted assemblages of mythology, materiality, and performance. The
second chapter in this part by Walther, investigates erotic consumption cycles as
co-constituted by subjects and objects, exploring the agency of objects upon the
consumption subject and vice versa. Furthermore, Walther explores how erotic
products change meaning and agency through the consumption cycle through
repurposing and personification. This is followed by Syrjälä and Norrgrann’s
chapter, which investigates the distribution and fluctuation of agency across the
multiple actants that enact the home. Rather than providing a (yet another) demonstration of the agency of objects, the authors investigate the ways in which