Welcome to the blog. I’m a consumer behavior scholar with a PhD in marketing/management (with a focus on economic and cultural sociology), and a background in health care. My academic corpus has focused on changing markets at the societal level, changing consumer identity at the individual level, and the intersections of these transformations. My two overarching academic areas of study: 1. The marketization of institutions (e.g. health care, religion, hospitals, finance/credit, higher education) 2. Consumer identity changes related to changing institutions (e.g. the datafication of society and the quantification of the individual; consumers leaving identity-salient institutions).
Examples of my current research: As a former NICU RRT, I am researching the patient and family experience in our increasingly marketized health care industry, and parental identity after the NICU experience. As an economic/cultural sociologist, I am researching the ways social enterprise benefits both individuals and community. As a consumer behavior scholar, I am researching what I’ve termed “consumption lifelines” — that is, how people “go to market” to address their own identity and community changes (whether past, present or future, whether desired, aspirational, or patently rejected).
On a more personal note, in 2020 at the height of the COVID crisis, I left SUNY Albany (where I worked as a business school professor — a position that I absolutely loved!) to move from New York to Newfoundland to join my husband, John. With the US/Canada border closed, and Newfoundland and New York in separate strict isolation lock downs, we couldn’t get to each other in any other way. COVID times forced many of us to make heart-rending decisions, and this was one of mine.
Here in Newfoundland, we live by the sea in a tiny mostly-original 1911 house in a working fishing village that dates back to the 15th century. We are conducting an ongoing deep immersion participant/observer ethnography here around a social enterprise that uses its ecotourism operations to fund its mission of bringing heritage Newfoundland skills and cultural knowledge to marginalized youth, women, and newcomers. We have two articles published on this work, one upcoming, and recently presented the work in France and here in Newfoundland.
When we’re not doing research, we spend our days writing together by our wood-fire stove; hiking; kayaking through sea caves; whale/puffin/iceberg watching; hand-line fishing for fresh Atlantic cod, wild blueberry/wild cranberry picking; chanterelle mushroom foraging; and cooking and baking with the treasures we’ve found. Believe me, I know that some of this sounds like Barbara Stanwyck’s made-up life in Christmas in Connecticut, but this is a relatively typical Newfoundland day-to-day lived experience. For a city girl like me, at times it’s quite surreal!
John is a Canada Research Chair in Social Enterprise, and is also an author and poet. In addition to our separate research and writing in different contexts, we are currently writing a book together from our ethnographic work about social entrepreneurs and their identity transformations to help people who want to transition out of traditional market capitalism, and use their business skills to make their communities and world a better place. We are incredibly happy that our changing paths have led us to this space and time.
In recent news, I have finally acquired a used grand piano (“I’ll take Consumption Lifelines for $5000, Alex!”) that takes up a ridiculously impractical amount of space in our 1000 square foot house. I’m currently working on Burgmuller’s The Storm (hey, I bought a piano with 88 keys, and darn it, I’m going to use them ALL) in preparation for the Newfoundland hurricane and blizzard seasons.
–BD
Beth DuFault Ph.D. 