Dr Lydia Martens

Background and Research Interests:

Dr. Lydia Martens joined Keele University as Senior Lecturer in Sociology in 2006, having previously worked at Durham University (2000-2006) and the University of Stirling (1997-2000). Her research interests focus on consumption and domestic life and she also has an interest in qualitative research methodology, having recently completed an ESRC-funded project in which she researched the potential of video recording in an investigation of everyday life and practices in domestic kitchens. Lydia contributes towards the undergraduate teaching programme in sociology. For further details on her teaching work, see the sociology website of the School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and Social Work.

Lydia's research agenda is positioned at the intersection between consumption and domestic life. She adopts an approach informed by feminist sociology in an attempt to develop theories of consumption and domestic life that are more gender 'informed' and that aid an analysis of continuity and change in consumer culture, domestic cultures and domestic identities in late modern society. She is currently working on three different substantive terrains with overlapping theoretical concerns. These are:

1. Gender & Consumption
2. Mundane Practices and Products
3. Adults, Children and Consumer Culture

Lydia's interest in consumption has always been infused with an interest in gender and the specific ways in which feminists have engaged with consumption. This is reflected in a new edited collection put together with Emma Casey entitled: Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life (in press with Ashgate). In addition to the edited collection, she has finished some other writing projects that relate to this agenda (see for instance the article in Consumers, Markets and Culture in the list of publications below) and she is planning others - including a co-authored book with Emma Casey. She is currently working on a book chapter for an edited collection by Gillis and Hollows in which she traces how domesticity and consumption were discussed within early second wave feminism. This work reflects not only an interest in the contemporary conjunctures between gender, gendered domestic identities and consumption, but also a preoccupation with the nature of consumer culture in late modernity.

The agenda of work on gender and consumption is closely linked to Lydia's other research interests. She has been working on two related research projects since 2002 in order to develop her interest in mundane domestic practices (especially cleaning and ordering), and how these connect with mundane domestic products, like cleaning products, and their representation in cultural texts. Together with Sue Scot, she conducted content analysis of Good Housekeeping magazine between the years 1951 and 2001. This work has been used to discuss how cleaning products address risk and danger in domestic life, but are also important contributors towards the experience of risk in the domestic sphere. Between 2002 and 2004, they also carried out an ESRC funded project called Domestic Kitchen Practices: Risk, Routine and Reflexivity (the DKP project) in which they investigated the nature of domestic practices in the contemporary domestic kitchen. This project has successfully piloted a methodology for studying domestic practice through video recording and they hope to utilise further in the future. The End of Award report for this project may be downloaded from the ESRC website.

As reflected in a jointly authored article in the Journal of Consumer Culture in 2004 (see details below), sociologists of consumption have not been very vocal on children's consumption practices or practices of consumption around children. Lydia is particularly interested in how adults 'do' generational culture through practices of consumption around young children that, for instance, feed into cultures of the cute and safety. She is currently engaged in some ongoing fieldwork at The Baby Show - a tri-annual exhibition for new parents and parents-to-be to consider how 'becoming' parents is connected with consumer practices and how consumer culture operates as a commercial community of parenthood, which informs new parents into the practices and the products of early childhood and parenthood.

PhD Research Supervision

Key Publications:

Books

• Casey, E and Martens, L (Eds.) (2007) Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life, Ashgate (in press).
• Warde, A and Martens, L (2000) Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge xi + 246p.
• Martens L (1997) Exclusion and Inclusion. The Gender Construction of Dutch and British Work Forces: 1940-1993, Avebury, Ashgate, xi + 243p.

Refereed Journal Articles

• Martens, L and Scott, S (2006) Under the Kitchen Surface: Domestic products and conflicting constructions of home. Home Cultures. Vol 3(1): 39-62.
• Martens, L and Scott, S (2005) ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Cleaning': Representations of Domestic Practice and Products in Good Housekeeping Magazine (UK): 1951–2001. Consumption, Markets and Culture. Vol 8(3): 371-409.
• Martens, L (2005) Learning to Consume - Consuming to Learn: Children at the interface between consumption and education. British Journal of Sociology of Education. Vol. 26 (3) 343-357.
• Martens, L, Southerton, D and Scott, S (2004) Bringing Children (and Parents) into the Sociology of Consumption: Towards a theoretical and empirical agenda. Journal of Consumer Culture. Vol 4(2):155-182.
• Olsen, W K, Warde, A and Martens, L (2000) Social Differentiation and the Market for Eating Out in the UK, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 19, 173-190.
• Warde, A, Martens, L & Olsen, W (1999) Consumption and the Problem of Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction and Dining Out, Sociology, 33, 1, 105-127.
• Warde, A and Martens, L (1998) Eating Out and the Commercialisation of Mental Life, British Food Journal, 100, 3, 147-153.
• Martens, L (1997) Gender and the Eating Out Experience, British Food Journal, 99, 1, 20-26.

Chapters in Edited Books

• Martens, L. (2009) Creating the Ethical Parent-Consumer Subject: Commerce, Moralities and Pedagogies in Early Parenthood. In J. A. Sandlin and P McLaren (Eds.) Critical Pedagogies of Consumption: Living and Learning in the Shadow of the “Shopocalypse”. NY: Routledge.
  (forthcoming).
• Martens, L. (2009) Gender and Consumer Behaviour. In Parsons, L. and Maclaran, P. (Eds) Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour. Elsevier/Butterworth Heinemann. pp. 105-120.
• Martens, L. (2009) Feminism and the Critique of Consumer Culture: 1950-1970, in S. Gillis & J. Hollows (Eds.) /Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture/. (New York and London: Routledge). pp. 33-48.
• Warde, A. and Martens, L. (2008) Mile Spotkania Przy Stole. In P. Sztompka and M. Bogunia-Borowska (Eds.) /Socjologia Codziennosci/. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Znak. pp. 371-392. (Translation of Chapter 8 ‘Eating out as a source of gratification’ from Warde, A. and Martens, .L (2000).
  /Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure/, Cambridge: CUP. pp. 371–392.
• Martens, L. (2007) The Visible and Invisible: (De)regulation in contemporary cleaning practices. In R. Cox and B. Campkin (Eds.) (2007) /Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination/. (London: I.B. Taurus). pp. 34–48.
• Casey, E and Martens, L (2007) Introduction, in Casey, E and Martens, L (Eds.) Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life, Ashgate. (in press)
• Martens, L and Casey, E (2007) Afterword: Gender, Consumer Culture and Promises of Betterment in Late Modernity, in Casey, E and Martens, L (Eds.) Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life, Ashgate. (in press)
• Martens, L & Warde, A (1999) Power and Resistance around the Dinner Table, in Hearn, J & Roseneil, S eds, Consuming Cultures: Power and Resistance, MacMillan, London, 91-108.
• Warde, A & Martens, L (1999) Eating Out: Reflections on the Experience of Consumers in England, in Germov, J & Williams, L eds, The Social Appetite: An Introduction to the Sociology of Food and Nutrition, Oxford University Press: Sydney, 116-134.
• Warde, A & Martens, L (1998) A Sociological Approach to Food Choice: The Case of Eating Out, in Murcott, A ed, ‘The Nation's Diet': The Social Science of Food Choice, Longman, London, 129-144.
• Warde, A and Martens, L (1998) The Experience of Eating Out in England, in Griffiths, S and Wallace, J eds, Consuming Passions: Food in the Age of Anxiety, Manchester: Mandolin/Manchester University Press, 118-122.
• Martens, L & Warde, A, Urban Pleasure? On the Meaning of Eating Out in a Northern City, in Caplan, P ed, Food, Identity and Health, Routledge, London, 1997, 131-150

Research Publications

• Martens, L and Scott, S (2004) Domestic Kitchen Practices: Routine, Reflexivity and Risk. ESRC End of Award Report, pp 21-52.

Forthcoming

Lydia has submitted two chapters for edited collections due out in 2010:

• Buckingham and Tingstad /Childhood and Consumer Culture.
• Sandlin McLaren /Critical Pedagogies of Consumption .