Gender Transculturation: Navigating Market-Mediated Contesting Gender Ideologies in Consumer Acculturation

In this book, I advance the concept of gender transculturation to illustrate how migrant consumers navigate contesting gender ideologies in their host cultural marketplace. Taking a consumer cultural theoretical perspective, the study lies in the nexus of and unpacks an alternative understanding in the current research frontier of consumer acculturation, gender and ideologies. Acculturation of immigrants and gender have become increasingly critical issues in contemporary academic, socio-economic and politico-cultural debates. Rising mobility and migration from the Global South to the Global North have steered immigrants to cross transcultural borders into contexts that are ideologically diverse. South Asian respondents from the Bangladeshi diaspora in Sweden have been interviewed to understand their home, host and transcultural discourses about gender through their narratives about the marketplace and consumption.

My findings develop the gender transculturation model that exhibits how respondents draw from four conflicting gender ideologies. They engage in perpetual and fluid navigation of ideological tensions through three modes of gender transculturation: ideological ossification, oscillation and osmosis. They demonstrate ossification by rigidifying patriarchal and Islamic and being resistant towards egalitarian and transgressive gender ideologies. Oscillation is embodied by retention of patriarchal and Islamic and reworking of egalitarian and transgressive gender ideologies. In osmosis, they reject patriarchal and romanticise and reflect on egalitarian and transgressive gender ideologies.

This is a book for consumer researchers, marketers, managers, social actors, policy- makers, and consumers who want to know more about migrant consumers with vast ideological differences and their views and beliefs on gender in the marketplace.