It is not consumption technologies that have put the ‘self’ in peril

• DOI: 10.1080/0267257x.2024.2346008
• Publication Date: 2024-06-03T13:58:10Z
• Authors: Andrei Botez; Joel Hietanen
• Keywords: Automation; Digitalisation; Core self; Extended self; Business and Management; Theology; Ideology; Christianity

Peer reviewed<br/>Craig Thompson (2024) offers an analysis of how Belk's distinction between the consumer's core self and extended self continues to be conceptually ambiguous and persistently troublesome as an onto epistemological foundation in consumer research. He notes that the recent proliferation of consumer technologies may lead us to finally see things for what they are and thus to forsake our lingering longing for an agentic core self in control. We offer a theological reading that stretches backwards for insights to what guarantees us the very problem of the self and the questions we can ask of it. We also offer grounds for believing that the trouble goes back to times immemorial, is largely non-negotiable, and is here to stay.<br/>