Identity âBrandingâ: consumption performances among Lebanese youth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper investigates consumption patterns among Lebanese youth. It posits that consuming foreign brands is a tool of communication in which product users ‘perform’ social status and cultural identity. Based on an ethnography conducted in Lebanon in May 2012, the study finds that consuming foreign brands is a means for consumers to gain recognition among peers and distinguish themselves from others in their community. The study focuses on the relationship between such consumption habits and contested identities in a volatile Lebanese society. As regional and domestic conflicts continue to polarize the Lebanese society, products emerge as a currency of symbols. Brand-name products reveal a consumer’s “cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1984) and savvy in global trends and fashion. Moreover, through these products, consumers exhibit a particular mindset by symbolically disassociating themselves from a sectarian society and a divided community. The excessive attention to brands – and thus, attention to self-identification – lies in one’s dissatisfaction with social and political affairs (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally, 1986). Giving a cultural and historical backdrop to Lebanon, this paper anchors ‘consumption performances’ within theories of hybridization and post-national identities.\nReferences\nBourdieu, P. (1984). Selections from Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste: Harvard Press.\nLeiss, W., Kline, S., & Jhally, S. (1986). Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products, & Images of Well-Being. Toronto: Methuen.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".