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Seeing Beyond the Margins: Reimagining Inclusion through Digital Consumption Practices

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Thesis embargoed until 25th June 2027(3.71 MB)

Date

2025

Authors

Supervisor

Yap, Crystal (Sheau Fen)
Kubacki, Krzysztof

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Technology is not a neutral force upon society. Shaped by its history and human-centred design, technology privileges some, often at the expense of further excluding others. This thesis examines a critical aspect of digital inclusion by exploring how digital skill-based definitions and measurements create societal divisions by ignoring the full complexity of how disadvantaged users engage with technology. By neglecting a range of skills developed and applied beyond the device, current skill frameworks view disadvantaged users through a deficit lens by classifying the ‘low-skilled’ population by the resources they lack rather than those they possess. Combining a Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) focus on consumer wellbeing with the sociocultural interests of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), this thesis uncovers alternative pathways for digital inclusion by revealing the diverse skills and competencies that arise from disadvantaged individuals’ and their sociocultural contexts. This thesis comprises two empirical papers, employing diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, which combine under the central framework of practice to reveal the sociocultural forces that shape how a disadvantaged consumer group navigates and engages with technology. Study 1 takes a Bordieuan approach that examines how a unique disposition emerging from the underclass habitus - the embodiment of coping - enables participants to overcome technological barriers and escape the subordination and marginality they experience in offline social fields with varying degrees of success. Through a series of phenomenological interviews, Study 1 reveals three distinct social trajectories (dislocating, conforming, and empowering) that offer several unique contributions to class-based consumption studies, particularly those focusing on dominated consumer acculturation. Study 2 takes an ethnographic approach to examine how group culture and social interactions serve as vital resources for (re)configuring digital practices within the participants’ social community. Using Shove et al.’s (2012) elemental view of practice, alongside theories of socially extended and distributed cognition (Gallagher, 2013; Hutchins, 1995), this study shifts focus from the competence of the practice carrier to the shared competencies circulating within the group. In doing so, Study 2 reveals how advanced forms of social competence replace digital skills to uphold practices while foregrounding the importance of borrowing competence rather than embodying it. Overall, this study underscores the importance of harmonising the offline and online social worlds of participants while revealing alternative yet effective pathways for their digital engagement. By combining the individual contributions across both studies, this thesis concludes by advancing a new conceptual framework that highlights several unique attributes, characteristics, and conditions – spanning People, Place, and Practice – that either facilitate or hinder the digital acculturation processes of disadvantaged consumers. This invites the reader to reimagine the skills, resources, and competencies required in digital contexts and to reflect on whether the term ‘disadvantage’ truly represents a deficit or merely a different way of approaching and engaging with the world. In doing so, this thesis encourages future research to continue questioning the broad assumptions made about non-mainstream consumer groups and to move beyond stereotypical labelling that characterises disadvantaged groups by perceived deficits without recognising other strengths they bring to consumption fields as complex and diverse human beings.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/19362

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Doctoral Theses