Pere tarbimisharjumuste käsitlused: töökaotust kogenud ja mittekogenud Eesti perede võrdlus

Date

2010

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

In the conditions of economic recession and being surrounded by speculations regarding its impacts, it is safe to assume that all families in Estonia are aware of the current situation and have felt the credit crunch in one way or the other. Direct or indirect contact with the recession forces people to make changes in their family’s consumer behaviour or associated way thinking. The author of the current thesis „Representations of family consumption practices: comparison of families, who have and who have not faced job loss” is trying to find out what does the recession mean for Estonian families, how people assess their own consumer behaviour and what are their future hopes. It is important to note that in thesis only people’s self-representations are used and it should not be deemed as actual behaviour. The focus of the thesis is on families who have experienced becoming unemployed and who lack this experience and their mentality on a family level, i.e. micro level. The thesis is based on five interviews with families having gone through becoming unemployed that have been compared against five interviews conducted by Kadri Pütsep with employed families. Although the herein thesis discusses briefly the unemployed families’ ideas also on the society level, the wider macro level discussion can be found in the thesis by Kadri Pütsep (2010). In the more theoretical section of this thesis discusses the consumer society on a more general level, gives an overview of the recession and its possible impacts both on the society and families. The author has used studies and analyses of consumer culture by Slater and Gabriel & Lang and enriched them with empirical studies of the Estonian society. Also Baumrind’s, Ekström’s and Moschis’ academic works have been used to analyse child-related consumerism. All interviews have been conducted by using structured type of interviews. Later qualitative analysis thereof was used to compare thought patterns in order to find commonalities and describe the self-representations of families in the context of the study aspects of the thesis. In case of the first four aspects the author analysed the awareness of recession in the comparative context of families who have suffered unemployment and those who haven’t. The fifth part gives an overview of recession-inspired thoughts and opinions of the Estonian society and the world as represented by the families who have experienced loss of work. Loss of employment as a personal experience with the recession brings about some differences between the families interviewed by the author and those interviewed by Kadri Pütsep who are relatively well-off. The suffered families are more family-cantered and those who have remained untouched by unemployment look at things more like bystanders. Both types of families try to spare their children and learn from the situation as much as possible in order to escape similar situation in the future. However, both believe that people’s memory is too short to be able to make use of serious lessons further in the future. Although the interviewed families may be considered to be average Estonian families, the number of interviewees is too limited to make any conclusions regarding the entire society. As this kind of study is the first of its kind, it could serve as an introduction to a more thorough analysis of the topic. The author deems the study conducted in this thesis a success as all objectives were reached and methods used justified themselves completely.

Keywords

bakalaureusetööd

Citation