rituals and routines: reflecting change, redefining meaning, recasting scope

This contemporary book offers current perspectives on routines and rituals to extend an understanding of the scope of these concepts, with a view to challenging conventional wisdom and to offer insight for practitioners.

Routines and rituals are part of everyday being. Routines can be useful for individuals in structuring ’messiness’ in their lives, while rituals are often more spectacular in nature and typically involve a collective event. Routines and rituals can be traditional, established, new or reinvented, as well as personal, social, and/or emotional. Traditionally, rituals have been characterised by formality, customs, regularity and procedure; conversely, routines (public or private) have been considered less important in their significance and meaning.

Employing several research methods (literature review, ethnography, netnography, autoethnography and in-depth interviews) and examining a variety of contexts (ranging from hen parties, clothing to collegiate tailgating and the Covid pandemic), this edited volume reveals typologies and tactics for strategic practitioner use and policy makers, as well as identifying avenues for further research.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Marketing Management.

Julie Tinson is Professor of Marketing at the University of Stirling. Her research explores the inter-relationships and sociocultural factors affecting individual and collective youth activity and experiences. The contexts for this work include rituals e.g., high school prom, as well as sport fandom and music.

Pete Nuttall is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Bath. His work has examined adolescent expression of self in the context of music consumption, the social environment and its relevance for adolescent choice and use of music. Recently he has explored elective identity and commitment to practice within social groups.