41. Böhm-Bawerk Lecture

Russell W. Belk is an American business academic, currently a Distinguished Research Professor and the Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at Schulich School of Business, York University. Professor Belk is a leading authority on consumption, consumer culture, consumer behaviour, materialism, collecting, gift-giving, sharing and the digital self. In 2017, he was elected to the Royal Order of Canada, one of the highest honours that can be bestowed on researchers in Canada.^[3]

His research involves the meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, sharing and materialism and his work is often cultural, visual, qualitative, and interpretive. He is the co-founder of the Association for Consumer Research Film Festival and has over 550 publications. He is currently on the editorial boards of 20 journals and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. He is past president of the Association for Consumer Research and the International Association of Marketing and Development, and is a fellow in the Association for Consumer Research and the American Psychological Association. He has received the Paul D. Converse Award, two Fulbright Fellowships, Society of Marketing Advances Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, and honorary professorships on four continents. In 2005 he received the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Consumer Research Award for Long Term Contribution to Consumer Research. Besides York, he has also taught at the University of Utah, University of Illinois, Temple University, Claremont Graduate University, and universities in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. He has won the Outstanding Reviewer Award multiple times.

Some of his notable papers include "Possessions and the Extended Self", "The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey", "Materialism: Trait aspects of living in the material world", "The Fire of Desire", "The Cult of Macintosh", "Sharing", "Extended Self in a Digital World" among many others.

He attended the University of Minnesota for his bachelor's degree in business and PhD in marketing. Prior to joining the faculty at York University, he served as the N. Eldon Tanner Professor of Business Administration at the University of Utah from 1986 to 2006. 


Abstract

All that is Solid Melts into Air: Digitization and the Move Toward Nothingness

Technology is different than when Marx was penning Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Museum.  But “All that is solid…” is no longer just a metaphor for the effects of industrial capitalism.  Our books, films, and file folders have literally disappeared.  Related processes like digitalization, miniaturization, and ephemeralization, together with phenomena like the sharing economy mean that we can travel and live more lightly today.  Drawing on conceptual art I ask whether the old wisdom that you are what you own, where you live, and what consume still has relevance.  Should we be nostalgic for days when the world seemed more solid?  Where is this headed, and does it matter?  Where does it end?  We will  consider such issues in a talk that is ultimately about nothing.