Navigating spirituality in vegan fashion consumption: Purification and transgression tolerance

Abstract

This study examines how consumers navigate their spiritual needs for transcendence in everyday consumption. While extant literature shows that both spiritual utilities and tensions emerge in sacred consumption, we build on and extend this research by illuminating how consumers navigate sacralisation and problematise profane consumption objects and practices. We employed Mary Douglas’s pollution theory to examine how consumers navigate cultural meanings of purity and transgressions. Through a qualitative study of vegan fashion consumption, we found that consumers negotiate the meaning of purity to govern everyday consumption practices in ways that resemble characteristics of religious institutions (e.g. faith and doctrines). Vegan consumers tolerate consumption transgressions through practices and rituals to sustain their faith within what is regarded as a polluted marketplace. Our study contributes to a novel perspective on consumer spirituality in regulating sacred and secular consumption and moralising relationships with the material world.