ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the following research questions: What conditions precipitate tensions for consumers enrolled in uneasily intersecting assemblages. And how may consumer responses to tension stabilize and/or destabilize the assemblages consumers are enrolled in. In this context, people found that some of the very same consumers who engaged in defensive forms of identity work also engaged in integrative forms of boundary work that attempted to reconcile, at least to some extent, the goals of the intersecting assemblages When catalytic triggers heighten the tensions experienced by consumers who are members of uneasily intersecting assemblages, then people expect to see these consumers engaging in either identity work, boundary work or both. The chapter observes that consumers who enrol at the intersection between different assemblages are able to mobilise a kind of 'practical agency', that is, a capacity 'to make practical and normative judgments among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and ambiguities of presently evolving situations.
