Individual and Collective Identities in Consocial Communities: Theorising New Forms of on and Offline Social Practice in Relation to Tensions between Individual and Collective Identities

In this paper we theorize about the consocial, brand-related consumption community as a new form of on and offline social practice. Consumption community is seen from a process ontology in which tensions between individual and collective identities are regarded as performances which express and expose underlying tensions between collective and individual identities. We apply selfdetermination theory as a micro-level empirical lens through which to study and understand individual’s relationship to the community and Actor-Network Theory and Practice Theory to understand the meta-level processes and interactions at the collective level. Whilst community culture is a well explored area, highlighting the stable cultural attributes of such communities, this paper empirically explores, through the analysis of a running community (often called running crews), less cohesive, loose coupled communities that are characterized by weak interdependency reflecting modern urban lifestyles. The aim of the paper is to develop a theory of these fluid, heterogenous and complex consocial communities from the collective AND the individual levels.