Journal of Marketing Management

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Digital consumption and the extended self

Russell Belk

To cite this article: Russell Belk (2014) Digital consumption and the extended self, Journal of
Marketing Management, 30:11-12, 1101-1118, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2014.939217

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Journal of Marketing Management, 2014
Vol. 30, Nos. 11–12, 1101–1118, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2014.939217

Digital consumption and the extended self

Russell Belk, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada

Abstract There are numerous and substantial effects of the use of digital
technologies on consumers. I focus here on the ways in which these
technologies have brought changes to the extended self. This review builds on
earlier work considering digital subjectivities. I find that the human–machine
digital interface results in a series of challenging theoretical issues. In
considering these issues at the broadest level I also address how the
affordances of digital technologies may cause us to rethink the notion of
extended self, the body and the relationship between objects and consumers
in digital environments.

Keywords extended self; digital technology; digital consumption; posthuman

technology; human–machine interaction; object agency

The digital body

It might seem that the ultimate legacy of the expanding digital universe for our sense
of self is one of disembodiment, re-embodiment and hybridity. Online, it seems, we
are freed of our physical bodies. According to this logic, rather than the body being
the most proximal instantiation of our selves (Belk, 1988), we are set free in
cyberspace to be whomever we wish, whether that be a Night Elf Priest in World of
Warcraft (Nardi, 2010), a playboy on an online dating site (Whitty, 2008) or an
entrepreneur on eBay (Denegri-Knott & Molesworth, 2010). With the Internet and
cyborgian hybrids of machines and organisms, we are envisioned by many researchers
to be freed from the prior constraints of our physical bodies as well as from societal
prejudices due to gender, race, age, class and physical impairments (e.g., Graffam,
2012; Haraway, 1991). As McRae (1997) argues from a feminist perspective:
The lack of physical presence and the infinite malleability of bodies complicates
sexual interaction in a singular way: because the choice of gender is an option
rather than a strictly defined social construct, the entire concept of gender as a
primary marker of identity becomes partially subverted. (p. 75)
Similarly, Haraway in her ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ (1991) argued that it has never been so
possible to confront and contest dichotomies like male/female as the digital world
disrupts dualities, including the Cartesian mind/body split.
There are also numerous science fiction plots in which technology allows us to
download our disembodied essence into a digital device and upload it into another
body, an android, or an avatar as depicted in the film Avatar (Graffam, 2012). And
there are numerous scholarly treatments envisioning the disembodied, augmented
© 2014 Westburn Publishers Ltd.
1102 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

and re-embodied worlds of cyborgs and posthumans (e.g., Bell & Kennedy 2000;
Benford & Malartre 2007; Brahm & Driscoll, 1995; Davis-Floyd & Dumit 1998;
Fuller, 2011; Gray 1995; Hayles, 1999; Hughes, 2004; Mann & Niedzviecki, 2001;
Toffoletti, 2007; Vancouver Art Gallery, 2001). But despite these visions of
immaterial and creatively re-embodied selves, it is a premise of this paper that the
body and material culture continue to play a key role in our identity.
This is not to say that avatars, digital prostheses and our various online self-
representations are of no consequence for our sense of self. They substantially
change the ways in which we may assert our identities and perceive others’
identities (Belk, 2013; Cool, 2012). But as will be demonstrated, we are far from
abandoning our physical bodies and tangible possessions, both of which continue to
play a critical role in our sense of self. But the centrality of the agentic self-controlling
objects and the idea of a singular self-extended via objects are challenged by the
possibilities of the digital world. In order to ground this discussion, we must first
begin with a brief history of embodiment, disembodiment and re-embodiment in the
context of past and present technologies.

The disembodied and re-embodied self

As Belk (1988) has documented, a key to our sense of self is our bodies. Whether we
adopt a Cartesian view of mind–body dualism in which the body becomes a separate
part of us, subordinate to the mind, or instead view the self as an integral
combination of a unified mind and body, our body and body parts are seen as quite
central to our identities. Nevertheless, it is also clear that technologies allow us to be
effectively present when our bodies are not (see Belk, 2013). I will refer to this
phenomenon as the disembodied self and to representations of the absent self as the
re-embodied self. We should also recognise that this phenomenon is not new to the
Internet age, as the following subsection demonstrates.

Predecessor technologies
Prior consumer research treats current digital technology as something fundamentally
new (e.g., Belk, 2013; Kozinets, 2008; Mick & Fournier, 1998). However, before the
Internet there were a number of prior technologically mediated representations of
self that were, to varying degrees, disembodied. They include portraits, books, letters,
diaries, telegraph messages, telephone conversations, photographs, silent films, sound
recordings, audio-visual recordings and even other people who communicate on our
behalf. These media differ in their fidelity, the particular senses involved, the degree
to which they are one-way or two-way communications, and the time delay between
creation and receipt of the message or other representation. When each of these old
technologies was new it provoked reactions that ranged from amazement to fear to
mystification (e.g., Assendorf, 1993; Manguel, 1996; Romanyshyn, 1989). The issue
of disembodiment and identity came up with new technologies as early as the
telegraph. As Stubbs (2003) notes telegraph operators routinely sent personal
messages to one another over the wire, with no way of verifying the identity of the
person at the other end. With the invention of the phonograph those who listened
initially found it frightening to be able to hear someone who was not physically
present (Gitelman, 2006). From the telegraph to the telephone to the television, early
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1103

users found the disembodied presence of others to be mysterious, spiritual and

magical (Marvin, 1988; Sconce, 2000; Standage, 1998). These media were, for
example, thought to provide magical means to speak with the dead (Peters, 1999).
Similarly visual images of people and religious figures have long provoked awe, fear
and reverence (Freedberg, 1989; Sontag, 1977).
It is easy enough to see the disembodiment in these predecessor technologies – the
body is missing and only the image or sound of the person remains. To someone
unfamiliar with these technologies the mystical and magical association with the
absent person is quite understandable. It is slightly more difficult to see that the
absent person is re-embodied in the device, the medium or other trace that they have
created. The image, sound or message created stands for the person, acts for the
person and for practical purposes is the person. When the medium is two way such as
letters, the telegraph or telephone, recipients of these messages may communicate
back and expect a further response. Even with one-way media of photographs,
diaries, films, radio and television, the reader or viewer may feel that they are in
touch with the person depicted and develop one-way parasocial relationships with
people who do not know them (Cole & Leets, 1999; Horton & Wohl, 1956; Rubin
& McHugh, 1987). In the case of a written diary, the relationship may also seem to
benefit from the contagious magic of the prior physical touch of the one who wrote
in the diary. Walter Benjamin (1936/1968) worried that with the mechanical
reproduction of photographs, films and recordings, this aura of the person depicted
would be lost. As the literature on parasocial relationships attests such physical
contagion may not be needed to experience the person’s aura. Still, compared to
two-way communication technologies and one-way communications that have been
in contact with the other person, it is to be expected that the power of one-way
impersonal representations is less than two-way representations and those which have
originated in the touch of the sender.

Online technologies
What then should we make of the Internet and online communication technologies in
terms of their abilities to represent an absent other? Two useful constructs that may
help determine the extension of self through online media are presence and co-
presence. Presence, sometimes called telepresence, is the illusion of ‘being there’ in
a virtual world or online game (Biocca, 1997). It has also been described in terms of
Csikszentmihalyi’s (1975) concept of flow (Draper, Kaber, & Usher, 1998). Co-
presence is the perception of ‘being in a shared virtual setting with remote others’
(Schultze, 2010, p. 438). Achieving this state may result from interactions between a
player’s avatars and those of others, although Ballantine and Martin (2005) suggest
that online lurkers may still form parasocial relationships with others’ avatars. As
Biocca (1997) notes, presence may be a matter of becoming progressively embodied
in an avatar as we use it. Avatars, in the broadest sense, are not only two- or three-
dimensional graphic characters that we manipulate on a computer screen, but also all
our online representations of ourselves including our emails, blogs, social media
profiles, ‘selfie’ photos and other online traces. However, avatars lend a special
sense of re-embodiment and control that makes them better able to be seen as not
only representations of ourselves, but as ‘us’. There is also a greater sense of co-
presence with others who are not only embodied in their own avatars, but who also
1104 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

have autonomous control of these representations and can respond to and interact
with our avatars.
It is most common in online role playing games and virtual worlds for users to
create avatars in their own image (Belk, 2013; Kafai, Fields, & Cook, 2010;
Meadows, 2008; Schultze, 2010), although Graffam (2012) reports frequent use of
avatar gender switching in World of Warcraft and Second Life. Experimental results
suggest a ‘Proteus Effect’ in which being assigned a taller, older or more physically fit
avatar has carry-over effects offline in making the person more confident,
parsimonious or active, respectively (Yee, 2007; Yee, Bailenson, & Ducheneaut,
2009). However, these results are less likely when we design our own avatars
(Belk, 2013). In this case, we may experiment with alternate genders and
enhancement of our physical features, but we are apt to create avatars that are not
too dissimilar to our offline selves. Jin (2009) found that in the context of Wii games
those who created avatars that represented their actual selves became more
psychologically immersed in the game world than those who created avatars that
represented their ideal selves.
Despite the liberating potential of online self-representations, our imaginations
also appear to be limited and constrained by our prior experiences. Belk (2003)
found a mirroring of everyday experiences in The Sims rather than more elaborate
reconstructions of self. And Schroeder (2003) found that online bank images in an
era of digital banking still reference images of classic architecture that once connoted
strength, stability and security. Moreover, Yee’s (2013) more recent work finds that
there is more transfer of the real world into the virtual world than the reverse.
The senses of presence and co-presence in online worlds have been found to vary
with factors such as the number of senses involved, sensory fidelity, autonomy, non-
verbal communication ability, control, manipulability, realism, sense of location,
interactivity and real-time synchronicity in actions and communications (Draper
et al., 1998; Mennecke, Triplett, Hassall, Conde, & Heer, 2011). However, Steuer
(1992) argues that these are ‘device-driven’ criteria and that what really matters is not
so much the physical nature of the virtual representation as much as the psychological
identification with these representations and their impact on our consciousness.
Draper et al. (1998) also detail some of these psychological factors and focus on
our ability to attain a state of flow in dealing with avatars in their digital
environments. That is, what matters is our ability to suspend disbelief and become
fully engaged in the virtual world and our presence and interactions within it.

Avatars
Of all of these technologically mediated representations of ourselves, it is currently
digital avatars in the narrower sense of two- or three-dimensional graphic
representations that most fully attempt to replicate the body. Even photos and
videos of us are static by comparison to our control of our re-embodied selves via
graphical avatars whose actions we control. The reason for this continuing emphasis
on the symbolic body as a source of identity is easy to appreciate:
…our bodies…are situated, making us present in a given place, time and social
context. They are also the primary site of identity with markers such as sex, race,
age and social class. In other words, we are our bodies.
(Schultze, 2010, p. 435)
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1105

Moreover, despite contested viewpoints about the so-called ‘digital divide’ along
these marker axes with regard to who uses digital technologies the most and least
(e.g., Coskuner-Balli & Thompson, 2013; Dempsey, 2009; Hilbert, 2011), online
representations of our body-based identity markers still rely heavily on replicating the
actual body. As we have moved from text-based Multi-user Dungeons (MUDs) and
MUD Object-Oriented (MOOs) (Turkle, 1984, 1995) to more visual and aural means
of representing our selves online, we have sought to use these representations as we
use our bodies, including the use of gaze and non-verbal body language. Thus, even
as we seek to overcome the limitations of the body by becoming digital, we cannot
leave the body behind:
…we seek to eliminate the constraints of corporeality through technology by
masking the body’s identity markers and engaging in simultaneous global
conversations so as to be ubiquitously present. And yet, there are many valuable
communicative capabilities of the body that are difficult to recreate technologically.
Consequently, we continuously strive to emulate the face-to-face encounter in our
development of new technologies.
(Schultze, 2010, p. 435)

But this instrumental focus on communication through the body is only part of the
reason for our seeking re-embodiment. Much as we might like to overcome the
prejudices that attend different bodies (Haraway, 1991), it seems that we cannot
avoid relying on the body or the avatar’s body as a source of identity. This is an
important premise when considering how the digital extended self is similar to as well
as different from the non-digital extended self.

The extended digital self

Although avatars are a primary means of extending our selves online, they are not the
only way in which we do so. One additional means of extension is the increasingly
prosthetic nature of our digital devices. For example, in tech circles, when the iPhone
was first introduced it was quickly dubbed the ‘Jesus phone’ (Robertson, 2013). As one
Apple fan put it ‘Jesus has come back and now he’s a phone’ (Campbell & La Pastina,
2010, p. 1192). Apple has had a cult-like following of devoted fans and the religious
overtones of their enthusiasm are evident (Belk & Tumbat, 2005; Kahney, 2004, 2005;
Muñiz & Schau, 2005). To merely note that mobile phones and smart phones like the
iPhone have become fashionable expressions of identity does not go far enough in
acknowledging the religious fervour with which we embrace these devices, the
prosthetic sense in which we are attached to them, or the ways in which they have
changed our lives, for better or worse. Kato (2006) had his Japanese college students
create films about their keitai (mobile phones). Many of these tales were about the
unthinkable state of being without their phones. In the videos the central characters
lost their jobs, failed in school and had their partners end relationships, all because of
the loss of the connections they depended on their mobile phones to maintain.
Similarly, Habuchi (2006) finds an ontological insecurity among a broader sample of
Japanese society which they attempt to reduce through nearly constant texting and
emailing on their keitai; something she refers to as ‘tele-cocooning’. Hillis (2009)
refers to ‘telefetishism and rituals of visibility’ in the seemingly obsessive use of
1106 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

mobile devices to communicate with peers, check social media activity and post photos
and messages. This phatic communication is often nothing more than a place marker
to say ‘I am here. I am thinking of you’. The to and fro of text messages between lovers
has been referred to as an ‘addictive call and response’ (Manghani, 2009). Katz (2006)
notes practices of including mobile phones in the casket of the deceased as well as
leaving phones at gravesites as tokens of remembrance. And sometimes cell phones can
acquire a traditional religious aura as with the halal phones in Indonesia discussed by
Barendregt (2012).
Besides digital devices and avatars, there are also a number of purely digital
possessions that have emerged and that potentially form a part of the extended self
in the same way that the tangible possessions and other people (either as part of
aggregate self or as ‘possessions’) can (Belk, 1988). These digital possessions include
photos, videos, music, books, greeting cards, emails, text messages, web pages, virtual
real estate and virtual possessions such as clothing, furniture, weapons, cars, magical
spells and shields for our avatars. Belk (2013) concludes that these possessions, as
contributors to our sense of self, are almost, but not quite, the same as their tangible
counterparts, if indeed they have such a counterpart. If our reach is greater thanks to
digital possessions, our grasp of these possessions is less, leading to frequently
backing up, duplicating and tangibilising them (e.g., by printing out digital photos,
making DVDs of digital films and making CDs of digital music). In order to ‘level up’
in many online games, hours of sometimes tedious online work is required
(Lehdonvirta, 2009). Given the amount of time that must be invested, it is
understandable that we may become attached to the virtual equipment we have
acquired, the virtual structures we have built and the virtual clothing and
accessories we have chosen, crafted or purchased.
The purpose of acquiring armaments in massively multiple online role playing
games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft is primarily to be more successful in
battles in the game and to advance our avatars to higher levels with greater powers.
Similarly, the purpose of buying more powerful and expensive cars in games like
Gran Turismo is to win races and advance through better equipment and skills. In
virtual worlds like the Sims, Habbo Hotel and Second Life the purpose of buying
land, buildings, furnishings and clothing is largely to acquire or display in-world
wealth or status. And in virtually all of these online worlds the display of these
acquisitions acts as an expression of self, just as it does in offline worlds (Belk, 2013;
Bryant & Akerman, 2009; Martin, 2008). Even though participants may spend many
hours in MMORPGs and virtual worlds, the proviso that these things are almost the
same, but not quite, means that except in the context of the game or world, they are
less effective displays of self than tangible goods because they are only visible to other
participants and only when in-world.
The same cannot be said as readily of social media and online communications.
When we post photos, messages, URL links, songs, photos or videos on Facebook,
Instagram, Flickr, WhatsApp, WeChat or YouTube, potentially millions of people can
see them, either directly or through pass-along exposure. We can even send email
messages to large lists of people as well as target them more specifically. This
targeting is common and besides email, instant messaging, text messaging, phone
calls and voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) calls are generally directed to one or a
few people. When these communications are two way, Belk (2013) and Tufekci
(2012) suggest that identity is also co-constructed, especially in social media like
Facebook as others post photos of us, tag us in them, add comments to our postings
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1107

and provide often instant feedback on our appearance, activities and opinions. One
way in which social media users may seek not only feedback but also self-affirmation
is by posting self-disparaging comments in the expectation that their online friends
will post contradictions affirming that we are really fine, good-looking, smart or
normal (Belk, 2013; boyd et al., 2010). It is common for recipients of such
affirmations to later provide reciprocal affirmations for the friends as well; both
sets of compliments then remain online as apparently spontaneous testimonials rather
than egoistic self-flattery. This is true not only on social sites like Facebook, but also
on more professional sites like Linked-In where when friends endorse our skills we,
in turn, endorse theirs. In this way we whitewash each other’s claims about self by
relegating authorship to our friends and professional acquaintances.
Blogging, personal web pages, dating site profiles and forum participation are
other ways in which we may seek to express and sometimes co-construct ourselves
via digital media. Although dating profiles tend to exaggerate positive attributes,
blogs may often be confessional and reveal negative traits, faux pas and
embarrassing details. As noted in Belk (2013) posting such revelations may be
therapeutic or may be consciously or unconsciously intended to garner a sort of
celebrity status through acquiring a large number of followers, hits, likes or
comments. It is also easier to confess online because of our feeling of invisibility in
addressing a computer screen rather than looking our audience in the eyes.
So in these and other digital media, we increasingly express our self to others in
ways that potentially attract a far larger audience than using non-digital media. The
self is extended via these digital expressions as well as through the digital devices on
which we increasingly depend. Although our digital possessions may not have the
heft and gravitas of physical possessions, they can still play a key role in our sense of
self. Our tenuous grasp of these possessions may lead us to be more materialistic in
seeking to endlessly back them up and tangibilise them. This simultaneous push to
dematerialise and rematerialise our possessions, the simultaneous disembodiment and
re-embodiment that we experience through online instantiations of self, and the fact
that new technologies are greeted with both technophillic enthusiasm and
technophobic resistance (Kozinets, 2008; Mick & Fournier, 1998), all suggest that
the digital world changes the game of self-presentation. More than this, it potentially
changes the nature of humans, non-human things and the relations between them. It
is these more fundamental changes in the extended self to which the following
section is addressed.

Implications for the self, the extended self and human–non-

human relations

Future research on the extended self will do well to consider just how digital
affordances affect the nature of the extended self. The original concept of the
extended self (Belk, 1988) has been challenged (e.g., Ahuvia, 2005; Bahl & Milne,
2010; Connell & Schau, 2013) and updated (Belk, 2013), but has yet to fully come to
terms with the relationship between the extended self and our expanding digital
environment. Recently, a number of perspectives have emerged that challenge the
view that the self is the sole agent determining our interaction with the physical and
digital world. They include Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 1987), assemblage
1108 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), extended cognition (Clark & Chalmers, 1998),
entanglement theory (Hodder, 2012), alien phenomenology (Bogost, 2012),
postphenomenology (Verbeek, 2000), the political ideology of things (Bennett,
2010) and trajectories of the technium (Kelly, 2010). It is not possible to consider
all of these related but distinct perspectives in detail here, but a few implications for
the extended self in a digital world will illustrate their potential utility in re-
examining the extended self-construct.
What these perspectives share is the view that non-human things are as important
as humans in shaping behaviour, history, technology and identity. Of these different
perspectives, consumer researchers have thus far restricted their attention to ANT
(Arsel & Bean, 2013; Bajde, 2013; Bardhi, Eckhardt, & Arnould, 2012; Bettany,
2007; Borgerson, 2013; Canniford & Shankar, 2013; Epp & Price, 2010; Giesler,
2012; Hui, 2012; Kjellberg, 2008; Martin & Schouten, 2014; Thomas, Price, &
Schau, 2013) and to a lesser extent, assemblage theory (Canniford & Shankar, 2013).
The only one of these consumer research applications to focus directly on
implications for understanding of the self and human–object relations is Epp and
Price (2010). They found that a large family table acted to sequentially bring
extended family together and keep them apart as the members enacted their
individual and joint identity projects. The table also ‘competed’ with other tables
with different biographies that, at various times, had pride of place within the
extended household. But this application of ANT perspectives does more than
remind us that the extended self includes networks of people and things. As Bajde
(2013, p. 228) observes, ANT’s networks, ‘are not networks in a substantive or
technical sense of stable systems connecting enduring entities’. Rather they are
ever-changing and situationally influenced configurations of human and non-human
actants, events, times, places, devices and meanings.
ANT (e.g., Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987, 2005; Law & Hassard, 1999) envisions
things in our environments as potential actants, that is, as unintentional agents
causing behaviours to occur as much as do the human agents who more
intentionally set things in motion. As Latour (2005) argues:
…there is hardly any doubt that kettles ‘boil’ water, knives ‘cut’ meat, baskets
‘hold’ provisions, hammers ‘hit’ nails on the head, rails ‘keep’ kids from falling,
locks ‘close’ rooms from unwanted visitors, soap ‘takes’ the dirt away,
schedules ‘list’ class sessions, prize [sic] tags ‘help’ people calculating and so
on. (p. 71)
Likewise, Latour argues, a computer acquires agency when it mediates our
calculations or information acquisition. Even when it is programmed to perform
certain functions automatically, the computer also requires the human actant, at least
for its initial programming, as much as the humans require the computer actant for
the tasks it helps them perform as part of their extended digital self. Through such
co-dependencies we meld into the digital prostheses on which we increasingly
depend.
As Bettany (2007) and Kjellberg (2008) note, ANT suggests that a
conceptualisation of the extended self that is rooted in the invariant meaning of an
object to a single individual is problematic. The incorporation of objects into the self
is a changing and evolving phenomenon and usually involves other people, as Epp
and Price (2010) demonstrate. Furthermore, ANT is more interested in the
behavioural outcomes of an evolving network of people and things. As Kopytoff
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1109

(1986) theorises, things have a cultural biography as much as people do. Like people
they enter and withdraw from relationships with other objects and people as they go
through their ‘lives’. They may have different singularised or commoditised meanings
to different people, as with the family members studied by Epp and Price (2010) as
they interacted with the storied table. These relationships may be temporarily stable,
but they change over time. Likewise, the people and objects that co-constitute each
other at any given point in time, inevitably change (Callon, Méadel, & Rabeharisoa,
2004). Although Belk (1988, 2013) anticipated such change as the objects and
subjects that comprise our extended self evolve, the situational specificity of
different salient selves (in combination with different objects and others) provide a
more dynamic view of this self (e.g., Ahuvia, 2005; Bahl & Milne, 2010). As Bajde
(2013) puts it, ‘there is no “finished”, durable “consumer” that can exist outside of
patterned relations between people, objects and meanings that construct particular
subjects, objects, devices, spaces and times’ (p. 229). The dynamics of our
increasingly digital and mobile world help to assure that these patterned
relationships continue to change (Hui, 2012).
A different possible theoretical revision of the extended self-formulation is offered
by Andy Clark – that of the extended mind (Chalmers, 2011; Clark, 2003, 2011;
Clark & Chalmers, 1998). In introducing Clark’s volume on supersizing the mind,
Chalmers (2011) observes that:

A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the
central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone
numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors
my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need
to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills
and tips. It is a tremendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present
to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help determine
what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone,
idly calling up words and images when my concentration slips. (p. ix)

While ANT holds that objects and humans (or animals) are distinct actants caught up in a
common network of relations, Clark’s notion of the extended mind maintains that there
is an inseparability of the mind, body and world that our consciousness extends outside
of our heads. Consider route-finding. Rather than relying strictly on our memory of a
route as a map in our heads, we may well rely on landmarks to cue our recollection of a
route to a destination. When we instead rely on directions from the global positioning
satellite in our car or smart phone, we are employing our extended digital mind and our
extended digital self. If ANTemphasises agency more than structure, the extended mind
perspective emphasises structural symbiosis more than agency.
My perspective is that both agentic and structural elements combine in the
extended self, whether digital or non-digital. Objects are both agents and
affordances that we can use. Like avatars (a particular type of object) we can use
elements of our environment to remember, cue behaviour and express our identity.
We must learn to feel embodied with our avatar to effectively do this just as we must
learn to feel embodied with a physical object like a kayak or pair of skis (Belk, 1988)
before it can be considered as a part of our extended self. But the limits in the
physical world (e.g., our telekinetic of flying abilities without the aid of machines)
may fall away with virtual environments and avatars.
1110 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

Clark (2003) also suggests that we are all becoming cyborgs who combine
elements of self, possessions and immediate environment in our sense of self. He
suggests that the extent to which we regard digital possessions as self versus other can
be assessed by the way we refer to these possessions in conversation. If someone asks
us if we have the time of day we are likely to reply yes, even before checking our
wristwatch or cell phone, which we automatically do in the next instant. On the
other hand if a houseguest asks if we know what the word ‘clepsydra’ means we are
more likely to answer no, but add that we can easily look it up. Such selective
cyborgian incorporation of only certain digital objects is changing, but for the
moment we regard our watch or the time feature on our cell phone as part of our
digitally extended self, but not the Google response to entering the word ‘clepsydra’
on our laptop, tablet or smart phone.
Drawing on Daniel Dennett (1991), Clark (2003) also concludes that:
There is no self, if by self we mean some central cognitive essence that makes
me who and what I am. In its place there is just the ‘soft self’: a rough-and-
tumble, control-sharing coalition of processes – some neutral, some bodily,
some technological – and an ongoing drive to tell a story, to paint a picture in
which ‘I’ am the central player. (p. 138)

Likewise, Belk (2013) has argued that the original idea (Belk, 1988) of a central core
self must be abandoned. The idea of a core self is an illusion that we sustain by
continually updating our self-narrative in a way that provides a sense of stability in
the midst of change. What is different here is that the mediated technological portion
of our self (e.g., as mediated by our wristwatch, smart phone, eyeglasses or digital
appointment calendar) is becoming increasingly invisible and taken as a ‘natural’ part
of self.
There are many important differences between ANT and extended cognition as
well as between both formulations and the other perspectives identified above. But all
of these perspectives converge on several points that call for refining and
reformulating notions of the extended self as a subject who actively extends self by
feelings of object ownership and identification with a narrow network of other
people. Bennett (2010) emphasises:

… the extent to which human being and thinghood overlap, the extent to which
the us and the it slip-slide into each other. One moral of the story is that we are
also nonhuman and that things too, are vital players in the world. (p. 4)

Expanding on Latour’s (1999) problematic of whether guns kill people or people kill
people, Verbeek (2000) responds:

The absurdity of this question underscores the necessity of thinking about

technology while recognizing the intermingling of humans and nonhumans.
No one would claim that the gun does not contribute to the shooting, and still
less that it is wholly responsible. … Guns and human beings are not separate,
but intertwined. (p. 155)

This suggests that rather than speaking of the extended sense of self we might equally
talk about the extended sense of object. Both are right in Verbeek’s view and the
human with a gun is as much a gun with a human. That is, they mutually constitute
each other (p. 155).
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1111

Hodder (2012) extends these observations into not just people becoming greater
by identifying with things, but also things becoming greater by their identification
with people:
Certainly it seems that humans add something to things – this added something
seems to be association, recognition, common history, investment of care and
labor. In all these ways material entities become things in which humans have
an interest, which they then wish to protect. At the basis of property is our
dependence on things such that they play a role in our lives. So we can also say
that things add something to humans. The magic that transforms a material into
a thing owned is a dual process of adding humans and things to each other.
(p. 26)
That is, not only does the thing add to the person’s sense of being, but the same
association can also add the person to the things’s sense of being. Think of it as a
congealed power of people in the object. George Washington’s teeth or Elvis Presley’s
handkerchief become sacred relics through the association of the person with the
thing, as our museums of historic objects attest. And just as our self-narrative draws
on things such as our writings, musical recordings and social media comments and
photos, so do things’ social biographies (Kopytoff, 1986) draw on their associations
with people (e.g., the ensemble of family for the fabled table researched by Epp and
Price, 2010).
Hodder (2012) describes multiple types of dependence between humans and
things. Humans depend on things to extend what they can do. Things depend on
humans to maintain them. Humans depend on other humans to live together in peace
and productivity. And things depend on other things (TT) to work in complex
assemblages such as cars and computers. These are not just paired relationships, but
sometimes long strings of dependence. When some of these entities become overly
dependent on another entity, entanglement becomes enslavement. Nevertheless,
Hodder’s (2012) overall account of our entanglements is positive: ‘Thus my being,
who I am, unfolds in the course of my interactions with the world over the course of
my life. … Who I am as a person is dependent on the equipmental contexts in which I
dwell’ (p. 26).
Returning to the centrality of the body, Kelly (2010) extends the focus on specific
things to a focus on interconnected system of technology that surrounds us, which he
calls the technium:
Our technological creations are great extrapolations of the bodies that our
genes build. In this way, we can think of technology as our extended body. …
If technology is an extension of humans, it is not an extension of our genes but
of our minds. Technology is therefore the extended body for our ideas. (p. 44)
He also notes that in today’s ubiquitous digital world we may define ourselves more
by resisting technology than by embracing it:
We define ourselves more by the technologies we don’t use than by those we do.
In the same way that a vegetarian has more of an identity than an omnivore,
someone who chooses not to drive or use the internet stakes out a stronger
technological stance than the ordinary consumer. (p. 239)
And like Hodder (2012), Kelly (2010) also recognises the threat of ubiquitous
technology and increasingly autonomous (TT) relationships: ‘Technology chips
1112 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 30

away at our human dignity, calling into question our role in the world and our own
nature’ (p. 197). It is in this sense that he emphasises the imperium of the technium in
answer to the question ‘What does technology want?’

Conclusions

As Tufekci (2012) observes, typing on the keyboard does not create an ontological
split between the body and its symbolic representation in the words we type. We may
display different facets of a complex identity, but ‘the body, in the end centers and
unites us’ (Tufekci, 2012, p. 37). This is contrary to Turkle (1995) who refers to ‘the
selves that don’t have bodies’ (p. 14). Or, more accurately, while it may appear that
there are selves that don’t have bodies (e.g., the disembodied anonymous posting
online or from chatbots like the one that fooled Bernius into thinking he was
communicating with another human (2012)), either they are mere representations
of embodied selves (the anonymous posting) or they are things that are not selves at
all (the chatbots). This does not mean that our re-embodied avatars and virtual
possessions do not form part of our extended selves; they do! But this is not the
same as having multiple selves, and our virtual possessions generally are not as much
a part of self as are our tangible possessions. Even if we are strongly attached to an
avatar we have created or a virtual possession we have earned through physical,
mental or monetary expenditures (Watkins & Molesworth, 2012), when we go to
work the next morning we are stripped down to our embodied self and tangible
possessions.
As Whitehead and Wesch (2012) note, ‘It is not our potential forms of
disembodiment that make us posthuman, but the way in which this historical
movement away from prior cultural forms of embodiment are understood’ (p. 4).
By this they mean we must recognise that:
Humans are part of much larger systems that include relationships with
animals, insects, microorganisms, spirits, and people who are not always
considered human by others. And as humans become more digitally
connected, we must also recognize that the speciality that emerges from such
connections might not always be immediately analogous to traditional social
formations and may involve unhuman actors and agencies. (p. 9)
There are benefits from deflating our hubris at being a superior species and
puncturing our aggrandised self-definition at the expense of marginal ‘others’. But
there is also a potential danger if we also diminish our humanity in taking up a view
of ourselves as machines; that is, if we lose sight of the body.
The nature of prosthetic possessions is most often to enhance what our inseparable
bodies and minds can do rather than to replace them. Feelings of presence and co-
presence surely extend our selves, but they are not the same as physically being there
or physically interacting with another person. Although we can meet a lover in
Second Life and have virtual sex online (Boellstorff, 2008), it is not the same as the
embodied experience. They are almost the same, but not quite (Belk, 2013).
For all the materialistic attachment we may feel towards our digital devices like
our smartphone, laptop or MP3 player, it is more likely that we are really attached to
the empowerment of what these devices can help us do rather than to the possession
itself. In terms used by Sartre (1943) the greatest source of self-definition in such
 Belk Digital consumption and the extended self 1113

cases is the doing rather than the having. Even if we have gone through the
possession rituals (McCracken, 1986) of personalising our phone, computer and
MP3 player with cases and decorations as well as ‘our’ music, files, ringtones and
contacts, it is still their functionality that matters most. If we can achieve these
capabilities in a replacement device there is no major blow to the extended self,
and the former digital device does not haunt us as with a phantom limb in the case of
a physical amputation. This is good news for marketers of digital devices, because it
means that attachment to prior models should not seriously hamper the adoption of
newer models with functional or aesthetic advantages. But it is bad news for designers
like the Dutch firm Eternally Yours that seeks to extend our attachments to our
possessions in order to reduce premature obsolescence and environmental waste
(Verbeek, 2005).
In closing, let me return to the iPhone which has come up several times in this
paper. As Clark (2011) notes language is one of the key skills through which we
interact with our environment. When I go to China, I have an app on my iPhone that
allows me to tap a phrase in English that is spoken aloud in Chinese as well as shown
on the screen in Chinese. Another application allows me to point the phone’s camera
at a foreign sign or menu and see an instantaneous translation into English. In Japan,
DoCoMo is working on an app for devices like Google Glass that does something
similar. In other words, even our language abilities are becoming enhanced and
mediated by digital applications and devices. Digitisation is part of a long evolution
of the extended self, but it is having profound effects on expanding the degree to
which the self can be extended.
Ultimately, however, perhaps the most profound changes that digital technologies
have provoked are in rethinking the significance, importance and agency of objects in
our lives. The Cartesian dichotomy of active agentic human subjects and passive inert
non-human objects is quickly fading from view as we realise the degree to which we
are entwined. No doubt as robots become commercially viable household
companions caring for our children and elders (Benford & Malartre, 2007), these
issues will become more urgent. But this is something we can anticipate with some of
the theoretical scaffolding being built from the extended self (Belk, 2013). Only now,
we also need to give serious consideration to the extended object and the full
entanglements of humans and things.

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About the author

Russell Belk is past president of the International Association of Marketing and Development
and is a fellow and past president of the Association for Consumer Research. He co-initiated
the Consumer Behavior Odyssey, the Association for Consumer Research Film Festival and the
Consumer Culture Theory Conference. His awards include the Paul D. Converse Award, two
Fulbright awards, the Society for Marketing Advances Distinguished Scholar Award and the
Sheth Foundation/Journal of Consumer Research Award for Long Term Contribution to
Consumer Research. His research involves the meanings of possessions, extended self, collect-
ing, gift-giving, materialism, sharing and global consumer culture. His work is often cultural,
qualitative and visual.
He has published approximately 550 articles, books, chapters and videos. Most recently he
co-wrote or co-edited the books: Qualitative Consumer and Marketing Research (2013),
Research in Consumer Behavior: Consumer Culture Theory (2013), The Routledge
Companion to Digital Consumption (2013) and The Routledge Companion to Identity and
Consumption (2013).
Russell Belk, Schulich School of Business, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON,
M3J 1P3, Canada.
T +1 905 596-0079
E rbelk@schulich.yorku.ca