Showing papers in "Consumption Markets & Culture in 2004"
TL;DR: This article analyzed the male body as a discursive "effect" created at the intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy and the free appropriation of meaning by the market.
Abstract: Through explication of a visual research method, this paper theorizes how masculine identity interacts with consumption—of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising and consumer culture. We analyze the male body as a discursive “effect” created at the intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy—what the marketer intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the market. The paper’s contribution rests in extending previous work on male representation into historical, ontological, and photographic realms, providing a necessary complement between understanding advertising meaning as residing within managerial strategy or wholly subsumed by consumer response. We argue that greater awareness of the connections between the traditions and conventions of visual culture and their impact on the production and consumption of advertising images leads to enhanced ability...
271 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the influence of branding and marketing in retail extends beyond components such as store design and is manifested in two main ways, through customer service provision and through how workers are embodied, both of which influence consumption by shoppers.
Abstract: The juxtaposition between production and consumption that characterises the retail sector render it interesting for studies of work and consumption. Contemporary chain store clothing retail is characterised by “lifestyle retail brands” that compete for sales through offering products and services targeted to customers of particular class, age, and gender backgrounds, and with particular orientations to fashion. This paper argues that the influence of branding and marketing in retail extends beyond components such as store design. Branding influences who is employed in a store, and what work they do. This is manifested in two main ways, through customer service provision and through how workers are embodied, both of which influence consumption by shoppers. This article draws on an innovative ethnographic study to explore the nature and meaning of customer service and aesthetic labour.
271 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the role of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and used that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy, using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK.
Abstract: This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practitioners. I argue that practitioners’ role should not be understood solely in terms of a mediation between producer and consumer; instead, their role should be conceived in terms of a negotiation between multiple “regimes of mediation”, including that of the relationship between advertising agencies and their clients. Agencies perform commercial relationships, bringing them into being and constantly redefining them. Attending to these multiple modes of mediation opens up questions about the status of advertising, the role of cultural intermediaries, and the relationshi...
150 citations
TL;DR: This article explored how two sets of creative workers in advertising and magazine publishing handled the ideal of the creative worker and the fun and funky image of these areas of work and found that the subjective investment of these practitioners within particular forms of masculinity and the way, through this, gender was written into the creative cultures of advertising and magazines publish.
Abstract: The “creative industries” and the dispositions of creative workers have acquired a new salience and significance within both sociological and business orientated commentaries in recent years. This has included an attention to the apparently hybrid character of “creative work” and the way this informs the ideal of the self‐expressive creative worker. Our paper takes these claims as its starting point and seeks to render more concrete discussions of these areas of work which have often been treated in an overly synthetic way. Drawing on our earlier research, we explore how two sets of creative workers in advertising and magazine publishing handled the ideal of the creative worker and the fun and funky image of these areas of work. Foregrounding questions of gender and, specifically, masculinity, we detail the subjective investment of these practitioners within particular forms of masculinity and consider the way, through this, gender was written into the creative cultures of advertising and magazine publish...
134 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how the complex relationship between consumption and production evolves in empty nest households as individuals reconstruct their sense of self during periods of major household change and role status transitions.
Abstract: In this paper we examine how the complex relationship between consumption and production evolves in empty nest households as individuals reconstruct their sense of self during periods of major household change and role status transitions. Specifically, we seek to understand the “lived experience” of mothers as they negotiate the role status transition on entering the empty nest stage of family life, and thus to provide glimpses of how women manage production and consumption in order to create family life across a variety of diffused sites as their children move away from home. The main themes to emerge from the data are: the distress associated with this role status transition as women re‐evaluate their definition of the self and their mothering role; and the evolving role of enacting love and mothering as the emphasis changes, in many cases, from production‐led tasks to consumption‐based activities.
87 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a dialogical model of acculturation and diasporic identity is used to capture glimpses of the imagined multiple worlds of young adult women in post-modern ethnic families, households and society.
Abstract: Our primary goal is to capture glimpses of “the imagined … multiple worlds” of young adult women in post‐modern ethnic families, households and society. Drawing on a dialogical model of acculturation and diasporic identity, we show how young South Asian women in Britain use multiple identities across a variety of cultural settings to negotiate and navigate cultural and consumer behavioural borders. Using an ethno‐consumerist framework for our research design, we provide a more nuanced understanding of the intersections between ethnicity, identity, self and consumption in families and peer friendship groups. These interactions reflect the individual’s co‐existence and identity maintenance in two cultures.
83 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of consumer responses to products placed in a sitcom, "Ads R' Us", created as a stimulus to ascertain the influence of a television program's genre and male/female respondents' sex on responses.
Abstract: The paper presents a study of consumer responses to products placed in a sitcom, “Ads R’ Us,” created as a stimulus to ascertain the influence of a television program’s genre and male/female respondents’ sex on responses. Textual analysis is used to analyze sitcoms, a category of programs created in accordance with genre conventions, the structural framework that influences responses to media vehicles. First‐generation feminist reading theory, which challenged the patriarchal assumptions mostly unquestioned in the US until the early 1960s, is used to analyze responses produced by second‐generation respondents, who came of age a generation later, after the women’s liberation movement led to socio‐cultural changes. The study draws from multidisciplinary theory and integrates stimulus‐side/response‐side research to enhance understanding of the text‐context‐consumer relationship. Findings indicate that second‐generation responses to placed products are problematized by the coexistence of patriarchal and femin...
43 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the lives and selected works of two intriguing genre painters, Francis W. Edmonds (1806-1863) and Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902), using concepts and methods from art history, visual culture, and postmodern theory.
Abstract: The re‐gendering of consumer agency in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, from being a male to an increasingly female prerogative and responsibility, marked an important milestone in the history of American consumer culture. Art from this period can provide a visual understanding of this ideological and social transformation. Accordingly, this paper examines the lives and selected works of two intriguing genre painters, Francis W. Edmonds (1806–1863) and Lilly Martin Spencer (1822–1902), using concepts and methods from art history, visual culture, and postmodern theory. Implications for household consumption history and theory are also discussed.
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a study of art galleries in the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) uses a political economy approach to examine the contours of the art world and the art market.
Abstract: This study of art galleries in the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) uses a political economy approach to examine the contours of the art world and the art market. A Chinese art market based on the Western and Japanese models was created in the early twentieth century, but was abolished in 1949 when the PRC, under Chairman Mao, adopted a socialist framing model on a national scale. Breaking out of this totalizing frame was difficult despite the adoption of market socialism in 1979. The decade between 1979 and 1989 witnessed rapid surges of creativity, which were brought to a full stop by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. In 1992, however, the national policy of rapid growth gave the cultural industry a sharp nudge. Since the mid‐1990s, two trends in the art world have emerged: a collaborative framework for developing contemporary PRC art (including commercial art) for both the internal and external markets; domestic art as a commentary on changing social and cultural values.
33 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade is introduced, followed by a detailed examination of Sadism as text and social structure, and five components of Sadean narratives are identified and applied in two consumer behavior cases.
Abstract: Desire, fantasy and imagination are integral aspects of the consumption experience. This paper critically develops a Sadean analytical framework to further explore these aspects of consumption in contemporary cultural settings. The philosophy of the Marquis de Sade is introduced, followed by a detailed examination of Sadism as text and social structure. Five components of Sadean narratives are identified and applied in two consumer behavior cases. The first applies a Sadean analysis to the popular television game show The Weakest Link. The second provides a Sadean interpretation of the service encounter. A justification for Sadean approach is considered together with a brief discussion of some of the moral questions raised by the analytical approach.
28 citations
TL;DR: The view that we live in an age where commercial promotion pervades everyday life to an unprecedented extent is so widely accepted that there have been few attempts to test it empirically.
Abstract: The view that we live in an age where commercial promotion pervades everyday life to an unprecedented extent is so widely accepted that there have been few attempts to test it empirically. This paper makes an attempt to rectify this by looking closely at ideas and evidence concerning escalating commercial promotion. This involves three main tasks. First, some of the arguments that have been made about promotion are briefly reviewed to help establish the extent to which judgements about its contemporary significance are “dehistoricised”. Second, consideration is given to the ambiguous status of historical evidence in questioning critical thought. History, it is argued cannot offer a straight, objective means of comparison but it can offer an insight into the contingency of pervasiveness upon the available media, techniques and technologies of promotion. Third, a glimpse into how these media, techniques and technologies have historically been marshalled to ensure commercial saturation is provided through ev...
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical cultural analysis of the assisted reproductive technologies (ART) market and selected consumption that takes place within that context is conducted, which assumes the view of markets as cultures and conceptualizes the consumption strategies of "other mothers", the unintended consumers of such body technologies, within the larger cultural context of what it means to be a family.
Abstract: This study conducts a critical cultural analysis of the assisted reproductive technologies (ART) market and selected consumption that takes place within that context. Specifically, it assumes the view of markets as cultures and conceptualizes the consumption strategies of “other mothers,” the unintended consumers of such body technologies, within the larger cultural context of what it means to be a family. The view of “markets as cultures” is employed to frame the ART marketplace and to address the multiple, local realities that emerge in the consumption process. The hyperreality of the ART marketplace emerges as a fluid and dynamic force that fosters the reversal of production and consumption through the creation of new forms of consumption. In this local context, marginalized ART consumers reappropriate body technologies to construct postmodern families of their own design. A conceptual framework of this cybernetic market culture is presented and discussed with implications for future research regarding...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare representations of work and Utopia in two examples of popular culture: management books and the popular music of Bruce Springsteen, arguing that Springsteen uses a "voice from within" to explore the ambiguities and paradoxes that emerge from the gap between real experience and utopian desire.
Abstract: This paper interrogates and contrasts representations of work and Utopia in two examples of popular culture. The examples are a sample of contemporary popular management books and a sample of work-related themes in the popular music of Bruce Springsteen. In comparing the two the paper examines how they both use utopian representations as a key element of their claims, yet do so in markedly different ways. It is argued that Springsteen uses a “voice from within” to explore the ambiguities and paradoxes that emerge from the gap between real experience and utopian desire. Conversely, popular management books tend to speak from a “voice from above” that actively suppress ambiguity and ignore power in order to reproduce the dominant ethos of contemporary capitalism. Thus while popular management provides uncritical support for its imaginary Utopia, Springsteen provides a compelling critique of the promises of economic freedom through capitalism—promises which management writers are so often complicit in (re)pr...
TL;DR: In this paper, a poststructural perspective is adopted to challenge the legitimization given to the exclusionary study of "the apparent" in memory, arguing that this approach neglects the development of a necessary and concurrent understanding of the contribution provided by the "less-apparent" forgetting.
Abstract: This article adopts a poststructural perspective to challenge the legitimization given to the exclusionary study of “the apparent” in memory. It is our contention that this approach neglects the development of a necessary and concurrent understanding of the contribution provided by the “less-apparent”—forgetting. It is argued that our preoccupation with the apparent obscures the relationship between memory and forgetting, resulting in a misguided, or at least a too-limited set of understandings associated with both. Through a deconstructive interdisciplinary approach, a new intelligibility of memory, grounded in an understanding of forgetting, is offered. From this perspective the consumer is cast as a constructive inquirer ( homo enquirean ) rather than as a retention bin ( homo estoreran ) to reveal what is being constructed and why. This change in perspective provides new avenues for research into consumer behavior and marketing strategy, which are discussed.
TL;DR: We are constantly reminded of the happy family, for example, in advertising, television shows, films, and literature where family life is commonly associated with myths and ideals as discussed by the authors, but in reality, f...
Abstract: We are constantly reminded of the happy family, for example, in advertising, television shows, films, and in literature where family life is commonly associated with myths and ideals. In reality, f...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how in post-Soviet times, after years of communal property and existence, Russia has reacted and adjusted itself toward the global expansion of Western capital with all the consequences of that process.
Abstract: In this paper the author discusses how in post-Soviet times, after years of communal property and existence, Russia has reacted and adjusted itself toward the global expansion of Western capital with all the consequences of that process. The analysis focuses on three films, Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia (1999), Fruntov’s All That of Which We’ve Dreamed So Long (1997), and Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men (1998), which in different, very desperate ways illustrate Russia’s economic and cultural ambivalence towards Western economic and cultural growth. The paper pursues the cultural manifestations of the cost of a psychological crisis exacted at the level of both society and the individual.