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Journal ArticleDOI

Marketplace Mythology and Discourses of Power

Craig J. Thompson
- 01 Jun 2004 - 
- Vol. 31, Iss: 1, pp 162-180
TLDR
In this paper, the authors argue that marketplace mythologies are tailored to the competitive characteristics and exigencies of specific market structures, providing meanings and metaphors that serve multiple ideological agendas, and illustrate this conceptualization by analyzing mythic narratives that circulate in the natural health marketplace.
Abstract
While drawing from general cultural myths, marketplace mythologies are tailored to the competitive characteristics and exigencies of specific market structures, providing meanings and metaphors that serve multiple ideological agendas. I illustrate this conceptualization by analyzing mythic narratives that circulate in the natural health marketplace. I propose that a nexus of institutional, competitive, and sociocultural conditions that engender different ideological uses of this marketplace mythology by two types of stakeholders: advertisers of herbal remedies and consumers seeking alternatives to their medical identities. I discuss the implications of this theorization for future analyses of consumer mythologies and for theoretical debates over whether consumers can become emancipated from the ideological influences exerted by the capitalist marketplace.

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References
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Book

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977

TL;DR: The Eye of Power: A Discussion with Maoists as mentioned in this paper discusses the politics of health in the Eighteenth Century, the history of sexuality, and the Confession of the Flesh.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the body's problem with illness is described as a Call for Stories, and a call for stories as a call-for-the-call for stories is presented.
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Modest_Witness@ Second_Millennium: .Femaleman _Meets_OncoMouse

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Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption

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