The “right to consume”? Re-thinking the dynamics of exclusion/inclusion in consumer society

ABSTRACT

Consumption is a political relationship. This article considers competing political discourses around consumption as different versions of a hypothetical right to consume. In the first section, we consider how the domain of consumption can express the critical potential of the “right to the city,” a concept inspired by Henri Lefebvre that has had widespread influence in urban studies and related fields. In the second section we consider how the right to consume can also become a bulwark for capitalist ideologies of an individualistic and destructive right to consume. A third section concludes on recent trends in consumption studies that point to ways that capitalism seeks to assuage and manage these tensions through ongoing innovations in consumer technology and finance. New questions about rights and democracy must emerge to confront this new techno-economy of consumer relations. In short, while we affirm the right to consume for the most vulnerable, we also insist on deconstructing the system of consumption as it is currently configured.     

No longer violent enough?: Creative destruction,innovation and the ossification of neoliberal capitalism

ABSTRACT

My goal is to suggest that it is useful to distinguish analytically between capital’s primal, often direct violence against bodies and a systemic form of violence that is at the same time reproductive of the capitalist system and directed against its own creations. I suggest that this analytical separation allows us to see that on the one hand capitalist violence is intensifying and with it processes of exploitation, class bifurcation, downward mobility and environmental, political and social degradation. On the other hand, however, capitalism appears to be ossifying as it loses its ability to self-reproduce. The violent act of (periodically) destroying its own creation to make room for new production and formation is becoming stifled and nothing appears capable of blowing up the dead weight of capital that is suffocating living labour. Drawing on the work of David Graeber and Mariana Mazzucato I propose that, paradoxically, it is the logic of the market that causes the stifling of real innovation and thus capitalism’s ability to reproduce. It is in this sense that I claim that capitalism is no longer violent enough.     

Connectedness Capitalism

As an approach to attenuating economic crises and enhancing sustainability in capitalism, the authors in this GDN 2009 keynote commentary present connectedness capitalism. In doing so, they consider social connectedness, purpose connectedness, common ground, right action and other key ideas of connectedness problem solving and negotiation, and apply these to problems in current capitalism.     

Branded places and marketplace exclusion

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the development of a branded place in a Brazilian city. Drawing on Lefebvre’s spatial triad, I show how the intertwined practices of hegemonic market actors in alliance concur to produce a city space that caters to the aspirations and ways of life of local elites while actively excluding lower-class groups from it. I distinguish three main elements of branded places –architecture and urbanism, brand narrative, and spatial governance– and demonstrate how they produce physical, symbolic, and social boundaries between middle- and lower-classes in the city. These findings contribute to understanding the ways market-mediated spatial dynamics perform exclusion of most vulnerable groups in post-industrial cities and extend place brand literature by accounting for the less documented practices of invested stakeholders in the production of branded places.     

Managing the paradox of unwanted efficiency: The symbolic legitimation of the hypermarket format in Finland, 1960–1975

Abstract

Occasionally, organisations are forced to adopt new practices that are inconsistent with the expectations of their stakeholders. An immediate adoption of the practices would risk the organisation’s legitimacy, but as previous research has noted, the perceptions of organisational stakeholders can be managed through symbolic actions. In this article, I examine how actors from four retail organisations symbolically legitimated the adoption of the hypermarket format within their individual contexts by means of internal professional magazines. The analysis suggests that the organisations buttressed their legitimacy by reversing Meyer and Rowan’s idea of loose coupling – adopting the new practice but maintaining their formal appearances.     

Marinetti,markets and making our futures ourselves

Following, and frustrating, the formative works of F. T. Marinetti, founder and fomenter of Futurism, contemporary consumers are far from overwhelmed by developments in technology and the turmoil of rapidly changing social structures, having come instead to understand, and to enjoy, such ‘future shocks’ as means of ordering and reordering their day‐to‐day lives in both shared and individual terms. Using widely recognisable yet culturally specific instances of items on offer to the public, these same trading patterns‐these communities within common speech‐are presented, against a background of multidisciplinary readings and prolific puns, as hugely flexible mechanisms, and metaphors, for the symbolic, even the biological, extension of everyday existence through the mass consumption of our industrially generated histories in tandem with our market‐led imaginings and innovations.     

Brand personality inference: The moderating role of product meaning

Abstract

This study draws on categorisation theory to investigate how consumers make brand personality inferences. Its purpose is to determine the basic category at which consumers make brand personality inferences and whether this level varies for functional and symbolic products. Experimental results show that the basic level of categorisation for brand personality inferences is the brand level for symbolic products and the product type level for functional products. These findings suggest that managers may have less latitude to adopt diverse personalities for functional than symbolic products. The study also demonstrates that, in contrast to prior work, future research on brand personality should consider a wider range of sources of personality.     

Symbolic violence and marketing ECRs in the neoliberal University

ABSTRACT

This paper uses symbolic violence as one way of interpreting the lived experiences of early career researchers (ECRs) in the neoliberal University. We focus on marketing ECRs as business schools epitomise the highly market-mediated, performative, and managerialist ideology of the contemporary neoliberal University which facilitates symbolic violence. Specifically, marketing education, with its orientation towards market logic, has been identified as aligning with the neoliberal paradigm. We draw on qualitative narrative interviews with 16 United Kingdom and Australian ECRs in marketing to demonstrate how symbolic violence is produced and reproduced through institutions, ideology, language and discourse, and social relations. We find that while ECRs are not entirely subjugated by symbolic violence in the neoliberal University – with some participants displaying critically reflexive awareness and resistance, we also find that they can be complicit and serve to reproduce the system through seeking to learn and play the game of academia, rather than change it. We argue that symbolic violence offers a framework to help conceptualise the neoliberal University. Further, we submit that instrumental advice to marketing ECRs on how to navigate a life in academia is not enough and that critical reflexivity, resistance, and social action to oppose symbolic violence and the ideology of the neoliberal University is required to achieve emancipation.     

Dreaming of the West: The power of the brand in Soviet Lithuania, 1960s–1980s

Abstract

The article reveals the interest in foreign trademarks observed in Lithuanian society from the 1960s through the 1980s, when the demand for brand names spread after Western culture reached the Soviet Union. The consumption of Western cultural products, or imitations thereof, became one of the key symbolic expressions of freedom in Soviet society. In Lithuania, the most popular clothes were those bearing fake trademarks, even though Soviet authorities attempted to prevent the desire for and the wearing of these garments through the use of ideological tools.     

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Industrial Development: Geography and the Creative Field Revisited

Creative destruction is a central element of the competitive dynamic of capitalism. This phenomenon assumes concrete form in relation to specific geographical and historical conditions. One such set of conditions is investigated here under the rubric of the creative field, i.e. the locationally-differentiated web of production activities and associated social relationships that shapes patterns of entrepreneurship and innovation in the new economy. The creative field operates at many different levels of scale, but I argue that the urban and regional scale is of special interest and significance. Accordingly, I go on to describe how the creative field functions as a site of (a) entrepreneurial behavior and new firm formation, (b) technical and organizational change, and (c) the symbolic elaboration and re-elaboration of cultural products. All of these activities are deeply structured by relations of spatial-cum-organizational proximity and separation in the system of production. The creative field, however, is far from being a fully self-organizing entity, and it is susceptible to various kinds of breakdowns and distortions. Several policy issues raised by these problems are examined. The paper ends by addressing the question as to whether industrial agglomeration is an effect of producers’ search for creative synergies, or whether such synergies are themselves simply a contingent outcome of agglomeration.     

Business and the limited reconstruction of industrial relations in the UK in the 1970s

Industrial relations were reconstructed in the UK in the 1970s, but only in a limited way. This article examines how business preserved ultimate managerial prerogative in the organisation of the firm and the workplace by constraining the process of reconstruction. The analysis contributes to understanding of business in the 1970s and varieties of capitalism literature on comparative political economy by suggesting that changes in industrial relations were accepted by business only where congruent with corporate strategy. Evidence comes from industrial relations surveys and the Bullock Inquiry on board-level worker participation.     

Managing new product development: Some alternative ways to organise the work of technical specialists

There is an increasing amount of management literature about how to manage the product development process. By‐and‐large this concentrates on organisational and management techniques to be applied within the enterprise. Based on a piece of empirical work carried out in a number of engineering‐based companies, this paper suggests a range of organisational and managerial options extending beyond the boundaries of the firm. For those firms engaged in product developments which require the expertise of technical specialists choices have to be made about how much occupational control these specialists exert; how much managerial control should be exercised over them; how much of this expertise should be available in‐house and how much bought‐in; and what relations there should be with government in the training and development of these technical experts. This paper explores these options in the context of a study of engineering designers.     

Eastern and Central Europe

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to help explain the impact of cultural variables on privatization and market entry strategies in several of the transition economies of Central Europe. The geographic area focus is on the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The cultural legacy of communism involves the need to fundamentally change core values. Democratic capitalism requires a cultural re-orientation. The authors seek to examine the implications of cultural impediments and opportunities and to show how successful strategic management seeks to function in a dramatic value transition. Finally, the analysis underlines how each country as well as individual management teams have made progress under the new circumstances.     

Unlocking the padlock: Retail and public policy in Belgium (1930–1961)

Abstract

During the inter-war and post-war decades, until the dawn of the 1960s, the Belgian retail sector remained very traditional and overcrowded. In that context literature usually points to the Belgian law of 1936/1937 restricting the expansion of department stores. This article outlines the history of this so-called Padlock Law (Loi de Cadenas/Grendelwet), and evaluates its effectiveness and impact. It tries to answer the question as to why the public debate on retailing in Belgium was caught in a deadlock and, specifically, why prohibitive measures against big distribution remained intact for such a long period. It demonstrates how the political dossier of the Padlock was interlinked with a much broader societal debate, that of the survival of the independent classes moyennes/middenstand. The Padlock became a highly symbolic issue, pitting small, family enterprises against big, capitalistic businesses, with all this linked to powerful social perceptions and powered by the dichotomy of modernity versus tradition. In the highly segmented and pillarised Belgian society, reaching a consensus on the modernisation of retailing was only possible after clearly incorporating small independent enterprises into the post-war neo-corporatist welfare state and into its structures of collective bargaining.     

The Long Term: Capitalism and Culture in the New Millennium

One of the most significant developments in the latter part of the 20th century and the first part of this new millennium has been the triumph of short-term over long-term thinking. We are increasingly a culture that looks neither to the past nor to the future, but only to the next “quarter,” or to the next Delphic pronouncement by Alan Greenspan. This cultural construction of time has given rise to social, political and personal problems of unprecedented magnitude. The short-term focus of contemporary American capitalism is causing us to behave, both individually and collectively, in an increasingly irrational and thus self-destructive manner. Ours is now the most violent, crime-ridden society in the industrialized world. Capitalism is sometimes blamed for this, yet there are other capitalist societies that do not suffer the same evils we suffer. I argue that we can learn from these societies how to correct some of the ills of our own system and in this way construct a new paradigm of the market, a paradigm for the new millennium, a more mature, rational version of capitalism that would focus on the long rather than the short term.     

Consumer normalcy: Understanding the value of shopping through narratives of consumers with visual impairments

This paper extends our understanding of the symbolic and experiential value of shopping. By exploring the narratives of consumers with visual impairments, consumer normalcy is shown to be an important value of shopping implicit in discussions of shopping experiences. The informants often achieve consumer normalcy, which they reveal consists of four dimensions: participating or being-in-the-marketplace (I am here), achieving distinction through the marketplace (I am me), demonstrating competence and control (I am in control), and being perceived as an equal in the marketplace (I belong). The consumer normalcy construct reveals to readers how shopping experiences contribute to identity and the tension between acceptance by others and individual agency. Reality differs between informants, but their collective realities inform how consumers realize their self and consumption aspirations by shopping.     

Cast Awayand the Contradictions of Product Placement

Abstract

This essay looks at implications of product placement in Cast Away, the 2000 film in which Tom Hanks plays a Federal Express executive who is stranded on a desert island before making his way back home. It argues that Cast Awayis a particularly valuable case study because of the conflict between its relentless product placement and its dark vision of contemporary global capitalism. The article investigates four aspects of global capitalism addressed by Cast Away: the compression of time, the compression of space, the rising influence of multinational corporations, and the dominance of consumer culture.     

Black,white or grey magic? Our future with artificial intelligence

ABSTRACT

Are new technologies driving us towards dystopia or utopia – or something in between? Marketers not only have a stake in finding out the answer to this question but also a direct (and indirect) influence on determining the answer. This commentary discusses recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and how these are influencing marketers, consumers and society by either leading to a dystopian (black magic), utopian (white magic) or ‘dualopian’ future (grey magic). We argue that the net effect is squarely in the grey and that marketers have a unique power to leverage AI and robotics developments for good. The commentary concludes with 24 research questions forming an agenda for future research under three streams: marketing power, understanding the bias and ethics revisited.     

Enterprise Restructuring in Transition

Abstract

Poland in 1989 was faced with massive and unprecedented change. If we consider what communism was-an ideology, an economic system, a political system, a way of life-we can begin to appreciate the nature, scale, challenge and complexity of the change involved.

This paper evaluates how privatised, post-socialist Polish enterprises have responded to market conditions. In particular, it traces the management role in capitalist restructuring and adjustment to the wider aspects of economic transformation in Poland.

A general introduction is followed by case material from three privatised, post-socialist Polish enterprises. Conclusions reached demonstrate both continuity and change in management behaviour and adaptation to capitalism through incremental rather than radical adjustment strategies. Capitalist restructuring is, however, shown to be more radical and extensive with dominant MNC ownership and control.