Martin Parker writes a review of Transformative Consumer Research for Personal and Collective Well-Being in the current issue of the Journal of Consumer Culture. To point to two quotations: There is something about North American English that makes me pause. It is not the grammar, or spelling, but something about its optimism, often an attitude coded into the deep structure of language. If this were a European book, the title would speak of struggle – ‘critical’ this, ‘radical’ that, ‘revolutionary’ the other – and much would be made of Marx, Adorno and Horkheimer, imperialism, patriarchy, queer and post-colonialism. The tone would be grumpy or sardonic, and a lot of heavy theory would be thrown at readers’ heads. But this is a largely North American business school book, so it announces transformation and well-being, and begins by claiming that the current conceptions of consumer research has evolved into a radiant yet deficient prism with multihued insights. Well perhaps, but we could be a lot more direct than this, and simply claim that much consumer research is a cognitive behaviourist attempt to sell more stuff than the other guy. and also... So, I suppose we could say that this book needs more sociology to add to its psychology, but also that it needs more understanding of political economy. The best science, which explains just why people get addicted to gambling, or eating Big Macs, or buying expensive handbags, will not actually change how the bet365 Group Limited, the McDonald’s Corporation or LVMH S.A. make their money. Changing this is going to require more than better arguments or evidence, but some idea about what sort of world we want to live in. For me, the most powerful parts of this book are the places where alternatives are being discussed and questions of dissemination become part and parcel of the project. Business schools have been complicit in producing many of the reductive models of human beings as utility maximising androids, so it is very pleasing when business school academics begin to suggest that another world is possible. I look forward to seeing just how TCR can join up with other oppositional movements, perhaps radicalising itself even further as it does so. These are precisely the set of concerns that we will be considering at the forthcoming workshop: consumerculturetheory.org/?page_id=281
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:50:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015