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The Sweetness of Salvation: Consumer Marketing and the Liberal‐Bourgeois Theory of Needs

Author(s): Kalman ApplbaumReviewed work(s):Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 3 (June 1998), pp. 323-350Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/204737 .

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Current Anthropology Volume 39, Number 3, June 1998© 1998 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/98/3903-0002$2.50

Under Marshall Sahlins’s incisive machete, Western so-cial science’s implicit ‘‘native anthropology’’ may haverecently been dispossessed of its ancient fig leaf forThe Sweetnessgood. Mainstream social science, not to mention theformative configuration in the 19th century of capital-of Salvation ism itself, Sahlins avers, is an outgrowth of ‘‘peculiarWestern ideas of the person as an imperfect creature of

need and desires, whose earthly existence can be re-duced to the pursuit of bodily pleasure and the avoid-Consumer Marketing andance of pain’’ (1994:439). The origin of this ‘‘tragicphilosophy’’ is the myth of Original Sin and itsthe Liberal-Bourgeoisinterpretation by St. Augustine. Augustine’s pessimis-

Theory of Needs1tic construal of the biblical story of the fall from gracelaid the cornerstone for subsequent Western philosophyconcerning the nature of man. ‘‘The punishment wasthe crime. . . . Man was destined to wear out his bodyby Kalman Applbaumin the vain attempt to satisfy it, because in obeying hisown desires he had disobeyed God. By putting this loveof self before the love of Him alone who could suffice,man became the slave of his own needs (De civitate Dei13, 14)’’ (Sahlins 1996:397).This paper is intended as a follow-up to Marshall Sahlins’s ‘‘The

Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Western Cos- In the wake of Renaissance philosophy regarding freemology’’ (1996). It isolates one field of practical action—market- will, human preferences, and ‘‘a certain kind of individ-ing and consumer behavior—to explore the ways in which the

ualism,’’ by Adam Smith’s timeimplicit theory of needs that Sahlins elucidates is embedded inmarketplace behavior, broadly defined, in the United States. Sup-ported by an ethnographic illustration, it hypothesizes the pro- human misery had been transformed into the posi-cess whereby professional marketers and consumers, via their tive science of how we make the best of our eternalpractical disposition toward each other in the mutually consti-

insufficiencies, the most possible satisfaction fromtuted sociocultural field of the ‘‘market,’’ help perpetuate themeans that are always less than our wants. It wasWestern cosmological duality of suffering and salvation. A cri-

tique of three writers on the subject of marketing and consumer the same miserable condition envisioned in Chris-behavior, Lefebvre, Baudrillard, and Bourdieu, forms the basis for tian cosmology, only bourgeoisified, an elevation ofa theory of cultural construction of the market and of consumer free will into rational choice, which afforded a moreidentities within it.

cheerful view of the material opportunities affordedby human suffering.

kalman applbaum is Lecturer at the University of Haifa (hismailing address: 5 Chauncy St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138,

The inauguration of the positive science of economicsU.S.A.). He was educated at Queens College (B.A., 1985) and atHarvard University (Ph.D., 1992) and has been a research fellow occasioned ‘‘no fundamental change in the Westernat the Harvard Business School (1992–93) and held visiting ap- conception of human nature. Man was ever an imper-pointments at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate

fect and suffering being, with wants ever beyond hisSchool of Business (1993–95) and Tel-Aviv University (1995–96).powers. The Economic Man of modern times was stillHis research interests include Japanese social organization and

the interface between marketing and urban society in industrial Adam. Indeed, the same scarcity-driven creature of needEast Asia. Among his publications are ‘‘Marriage with the Proper survived long enough to become the main protagonistStranger: Arranged Marriage in Metropolitan Japan’’ (Ethnology of all the human sciences.’’34:37–51), ‘‘The Endurance of Neighborhood Associations in a

Most anthropologists, along with a growing contin-Japanese Commuter City’’ (Urban Anthropology 25:1–37), andgent of sociologists and economists, have rejected neo-‘‘Rationality, Morality, and Free Trade: U.S.-Japan Trade Rela-

tions in Anthropological Perspective’’ (Dialectical Anthropology classical economic theory and its central tenet of uni-28, in press). The present paper was submitted 11 viii 97 and versal, utility-maximizing, freestanding human agents.accepted 26 viii 97; the final version reached the Editor’s

We have claimed, with Karl Polanyi, that ‘‘the humanoffice 2 x 97.economy is embedded and enmeshed in institutions,

economic and noneconomic’’ (1992:34). Many of usmay not have realized, however, that we have been do-ing little more than bouncing off the inside of the ironcage of the selfsame economic philosophy we contestedor its Genetic predecessor, the Christian cosmology ofexistential suffering. Sahlins does much worse than

1. I thank Ingrid Jordt for her substantial contribution to the theo- drive another nail into that most infamous of all strawretical formulation of the ideas presented in this essay. Thanks are men, Homo Oeconomicus. The founding father of eco-also due Isaac Cheifetz, who provided key corporate executive con-

nomic anthropology, Malinowski himself, along withtacts and many hours of humorous and insightful observation into

Radcliffe-Brown, Freud, Durkheim, Foucault, Elias, andtheir world. The comments of Nurit Bird-David, the editor, and ref-erees at CA also helped improve the final version. by extension or implication many others, is here ex-

323

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324 c u r r e n t a n t h r o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 3, June 1998

posed by Sahlins to have been an unwitting accomplice inforcement of the liberal-bourgeois ideology that Sah-lins examines.to the perpetuation of a depressive social philosophy

which counterposed an implicit theory of ‘‘inner de- Second, I analyze the goals and practices of marketingin a holistic manner not unlike that of critical neomarx-sires’’ with an ‘‘oppressive sentiment of society as a sys-

tem of power and constraint’’ (Sahlins 1996:404). ist writers such as Baudrillard and Lefebvre, whoseworks I review specifically. In partial agreement withSahlins is revisiting an old demon: liberal-bourgeois

ideology (see Sahlins 1972, 1976, 1993, 1994), the cul- these writers, I claim that the behavior of consumers

cannot be fully conceived without taking into consider-tural economic edifice in which is housed the theory ofneeds. For Sahlins, perhaps, the spirit of this ideology, ation the agency of marketers. However, I do not pro-

pose yet another conspiracy theory of marketing capi- la pense e bourgeoise (1976), has now finally been sub-dued. For the rest of anthropology, Sahlins’s (and talism in which consumers are passive victims of the

commercial messages of advertisers and other productMintz’s [1985] and a few others’) recent studies of capi-talism at its cosmological and geographical core denote promoters. I also reject the fashionable hegemony the-

ory, consecrated to Gramsci, in which ‘‘the [capitalist]just a beginning. The liberal-bourgeois ideology thatSahlins penetrates, child of Adam Smith, grandchild of control of ideas in the interests of consumerism is al-

most total’’ (Sklair 1991:82). I conclude that the way inSt. Augustine, is all-encompassing historically, cultur-ally, and institutionally. Its deep sedimentation will yet which marketers change the conditions of consumer re-

ality is mainly by intensifying, rationalizing, and uni-be detected in a whole range of classificatory structures(‘‘cultural categories’’), praxiological schemes, and mo- versalizing existing tendencies, not by altering either

extant cultural categories or the core cosmology of capi-tivational schemas.Liberal-bourgeois economics is embodied in a totaliz- talism, to which marketing itself perforce conforms.

Using an alternative idiom to the political one (whiching set of beliefs—is constituted through a discernibleconstellation of recurrent practical actions in everyday seems to generate hegemony theories) and paying meta-

phoric homage to the mythic root of Sahlins’s insight,life. In this paper I isolate one particular field of practi-cal action—contemporary marketing and consumer be- I propose that one might look upon big company mar-

keters as spiritual leaders, public myth tellers, andhavior—to show the ways in which the liberal-bour-geois theory of needs is embedded in economic praxis agents in the perpetuation of a faith in which needs and

salvation stand in a cosmic spatial-temporal duality thein the United States. What will emerge first from myanalysis is a profile of the implicitly held theory of pendular motion through which is held to describe the

life course of the person. Marketing is an instrument ofneeds underlying and informing market activities,which constitute and metaphorize a sizable (arguably popular interpretive schemes and even wishes; market-

ers are less drug pushers than community guides, lead-growing) portion of everyday private and social life inthe United States. Second, I hypothesize the process ers, and, for our purposes, bellwethers of popular cul-

ture.whereby professional marketers and consumers, viatheir practical disposition toward each other in the mu- In the third stage of my analysis I turn more directly

to consumer behaviors, considering these through thetually constituted cultural field of the ‘‘market,’’ helpperpetuate the Western cosmological duality of suffer- lens of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and in accordance

with his notion of habitus.3 Consumption behavior, I ar-ing and salvation.My investigation unfolds in four stages. First, I inte- gue, can be seen as a form of habituated, classifying

practice that reinforces, through objectification, not sograte an ethnographic analysis of marketing strategicpraxis into the frame of the implicit theory of needs much class relations, as Bourdieu claims, as the product

categories promoted by marketers as standing for cate-held in common by marketers and, apparently, consum-ers. My analysis emerges from a general description of gories of needs. The social order being reproduced is less

class structure than an order that signifies itself in prac-marketing and the so-called marketing concept—thecore term in marketing’s own theory—and from a diag- tical, rationalist terms as ‘‘the marketplace.’’ We, to

some extent along with Dilley and his contributorsnostic case study of a market research program for theintroduction of a newly branded household medicinal (1992), will regard the marketplace as a cultural phe-

nomenon, constructed, imagined, and ‘‘socially real-product in the United States.2 My case example willshow how marketers apply the liberal-bourgeois needs ized,’’ that is, as a medium that comes to stand for the

social reality—social structure in reserve, Dilley callstheory in their everyday work. It will show, as well, thatconsumers are not passive subjects of marketing activ- it. The cosmological ordering of the marketplace is the

liberal-bourgeois ideology of needs and the belief in theity, just as marketers do not stand outside the culturalsystem of the marketplace. Consumers and marketers capability of the market to satisfy those needs, princi-

pally by affording to its participants the freedom to ex-participate together in the cultural construction and re-

2. The data for this paper were culled from several sources. Inter- 3. In the conception of habitus, social life is seen as a mutuallyconstituting interaction of structures, dispositions, and actionsviews with 28 executives in 11 transnational corporations and 2

advertising agencies form the core data set. In addition to the for- ‘‘whereby social structures and embodied (therefore situated)knowledge of those structures produce enduring orientations to ac-mal interviews, I spent several months between 1992 and 1995 ob-

serving the product marketing process firsthand in two transna- tion which, in turn, are constitutive of social structures’’ (Postone,LiPuma, and Calhoun 1993:4; see Bourdieu 1984:170–71).tional corporations based in the United States.

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a p p l b a u m The Sweetness of Salvation 325

ercise choice in the selection of goods and services. Phe- it into a description of the cosmology of the West thatSahlins specifies.nomenologically, consumer strategies to satisfy needs

or the meaningful choices made to realize preferencesresult in the purportedly self-initiated construction ofindividual and social identity. Finally, in the fourth Marketingstage of my presentation, I reanalyze the suffering-and-salvation model (what social scientists since Marx have Marketing as an academic and professional discipline is

a direct elaboration of liberal-bourgeois economic phi-referred to as alienation and dealienation) in referenceto marketing and consumer behaviors. I point to the losophy. It is, in historical fact, an outgrowth of neo-

classical economics.5 Marketing’s theory of needs andspecial meaning that consumption practices afford theiradherents and proponents in terms of a native theory of, the spheres of its application, however, are largely dis-

tinct from economics. My initial, and ultimate, ques-or belief in, transcendence and radical individualism. Itis through radical individualism, achieved through ful- tion is: What sociocultural processes are engendered

through the institutionalization of liberal-bourgeoisfilling ‘‘inner desires,’’ that the ‘‘oppressive sentimentof society as a system of power and constraint’’ (Sahlins economics in this form?

Marketing, like ‘‘the market,’’ is a cultural vortex1996:404) is transcended and ‘‘salvation’’ attained.One caveat: I will be proposing a model in which pro- that refracts social and individual experiences in many

pragmatic domains in modern society. Marketers andfessional marketers’ system of production of knowledgefor their own purposes resonates with the cultural- consumers are partners in the marketing process; it is

a mutually constituted and intelligible relationship. Asintellectual system that Sahlins identifies and criticizesin our own social science. The marketer is one of ‘‘us’’ Dilley has observed, ‘‘the market as such can only have

an effect if those we are describing also share in [its cul-not only in proximate social position but in the sharingof many of the assumptions and tools that we as social tural] conception; that is, if it is part of their body of

knowledge which forms the grounds for their social ac-scientists routinely employ. Marketers’ theory of needsbears a resemblance to our own. This should come as no tion’’ (1992:14). This point seems to have been often

misunderstood. Many have neglected to recognize thatsurprise, since it is ‘‘we’’ who teach ‘‘them’’ in businessschools to conduct behavioral research and to apply marketers cannot themselves be outside ‘‘the sys-

tem’’—‘‘disembodied agents,’’ in Dilley’s expressiontheir findings to our common world.4 Furthermore, wehave not entirely segregated ourselves in our capacity (1992:11). Marketers participate in the social construc-

tion of the market and in discourses about the natureas social scientists from our predicament as consumersin the joint marketer-consumer complex I describe. By of exchange, consumption, and, we shall see, human

misery and the effort to escape it.showing that the Western scheme of needs precedes andunderwrites our quotidian as well as our intellectualconstructions of the world, Sahlins has first sealed the

managerial phenomenology,Platonic escape hatch that implicitly privileged us as

or marketers’ theorysocial scientists to stand apart from the peoples westudy. Sahlins’s meta-anthropology of the Western cos- What is marketing? In the native vernacular, I specify

two rather official definitions: ‘‘Marketing is a socialmology thus reopens the possibility of a more objectivesocial science. and managerial process by which individuals and

groups obtain what they need and want through creat-The concept of cosmology, defined afresh in recentwork by Sahlins (1994) and Tambiah (1984, 1985), is key ing, offering, and exchanging products of value with

others’’ (Kotler 1991:4). And ‘‘Marketing is the processto achieving this new level of analysis. As these writersuse it, the term ‘‘cosmology’’ appears a more flexible of planning and implementing the conception, pricing,

promotion, and distribution of products6 to satisfy indi-and inclusive substitute for culture, indicating a totaliz-ing framework in which culture is given historical and vidual and organizational objectives’’ (Atac 1985:2).

Foreshadowing the analysis to follow, I add my own an-manipulable dimensions while retaining both its to-talizing quality and its subjective interpretability alytical characterization: Marketing is the commoditi-

zation and signification for purposes of commoditiza-through ‘‘key symbols.’’ Cosmology therefore providesthe anthropologist with an additional tool with which tion of ideas, people, experiences, and things.

It is of paramount importance to recognize that mar-to make the second, critical break with the objectivistand phenomenological standpoints that accept prac- keting works through more than just advertising mes-tices ‘‘as a fait accompli, instead of constructing theirgenerative principle’’ (Bourdieu 1977:3). I aim to decon-

5. A compendious history of early marketing has not yet been com-struct one aspect of the Western bourgeois cosmology, piled. It is common understanding that marketing was founded aswith the help of practice theory, in order to reaggregate a branch of applied economics in the 1930s and 1940s. The contri-

butions of economists such as John Hicks (1962) to an economictheory of consumer wants are revealing of the superimposition ofneoclassical economic theory upon marketing. For some materials4. Sahlins recognized this parallel in 1976: ‘‘Utilitarianism . . . is

the way the Western economy, indeed the entire society, is experi- concerning the growth of marketing ideas, see Bartels (1976) andHollander and Rassuli (1993).enced: the way it is lived by the participating subject, thought by

the economist’’ (p. 167). 6. Including goods, services, and ideas.

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sages. Marketing’s role encompasses management of barreled messages of personal fatigue and social anxietydue to material deficits. Marketers so proceed becausethe entire circulatory path from market research to

product creation to distribution channel selection and they believe this approach to be an effective means tothe pursuit of profits; that is, they do not themselvesmanagement to pricing to advertising generation to me-

dia planning to point-of-sale promotion to merchandis- question the paradigm of needs but pragmatically stra-tegize within it. Marketing’s messages are crafted withing to setting the terms of exchange to administering

sales and after-sales service and sometimes to supervis- the purpose of exciting in the consumer an implicit or

explicit intuition of real or imagined (at any rate, cultur-ing the discarding of the object (trade-ins, for example),repurchase stimulation, and more. Kim Sawchuck pith- ally experienced) deprivations and social alienation.

Central to the marketers’ implicit theory of needs is theily observes the contrast: marketing is about circula-tion; advertising is about representation (1994:95). ‘‘marketing concept.’’ The marketing concept has be-

come a central byword for social action among businessBy marketing’s own lights, there exists a continuumor, perhaps better put, a simultaneity between produc- people since the 1950s. It has come to be (to use Zukin

and DiMaggio’s [1990] suggestive term) ‘‘cognitivelytion, marketing, and consumption. This is partly sup-ported by the sharing of the transactional space by mar- embedded’’ in manager’s minds. From the outset it was

not an analytical concept but a normative one; itketers and consumers; marketers and consumers‘‘meet’’ and respond to each other in the context of the was invented to solve a problem rather than to identify

one.‘‘marketplace.’’7 This transaction implies some mea-sure of fit between marketer and consumer views of the The problem the marketing concept was devised to

solve is, again, human appetite—the chimerical predic-market, its structure, operation, and the nature of thetransactions within it. Furthermore, there is an overlap ament of effectively boundless needs and wants. Ac-

cording to the theory of practice of marketers, the solu-in personnel; marketers are themselves consumers andsometimes vice versa. tion to acquisitiveness lies in an alignment of wants, in

quality and quantity, with supply. However, marketersMarketers see their functional partnership with theirconsumers thus: Marketing consists of a set of func- reason, consumers are often incapable of finding this

equilibration. ‘‘Customers don’t always recognize theirtions each of which is specified by a certain flow orchannel—physical flows, financial flows, promotional needs, can’t verbalize their needs, [but] can articulate

needs only in terms of the familiar,’’ claim two market-flows, informational flows, risk flows, and so on. Eachparticipant in the marketing process performs one or ing professionals (McGee and Spiro 1988:43). The

consumer-marketer seeks out an emotional impetus be-several of the functions, and the functions can beshifted among the ‘‘channel members’’ although they hind the material craving, coding it for himself as an

emotional need—status, approval, novelty, vitality,cannot ordinarily be reduced. Consumers are participat-ing members of the marketing channel, since they may embarrassment avoidance, and so on—rather than a

material one. The types and levels of researches anddecide to perform some of the marketing functionsthemselves. For example, a consumer may choose to practical actions in the marketer’s consumer-behavior

manual are legion, as they vary in accordance with thedrive a long distance to a wholesaler’s warehouse,where he may be permitted to buy the product in bulk. type of purported need, the media available for con-

tacting the consumer, and the marketing agents in-Systemically, the costs (also, ‘‘functions’’) of transporta-tion to retailers, of breaking bulk at the retail level, and volved (who again vary by industry, company size, role

in the process, and geographical location). But the singleeven of in-store promotions may be avoided in this ar-rangement and hence the consumer can buy the product philosophy of action and native theory of practice pre-

vails: consumer satisfaction can be attained if the mar-at a lower price. The consumer’s costs are his time, gas-oline, storage space, and trouble.8 All this is to say that, keter locates and then addresses the specific emotional

need behind the purported generalized craving.from the marketer’s point of view, the consumer is apartner in the marketing effort. The marketing concept has as its complementary

function service to the corporation. Hence marketers’official definition of the marketing concept has two

marketers’ implicit social sciencecomponents: (1) ‘‘the external consumer orientation . . .as contrasted to internal preoccupation and orientationIn slightly more detached terms but not yet from the

etic vantage point, marketing is a proposed practical so- around the production function’’ (Konopa and Calabro1971:9) (indeed, a focus on the consumer’s ‘‘needs’’lution to what marketers trust in as the problem of in-

satiable needs. Marketers and advertisers project and re- rather than one’s own inclination or convenience as aproducer is at the core of the marketing concept) andflect back to the consumer discontent with the status

quo. This is most often conveyed through the double- (2) ‘‘a corporate state of mind that insists on the integra-tion and coordination of all the marketing functions’’(Felton 1959:55). These characteristics of the marketing

7. I will not maintain the distinction, spoken of since Bohannan concept—the jointly pragmatic foci on both the firmand Dalton (1965), between the market, the marketplace, and the

and the consumer—in conjunction with the impliedmarket principle.

ethical responsibility of the marketing organization to8. See Stern and El-Ansary (1988) for a detailed explanation of thislogic. solve the problem of needs amount to an encompassing

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statement about the perceived interdependence of mar- the role and logic of market researchketer and consumer and about the centrality of market-

The aim of marketing research is to forecast sales anding to the firm.9

determine, in the words of one executive, ‘‘what theconsumer wants and how he wants it.’’ More techni-cally, research tells the marketer how best to appeal tothe largest number of customers through the toolsAn Ethnographic Diagnostic Event:available: the marketing mix.10 Contrary to a common-

A Qualitative Consumer Research Session sense understanding of the marketing process, however,research is not outside or preliminary to marketing butThe following ‘‘event’’ was chosen for its neat demon-part of it, on levels of both progressive, normative man-stration of everyday marketing theory and practice. It isagerial science and our analysis of marketers’ theory—also a mutually constituted event between a group ofour ‘‘theory of the theory’’ (see Bourdieu 1977:3).marketing managers and a handful of ordinary (from the

The propositions of marketing research are not as-marketers’ standpoint, the more ‘‘ordinary’’ the better)sessments based upon pure exploration but narrow slotsconsumers. It therefore serves as a ‘‘diagnostic event’’into which only data in the shape of coins can fit. The(Moore 1987) for our investigation. I preface my presen-role of research is a justification and instrument fortation of the event with a brief description and explica-practical action, that of transmuting needs and wantstion of marketing research.into commodity sales. The marketer’s claim for re-search is that it is a tool for servicing consumer demandin a primary fashion: through it producers learn what9. The marketing concept has been described as follows: ‘‘In its

fullest sense, the marketing concept is a philosophy of businessproducts the consumer needs or desires. The official or-which states that the customer’s want satisfaction is the economic der of things, then, is that the consumer gives the mar-

and social justification of a company’s existence. Consequently, all keter a wish list, and the marketer produces the re-company activities in production, engineering, and finance, as well

quested product. In fact, something quite differentas in marketing, must be devoted first to determining what the cus-occurs. The company’s raison d’etre is to produce goodstomer’s wants are and then to satisfying those wants while still

making a reasonable profit’’ (Wilmhurst 1978:2). This definition of a given sort. It is a forgone conclusion that the com-advances us two understandings. First, it points to a ‘‘philosophy pany will do so, else it ceases to exist. The questionof business,’’ to use Wilmhurst’s term, in which consumer and firm

then becomes what will be produced. It is at this stagegoals are of necessity isomorphic and never contradict each other.

that market research is applied. Once this sequence is(Conveniently, both operators are seen as maximizers, so the be-havioral dimension is always analytically accounted for.) The sec- apprehended, research can no longer be seen as separateond understanding is that marketing is the primary function of the from the rest of marketing activities. The question offirm. Though the firm has various limbs and organs other than whether there are needs or wants that can be answeredmarketing (production, finance, etc.), marketing is—or should be—

by the product specialty of a company also is no longerthe ego, das Ich, of the firm.moot; as a matter of fixed procedure these are assumed.There are several pragmatic reasons that marketing has become

central to the current business enterprise. First, successful compe-The marketers interviewed for this study were them-tition in the marketplace is somewhat less dependent at present selves not cognizant of this logical bind. Instead, they

than in the past upon intraorganizational competencies such asare inheritors of, and contributors to, a mystificatory

managerial efficiency, financing, and human resource manage-scheme in which products can truly come into exis-ment. Large organizations increasingly enjoy comparable access to

each of these competencies. Access to technology and therefore tence as a result of needs and desires, and they seemarket leadership through product modernization is also nearly themselves as ‘‘enablers’’ or ‘‘facilitators’’ in this pro-equivalent in some industries (e.g., automobiles, house and per- cess. It is opportune here to point out that marketingsonal care products, clothing). What has come to differentiate one

has taken a giant step beyond the economist’s method-company’s chances for competitive success over others is thereforeological fetishism11—that the needs of consumers arecompetency in externally oriented activities, most notably market-

ing innovation. ‘‘revealed’’ by their market behavior (Hicks 1962:256).Second, from a managerial standpoint, the increased importance The marketer has it that—and here a quote from a mar-

of marketing results from pressures on the firm to expand its mar-keter of educational baby toys— ‘‘Product categories arekets due to the shift in the cost structure of the modern corporateneeds.’’12

enterprise. The management consultant Ken’ichi Ohmae explains:‘‘In a variable-cost environment, the primary focus for managers ison boosting profits by reducing the cost of materials, wages, and 10. ‘‘The marketing mix is the combination of activities involving

product, price, place, and promotion that a firm undertakes in orderlabor hours. In a fixed-cost environment, the focus switches tomaximizing marginal contribution to fixed costs—that is, boosting to provide satisfaction to consumers in a given market’’ (Hiam and

Schewe 1992:434).sales. This new logic forces managers to amortize their fixed costsover a much larger market base’’ (1990:7). Factors raising the ratio 11. This is Arjun Appadurai’s expression (1986).

12. See also Friedman (1994:5), who points out: ‘‘Utility theoriesof fixed to variable costs include automation, the high costs of re-search and development, and the growing costs associated with es- of demand . . . have tended to tautology: people buy what they

want, and since producers by and large produce what is demanded,tablishing a brand name in the context of excessive advertisingclutter. Marketing’s all-encompassing task is to boost sales, long- consumption is an asymptotic function of production. At the same

time, the source of demand is entirely within the individual subjectand short-term. For these reasons the management theorist PeterDrucker declares: ‘‘Marketing is so basic it cannot be considered a and is unaffected by the social and cultural context. This implies

that curious methodological individualist determinism wherebyseparate function. It is the whole business seen from the point ofview of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view’’ consumption is reduced to a reflex of supply (or vice versa) all of

which is part of the overall rationality of the market economy, at(quoted in Kotler 1991:1).

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Marketing research is a translation device that simul- is in fact a methodical extraction of symbolic associa-tions from consumers in the service of giving marketerstaneously transmutes consumers’ symbolic perceptions

of the material world in particular and of cultural life the tools to affix the most profitable (i.e., appropriate forthe largest segment of consumers) sign values to theirin general into order forms for specific products. The

cultural logic of this can be found in the insights of products. Interviewees, however, are far from passive inthis extraction.Adorno, Baudrillard, and others: in modern capitalist

consumer society the use-value of goods is subsumed The example described is the focus-group interview

for a household medicinal product intended for the U.S.by a symbolic or ersatz use-value in which commoditiesassume purely cultural images and associations rather market. The substance was familiar to many or most

U.S. householders already.14 A senior marketing man-than functional ones (see Featherstone 1991:chap. 2).Consumers, in this view, purchase not commodities ager at NM Corporation, an $8 billion household and

personal care products manufacturer, wrote a market-but commodity-signs. Marketers are thereby enabled to‘‘attach images of romance, exotica, desire, beauty, ful- ing proposal in which he eagerly pointed out that no one

had yet branded this familiar substance. (Imagine that,fillment, communality, scientific progress, and thegood life to mundane consumer good such as soap, just as aspertame was branded under the name Nutra-

sweet, a familiar substance such as aloe vera or witchwashing machines, motor cars, and alcoholic drinks’’(Featherstone 1991:14). Hence, marketing researchers hazel could likewise be ascribed a brand name and mar-

keted to the benefit of a single manufacturer.) If NMcan be seen as, first, translating consumer aspirations,fears, desires, and beliefs into tangible understandings Corporation, which manufactures similar household

medicinal products, were to extend the brand namefor marketers (e.g., ‘‘research shows that 60% of Ameri-cans believe that people with yellow teeth tend to have from its other leading products to this one, he reasoned,

it could capture the market for this product. The pro-bad breath’’); marketers can then transform these un-derstandings into commoditized, salable form (e.g., ‘‘a posal was endorsed by the executive vice president of

the company, and a research program was initiated. Thetoothpaste that both whitens teeth and freshensbreath’’). Scrutiny of the research process illustrates the research initially consisted of a limited test marketing

of the product. The focus-group interview was a follow-transformative rather than exploratory nature of theproject13 and hence its appropriateness as a diagnostic up step.

The subject group consists of 12 women. The selec-for the practice theory I wish to illuminate.tion of women for the panel, I am told, is based on re-search saying that ‘‘housewives,’’ aged 29–49, are the

the focus groupmain purchasers of ‘‘these types of products.’’ Thewomen enter the interview room and sit at a largeThe most intimate and culture-evidencing of market re-

search techniques is the focus-group interview. The round table. NM Corporation management, includingthe director of research and development and his assis-focus-group interview is commonly used as a first pro-

cedure in marketing research. In it a small group of per- tant, the product category manager and his assistant,

the brand manager, three product managers, four adver-sons (between 6 and 12, typically) spends a few hourswith an interviewer to discuss a product and its pro- tising agency representatives, two company research-

ers, and a legal adviser have flown in for the event. Asposed marketing. The results of this qualitative re-search will form the basis of the quantitative market the women in the room are being told, for legal pur-

poses, that the session is being recorded (‘‘I think theresurveys. Interviewers probe for the qualities that con-sumers associate with a particular product or with the is a microphone in the room somewhere—maybe it’s up

there?’’ the focus-group moderator says as she points toproduct category. Interviewees are also consulted con-cerning the proposed distribution, packaging, promo- the water sprinkler on the ceiling), the managers sit be-

hind a two-way mirror with a clear view of the meeting.tion, and advertising of the product.On the surface, the focus group is a forum in which Two video cameras record the discussion.

The discussion opens with questions regarding con-consumers tell manufacturers what qualities would bedesirable in the product offering. By understanding consumers’ usage habits with regard to products in this cat-

egory. Then awareness of the branded product (in thesumer needs and habits, marketers can design and sellappropriate products and distribute them in convenient center of the table) is inquired after. After some 15 min-

utes of this, the moderator turns to questions of currentlocations at an acceptable price. What will become clearis that the dialogue between consumers and marketers usage habits. How, where, why, when, and who pur-

chases the product? Where does this product fit in the‘‘product category,’’ that is, in relation to competing or

the same time that it is entirely a product of the sum of indepen-similar products? How is the product used, exactly?dent individual demand schedules.’’What ‘‘perceptions’’ or ‘‘imagery’’ do the consumers as-13. Here, as in most of this essay, I describe processes related to

what Shelby Hunt (1976) has categorized as the profit/micro/nor- sociate with the product?mative segment of marketing research and use. This approach mostclosely characterizes marketing practiced by for-profit corpora-tions. Nonprofit, nonnormative, and macroscopic orientations in 14. In accordance with agreements signed to this effect, the corpo-

rations and products on which I conducted research must remainmarketing employ similar logics and tools to those described here,but the goals and outcomes are quite different. anonymous.

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The format is natural conversation. As the two-hour cultural assumptions and even the goals of the twogroups are compatible.discussion proceeds—in front of and behind the mir-

ror—it becomes apparent that the reification of com- The moderator seeks to elicit what will make thisproduct and its marketing more efficacious ‘‘in the con-modity-signs and mental imaging of the shopping expe-

rience is the central goal and enjoyment of the exercise sumer’s mind.’’ One woman says that if the smell werestronger she would think the product would performfor the participants. The moderator walks the partici-

pants through their ordinary purchase and usage habits, better; another says she wouldn’t buy it if the smell

were too strong, even if it did mean the product wasdiverting them occasionally with questions designed tobring to light more deeply embedded associations. The more effective. Another suggests that the product be

clear instead of white. Yet another suggests that shediscussion does not veer from the product itself, yet atthe end of two hours the conversation is still lively. The would think the product would last longer if it were

more viscous. In the meantime, behind the mirror, therespondents are talking about themselves through themedium of the product. Even for a product such as this marketers pounce on every suggestion; if follow-up

quantitative research proved it to be a popular ‘‘need,’’one, with ‘‘low consumer involvement’’ (as comparedwith, say, perfumes or automobiles, which are said to would it be feasible in financial, technical, produc-

tional, and legal terms? The relationship between re-have high involvements), the consumers are at no lossin exploring and then elaborating upon their feelings. spondent suggestions on the question of efficacy and

the actual efficacy of the product is ignored, exceptThe atmosphere in the room at times resembles grouptherapy (a feeling that the moderator says she wishes to when the research-and-development manager notes in

jest that some of the suggestions might actually makeenhance), and the result of the dialogue is a verbaliza-tion of shopping and product usage habits: the product more expensive but less effective, from his

point of view. All the suggestions will make the productI hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess I would more expensive, since its current formulation will havetend not to buy this sort of product in a supermar- to be changed. One must give consumers what they askket. If I saw it in a supermarket, maybe I’d think it for, not what works best or costs least: a seal of ap-wasn’t safe. Maybe it’s not always true, but I think proval, a dummy ingredient, an 800 number, even aa pharmacy pays closer attention to what they sell. higher price tag. ‘‘The consumers,’’ one of the advertis-

ing executives shrewdly observes to me, ‘‘often out-smart themselves.’’

I don’t like having sticky substances on my skin. ItThe interview proceeds through the questions of

makes me feel sweaty and uncomfortable. And youpackaging design, distribution outlets, advertisements,

always worry the odor won’t come out of yourand price. One of the partially produced advertisements

clothes. I’d almost rather put up with [the problem]is shown on a TV set, and some more possibilities are

than be sticky all over.shown in story-board format. The respondents aretested for their recall of the main points in the adver-

tisement. Among themselves, the marketers wonderWhen it comes to things like medicines and chemi-aloud whether a reigning theory in the academic fieldcals, except for cleaning materials, my husband usu-of ‘‘consumer psychology’’—that mentioning the brandally does the shopping. Or at least he tends to takename twice yields maximum results—is working ina closer look and see at what I buy. If I broughtthis case. The advertising is discussed for 20 minutes. Inhome something like [this product] without con-conclusion, the interviewees are asked again what thesulting with him, he might raise his eyebrows andproduct and its various components mean to them. Theask . . . you know. . . [laughter], like could I readconsumers, like their marketers, believe in progress.the ingredients to know whether or not it was safe,The familiar brand logo on the product implies that theto apply on the kids and all. But with [NM Corpora-product has been improved in the laboratory (the pro-tion brand] on the package, he wouldn’t think thereposed advertisement makes this claim explicitly). Ref-was anything suspicious or dangerous about theerence on the package to the absence of ‘‘chemicals’’product.and ‘‘toxins,’’ mythical demons in the American popu-lar health culture-scape, inspires confidence. The mainSometimes the interviewees adopt a sympathetic,

participatory voice with regard to the company: ‘‘If I advertising tag lines, subject to approval from the legaldepartment, will be effectiveness and safety, along withwere [NM Corporation], I’d try and sell it in do-it-

yourself-like stores, where you can buy gardening mate- the claim that neither of these can be ensured by pur-chasing the nonbranded product.rials, insect repellent, stuff like that.’’ Or even ‘‘I don’t

want to be the one to put the idea in their head, but I The purpose of research, according to one of the man-agers, is tothink they can charge much more for the product than

that. I know I’d pay more for it.’’ Such comments illus-trate the interviewees’ at least partial understanding of identify needs. Consumers have a set of needs that

they cannot clearly articulate. Our job is to findand participation in marketing logic. The two-way mir-ror, employed for ‘‘scientific purposes,’’ exaggerates dif- those needs and then change the way that they per-

ceive [our] products to be delivering against thoseferences between the two groups. In many respects the

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needs. We can’t change the consumers’ needs base. tural diffusion, of the cultural status quo.15 But it is not,principally, the stability of cultural subcategories thatBut we change their perceptions. . . . At least we are

able to enhance the importance of some needs over interests me here. Rather, it is that the cosmologi-cal status quo is being reinforced via the consumer-others in the eyes of the consumer and therefore

communicate a benefit about what our product de- marketer interaction complex. The consumer-marketerengagement described here and in general is underwrit-livers that another doesn’t.ten by the purposeful joint search for specific iterations

of purportedly generalized needs and the trust that freeIn the process of identifying the needs that consumerscannot articulate, the market researchers take the first choice among an endless array of product offerings (the

‘‘market’’) is an antidote to the situation of needs.step toward linking their commodity to a limited set ina larger array of possible sign values that the product The application of the needs and preferences theory of

marketers is predicated upon the manipulation of whatcan be made to stand for. The sign value of the productis variable within this range. It will be determined dif- Adorno and others have called commodity-signs. The

notion of the commodity-sign is central to any theoryferently depending on how the potentially most profit-able segment would like to (or is likely to) invest it with of marketing and consumer culture. It is so not only for

the reasons Douglas and Isherwood first specifiedmeaning.The conversion of commodities into commodity-sign (1979)—that objects are meaningful along the dimen-

sion of collective and not merely individual consump-values and back again into commodities during thecourse of the focus-group interview depends upon the tion and in their relations to other objects within a field

of signifiers. These characterizations are true for objectssharing of a sign-value system by marketers and con-sumers. Once the ‘‘code’’ is iterated, marketers can add (material culture) in any society. The relevance of

commodity-signs is especially pronounced in capitalistnew commodities to their existing ‘‘stables’’ by recy-cling commodity signs. I have said that marketing is the society, however, because of the active application of

a rationalized technique, marketing, in the strategiccommoditization and signification for purposes of com-moditization of ideas, people, experiences, and things. production and dissemination of commodity-signs.

Marketers assign signs to their products for the purposeOne might refine this by adding that one way in whichmarketers commoditize is by labeling or branding. La- of making them commodities. Commodity-signs en-

hance the communicability or ‘‘currency’’ of objectsbeling connotes identifying, naming, describing, classi-fying, notifying, or designating. Thus labeling may si- across populations.multaneously be a scientific, an appropriating, and acommunicative act. In fact, marketers seek to be associ-ated with all three of these: to be the discoverers and Marketing, Power, and the Structure ofintellectual codifiers of a product experience (hence the Modern Consciousnessrights to patent and to ‘‘educate’’ the public), to appro-priate the object from its noncommoditized state and Two reigning social theoretics concerning the mar-

bring it into the commodity state (cf. Appadurai 1986), keter-consumer interaction are here criticized en routeand to carry, through brand ascription of the product, a to proposing a unified field theory of marketing andfurther message about the company behind the product consumer praxes. The first theoretic, which I selec-(‘‘brought to you by the makers of . . .’’). The process of tively represent with a brief description of the work oflabeling is demonstrated nicely by our example of the Lucien Lefebvre and Jean Baudrillard, is the neomarxisthousehold medicinal product. The company that la- critique of consumer culture. In broad terms, thesebeled it with its brand name could claim to have scien- writers denounced the ‘‘culture industry,’’ of which thetifically improved the product, brought it to a height- most instrumental actors were held to be advertisers.ened commodity state, and communicated additional Advertisers, they said, defused critical awareness of thequalities about the product and the company that did capitalist colonization of consciousness through thenot previously exist in the consumer’s mind. purposeful manipulation of commodity-signs. This crit-

Through this description of marketing and re- ical tradition of thought has given rise to something ofcounting of part of the process by which a new product a culture industry in its own image, whose objective hasis brought to market, I have attempted to convey a been to ask such apparently rhetorical (for chronic want

sense of the character of one instance of the marketer-consumer interface. In this case, marketers aimed to re-

15. I emphasize here that this conclusion is based upon my ownflect back to consumers what they asked for, evenempirical findings rather than a general outlook on marketing andthough this was not necessarily in the consumers’ bestcultural change. As Friedman (1994:7), citing Campbell, compel-

interest. In general, individual companies strive to iden- lingly argues: ‘‘The dynamics of distinctions in capitalism does nottify and deepen existing demand—if defined by the mar- conform to a static classificatory scheme.’’ This point is one di-

rectly verifiable in the process of international marketing, in whichketer according to abstracted signs and not explicit evi-foreign cultural categories are imported, on the wings of powereddences—rather than attempting to alter the underlyingexchange relations and through the introduction of new technolo-

cultural categories that canalize demand. The interac-gies of exchange (Kopytoff’s [1986] term), into local cultural cir-

tion between marketers and consumers described here, cumstances. I deal with this question in a work in progress on thesubject of transnational trade and sociocultural change.at least, illustrates the reiteration, through material cul-

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of an empirical basis) questions as whether the highly works of objects, ascends from pure and simpleabundance to a complete conditioning of action andrationalized organization of marketing implies a direct

consequence for consumers (as Lefebvre argues) or (as time, and finally to the systematic organization ofambiance, which is characteristic of the drugstores,Daniel Miller, an opponent of the neomarxists, implies

[1987, 1995a]) whether the structure and agency of mar- the shopping malls, or the modern airports in our fu-turistic cities.keters are more or less subordinate to the agency, con-

sciousness, or culture of consumers. If the specific link

For Baudrillard, the systems of needs and productionbetween marketing activity and consumer conscious- operate and converge not merely on a tangible, inter-ness is deterministic, what is the link between eco-actional plane. There is instead a system of mutuallynomic structures and cultural practices in general?intelligible signifiers that have come, through propaga-Does the sign saturation of consciousness (Baudrillard’stion by advertisers and other media manipulators, toconcept) lead to a prefiguring of social and cultural cate-saturate consciousness in the modern industrializedgories according to a ‘‘calculus’’ of commodity catego-world.ries?

The second major theorist of marketer-consumer in-Lefebvre and Baudrillard share a focus on consump-teraction I wish to involve is Pierre Bourdieu. In Dis-tion as the central distinguishing feature of modern life.tinction, Bourdieu attempts to explain, among otherIn Lefebvre’s (1984) view, corporations, in collusionthings, the apparent homology that exists between sup-with the state, conspire to persuade people to purchaseply and demand in the realm of goods. Recalling Bau-the excess fruits of productivity of industry. (This hasdrillard’s terms ‘‘system of needs’’ and ‘‘system of pro-elsewhere been called ‘‘the production of consump-duction,’’ Bourdieu speaks of the fields of productiontion.’’) Only by way of this collusion can the capitalist

and consumption. However, he does not resort to thesystem, with its demonstrable forms of social hierarchy mechanistic determinism implied by Baudrillard andand domination, be perpetuated. The multibillion-dol-other neomarxists. For Bourdieu, tastes are neither pro-lar ‘‘motivation industry’’—advertising—induces in usduced en masse by advertisers nor a creative contriv-a consumer orientation, capitalizing upon our need toance of consumers. Instead, he speaks of an ‘‘objectiverepossess those feelings of human attachment that haveorchestration of [the] two relatively independent logics’’been alienated from us in the context of the modern(1984:230). In other words, producers operate withinworkplace: love, fulfillment, security, and a sense oftheir own subjective field of activity, namely, ‘‘compe-identity. Lefebvre further depicts a scenario of bureau-tition with other products and the specific interestscratization and rationalization of everyday-life pro-linked to position in the field of production’’ (1984:231),cesses, especially consumption. His memorable expres-while consumers operate within their field, which ission ‘‘the society of bureaucratically controlledthe field of socially conditioned tastes, according to theconsumption’’ conveys the sense in which ‘‘everydaylogic of class.16 Through the subtle mechanism of habi-life must shortly become the one perfect system ob-tus (for example, 1984:17–18), the independent strate-scured by the other systems that aim at systematizing

gizing of producers and consumers, respectively, yieldsthought and structuralizing action’’ (1984:72). or reproduces class relations.Baudrillard’s early emphasis on consumption bearsI aim to reemploy some of the descriptive and meth-some resemblance to Lefebvre’s, though by virtue of its

odological elements of each of these writers’ work ingreater sophistication it has proven more fruitful forgreater detail below, but here I wish to indicate my fun-later theorists. Baudrillard also speaks of the bureaucra-damental departure from all three. Principally, it is alltization and rationalization of promotional culturethese writers’ intention to reduce the system of ex-(1968, 1970, 1975). Dispelling simpler schemes of thechange between marketers and consumers to a powerproduction of consumption, however, he says, ‘‘Therelation. In Lefebvre’s conception marketers cunninglytruth is not that needs are the fruits of production, butalienate us from our means of production and from our-that the system of needs is the product of the systemselves; then they deign to sell back to us the hope ofof production, which is quite a different matter’’ (1995:dealienation or self-realization. Because this hope is201). Perhaps the kernel of Baudrillard’s early thoughtcommodified, mystified, and false, we are left worse offon consumption is evident in this passage (p. 195):than when we started. Baudrillard’s outlook resembles

We have reached the point where ‘‘consumption’’has grasped the whole of life; where all activities 16. It may be that Bourdieu’s attribution of ‘‘relatively independent

logics’’ to producers and consumers is more germane to the subjectare sequenced in the same combinatorial mode;of cultural goods, such as art works, than to mass-produced con-where the schedule of gratification is outlined in ad-sumer goods. Artists and their consumers may in some cases be

vance, one hour at a time; and where the ‘‘environ- quite disconnected one from the other; not so with consumerment’’ is complete, completely climatized, fur- goods, where consumer-marketer interactivity—as we have seen in

our event description—is pivotal. Nevertheless, the benefits ofnished, and culturalized. In the phenomenology ofconsidering the producer-consumer complex in terms of orchestra-consumption, the general climatization of life, oftion rather than manipulation are apparent in the cogency of Bour-

goods, objects, services, behaviors, and social rela-dieu’s interpretation. In criticism of Distinction, David Gartman

tions represents the perfected, ‘‘consummated,’’ (1991) has made a fascinating argument regarding the differencesbetween ‘‘mass material’’ and ‘‘class nonmaterial’’ culture.stage of evolution which, through articulated net-

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this, except that for him capitalist control is achieved Baudrillard) from the theories of these writers, which,stripped of their power orientation, remain quite usefulvia a sign saturation of consciousness, a semiological

domination. The conversion and exploitation of the to our project. In Baudrillard’s case, briefly, I refer to hisinsight of the sign saturation of consciousness and itssign for commercial purposes takes place, according to

Baudrillard, in a historical context of a sort of hyperreal- consequences for the personal identity of consumers.Baudrillard claims that needs have been mystified andity in which politics and economics cease to exist and

only simulations remain. However, the conspiratorial transformed into a totalizing, self-referential system of

commodity-signs in the capitalist system. Categories ofoutlook remains, including the familiar insinuationthat the media are the opiate of the masses. As did Le- objects have become fetishized into categories of per-

sons, ‘‘stereotyped personalities,’’ complete with a setfebvre and others in this tradition, Baudrillard sees themedia and marketing as autonomous spheres or agents of distinguishing values that constitute a ‘‘new founda-

tion of group morality’’ (1988:12). Given the nature ofof cultural production.Bourdieu, though he posits a subtle ‘‘orchestration’’ this fetishization, individuals have no choice but to

seek to ‘‘actualize themselves in consumption’’ (1988:of the goals of marketers and those of consumers ratherthan the pitting of one against the other, nevertheless 12). Baudrillard’s quotation of the following advertise-

ment demonstrates in a nutshell his wish to link theprivileges power relations as the ultimate generativeforce behind the structuring structures of social rela- notion of semiological domination to the perceived re-

ality of those living under that domination:tions. That is to say, he is interested, as are we, in dis-covering the generative principle in the re-creation or

To have found one’s personality, to know how to as-reiteration of the social order, but he does so chiefly ac-sert it, is to discover the pleasure of really being one-cording to the principles of power rather than those of

self. Sometimes a few things are enough to feel so. Imeaning. Class domination, symbolic violence, hege- have long looked for it, and I have realized that a lit-mony acting through culture, and the material basis oftle lightening in my hair would be sufficient to cre-cultural exchange can each be found behind and in theate a perfect harmony with my skin, my eyes. Ioutcome of Bourdieu’s social scheme. Hence Bourdieu,have found this blond color in the range of sham-like his predecessors and cohorts (and rivals) of thepoos of the brand Recital. With that blond colorFrankfurt and Situationist schools, assumes a prior po-from Recital, so natural, I have not changed: I amlitical dialectic to historical exchange relations, includ-myself, more than ever.ing, by inference, that of the marketer-consumer inter-

action. This is at the least somewhat implicative of the I return to elaborate upon this mechanism below. Atsocietal-oppression model that Sahlins exposes in his present, I turn to Bourdieu’s practice theory of the or-critique of the native anthropology of Western cos- chestration of the two fields of action of marketers andmology. consumers. My theory begins with Bourdieu’s notion of

I prefer to see the marketer-consumer relationship in practical mastery.the United States not as one constituted in a power

struggle, immediate or deferred, but as one of mutualintelligibility, even agreement. If one provisionally re- The Practical Mastery of Everyday Lifemoves the theory of the power dialectic between them,one is free to behold an exchange relationship in which As I have said, in Bourdieu’s theory the independentthe internal, meaning-centered goals of each ‘‘side’’ are strategizing of producers and consumers, respectively,pursued and in the final analysis the economic basis of yields not the market (as economic or cultural locus)their relationship reproduces a cultural meaning sys- but class relations. Bourdieu’s methodology, hinging astem. Power is thus not the main generative impetus it does on the mechanisms of habitus and practice, canbehind the re-creation of the capitalist cosmology; be refitted to illuminate the process of construction ofmeaning and the practices associated with economic more than just social positioning. The methodologicalexchange are. Marketers do constitute a semiautono- term I use is ‘‘practical mastery’’ of social situating (seemous institutional front for some purposes, but such in- Bourdieu 1984:466). In Distinction, the mechanism forstitutions have no authority over consumers. Marketers this social situating, as well as the tangible outcome ofand consumers participate together in the molding of the practical mastery, is taste. Taste is therefore a struc-

cultural consciousness. Theirs are simply different as- turing structure and a structured structure. In keepingpects of the production of the same cosmology. Imagin- with the notion of praxis, taste is more than merely aing such a world is not difficult for the anthropologist: conceptualization; it is a cultural construction that isa cultural economic rather than political economic realized through action.17

model of exchange has been, after all, the most preva-lent theoretical model for exchange in our disciplinary

17. Where Bourdieu is concerned, the action in question beginsken.with classifying, with making distinctions—‘‘the perception of theWhere Baudrillard and Bourdieu (especially) are con-social world implies an act of construction,’’ he says elsewhere

cerned, however, one is not to be too hasty in dispens-(1985:728). Cognitive engagement in practices is itself a structuring

ing with them. I would like to separate the methodolo- practice, since it subjectively reinforces for the actor the practicalclassification of objective social conditions.gies (in Bourdieu’s case) and key descriptive terms (for

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I wish to posit that consumption activity itself (by tivities are practice-oriented actions (i.e., repetitive andclassifying) which underlie the construction of selfwhich I mean not only buying and using goods and ser-

vices but also engagement with the media, such as read- identity. This construction of identity is realizedthrough subjective strategizing to satisfy particularing advertisements, watching television, etc.) involves,

like the exercise of taste, a set of classificatory construc- wants or the meaningful choice of how to satisfy needs.(This passage, incidentally, describes less the Christiantions. Consumption can in fact be thought of as both an

active concretization and, at times, a passive abstrac- who holds that life is suffering because of Original Sin

than the consumer who thinks that life is suffering be-tion of taste. Like taste, it is a form of perception andhence classification of the social world. The classifying cause many of his actions in a day and many of the mes-

sages he absorbs in a day reproduce and confirm thisagent, however, is not one whose ultimate positioningin the naturalized reality (its identity) is entirely in rela- notion for him.) This system of needs satisfaction

describes—or ‘‘mirrors,’’ in Baudrillard’s expression—tion to class. In the liberal-bourgeois culture we havebeen speaking of, at least one central aspect of the objec- the footprint, modus operandi, and opportunity struc-

ture of marketing. Marketing agency is about the ra-tive reality against which the classifying agent is ulti-mately identified is the market. Phenomenologically, tionalized effort marketers make to modify the cultural

question from ‘‘How are you trapped by your needs?’’this market-based identity resembles the distinction-seeking identity proposed by Bourdieu: it sees itself as or ‘‘How will you escape your needs?’’ to ‘‘Which need

is going to define you at this moment or in general?’’being in the pursuit of the satisfaction of particularizingwants. But the result of practical action is not distinc- Marketing is a practice which, orchestrated with the

practice of consumption, gives rise to a specific sort oftion that will ultimately result in the reproduction ofthe class structure. The sociocultural order being repro- modern identity: constructivist, attached to the idea of

free choice, based on style, particularistic, and ‘‘deterri-duced is the marketplace, as I have earlier spoken ofthis, along with its very tangible divisions of labor, in- torialized’’ in relation to ordinary concepts of social

space such as corporate groupings. Marketing, indeed,cluding, at its simplest, production, marketing, andconsumption. Further, as regards the individual con- contributes to the radical culture (or the cult) of identity

altogether. The combined engine of marketing and con-sumer, what Dilley said in jest—‘‘I shop therefore Iam’’—I wish to elevate here to the level of a theory of sumption behavior has changed the world we live in

from one filled with individuals, things, ideas, publicpractice in which the continual, repetitive engagementwith marketing media and purchasing- and consump- plazas, and communities to one of consumers, goods,

commodity-signs, private shopping malls, and imaginedtion-related behaviors conditions individuals to a par-ticular type of self-classification, self-definition, iden- communities.

The implications of this claim are serious. Let us ex-tity in relation to an objective social structure and to asubjective self. amine closely the mechanics of the practices I indicate

before proceeding further.‘‘Construction of identity’’ rather than ‘‘reconstruc-tion of class’’ means more than opening a wider field

of social positioning, this time privileged by a sense of kodak moments and the structuringvoluntarism instead of coercion. Rather, construction

of lived experienceof identity must be understood as having both subjec-tive and objective dimensions, the one, as it were, or- As a result of, and enabled by, technical and technologi-

cal upgrades, marketers expect and in an aggregatechestrated with and mutually constitutive of the other.As far as consumption-based construction of identity is sense manage to achieve the envelopment of consumers

with promotional messages. As far as is financially war-concerned, the subjective identity is that of the individ-ual in relation to itself, in opposition to the social world ranted, they want to induce all consumer movements,

contemplations, and activities to be in the pursuit ofrather than as part of it. The objective structures beingproduced by so many individual acts of consumption their product. They attempt to occupy as many mo-

ments as they can, filling consumers’ consciousnessare (a) individualism and (b) the liberal-bourgeois sys-tem, that which calls itself ‘‘the free market’’ or, sim- with the thought, touch, smell, image, taste, and experi-

ence of the branded product. To the extent that theyply, ‘‘the market.’’ Given that the market is, accordingto its many advocates’ apperception, founded most ex- succeed at this enterprise, and to the usually less-recog-

nized degree to which marketing’s modus operandi—plicitly upon ‘‘free choice,’’ the relationship to individu-alism is not difficult to trace. That the market has be- the marketing concept—has also been self-consciously

adopted by schools, hospitals, dairy boards, churches,come the central social structure and idiom ofAmerican society in particular is reflected by and, in and various branches of local and central government,18

not to mention politicians (see Westbrook 1983), theturn, results in the widespread individualism in thatsystem. generalized consciousness of need fulfillment through

some activity akin to shopping and product message ab-Let us begin with the familiar assumption that oneaspect of consumption behavior is the appropriation of sorption has been very much intensified. The number

of hours in one’s life that are devoted to these practicesthings, people, ideas, and experiences in the environ-ment for the purpose of constructing a personal and so-cial ‘‘self.’’ Shopping and other consumption-related ac- 18. See Kotler and Levy (1969) for an early discussion of this topic.

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(three full years of an American’s life are spent watch- spread translation of things, persons, experiences, andideas into commodity-signs and (2) the simple, repeti-ing television advertisements alone, it is said), amounts

to something so significant that the practice itself con- tive actions of consumers, the practical mastery in-volved in the perception of marketing messages and intributes, on the level of schema formation, much to

structuring identity. Once there is the sometime dispo- the procurement and use of commodities for the pur-pose of self-construction. Processes 1 and 2, though dis-sition to consider every source, to regard every moment

of engagement, as a potential for buying or consuming tinct, are, by logics I have employed thus far, sometimes

two sides of the same coin.something, then how consumers outwardly constructtheir individual and social space must also largely be as A separate accounting for 2 is also possible. I refer

again to practical mastery of consumer behavior (theconsumers—just as under other conditions of practicepeople define themselves as citizens, ethnic group continual, repetitive engagement with consumption) as

the key to its becoming accustomed, internalized, andmembers, working-class members, soldiers, or stu-dents. The role of consumer, however, because of the then meaningful. Sundry everyday activities, from

shampooing a rug to piano playing, that Bourdieu mightproliferation of commodity-signs and of the marketingidiom, with its twin ideologies of need satisfaction and view as fields of practice in the realm of taste-linked

classifying (the exercise of taste) can readily be trans-free choice, has to a large degree come to subsume anddefine expression for these other roles. In somewhat posed into or simply reiterated as fields of practice in

the realm of consumption-linked classifying (‘‘consum-more inflammatory terms, it can be raised as a subjectfor speculation whether these other roles are made real ing,’’ ‘‘identity making’’).19

only once consumption of some good or service makesit so.

the transposition to meaningfulnessOne rationale for what has been described as a panop-

tic-like tracking and accosting of consumers by market- The meaningfulness of consumer activity to its prac-titioners is crucial to our discussion, since only once iters arises from the widespread managerial conviction

that needs have a moving-target-like quality to them. has become meaningful can a practice be consideredculturally embedded. I have illustrated how this ideol-‘‘We are always looking for new ways to satisfy [our-

selves] . . . we are never quite happy with one thing. We ogy is firmly instituted in the practice of marketing. If,as I say, the native theory of needs that Sahlins writesget bored,’’ philosophized one marketing executive.

This Augustinian-cum-liberal-bourgeois-cum-market- of in historical, religious, and scientific domains is em-bedded in everyday economic praxis (i.e., marketing anding-concept philosophy that, as Baudelaire once put it,

life is like a hospital in which all the patients are trying consumption), then it remains to be demonstrated howconsumers are entangled in the self-evidence of theto change beds is one pretext for ‘‘bombard them every-

where, all the time’’ marketing plans (what some of needs philosophy, beyond the explicit fact that they par-ticipate in the mutually constituting play with market-their enthusiasts call ‘‘guerrilla marketing’’). Many con-

sumers may embrace rather than resist this logic. ‘‘If I ers. The key to this demonstration is meaningfulness:

how does consumer activity—be it piano playing, dogdon’t feel like buying one right now I don’t have to.That’s my choice. But I sure appreciate having the grooming, stamp collecting, magazine subscribing, res-choice available when I want it,’’ reasons the same ex-ecutive, now speaking as a consumer.

19. Consumption identity is analytically superior to taste situatingThere is a more immediate incentive for marketers

for our purposes. It allows us to disassociate ourselves from the spe-to besiege consumers with promotional messages. It is cific end point Bourdieu has prepared for us in relation to the exer-

cise of taste: a sense of one’s position in the social space (1984:466).assumed that the more consumers bear a product inConsumption behavior can result in distinction making that istheir minds, the more likely it is that they will selectmapped out in social space along dimensions other than high orit when faced with a selection in the store. Marketerslow, upper-class versus working-class. Consumption distinctions

thus seem to be competing for what I call ‘‘share of represent a finer tool than taste in the service of mapping the socialmind.’’ To win against competitors, the marketer must reality. Daniel Miller is sensitive to this possibility in his use of

the term ‘‘identity.’’ He says, ‘‘Bourdieu’s emphasis is on artefactsstrive to encircle the consumer as often and as strategi-as a consumer aid in the major struggle for social positioning, thiscally as possible with the product message. The tech-relational activity taking precedence as a practice over the abstrac-

niques are truly myriad—perhaps no less a tribute totion of class. . . . Social positioning is, however, only one element

human engineering and exertion than the great archi- in the construction of identity . . .’’ (1987:9). Even more to thepoint, Friedman says: ‘‘Consumption for the presentation of selftectural masterworks of old. Coca-Cola and McDon-has the self as a primary audience in modern times. The mirror isald’s surely must be counted among the seven wondersour own. In such an approach, distinctions are not just a way ofof the modern world. Beholding this massive barrage ofmarking a difference in relation to others, they are a way of experi-

communications all shouting ‘‘Buy me!’’ (though in fact encing their content as a subjective fantasy, a specific identity de-the message is ‘‘Choose me!’’), the critics have often fined as a world of goods’’ (1994:10). Use of the term ‘‘identity’’ for

that which is ‘‘constructed’’ through consumption is fortuitous asheld that a force capable of co-opting consciousness inwell because, as Friedman suggests, there is a strong individualistthis way must be organized, conniving, and hegemonic.dimension in the construction of identity that may be served or

I would cast this phenomenon in more moderatestrengthened via personal consumption (whereas taste, in the man-

terms, as a maneuvering of consciousness into con- ner Bourdieu uses it, is always collective in origin and conse-quence).sumer mode described by two processes: (1) the wide-

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taurant eating, car renting, or greeting-card browsing— a symbolic system whose key organizing principle isdistinction. He says, ‘‘The social space, and the differ-fit meaningfully into the social abstraction of the mar-

ket, the liberal-bourgeois ideology of needs, and the re- ences that ‘spontaneously’ emerge within it, tends tofunction symbolically as a space of life-styles or as alated social and cultural fixtures that have ultimately

derived from these? Phenomenologically, how does set of Stande, of groups characterized by different life-styles’’ (1985:730).

21consumer activity contribute to the construction ofself-perceived identity in the consumer? In Distinction (1984:173), Bourdieu elaborates:

Let us introduce the transposition to meaningfulness life-style [is] a unitary set of distinctive preferencesof consumer activity by way of an example. I have men-which express the same expressive intention in thetioned piano playing as a form of consumption. What isspecific logic of each of the symbolic sub-spaces, fur-it that makes the identity of the pianist a meaningfulniture, clothing, language or body hexis. Each di-one, one that is extended to situations beyond the hoursmension of life-style ‘‘symbolizes with’’ the others,spent sitting at the piano? There exist several drives toin Leibniz’s phrase, and symbolizes them. An oldmeaningfulness here. First, through one’s associationcabinetmaker’s world view, the way he manages hiswith the piano one can achieve distinction in the man-budget, his time or his body, his use of languagener Bourdieu suggests. Depending upon what sort ofand choice of clothing are fully present in his ethicmusic one chooses to specialize in, one may furtherof scrupulous, impeccable craftsmanship and in theclassify oneself in a particular social grouping, in theaesthetic of work for work’s sake which leads himsame way Bourdieu describes with regard to those whoto measure the beauty of his products by the carelisten to one sort of music rather than another (1984).and patience that have gone into them.Piano playing is therefore a form of consumption associ-

ated with specific purchases (the instrument, sheet mu- I mention Bourdieu’s use of the lifestyle concept be-sic, a metronome) and a performance of social and/or cause it is also a central preoccupation of marketers.artistic identity. Marketers, for their part, perceive pi- Marketers’ description of lifestyle is not altogether un-ano playing as an opportunity to market instruments like Bourdieu’s, if devoid of analytical content—whichand other accoutrements for the hobby. The consumer/ may point to a shortcoming of Bourdieu in failing to ac-pianist (compared, perhaps, with the simple pianist of count for the interference of marketing in his theory ofold) realizes a heightened identity through consump- distinction (see Gartman 1991). The marketer, althoughtion of these add-ons—since the piano playing is now to a much lesser degree, has learned about the cabinet-associated with a range of related-to-each-other and maker what Bourdieu has— his taste habits and patternsrelated-to-the-consumer goods.20 Finally, meaningful- of consumption. Special high-quality tools may be ‘‘tar-ness flows from the fact that the identity of the pianist get-marketed’’ to him, tools which ‘‘require’’ or ‘‘gois achieved, as opposed to ascribed, and is therefore held with’’ a certain kind of workbench, toolbox, or multi-to be meaningful relative to modernity’s most sacred pocketed work outfit on which tools and little parts cancategory: the individual. be conveniently hung.22 And in all this the cabinet-

I devote the balance of this paper to an elaboration maker is a difficult example—perhaps especiallyand situating of three sources of meaning mentioned chosen by Bourdieu to evoke the image of the mostheretofore in connection with other things: distinction ‘‘natural’’ type of taste-bearer, a production- and use-(or social self-realization) according to lifestyle, allevia- value-oriented creature satisfied in his hard work. Thetion of suffering, and the adulation of individualism. All Wall Street stockbroker may be an example from thethree of these suggest, in both phenomenological (i.e., opposite extreme. Also hard-working but transient,of marketer and consumer) and objectivist analyses, ef- acquisition-oriented, materialistic, and aspiring, theforts to achieve a kind of transcendence of alienation stockbroker has tastes and lifestyle habits that arethrough consumer activity. much more susceptible to the mechanisms of market-

ing than those of Bourdieu’s cabinetmaker. The stock-broker can and indeed wants to be sold entire packages

The Sources of Meaning in of harmonizing goods (once roused to believe he isunique in his tastes): watch, tie and pin, shoes, socks,Commodity Consumptionautomobile and phone, pen, computerized pocket

distinction according to lifestyle: the scheduler, outfitted winter vacation (in Vail or Paris),social self and the appeal of imagined sailboat, tinted contact lenses, pop management booksconsumer communities

and magazines, and on and on, all more or less conform-ing to the range of possibilities indicated by his disposi-Bourdieu recognizes the abstracted quality of such cate-

gories as working-class (1985:724). To get closer to the tion as a stockbroker/consumer.reality of that which the term ‘‘class’’ is intended to des-ignate, Bourdieu speaks of lifestyle. Lifestyle is a way of

21. Gartman points out: ‘‘[for Bourdieu] classes always appear asdescribing how the social space achieves the status of status groups . . . defined by lifestyle’’ (1991:423).

22. For a discussion of the relations of objects to each other in afield of consumer meaningfulnesses, see McCracken’s (1988) essayon ‘‘Diderot unities.’’20. For a discussion of consumer-object relations, see Belk (1988).

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Marketers’ lifestyle-typologizing schemes are exhaus- as ready-to-go Thanksgiving dinners or gift occasionsthat may be mediated and magnified by commercialtive. The following is the introduction to lifestyle re-

search in a consumer behavior textbook (Solomon 1996: brokers.577):

consumption as soteriological action:In traditional or collective societies, one’s consump-

freedom from sufferingtion options are largely dictated by class, caste, vil-

lage, or family. In a modern consumer society, how- In the free-market cosmology, we are all agents of freechoice. Consumer free choice, like Christian free will,ever, people are more free to select the set of

products, services, and activities that defines them allows and enables us to transform ourselves, to tran-scend our suffering and our needs. True, the market-and, in turn, create a social identity that is commu-

nicated to others. One’s choice of goods and ser- place can only offer a secular salvation, but this salva-tion is no trivial one; it makes life sufferable, evenvices indeed makes a statement about who one is

and about the types of people with whom one de- enjoyable. Sahlins says in reference to the Smithian phi-losophy that the pursuit of individual goals results insires to identify—and even about those we wish to

avoid. Lifestyle refers to a pattern of consumption public good, ‘‘Life might be unbearable were it not forthe imagined totality that gives purpose and solace toreflecting a person’s choices of how he or she

spends time and money. individual suffering or, better, makes the partial evils ofan alienated existence the means of human welfare.Thus, each person maximizing his own resources . . .’’In the hands of marketers the lifestyle concept is not an

analytical but a normative one. It is the moment of (1996:408). The path to transcendence, to salvation, is

also clear: radical individualism. ‘‘God loves those whotheir praxis. Through their lifestyle concept, marketersaim to appeal to consumers’ aspirations to belong to love themselves,’’ Sahlins quips. This transcendent role

for individual utility maximization results not just inmore than their actual status groups. In light of this, itis understandable that they seek to isolate individuals need fulfillment but in self-identity construction,

which elevates the practical mastery of consumption tofrom actual groups such as family and community andencourage them to seek attachments to imagined com- the level of the sacred. The logic is as follows: Insofar

as free choice is about selecting how to satisfy needs,munities instead. As an individual, one is less subjectto sumptuary customs associated with the group and, needs are transformed into preferences. A person is free

to prefer; he is not free to need. A person is thereforeby marketing scientific standards, most rational as adecision maker (group influences upon purchasing be- no longer trapped by needs but transforms himself into

them. Persons define themselves by the wants and pref-havior are less well understood). The quintessentialfree-choice agent is the individual, not the group. In erences they have (‘‘I prefer skiing in Colorado to shuf-

fleboard in Florida’’) rather than by the needs they arehorizontal relations, the individual may be seen in rela-tion to other individuals as free actors, free choice mak- restricted by (‘‘I may be old, but don’t define me by it;

I prefer skiing in Colorado to shuffleboard in Florida’’).ers, whose unfailing goal of satisfying primordial needsand achieving the construction of self-identity are not Consumer identity is a transformational, transcendent

ideology because consumers are not only not runningcompromised by such interferences as filial duty or cus-tom. This unrecognized marketing philosophy is the away from their basic needs but transcending them by

becoming them—by reifying them into self-identity.selfsame one that Sahlins points to as being related tothe ideology of needs; for our purposes, social con- The salvation is not just in the material things but in

the manipulation of needs in the meaningful construc-straints represent a restriction on human potential forself-realization through the satisfaction of needs. tion of identity. Salvation is not just a kind of material

package but a meaningful solution in which one tran-We may find marketing, as it finds itself to its ownsmug amusement, to be at the heart of modernity mak- scends materiality itself. In the end game of Western

liberal-bourgeois cosmology, we come down to beinging, for the shift to modernity in no small way involvesthe breakdown of the conception that identity is about creatures of need, but the mystificatory system of mar-

keting and consumption brings about an outcome thatbelonging to local groupings such as family and villageand the fashioning of the conception that identity is says not ‘‘Woe is me’’ but ‘‘The song is me.’’ There is an

outer limit or structure of possibilities. Not all identityabout ‘‘finding oneself,’’ about being a ‘‘card-carryingmember’’ of some half-dozen imagined communities. derives from consumption, and insofar as product offer-

ings are myriad, self-definition retains some of its cre-Communality, as the secondary but still critical aspectof identity making, is offered up as an imagined relation ative character.

Marketing, for its part, manages to deepen thewith other people who consume the same things—thePepsi Generation, Toys R Us Kids, and United Colors grooves of the liberal-bourgeois ideology. The great

promise in the marketing concept is that salvation willof Benetton but also athletes, college graduates, gentle-men, or symbolic members of an ethnic group (Gans come from one’s ability to take products and have them

come to stand for oneself, at which point satisfaction1979). Alternatively, communality is regurgitated backto us as consumption-holiday occasions, at which time and meaning will be realized simultaneously. But the

Garden of Eden sodded for us by marketers is not with-our social selves are sold back to us through such items

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out its snake. Pursuit of salvation through individual In both of these theories of needs, nature and societyare the fetters to the satisfaction of needs. Needs ariseaction brings with it the guilt of not observing obliga-

tions to the social entities to which we inevitably be- because of nature and society—because they are frus-trated by these objective entities. Therefore, the onlylong.23 Baudrillard recognizes this difficulty in at-

tempting to explain the manner in which ‘‘advertising salvation possible is through radical individualism,wherein free choice and agency are fully articulated.takes over the moral responsibility for all of society and

replaces a puritan morality with a hedonistic morality Nature, mind, is not only ‘‘out there’’—the ‘‘beasts of

the field,’’ in biblical locution (Deut. 7.22)—in whichof pure satisfaction’’ (1988:13). He continues, ‘‘The free-dom of existence that pits the individual against society case choosing one’s relationship to it (with the purchase

of a personality-enhancing, nature-conquering four-is dangerous. But the freedom to possess is harmless,since it enters the game without knowing it. . . . this wheel-drive vehicle, for instance, or a ‘‘personal’’ com-

puter, or by eating organic produce) might be an ade-freedom is a moral one . . . even the ultimate in moral-ity, since the consumer is simultaneously reconciled quate subduing to achieve independence of it. Nature,

the anthropology of biology (Sahlins 1996:400) assureswith himself and with the group. He becomes the per-fect social being.’’ Baudrillard claims that the message us, lurks also within the subject. The perceived need to

free our innermost selves by vanquishing our brute in-to consumers is important because it enables them toovercome feelings of antisocial behavior while pursuing ternal human (‘‘only human’’) nature has likewise con-

tributed to nurturing the massive industry of consumerindividual consumption. Similarly, when Mintz (1997)tells us about the person who steals alone into the marketing—as well as to a sometimes parallel radical-

individualized confessional consumer pastime, psycho-kitchen under cover of darkness to eat the prized foodwithout distributing it to the group, it is clear that the therapy.

Marketing, albeit steeped in pragmatism and intoxi-advertising must tell that thief not to feel guilty. Mintzcalls this antisocial eating. cated with and rich in the lucre of liberal-bourgeois ide-

ology, is not without its creativity. It dares to theorize:The individual in modern society is alienated not from

marketing, consumption, alienation,community but because of it. This is so because society

and the individualis seen to place constraints on individuals and therebyto alienate them from their own self-potential and self-Any inquiry into the phenomenology of marketing is

bound to leave us doodling equations on the wall some- realization. In order to overcome alienation, individualstranscend its objectified form (nature and society)where between the floor of liberal-bourgeois ideology

and the ceiling of historical materialist philosophy. through the consumption of the single entity unable torestrict its movement: fantasy. Fantasy allows alien-Within both paradigms, freedom is realized only when

the individual has experienced total alienation—when ation from the tortured self (tortured by social and natu-ral needs) by offering alienation into the self. Whethermisery is transcended through the full existential real-

ization of alienation rather than the rejection of it. Such of the Hollywood sort or of the imagined-community

sort, fantasy is therefore the quintessential marketingan alienation begins in and is characterized by the radi-cal technological and utilitarian maximization of the vehicle, and therein lies marketing’s core creativity.

But lest I be accused of having misled the reader, ofenvironment—either through consumption or throughlabor overcoming the original problem of a nature hos- having puffed up marketers beyond their true intellec-

tual contribution, let me qualify my conclusion. At thetile to the subject.24

marketing end there is truly no salvation, only pragma-tism. Professional marketers are not just painstakingly,23. Mintz (1993:269) observes: ‘‘It is not difficult to contend that

contemporary American society, even while consuming material methodically, even methodologically thoroughgoing ingoods at an unprecedented rate, remains noticeably preoccupied by their pragmatism but often idealistic in the service ofthe moral arena in which sin and virtue are inseparable, each find-

this pragmatism (consider the oft-invoked ‘‘belief in theing its reality in the presence of the other. We consume; but weproduct’’). And, like other manufacturers of sweet sub-are not, all of us and always, by any means altogether happy about

it. The desire to consume, powerful as it is, does not rest easy on stances, they are industrious. The result of all this dron-the American psyche. The feeling that one must pay for one’s ex- ing pragmatism is a gigantic, largely amoral morass ofcesses is at least as American as the consumption itself. The feeling

seemingly contradictory strategies and outcomes. Herethat in self-denial lies virtue, and in consumption sin, is still pow-

marketers urge individuals to buy those products thaterfully present.’’24. One recalls here Baudrillard’s theory, elaborated at the expense will embellish their social identity; there marketersof Marx himself, of the mystification of use-value. Use-value, Bau- (the same ones, sometimes) assure us that social partici-drillard says, is mystified in the work of Marx and his followers by pation of any sort is painful and should be avoided bythe notions of ‘‘basic biological needs’’ and the ‘‘human essence’’

use of some self-oriented product or activity. Or thenthat is labor power applied to satisfy those needs ( 1975:21). Thisagain, marketers inform us that social life can be mademajestic critique was one of the original inspirations for Sahlins’s

early double-play of historical materialism and bourgeois econom- tolerable if only we use certain products—mouthwash,ics. The former, Sahlins points out, easily becomes a subset of the deodorant, cosmetics, etc. Marketers work both on con-latter: ‘‘In treating production as a natural-pragmatic process ofneed satisfaction, [historical materialism] risks an alliance with

in concealing the meaningful system in the praxis by the practicalbourgeois economics in the work of raising the alienation of per-sons and things to a higher cognitive power. The two would join explanation of the system’’ (1976:166).

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sumers’ perceptions of objects and on consumer self- erable contribution by enhancing our appreciation ofthe vital role of consumption in our pursuit of worldlyperceptions to advance sales. They hypercommoditize

objects through planned singularization (a sort of com- salvation. Certain concepts he advances involvingimagined consumption communities, fantasy as themoditization of decommoditization) or ‘‘humaniza-

tion’’ of manufactured products (see, e.g., Carrier 1990), quintessential marketing vehicle, and planned singu-larization of manufactured objects also resonate appeal-and they try to singularize (Kopytoff 1986) individuals

in their own minds so that hypercommodities can find ingly. Although Applbaum’s analysis offers a promising

beginning for a deeper theory of marketing and con-their market—‘‘something for the man who has every-thing.’’ sumer behavior, my primary reservation is that it does

not escape the prison-house of the liberal-bourgeois the-ory of needs that it demonizes.

The fault lies in Applbaum’s one misconception: thatIn Conclusionthe textbook principle called the marketing concept ispart of marketing praxis. The idea that marketers areI have endeavored to put Sahlins’s critical insight into

the workings of Western cosmology to use in order to simply serving consumer needs rather than helpingshape desires is a convenient palliative that helps mar-illuminate a local case study of its materialization, with

the ultimate aim of exploring the eventual possibilities keters and marketing academics feel better, but it hasvery little effect on marketing activity. Nor should itand limits of an anthropology of marketing. The path to

this destination must remain littered with the debris of in many cases; if clothing fashions, music, or computerinnovations were designed on the basis of consumerprior debates concerning the agency or nonagency of

marketers (hegemony versus facilitation of demand ful- wishes, we would all be the poorer for it. Besides con-

sumers’ lack of artistic and technical expertise, our in-fillment, respectively) and consumers (creativity versuspassivity or cultural conformity, respectively). The dividual responses to fashion designs are meaningless

until we see who is wearing what; fashion is unequivo-present essay has in places also lingered over thesequestions without definitively concluding in favor of cally social. The needs discourse that exists among mar-

keters and consumers is little more than a rationaliza-any prior perspective. This denouement is not acciden-tal, for it is not my aim to determine who does or does tion. It naturalizes and justifies consumers’ behaviors as

biological imperatives and exalts and transfigures mar-not ‘‘control’’ the market. I have instead aimed to showthat marketers and consumers are equal partners keters’ actions as fulfilling preexisting consumer needs.

To escape falling victim to the narrow individualism(whether as partners or adversaries, whether as active orpassive) in the process of the re-creation of the capitalist and utilitarianism of needs discourse ourselves, it

seems useful to frame a broader agenda of questionscultural economy. Sahlins, Mintz, and several otherswithin and outside the discipline,25 by holding a histori- about marketer and consumer behavior. What roles do

consumer goods play in human interactions, rituals,cal anthropological lamp to several facets of the culturaleconomy of capitalism, have raised the possible level of and socially embedded relationships? How do consum-

ers transform, extract, or fail to extract meanings fromabstraction of its interpretation to the level of cosmol-ogy. Marketers and consumers, in haggling with each goods? Rather than adopt prepackaged lifestyles and

identities, can consumers transcend the sign-valuesother over the price of culture in late capitalist moder-nity, share the responsibility for the generation of this marketers attempt to impart to these goods? How is the

cosmology outlined by Sahlins evolving in secular con-capitalist cosmology.sumer society? And how does all this differ across cul-tures? By viewing capitalistic consumers ahistoricallyas alienated individuals pitted against community, Ap-plbaum’s account seems to foreclose such perspectives.CommentsThe consumer has not so much been cast out of anabundant garden as cast out of the human community.

There are some additional concepts that could be use-r u s s e l l w . b e l kDepartment of Marketing, David Eccles School of ful in broadening the proffered theory of marketing and

consumption to address such questions. McCrackenBusiness, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah

84112, U.S.A. ([email protected]). 20 xii 97 (1988) outlines a series of consumption rituals (posses-sion, exchange, grooming, and divestment) that high-light some processes by which we derive meanings fromApplbaum’s understandings of the foundations of mar-

keting thought and the symbiotic relationship between goods. Such ritual processes lend a more communal andnuminous cast to a consumption-focused cosmology.buyers and sellers in mutually constructing a culture of

consumption are incisive. In extending Sahlins’s (1994, Central as individualism is to Western notions of self,there may be richer venues and vessels for the sacred in1996) sweeping insights into the Western cosmology of

needs and suffering, Applbaum’s paper makes a consid- consumption. Colleagues and I have argued that sacredloci in secular consumption practices can include giftgiving, tourism, bequests, inheritances, heirlooms,25. For a recent bibliography and review of disciplinary approaches

to consumption, see Miller (1995b). iconic brands, collections, and moneys (Belk, Wallen-

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dorf, and Sherry 1989). These consumption phenomena poses of commoditization of ideas, people, experiences,and things’’) in which ‘‘needs’’ as defined by marketersoften reinforce concrete (rather than just imagined)

community relationships. are uncritically identified with consumers’ perceptionof actual fundamental values; and thirdly because of itsIn addition, secular equivalents of temptation, sin,

atonement, martyrdom, and redemption offer promis- lack of reference to important recent theoretical workin the anthropology of consumption, which leads noting concepts with which to understand how some con-

sumer purchases, nonpurchases, gifts, or savings may only to the absurd and unsubstantiated claim that mar-

keting in contemporary capitalist society is the path toact as self-rewards, sacrifices, offerings, or penance. Adifferent understanding of suffering emerges in Camp- transcendence and salvation but to a serious misreading

of the relationship between marketing and consump-bell’s (1987) work characterizing consumer desire as astate of ‘‘enjoyable discomfort’’ (p. 87) and making the tion that forms the essay’s core.

The claim that ‘‘professional marketers and consum-desire for desire the basis for contemporary consump-tion. While our consumption desires focus on particular ers’’ in the context of the ‘‘market’’ manage to ‘‘perpetu-

ate the Western cosmological duality of suffering andconsumer goods, what we really long for, in this view,is desire itself. Each purchase therefore merely reini- salvation’’ needs serious unpacking, and Applbaum’s

claim to have demonstrated this needs close analysis.tiates the cycle of desire. This too appears to fit wellwithin contemporary Western cosmology in that such I believe that his claim fails on several major grounds:

(1) His argument is full of assertions that are not exactlydesire involves an anticipatory faith in consumptionbliss that seems a stronger parallel to eschatological news, such as that consumers are not passive subjects

and that marketers do not stand outside of the culturalhope for salvation than Applbaum’s candidates of radi-cal individualism and the purchase fulfillment of ‘‘inner system of which they are a part. (2) He invokes (and as-

sociates himself with) some major critical theorists,desires.’’It is also well to note gender roles in the story of Orig- such as Baudrillard, Bourdieu, and Lefebvre, while actu-

ally constructing, by judicious quotation from a very se-inal Sin. Because critiques of consumption and luxuryare often gender-specific (Berry 1994) and because mar- lected range of their works, a position quite at variance

with their actual viewpoints. (3) The empirical basis ofketing helps to (en)gender consumer goods, sex rolesand sexual preferences also deserve attention in the a study which attempts to characterize in a ‘‘holistic’’

(i.e., essentialist) mode the whole of North Americanquest for a deeper theory of marketing and consump-tion. And partly because of the ostensible role of the marketing behavior is a single instance of a staged prod-

uct-development meeting between marketers and an al-ideology of consumption-as-salvation in the economictransformations of formerly communist and colonial ready preselected group of consumers the occupations

and ethnicities of which are carefully concealed (we arenations, surely greater attention to local and global as-pects of marketing and consumption is warranted. Here simply told that they are ‘‘housewives’’). How such a

staged and engineered setting is supposed to reveal therecent studies by Miller (1997) in Trinidad, Burke (1996)in Zimbabwe, and Gronow (1997) in Russia provide pro- salvic effects of marketing is never made clear. Instead

we are again told the obvious—that ‘‘one way market-vocative fodder. With such embellishments, I vigor-ously applaud Applbaum’s extension of Sahlins’s work ers commoditize is by labeling or branding’’—and this

in the context of Applbaum’s own symbolic violenceand the foundations he has laid for a more adequate the-ory of marketing and consumption. when he invokes Baudrillard and Bourdieu as the two

major theorists of ‘‘marketer-consumer interaction.’’This latter really is news to me, and unfortunatelyspace does not permit a detailed engagement with thej o h n c l a m m e r

Department of Comparative Culture, Sophia misreadings of both Bourdieu and Baudrillard that Appl-baum introduces in using them to support an argumentUniversity, 4 Yoban-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan

102. 26 xi 97 the contrary of their actual positions.The thesis that it is the cosmological status quo that

is being reinforced via consumer-marketer interactionIt is difficult to know exactly where to begin with thispiece, which, riding on the back of Marshall Sahlins’s is stated throughout the paper but is nowhere demon-

strated—nor, I would argue, can it be on the ‘‘evidence’’Sidney Mintz lecture, reduces the richness, scholarship,

and ingenuity of that essay to a caricature, containing produced. Applbaum has made a serious category errorhere. In suppressing Bourdieu’s central preoccupationas it does an improbable thesis, circular arguments, dis-

tortions of theory, and the complete absence of serious with class, Applbaum is overlooking the fact that it isnot just individuals who consume but households, anddata.

Why this harsh judgement? First, because of its perva- households ‘‘consume in worlds of both class and sta-tus’’ (Carrier and Heyman 1997:363). Fundamentally Isive essentialism (‘‘the theory of needs,’’ ‘‘the Western

scheme of needs,’’ ‘‘through their lifestyle concept, believe Applbaum’s key error to be that he argues thatconsumers respond to objects only as individuals andmarketers aim to appeal,’’ ‘‘to transcend our suffering

and our needs,’’ and so on); secondly, because of its self- only to their symbolism. In making this theoretical (orrather, perhaps, ideological) move he effectively inflatesserving and circular mode of argumentation (‘‘Market-

ing is the commoditization and signification for pur- marketers to a cultural role far in excess of the one they

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actually occupy and invests consumption with tran- to a U.S. case study of consumer-marketer interactionwithin a research focus group. (The problem of a plural-scendental qualities that it does not possess, while si-

multaneously suppressing the politics of identity that ity of cultural consciousness in the U.S.A. could beraised here, as well as that of the possible disjunctionis involved in material decisions and the social and cul-

tural, to say nothing of economic, strategies that are in- between projected media images/commodity-sign val-ues and their apprehension by social actors.) My pointvolved. To conflate a theory of ‘‘needs’’ constructed by

marketers in pursuit of profit with actual needs (as de- is that the dualisms present within an indigenous cos-

mology become reworked in the study to find new ex-fined, for example, in contemporary development the-ory) and to identify it with a transcendent principle un- pression at an analytical level in the distinction made,

for example, between the ‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘subjective’’derlying ‘‘Western’’ civilization is to go somewhat toofar. The marketing project of confining the subjectivity throughout the paper.

The basic counterpoint of ‘‘inner desires’’ with anof the individual in a totally commoditized ontology isindeed worthy of serious anthropological investigation. ‘‘oppressive sentiment of society as a system of power

and constraint’’ (adopting Sahlins’s phraseology) pro-But to do this the socioeconomic and cultural framingof the participants, the quality of their relationships, vides a key duality, itself reflecting a root cosmological

distinction drawing on the condition of suffering andwhich may be resistant and contradictory as much asmutual, and the role of mediating institutions between the possibility of salvation. Yet variously attired duali-

ties appear throughout the analysis in the guise of Sah-marketer and consumer (media and advertising in par-ticular but also the stock of images and symbolism lins’s meta-anthropology as offering ‘‘the possibility of a

more objective social science,’’ then ‘‘internal meaning-available through literature, particular histories, ethnic-ities, and genders) all need explication. For a paper pur- centered goals’’ as opposed to external powers of con-

straint followed by ‘‘liberal-bourgeois culture as one as-porting to be anthropology, this essay is critically shortof actual cultural analysis and may unwittingly even be pect of objective reality’’ versus a phenomenological

arena of ‘‘distinction-seeking identity’’ or ‘‘objective so-deeply sexist. Applbaum’s ‘‘focus group’’ is made uponly of women. Are women, then, the carriers of ‘‘West- cial structure’’ and ‘‘subjective self,’’ and so on. It is

ironic that native theory and practice of marketers andern’’ ontology and all the disasters that it has visitedupon the globe? Or did Sahlins miss something which consumers manage to transcend the basic duality of in-

ner desires and society’s oppressive power and con-Applbaum has stumbled upon: that salvation is notonly sweet but also feminine? straint by finding salvation in ‘‘radical individualism,’’

a view that ‘‘social participation of any sort is painful.’’(Surely the idea of social participation is not erased frommarketers’ schemes—witness images of breakfast cere-r o y d i l l e y

Department of Social Anthropology, University of St. als being consumed by contented family members smil-ing broadly around the kitchen table.) Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland. 18 xii 97

The continual reemergence of the distinction be-

tween ‘‘objective social structures’’ and ‘‘individualApplbaum produces a rich and sophisticated account ofconsumer marketing and its connections with a theory subjectivity’ in Applbaum’s analysis calls for decon-

struction; it also raises questions about the ontologicalof needs. Particularly suggestive is the manner in whichhe brings together concerns about the place of markets status of items described as objective. Clarification is

required as to whether aspects of ‘‘objective social real-and marketing in social theory (‘‘indigenous’’ socialtheorising as well as ‘‘our own’’—the line is nicely ity’’ are to be construed as such only with respect to na-

tive discourse or whether particular claims are beingblurred) with investigations into commoditization, signvalues, and cultural identity. This new theory of mar- made about their reality status. For instance: [One of]

‘‘the objective structures being produced by so many in-keting and consumer praxes, as it is coined, is a mostfruitful and welcome union. Indeed, any case study that dividual acts of consumption’’ is ‘‘the free market’’ or,

simply, ‘‘the market.’’ If the latter case about objectivistfocuses on the neglected area of executive marketingagents must be applauded, the more so for the manner claims holds, then we have hardly moved from neoclas-

sical economic theory, against which Applbaum ap-in which the analysis develops into an investigation ofgeneral problems relating to the cultural economy of pears to protest along with so many of us.

My second major concern is the stripping of issues ofcapitalism. There are, however, three problematic areasI wish to address: the problem of binarism, the issue of power away from an anthropological consideration of

exchange relations. (This again is not out of line withpower and meaning, and the ‘‘spiritualism’’ as againstthe ‘‘pragmatism’’ of marketers. neoclassicism.) The justification appears to be that by

so doing the ‘‘internal meaning-centered goals’’ of mar-The Western cosmological duality of suffering andsalvation, it is argued, is central to a number of aspects keter and consumer can be more easily pursued, since

these goals are mutually intelligible and even shared.of marketing and consumption. This part of the studyis a development of Sahlins’s earlier project (1996) Do power and meaning have to be seen as mutually ex-

clusive? A cultural economic approach is not antitheti-connecting such cosmology to economic behaviour;but here it is particularised and specified in relation cal to questions of power; indeed, much recent fruitful

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work attempts precisely to synthesize perspectives that sumers engaged in exchanges that amount to a religiousexperience is disquieting. If we follow out this logic, ev-embrace cultural meaning, social practice, power, and

agency. ery exchange can be seen as sacred, and capitalism asa consequence becomes our most sacred domain. ThePower and agency cannot, in my view, be divorced

from questions of meaning. Ironically again, Applbaum spiritualizing of capitalist activity found in the essaymight even cause us to question whether the poor areraises questions of agency at a number of points in the

paper, especially with respect to fascinating details less spiritual, since those who consume the most could

be considered the most sacred. At every entry point thisabout marketers’ own research strategies. This researchis not only an act of translation but also one of transmu- is an argument with profound and disturbing political

implications.tation and transformation: it is, therefore, an act whichhas effects; it has agency. It is unsatisfactory to consign Yet there is also marked ambivalence, here most

clearly stated in the conclusions, where Applbaumthe issue of the agency or non-agency of market playersto the dustbin labelled ‘‘debris of prior debates’’ and fail pulls back from his argument and says, ‘‘The present es-

say has in places also lingered over these questionsto conclude ‘‘in favor of any prior perspective’’ onagency, especially when the issue is obviously central [what he has referred to as a cultural economics versus

political economics perspective] without definitivelyto a number of parts of the analysis and when so mucheffort has been invested in stripping power from concluding in favor of any prior perspective. This de-

nouement is not accidental, for it is not my aim to de-meaning.The last issue relates to the characterisation of mar- termine who does or does not have ‘control’ of the mar-

ket.’’ His critique of Lefebvre, Baudrillard, and Bourdieuketers as ‘‘spiritual leaders’’ and ‘‘public myth tellers’’rather than as political figures wielding power. The con- and their emphasis on power, domination, and hegem-

ony, thus, stops short.clusion states that after all there is no salvation, onlypragmatism, and the result is a ‘‘gigantic largely amoral The ‘‘power’’-based arguments provide another exam-

ple of this ambivalence. Applbaum tells us, for example,morass of seemingly contradictory strategies and out-comes.’’ If true, this raises a question about the attempt that he prefers ‘‘to see the marketer-consumer relation-

ship in the United States not as one constituted in ato describe (via Bourdieu) the orchestration of logics un-derlying the strategies of producers and consumers such power struggle, immediate or deferred, but as one of

mutual intelligibility, even agreement,’’ while at thethat the outcome reproduces not class relations but in-stead the sociocultural order of the ‘‘marketplace.’’ same time he notes that marketers compete for ‘‘mind

time’’ and that ‘‘the dialogue between consumers andThe marketer appears to be a religious charlatan: nosalvation, no orchestrated strategies, and little certainty marketers is in fact a methodical extraction of symbolic

associations from consumers in the service of givingabout achieving the grail of a marketplace, which isafter all only an empty space. It is surely the magic of marketers the tools to affix the most profitable sign val-

ues to their products.’’ I take this to suggest that mar-the marketer and others of that ilk that they conjure theillusion of ‘‘the market’’ from such empty spaces. Mar- keters trade on unequal power and manipulation as part

of the selling of their products. Information from focusketers appear to be the original Bokononists, whosecreed is described in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle as groups is elicited against a backdrop of preestablished

categories and items.1 Additionally, Applbaum tells usfollows: ‘‘All of the true things I am about to tell youare shameless lies. Anyone unable to understand how a how the power of the marketer is realized through the

large sums of money spent on advertising to capture ouruseful religion can be founded upon lies will not under-stand this book either. So be it.’’ ‘‘mind time’’ via one-way media that we, as receivers

of the message, cannot meaningfully engage. Indeed, heunderscores that we, as consumers, are awash in adver-tising. Three years of our lives are taken up by thej a m e s h . m c d o n a l d

Division of Behavioral and Cultural Sciences,University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio,Tex. 78249-0652, U.S.A. 5 xii 97

1. It would also be interesting to know how the focus-group samplewas selected. Several years ago I participated in a multisite market-

Applbaum’s essay is a thought-provoking exploration of ing research project in which we conducted interviews concerning

common ailments (e.g., colds, headaches). The results were to bematerial consumption as spiritual journey that forces usused by a large pharmaceutical company in the refinement and de-to consider marketer-consumer relations in new ways.velopment of over-the-counter remedies. The sample of people weInspired by Marshall Sahlins’s work, Applbaum arguesinterviewed was selected by a local company specializing in this

that one of our late-20th-century expressions of the activity. Many of the people interviewed turned out to be ‘‘profes-Christian model of suffering and salvation is commod- sional interviewees’’ who had participated in many different stud-

ies. This was clear to the consultants I was working for and did notity consumption. Within this cosmological opportunityseem to bother them. It is not hard to imagine, however, that thesestructure, modern marketers define the means to salva-professional interviewees had become sensitized to the kinds of

tion while consumers are their willing and active ac- things of interest to marketers. At what point does marketing re-complices rather than stupefied, passive masses. The search becomes more of a ritual of justification than a discovery

procedure?image conjured up of corporate capital and willing con-

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watching of television commercials alone (not to men- d a n i e l m i l l e rDepartment of Anthropology, University Collegetion the advertising that is embedded in television pro-

gramming and movies, as well as print ads and the like). London, London WCIE 6BT, U.K. 17 xi 97The ability of marketers to make choices that shape ouridentities would certainly be taken by many as an exer- Applbaum’s useful paper demonstrates that the self-rep-

resentation of marketing is saturated with a concern forcise of social power. While I would agree that marketersand consumers to a certain extent operate in collusion, needs both as concept and as central to its practice. My

comment is not intended to take issue with this or withI would hardly call them ‘‘equal partners’’ as Applbaumhas it. the remarks he makes about Sahlins or Bourdieu. It has

to do with the assumption that this self-representationMarketers, for example, use various types of manipu-lation both to get our attention and to get us to buy is also a representation of how marketing or consump-

tion actually operates. What Applbaum ignores is thattheir products. On the one hand, they frequently manip-ulate Gricean rules of conversation through which we anthropologists are today themselves engaged in the

ethnographic study of these same phenomena, and as amake certain assumptions about the nature of the infor-mation we receive (Grice 1989). By providing us with result we have the foundation for an attempt to refute

many of these assumptions and secondary discoursesparticular kinds of irrelevant or insufficient informa-tion, they commonly entice us to draw certain conclu- about the ‘‘consumer society’’ and engage directly in a

much more informed analysis. This would indicate thatsions about a product that may not be correct. On theother hand, as Applbaum notes, fantasy is another pow- while marketing and anthropology may share assump-

tions about the concept of need within contemporaryerful method in their arsenal. Postman (1993) would ar-gue, for example, that the use of fantasy effectively discourses, both may be challenged when it comes to

assumptions as to the relationship between those dis-short-circuits our ability to assess the truth value ofwhat we are being told. Finally, Applbaum recognizes courses and the cosmology revealed by ethnographic ob-

servation.the conscious link of commodity to sign by marketersin order to create sign value that endows the commod- There is, of course, a marketing literature that is in-

tended amongst other things to train people in thatity with meaning. Thus while marketers may strive tomeet consumer demand, the creation of the commod- profession. This takes a model of the consumer (us-

ually a mix of economics and psychology but increas-ity-sign would also seem to be a powerful way in whichdesire is created. The ascendence of the American To- ingly with ‘‘added anthropology’’) that considers con-

sumption to be principally about individuals and theirbacco Company under the direction of James BuchananDuke is an interesting case in this regard. In the late needs, desires, etc. It tends to provide (as does this pa-

per) a series of marketing success stories (surprisingly1800s the technology to mass-produce cigarettes pre-ceded the existence of a market for their sale. Launch- rare events in actual marketing) that shows how mar-

keting could or should be done. In general I have littleing a massive advertising and sales campaign, Dukesubsequently opened national and international mar- quarrel with what Applbaum does with this literature,

inasmuch as he is prepared to take on marketing in itskets and reaped huge profits (Chandler 1977:290–92,382–91). The cigarette under the marketers’ wand was own terms rather than just dismiss it. He correctly rep-

resents the sophistication and nuances that marketingnot just an addictive product with mildly intoxicatingqualities but associated with the perfect identity— is capable of. I would also concur that the key relation-

ship between commerce and consumers is often one oftrendy, strong, intellectual, desirable, and so on. It is lit-tle wonder that we are often compliant participants, collusion. Galbraith (1967) and others who provided ro-

bust critiques of capitalism and the massive amountgiven the seductive power of these promises.Applbaum’s essay is an ambitious one that seeks to spent on manipulation also thereby demonstrated its

costs. If a company can make something of sufficientlyreduce capitalist forms of exchange to basic principlesderived from Christian theology. The marketer be- high quality or collude with consumers in such a way

that it can dispense with the costs of manipulation, itcomes the bricoleur who takes the universal and shapesit in specific ways. By giving primacy to this supposed may make greater profits. Marks and Spencer, the high-

est-quality food chain in Britain, does not usually adver-universal Western cosmology, within which there is aconcordant relationship between marketers and con- tise (see also Schudson 1984).

What is lacking, however, is any challenge to this setsumers, Applbaum moves with amazing quickness toreject the critique of marketer-consumer interaction of representations. Today many anthropologists are

engaged in the ethnography of these processes, andfound in the work of Baudrillard and Bourdieu only towaver later. Also, throughout the essay he posits an un- what is revealed is quite different. Applbaum repre-

sents me as arguing for consumer agency againstdifferentiated consumer, marketer, and form of ex-change which is also problematic. At the essay’s end, I others who argue for passivity (incidentally, Fine and

Leopold [1993] would have been a better exempli-was left wondering whether Applbaum felt that themarketers’ ‘‘guidance’’ of the sweetness of salvation fication of the neomarxist argument than those he

cites). Actually, I would rather argue for an ability torepresented a process that is positive, negative, or sim-ply inescapable as it is constituted in the late 20th cen- recognise that all sorts of relationships may exist in a

field as complex and massive as that between produc-tury.

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tion and consumption. It does not surprise me, for ex- b e n j a m i n o r l o v eColumbia Earth Institute, 535 W. 116th St., Low 405,ample, that Moeran’s (1996) ethnography of the cream

of Japanese advertising agencies suggests more effective New York, N.Y. 11027, U.S.A. (bsorlove@ ldeo.columbia.edu). 1 xii 97manipulation than would my ethnography (1997) of

run-of-the-mill marketing and advertising in Trinidad.Lien’s (1997) ethnography of food marketing in Norway This article offers some general thoughts on consump-

tion and marketing, a discussion of a variety of previouscomes somewhere in between. In turn, the ethnography

of consumption (e.g., Howes 1996, Silverstone and writings on these topics, and a brief examination ofsome ethnographic research into the campaign to de-Hirsch 1992, Orlove 1997a) reveals a far more complex

phenomenon than the secondary rhetoric about con- velop and market a new product. Though the abstractand introductory paragraphs promise a close relationsumer culture associated with writers such as Baudril-

lard. among these different parts of the article, they remainloosely integrated.Applbaum correctly identifies the focus group as the

main substitute for society in marketing (and increas- Applbaum seems to want to describe some key struc-tures in Western culture that are evident in marketingingly in politics), but in our ethnography of shopping we

deliberately used ethnography (Miller n.d.) as well as fo- and consumption. He suggests that these structures arerooted in cosmology, more specifically a secular reli-cus groups and questionnaires (Miller et al. n.d.) so as to

be able to compare these and demonstrate the problems gion of suffering and salvation. Despite his concern tobring history and agency into the study of these struc-with assuming that focus groups ‘‘represent’’ consum-

ers. As a result of this recent research we can start to tures, they seem fairly fixed. He states that marketingactivities lead to ‘‘intensifying’’ rather than ‘‘altering’’enter into an entirely different conceptualisation of

marketing and consumption that would offer a radical these patterns, so marketing reflects rather than trans-forms or changes these structures. In my own work, Ichallenge to the given literature. Marketing people may

talk happily to consumers about needs, but ethno- have presented consumption in different terms. The Al- lure of the Foreign (Orlove 1997a) claims that the con-graphic study, I submit, suggests that most consump-

tion is not principally about individuals, liberal-bour- sumption of foreign goods was a key context in whichelites and masses in postindependence Latin Americageois systems, identities, or desires. It also provides a

much more critical perspective on the concept of needs. defined new national identities and created specificallyLatin American forms of modernity. In a study of aThere is a strong case for saying that it can indeed be

revealing about cosmology (including concepts of salva- Chilean food riot (Orlove 1997b) I examine consump-tion as an activity that permits significant political mo-tion) and about the tensions of living within modernity,

but the kind of cosmology that is revealed by ethno- bilization. I would therefore have liked to see a fullerpresentation of a perspective that seems somewhat dif-graphic study of people as consumers (and, of course, in

all the other capacities that ethnography, unlike mar- ferent.Applbaum allocates a good deal of space to con-keting, encounters) has very little in common with ei-

ther the self-representation of marketing or that of this trasting his approach with those of other authors on thesubject of consumption. These contrasts are posed inrather secondary debate about the nature of consumer

society. Anthropology’s forte is challenging self-repre- very general terms; though they contain interestingthoughts, especially on the subject of classification, Isentation. Noting that people in marketing (and equally

most ordinary consumers) are sophisticated and self- would have liked to see a fuller exposition of his ownviews on consumption, cosmology, and salvation. Theconscious is compatible with evidence that they are

primarily concerned with the representation of ideol- empirical case material could have been a place forexpansion on his structural account, but the treatmentogy (see also Carrier 1997) rather than of practice.

For example, when ethnographers have entered into of the new-product campaign is brief, and over half ofthe space on this campaign is allocated to an account ofmarketing they find that research is most often used

for post hoc legitimation of decisions made for other a single focus group. In short, I would have liked a fulleraccount of the ‘‘soteriology’’ that Applbaum promisesreasons and that the main drive comes not from an en-

gagement with consumers but from an obsessive con- but does not adequately provide.cern with competition. It is the culture of commerce,

not that of consumers, that drives most of what is go-ing on.

To summarise, Applbaum has made a number of use- Replyful observations, and I have no particular quarrel withhis comments on either Sahlins or Bourdieu. But an-thropologists who have become involved in the ethnog- k a l m a n a p p l b a u m

Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 28 i 98raphy of marketing and consumption are in a positionto launch a far more radical critique than the one pre-sented here and one that challenges the hegemony of I thank Belk, Dilley, McDonald, Miller, and Orlove for

their engaging and substantive critiques of my paper.the discourse within which the paper by Applbaum isclearly situated. Their chief concerns fall into the following categories:

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1. Power and meaning cannot be mutually exclusive. the field of production’’ (1984:231), while consumersoperate according to their own intentions and construc-Are marketers really ‘‘‘spiritual leaders and public

myth tellers’ rather than political figures wielding tions. I would not say that power relations are absentfrom the exchange between these two ‘‘groups’’ orpower’’? (Dilley, McDonald)

2. The self-representation of marketers is not the way ‘‘fields.’’ I do claim that if one focuses mainly on thepower aspect of this relation one is missing an opportu-marketing and consumption actually operate. Their

self-view is ideology rather than practice. (Miller, Belk) nity to discover the cultural implications of the mutual

intelligibility of the two actor groups (who are also in3. The cosmology model seems static, not allowingfor history or agency. A fuller account of consumption, hundreds of thousands of cases one and the same per-

sons, as marketers are themselves consumers). The areacosmology, and salvation is needed. (Orlove)In holding power constant in this essay, I sought to of mutual intelligibility, as I have said, lies in the cos-

mology that Sahlins brilliantly analyzes, the liberal-enhance two perspectives. First, I wanted to separatethe political and economic power held by the actors in bourgeois ideology of needs, and (I propose as an exten-

sion) in the belief in the capability of the market to sat-question from their intentions so as to elucidate theirsubjective goals and understandings. Second, I wished isfy those needs by affording its participants the free-

dom to exercise choice in the selection of goods andto employ these understandings in the service of re-flecting not upon the marketer-consumer complex as an services.

There is, further, a methodological complication tointernal negotiation over competing meanings but uponits capacity to constitute a total cultural system. I de- separating marketers and consumers for purposes of

weighing power imbalances. This is the wholesale ex-note this total cultural system, based upon common orcomplementary cultural constructions by marketers tension of marketing logic itself to areas outside the

realm of corporate marketers. I indicate above the self-and consumers, as a ‘‘cosmology.’’Of the dozens of marketers I have worked with or ob- conscious adoption of marketing by schools, hospitals,

dairy boards, churches, government agencies, and, ofserved or interviewed for the above paper, not onethought him/herself to be in the business of exercising course, politicians. I have myself witnessed a scientific

academic journal hoping to enlarge its readership hire apower. Even when marketing practitioners admit thattheir campaigns alter consumers’ attitudes, they do not marketing management consulting company. The tac-

tics recommended by the consultants and adopted byregard this as a form of power because (in their view)they and consumers are participating together in a game the journal (including changes in pricing, packaging,

promotion, and distribution) conformed closely to thosethe rules of which are understood in advance, regulatedby an unbiased government, and therefore fair. Con- used by corporate marketers in other settings. Would

the analysis of this situation be better served by regard-sumers, they say, have the ultimate power to decidewhether or not they will buy something. Many marketing the members of the governing board of that journal

as hegemonic power mongers or by considering themers also hold that they are appealing to either existing,latent, or nascent demands and therefore their activities participants in a culture in which marketing has be-

come a dominant (if also at times dominating) element?have more the character of shifting market share than ofcreating it from scratch. This latter response may vary The ratcheting up of competition for consumers’ atten-

tion occurs through the offices of marketing. Thoseaccording to the industry in which one asks the ques-tion. Additionally, as Miller observes, marketers are seeking the public’s attention in a great range of fields

and industries perceive that they have no choice but tousually more obsessed with their competition thanwith their engagement with consumers. As a result, market their wares in the professional marketing man-

ner, since ‘‘the market’’ has become a universal require-marketers’ misrecognition of the power they wield intheir interactions with consumers should not be ment for survival.1

I also sought, if implicitly, to make a distinction be-entirely unexpected, nor should the view marketersshared with me that they were serving consumer needs tween marketing activity and its relation to culture in

the United States and this configuration abroad. Whenbe interpreted in more than a few cases as ‘‘a convenientpalliative that helps marketers . . . feel better,’’ as Belk U.S. marketers go abroad the power dimension becomes

far more difficult to ignore, for comprehensible reasons.asserts (though I do believe this is true for many mar-keting academics). That marketing is so deeply embed- One can envision Orlove’s findings, in which the con-

struction of national identity through consumption ofded in North American culture that its power is liableto be misrecognized by its practitioners is stated nicely foreign goods, for instance, can indeed lead to ‘‘altering’’

rather than ‘‘intensifying’’ cultural patterns. I maintainby Laura Nader (1997:720, emphasis added): ‘‘Culturalcontrol when it is hegemonic is impersonal, embedded,and often invisible, and even those who in fact exercise 1. Erich Fromm observed 50 years ago that a ‘‘marketing orienta-it may not understand its extent, thinking of it as only tion’’ was spreading in which individual personalities had become,

like commodities, subject to the market forces of demand. He said,marketing.’’‘‘Success depends largely on how well a person sells himself on theIn this connection, I cited Bourdieu as having rea-market, how well he gets his personality across, how nice a ‘pack-

soned that producers operate within their own subjec-age’ he is. . . . The principle of evaluation is the same on both the

tive field of activity, namely, ‘‘competition with other personality and the commodity market: On the one, personalitiesare offered for sale; on the other, commodities’’ (1947:40).products and the specific interests linked to position in

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that the internal construction of culture in the United ternal nurturance’’ (p. 27). Paradise in both religious andcommercial idiom was about self-transformation. InStates proceeds relatively more as a mutual construc-

tion than is the case for transnational interactions, in fact, the evangelical use of this idiom, Lears claims,helped pave the way for its use in commercial advertis-which demonstrations or assertions of power on the

part of marketers or consumers make evident the stakes ing (p. 57): ‘‘By popularizing a pattern of self-transforma-tion that would prove easily adaptable to advertisers’involved in the adoption of particular meanings in any

given instance.2 This is the case not only because the rhetorical strategies, evangelical revivalists played a

powerful if unwitting part in creating a congenial cul-United States can be considered, for some purposes, asemiautonomous unit for cultural analysis and hence tural climate for the rise of national advertising. It was

not accidental that conservatives like Philip Schaff,marketers and consumers are reading from the samescript but also because of the relative lack of a perceived writing in 1844, likened revivalists to peddlers.’’

It is significant that the most successful early market-need among the citizenry for a unified movementagainst the forces of marketing. This has meant to some ers (such as Coca-Cola’s Asa Candler) in the mid- to late

19th century were nostrum or patent-medicine market-that big business has successfully opiated its victims sothat they can no longer conceive of a position outside ers who often self-consciously adhered to Christian

ideals and sensibilities. Lears claims that ‘‘the narra-the system from which to initiate rebellion. To othersit seems to mean that North Americans believe them- tive pattern of many patent medicine advertisements

closely resembled the standard accounts of conversionselves to be at the helm—that the consumer choicesmade are expressions of personal and cultural creativ- experience. The use of testimonials drew directly on

patterns of evangelical culture: the cries of the con-ity, not illusions of choice.I aimed to sidestep this Hercules-versus-the-Nemean- verted testified to the soul’s deliverance from suffering’’

(1994: 143). The current fascination in the United Stateslion debate and point out an aspect or mechanism ofNorth American marketer-consumer interaction which with ‘‘natural’’ antidepressants such as St. John’s wort

is a continuation of this cultural strand.3 I argue in aserves to reinforce a common understanding, namely,the cosmological linkage of personal dealienation to paper in preparation that the techniques and moral jus-

tifications of early marketing were, moreover, con-consumption and consumption to secular salvation.The first topic requires more theoretical elaboration nected to Reformist practices and ideals, including that

of proselytizing.and the second more historical exploration than I havebeen able to devote to it here. Sahlins’s Mintz lecture Miller and Belk are concerned that the self-represen-

tation of marketers I recapitulate does not correspond to(which, contrastingly, compacts something like an en-tire social science into the space of an essay) contributes the praxis of marketing and consumer behavior. Miller

appreciates my thesis that the marketers’ concept ofsignificantly to both, since it explores historically thetheory of needs native to Western cosmology that gives needs can be revealing about cosmology (including con-

cepts of salvation) but argues that ‘‘the kind of cosmol-rise to these relationships. There have also been somerecent historical works concerning the relationship be- ogy that is revealed by ethnographic study of people as

consumers . . . has very little in common with eithertween North America’s religious culture and its con-sumer culture. Leigh Eric Schmidt’s Consumer Rites the self-representation of marketing or that of this

rather secondary debate about consumer society.’’ Belk(1995) is a religious and cultural history of the commer-cial mediation of American holidays. He says, ‘‘The similarly severs marketing ideology from marketing

and consumer practice, referring to the marketing con-commercial culture sought to redefine Christianity andits feasts in its own promotional image. Old Christian cept as ‘‘little more than a rationalization.’’ I intention-

ally do not separate marketing ideology from marketingrituals were refashioned into new liturgical forms thatprovided the rubrics for a new consumerist gospel of praxis, for the ideological system of marketers I describe

is not fixed but ‘‘dialectically engaged’’ (Tambiah 1976)prosperity and abundance’’ (1995:14). Schmidt’s com-parison of early evangelists (who helped democratize re- in their experience with consumers. I describe the to-

talizing system within which the dialectic between ide-ligion) and roving chapmen (who helped democratizeconsumption) in a chapter entitled ‘‘Time Is Money’’ is ology and praxis takes place. The linkage between mar-

keting and the larger idea of needs in Westerninstructive and useful here in that it reveals historicalparallels between religious and commercial idioms of cosmology is suggested by Sahlins’s inspired research

on the subject. Sahlins says, ‘‘Originally understood byabundance and salvation. Jackson Lears’s Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in the Church Fathers as a form of bondage, each man’s

endless and hopeless attention to his own desires be- America (1994) delves still deeper into these relation-ships. The vision of an earthly paradise in America, he came, in the liberal-bourgeois ideology, the condition of

freedom itself’’ (1996:397). The relationship of this tosays, ‘‘preserved the venerable tendency to link abun-dance with divinity as well as natural fecundity and ma- marketing’s and North American consumers’ own ide-

2. Perhaps this is also true for certain instances within the U.K. as 3. I urge the reader also to consult the work of consumer behaviorresearchers such as those cited by Belk. Two outstanding bibliogra-well, which is why Miller, who has written of consumer behavior

there (e.g., 1987), does not seem obsessed by the power of market- phies of the culture-oriented researches of this group are to befound in Sherry (1995) and Belk (1995).ers over consumers.

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ology of the sacred freedom of choice is apparent. Sah- self-representation is wrong or ‘‘merely’’ ideology4 be-cause consumers do not conform to what marketerslins further points to the curious ‘‘discovery that the de-

mands of the flesh increased with the ‘progress’ of the think. According to Miller, ‘‘Marketing people may talkhappily to consumers about needs, but ethnographicsociety’’ (p. 400). ‘‘This was the great industrial revela-

tion: that in the world’s richest societies, the subjective study . . . suggests that most consumption is not princi-pally about individuals, liberal-bourgeois systems, iden-experience of lack increases in proportion to the objec-

tive output of wealth’’ (p. 401). This native Western co- tities, or desires.’’ Without reading his work in progress

I cannot weigh this conclusion, though I can wondernundrum, peculiarly ideological in its self-discovery,can be addressed in earnest with a historical analysis of whether this research was carried out in the United

States.5 And I do trust that Belk’s proposed ritual-pro-the institutionalization of marketing. In very crudeterms, the more industrialized we became the more process motivational approach to understanding why con-

sumers make purchases will yield useful information.ficient the mechanism of marketing became in gettingus to focus on our needs and desires—through the pur- My goal has been quite different from and quite a bit

less secure than either of these enterprises.suit of mind share that I mention and that is nicely de-scribed by the notions of ‘‘bureaucratically controlled I have not been concerned with the issue of interpre-

tive engagements with the question of consumers’consumption’’ and ‘‘semiological domination’’ theo-rized by Lefebvre and Baudrillard. Correspondingly, our wants and its relation to the discrepancy between what

marketers think they do and what they actually do. Ipractice as consumers of constantly being in the act of‘‘satisfying’’ our needs or exercising our preferences am trying to discern a dialectical relationship within

which consumers and marketers participate in the con-through consumption is one way in which we ourselvesgrow to focus more and more on our ‘‘needs,’’ im-

printing them upon our concept of self and thus 4. What marketers assume by way of behavioral propositions is im-portant in and of itself. In the past 20 years neoclassical economicstrengthening our practice of acquiring or validatingprinciples have been popularized through the efforts of contempo-identity (self or group) through consumption. As I speci-rary marketing ‘‘gurus.’’ This is of real consequence in that it hasfied above in my own proposed wrinkle to a consumermeant a dissemination of largely unquestioned, universalistic be-

practice theory, ‘‘the continual, repetitive engagement havioral propositions, misconstrued as method, to mass audienceswith marketing media and purchasing- and consump- of small power holders. These methods of modern consumer mar-

keting, along with their behavioral assumptions, are conveyedtion-related behaviors conditions individuals’’ to athrough the international business networks of the world’s greatnumber of patterned outcomes, including ‘‘a particularcorporations. Transnational corporate marketing culture and prac-

type of self-classification, of self-definition, of iden- tice, owing to the copious resources sustaining it, affects both con-tity.’’ The liberal-bourgeois ideology is thus trans- sumer behaviors and marketplaces around the world. In a work in

progress I identify and examine the operating assumptions of mar-formed into permanent, self-reproducing action by wayketing managers to show how managers’ theories about consumerof the bureaucratization of the ideology itself. The em-wants and strategic approaches to intercorporate competition in-bodiment of the bureaucratization is marketing. Natu-form and constitute corporate policy. The intellectual and ideologi-

rally there are other aspects to the reproduction of the cal substructure of transnational corporate marketing practice is

schema, and of course consumption serves many other animated by normative economic principles, including most nota-bly modernization and individual-utility-maximization theories.purposes than identity construction, but this is oneLinked to these are more generalized Western values such as de-angle.mocracy, individualism, and the sanctity of consumer choice, as

The goal of illustrating that this cosmology in fact op- well as trust in the symbolic appeal of Western products taken toerates in the mutually constituted field of the ‘‘market’’ stand for these values. Corporate managers’ conceptions in these

two areas—consumer wants and competitive strategy—may beand justifying the mechanism whereby the ideologyconsidered, using Bourdieu’s words, ‘‘undisputed instruments ofheld in common by marketers and consumers turnsknowledge’’ that contribute to the reproduction of the market capi-into practice is quite a different ethnographic projecttalist order on a global scale. I argue that as firms expand into new

from what either Miller or Belk has in mind. What markets they tend to extend their organizational systems and man-Miller says he is trying to determine is whether focus agerial culture to their subsidiaries or affiliated companies abroad.

5. Sidney Mintz is characteristically eloquent in describing the re-groups represent what consumers want (unfortunatelylationship between individualism and consumerism after the In-he does not elaborate his conclusions, and they are not,dustrial Revolution: ‘‘In the new scheme of things, what one con-

as of this writing, in print). He says he achieves this by sumed became a changing measure of what (and of who) oneusing ethnography as well as focus groups and question- was. . . . Collective (social) needs would now take on a different

form, altered by the expansion of individual needs, as these becamenaires. This indicates that (probably among othermore immediate, more apparent, and more widely justified in thethings) he is trying to produce a microanalysis of whatpress, by the political organs of the state, and even from the pul-people really want and how, culturally, this is ex-pit. . . . For this new individuality to take shape, society must suc-

pressed. Belk proposes something similar: how ‘‘secular ceed in shifting people’s perceptions of where the locus of desireequivalents of temptation, sin, atonement, martyrdom, lies. . . . The motor of desire, speaking now largely with its own

voice, is transformed into one of the most powerful of all signalsand redemption offer promising concepts with which toattesting to the existence of the individual. This highly divisible,understand how some consumer purchases, nonpur-modern self is now a ‘bundle of desires,’ elements which come to-

chases, gifts, or savings may act as self-rewards, sacri- gether and express themselves unitarily at certain moments, proba-fices, offerings, or penance.’’ On the basis of these bly with special clarity in acts of consumption’’ (1996:79; I thank

Sidney Mintz for referring me to this essay).discoveries, Miller and Belk suggest that marketers’

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struction and reproduction of a cosmological schema. ful event to interpret. It has its utilitarian purpose—thestated function of trying to determine what consumersThe aspect of the cosmology that I address is the implic-

itly held theory of needs and their purported satisfac- want. It serves a post-hoc justificatory function. It alsoserves as a team energy booster in new projects, sincetion through the mutually constructed cultural eco-

nomic entity of the free market. The self-representation it provides an opportunity for key players to meet ‘‘theconsumer’’ and get excited together about the possibili-of marketers is one key location for identifying and ana-

lyzing this expression of the native theory of needs (and ties for making money. Finally, and most important to

me, the focus group is an expression of certain key in-its relation to alienation and dealienation). My ethno-graphic research in U.S. corporations verifies for me digenous concepts the explication of which gives ex-

pression to an integrative picture of the cosmologythat marketers do believe in the scientific validity oftheir research—though, as I have said, the propositions within which marketers and consumers operate. The

focus group is more than just another locus in the con-of marketing research are not based upon pure explo-ration. Of the numerous focus groups I attended, for sumer-marketer interface—one more link that Miller

would argue must be examined to determine whetherinstance, more than half formed the basis of the sub-sequent quantitative research on the products in ques- marketers actually do serve consumer needs in the way

they say they do. The focus group can be likened to ation. Expenditures rose in these cases into the tens ofthousands of dollars, not counting executive time in- performative ritual but not one with empty or merely

self-referential significances. Its efficacy as a reinforcervestment, which is notoriously costly. These people arenot spending a grant from the National Endowment for of a particular cultural pattern is ‘‘achieved not by real

exercise of power and control but by the devices andthe Humanities. One can assume that they do this re-search in the full assurance that it has a good chance mechanisms of a ‘ritual kind’ which have, to use the En-

glish philosopher Austin’s phrase, ‘performative valid-of yielding accurate results. In my paper I propose aninterpretive theory for what I think is really going on in ity’’’ (Tambiah 1985:270). The focus group is thus a

structuring structure. It is a key indigenous concept andmarketing research—extraction of sign values, justifi-cation for practical action, etc. As Orlove says, my time a ritual mechanism with performative validity. Its sta-

tus as a performance may be more important than itsmight better have been spent reemphasizing my centralthesis of the focus groups’ role in the affirmation of the status as a research vehicle, which is why I say that

marketing research in general is not exploratory in thenative cosmology.6

That corporate marketers, who are pragmatic and in- way we as anthropologists might understand it. Market-ers believe in their research because it reproduces thetelligent people, could tolerate the practice of so much

invalid research was a signal to me that something sig- categories that are meaningful to them. This is the na-ture of totalizing systems, that there is ‘‘a recurrence ofnificantly cultural was going on. The success stories

bandied about by marketers and in the ancillary litera- structures and their transformations in systemic terms.. . . Totalization . . . means how the systemically ac-ture directed to marketers despite their rarity in real life

have often reminded me of Evans-Pritchard’s thesis in countable, in terms of continuities and transformations

in an open-ended way, produces a historical totalityWitchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Inlight of this conundrum, the focus group becomes a use- that is best understood not in disaggregation but in

combination. It implies thus the passage of a totalityand its ‘becoming’ in its present shape over time’’ (Tam-6. I ought to have cited in full rather than just referred the readerbiah 1976:5). In sum, the focus group has multipleto the source of my use of the term ‘‘cosmology.’’ Tambiah (1985:

130) says, ‘‘By ‘cosmology’ I mean the body of conceptions that meanings and purposes, some of which can be exploredenumerate and classify the phenomena that compose the universe only in an objectivist frame. This objectivist stance pos-as an ordered whole and the norms and processes that govern it. its that marketers (and consumers) are not whollyFrom my point of view, a society’s principal cosmological notions

aware that their operating concepts and actions contrib-are all those orienting principles and conceptions that are held toute to the reproduction of a cosmological ordering. Thisbe sacrosanct, are constantly used as yardsticks, and are considered

worthy of perpetuation relatively unchanged. As such, depending is a departure from the postmodernist interpretive task,on the conceptions of the society in question, its legal codes, its in which one recognizes that consumers are quite so-political conventions, and its social class relations may be as inte-

phisticated, that they are enmeshed in contestationsgral to its cosmology as its ‘religious’ beliefs concerning gods andover power and meaning. This is indeed the case, and itsupernaturals. In other words, in a discussion of enactments which

are quintessentially rituals in a ‘focal’ sense, the traditional distinc- is an important ethnographic pursuit, but it is not minetion between religious and secular is of little relevance. . . . Any- here.thing toward which an ‘unquestioned’ and ‘traditionalizing’ atti-tude is adopted can be viewed as sacred. Rituals that are builtaround the sacrosanct character of constitutions and legal chartersor wars of independence and liberation and that are devoted to theirpreservation as enshrined truths or to their invocation as greatevents have (to borrow a phrase from Moore and Myerhoff) a ‘tradi- References Citedtionalizing role,’ and in this sense may share similar constitutivefeatures with rituals devoted to gods or ancestors. No wonder anAmerican sociologist—Bellah—has coined the label ‘civil religion’ a ppa dur a i , a r j un. 1986. ‘‘Introduction: Commodities and

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Calendar

1998ogy, 8th International Congress, Victoria, B.C., Can-ada. Write: Conference Management, ContinuingJune 11–14. International Society for the Comparative

Studies, University of Victoria, Box 3030, Victoria,Study of Civilizations, 27th Annual Meeting, Ka- B.C., Canada V8W 3N6 ([email protected]).shiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Theme: TheSeptember 3–6. Alta Conference on Rock Art 2, Alta,Emergence of Pacific Rim Civilizations? Write: Mi-

North Norway. Themes: theory of interpretation ofdori Yamanouchi Rynn, ISCSC 1998 Program Chair,rock art, curation. Write: Knut Helskog, Tromsø Mu-Department of Sociology, University of Scranton,seum ([email protected]) or Bjørnar Olsen, InstituteScranton, Pa. 18510-4605, U.S.A.of Social Science ([email protected]), University ofJuly 26– August 2. International Union of Anthropolog-Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway.ical and Ethnological Sciences, 14th Congress, Wil-

September 18–20. Plains Indian Seminar, Cody, Wyo.,liamsburg, Va., U.S.A. Theme: The 21st Century:U.S.A. Theme: Plains Indian Art: The Pictorial Tra-The Century of Anthropology. Write: Tomoko Ha-dition. Write: Lillian Turner, Public Programs Coor-mada, Executive Secretary, 14th Congress IUAES,dinator, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 720 Sheri-Department of Anthropology, College of Williamdan Ave., Cody, Wyo. 82414, U.S.A. (programs@and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. 23187-8795, U.S.A.wavecom.net).([email protected]).

October 19–23. 5th Congress of the Latin American August 2–8. 4th International Mayanist Congress, An- Association of Biological Anthropology/6th Luistigua, Guatemala. Theme: Maya Identity. Write:Montane Symposium on Physical Anthropology, Ha-Ana Luisa Izquierdo, Centro de Estudios Mayas, In-vana, Cuba. Write: J. Martınez Fuentes, Facultad destituto de Investigaciones Filologicas, Circuito Ma-Biologıa, Universidad de La Habana, La Habanario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico,10400, Cuba.D.F., Mexico.

December 2–6. American Anthropological Associa- August 17–18. Society for the Multidisciplinary Studytion, 97th Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A.of Consciousness, Inaugural Conference, San Fran-Theme: Population: 200 Years after Malthus. Write:cisco, Calif., U.S.A. Themes: Multidisciplinary Con-AAA Meetings Department, 4350 N. Fairfax Dr.,ceptions and Principles of Consciousness. KeynoteSte. 640, Arlington, Va. 22203-1620, U.S.A.address, by Karl H. Pribram: Conscious and Uncon-

scious Processes: Relation to the Deep and SurfaceStructure of Memory. Plenary panel: Metaphors of

1999Consciousness. Write: Maxim I. Stamenov, Institute

of the Bulgarian Language, Shipchenski Prokhod St.January 10–14. Fourth World Archaeology Congress,52, bl. 17, Sophia, Bulgaria (maxstam@bgearn.

Cape Town, South Africa. Theme: Global Archaeol-acad.bg,) or R. MacCormac, Duke University Medi-ogy at the Turn of the Millennium. Write: Carolyncal School, Department of Radiology and NuclearAckermann, WAC4 Secretariat, P.O. Box 44503,Medicine, Box 3949, Durham. N.C. 27710, U.S.A.Claremont 7735, South Africa.([email protected]).

August 23–29. International Council for Archaeozool-

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