Discursivity, difference, and disruption: Genealogical reflections on the consumer culture theory heteroglossia

We offer a genealogical perspective on the reflexive critique that consumer culture theory (CCT) has institutionalized a hyperindividualizing, overly agentic, and sociologically impoverished mode of analysis that impedes systematic investigations into the historical, ideological, and sociological shaping of marketing, markets, and consumption systems. Our analysis shows that the CCT pioneers embraced the humanistic/experientialist discourse to carve out a disciplinary niche in a largely antagonistic marketing field. However, this original epistemological orientation has long given way to a multilayered CCT heteroglossia that features a broad range of theorizations integrating structural and agentic levels of analysis. We close with a discussion of how reflexive debates over CCT's supposed biases toward the agentic reproduce symbolic distinctions between North American and European scholarship styles and thus primarily reflect the institutional interests of those positioned in the Northern hemisphere. By destabilizing the north–south and center–periphery relations of power that have long-framed metropole social science constructions of the marginalized cultural “other” as an object of study—rather than as a producer of legitimate knowledge and theory—the CCT heteroglossia can be further diversified and enriched through a blending of historical, material, critical, and experiential perspectives. </jats:p

Guardianship and Ownership on Nebraska Century Farms

Century farm families are those that have held title to a farm for at least one hundred years. Depth interviews and participant observation with Nebraska Century farm families extends our understanding of the limits to fungibility of possessions imbued with relational symbolism within a kinship group. Our research exposes cultural tensions between ownership and guardianship as well as the way these tensions shape curatorial consumption. Engagement with, access to, and transfer of Century farms illustrate the interplay between ownership and guardianship across generations of farm families. Our paper calibrates a variety of curatorial tactics that illustrate how access and ownership are subordinated to guardianship. We develop contrasts between this cultural model of guardianship and a corporate model of management and ownership

Ethnographie Stories for i\/iari(et Learning

Although ethnography has become a popular research approach in many organizations, major gaps exist in the field&apos;s understanding of the way it operates in the corporate world, particularly in how ethnography facilitates market learning. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography, the authors describe how ethnographic stories give executives a unique means of understanding market realities. By working through the rich details of ethnographic stories infused with the tensions, contradictions, and emotions of people&apos;s everyday lives, executives are better able to grasp the complexity of consumer cultures. Overall, this research should help managers leverage the catalytic effects of ethnographic storytelling in their efforts to learn about and understand market contexts

Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption

The study of the consumption of goods has never achieved the prominence in anthropology of either production or exchange. Yet the accelerating consumption of western goods in non-western societies is one of the most obtrusive cultural and economic trends of the last three centuries. This article addresses the general issue of why goods flow between cultural groups by re-examining the concept of consumption. It raises questions of importance to studies of development, material culture, ethnohistory, and symbolic anthropology