The Dynamics of the Local and the Global: Implications for Marketing and Development

Globalization’s contemporary omnipresence has resulted in an emphasis on the conflicts between the local and the global. This emphasis has blurred our ability to have insights that may be gained by recognizing that the local and the global are interdependent and cannot exist without each other. This paper explores the initial insights from such recognition regarding local identities, cultural development, and modern marketing’s shortcomings in aiding development. Preliminary conclusions as to how a new conceptualization of marketing can be instrumental in enrichment of meaningful and substantive human lives through constructing redefinitions of development and marketing based on these insights are presented

Orbits of Contemporary Globalization

Contrary to the commonly accepted view, human beings were global (i.e., migratory and without borders) to begin with and then localized as they started to reduce hunting and gathering and got into agriculture and animal husbandry. When they were migratory, humans exchanged genes, tools, cultures – in effect, they were already globalizing. In the second part of this commentary, I analyze the contemporary conditions of globalization. I suggest that today we are experiencing a market centered iconographic culture; and the possibilities for richer and more inclusive symbolic cultures exist, and need to be cultivated

Cultural and religious perspective of loss and bereavement in Anatolia

Coping with death is a grueling job to be done however it is not impossible. All cultures have developed ways to cope with death. Interfering with these practices may interfere with the necessary grieving processes. Understanding different cultures' and religions response to death can help counselors recognize the grieving process in patients of other cultures. It is also important to realize that, while each individual grief process is unique, there is a form of grief that is disabling, interfering with function and quality of life. A great majority of the people in Anatolia have remained under the influence of tradition as well as religion. In the foundation of main behavior models which forms our traditional life, ensuring them to possess specialty and formation however there lays numerous customs, beliefs and ethic operations. So that such kind of variations affects the death and the bereavement customs. As in the case of the three important event of the life, a great number of beliefs, customs, tradition, ceremonies, and behaviors have been also grouped around death. Such beliefs, customs, transactions, ceremonies and pattern behaviors which accumulated around the death and surrounded individuals with the death are collected under three groups. Sets of traditions formed as pre-death, during death and after death. So this study was carried out so as to determine the approach of Anatolian traditions to the death and bereavement. This qualitative research was conducted by means of semi-structured interviews in which   three questions prepared by the researchers and were asked to four volunteer male participants whose mean age was seventy-five years old. The study concludes that the traditions of Anatolia give importance to sharing and supporting the family of deceased, which overlaps the literature of bereavement process psychology

License to Heal: Understanding a Healthcare Platform Organization as a Multi-Level Surveillant Assemblage

Platform organizations bring renewed attention to power disparities and risks in the rise of surveillance capitalism. However; such critical accounts provide a partial understanding of the complexity of surveillance phenomena in such shifting socio-technical and digital environments.The findings from a netnographic investigation of a healthcare platform organization, PatientsLikeMe, unravel how platforms become the locus where multi-level flows of surveillance converge, thereby constituting what we identify as a surveillant assemblage. We develop a comprehensive approach for understanding how platforms constitute a dynamic crossroads of micro-, meso- and macro-surveillance phenomena within and beyond the online communities they create.This study highlights this surveillant assemblage\u27s emerging practices and potentially empowering outcomes that enable multi-stakeholder involvement in big data and knowledge generation in healthcare. Broader implications of multi-level surveillance in and through platforms are discussed

Non-western contexts: the invisible half

Like many other disciplines within the broad area of social sciences (e.g., anthropology, gender studies, psychology, sociology, etc.), consumer research is also highly navigated by scholars from Western countries. This, however, does not mean, by any means, that consumer research is devoted to studying Western contexts only. As evident from the ever-increasing number of regional conferences (e.g., Asia-Pacific and Latin American conferences of the Association for Consumer Research) and non-Western students' enrolment in doctoral programs at Western universities, there are many more researchers (from non-Western countries) who are entering the field and enriching it by their colourful contributions. Yet, given the low number of publications on consumer research in non-Western contexts, it seems that our current knowledge in these societies has a long way to go to flourish. More specifically, and in the domain of consumption culture research, this gap is even further widened by the fact that the culture of consumption in such contexts is largely interpreted with reference to the 'grand narratives' of Western scholars (e.g., Foucault, Mafessoli, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Derrida, etc.). Therefore, from an ontological perspective, it seems that our existing knowledge about non-Western societies lies heavily on the 'theoretical structures' that are 'constructed' by Western philosophy as a set of ideas, beliefs, and practices (Said, 1978). As Belk (1995) reminds us, consumption culture always existed in all human societies. What makes contemporary societies different from that of our predecessors' is not the fact that consumption culture did not exist in those societies, but that consumption culture has become a prevailing feature in modern society (Slater, 1997; Lury, 1996; Fırat and Venkatesh, 1995; McCracken, 1988). Therefore, the nature and dynamics of consumption culture in each society should be studied not only against the sociocultural, historical, and economic background of a given context (Western or non-Western) but also with reference to the philosophical and epistemological viewpoints that analyse and interpret cultural practices of that society from within that culture. Addressing such issues, this paper discusses some of the key reasons for lack of theory development in the field from non-western contexts. The paper invites scholars in non-Western contexts to introduce the less articulated, and sometime hidden, body of knowledge from their own contexts into the field of marketing in general and consumer research in particular