The Art of Reconstructing a Shared Responsibility: Institutional Work of a Transnational Commons

The author examines how the production of art may constitute an important form of institutional work and legitimating rhetoric for institutional change. With a case study on the design process of a work of art calling to mind the common responsibility to protect the Baltic Sea, she identifies three mechanisms through which an artistic form of institutional work is performed. They are (a) creating emotional response by generating a sense of nostalgia over a lost common experience,(b) educating by constructing a mnemonic device that educates the audience and constructs the commons as a shared category, and (c) empowering that gives marginalized actors power to participate in protecting the commons. The study shows how artists, through their art, contribute to the creation of a shared material and symbolic space that helps construct mutual responsibility for collective resources such as the world’s seas and oceans.Peer reviewe

The Discourses of Marketing and Development: Towards "Critical Transformative Marketing Research"

In order to understand the connection between development, marketing and transformative consumer research (TCR), with its attendant interest in promoting human well-being, this article begins by charting the links between US ‘exceptionalism’, ‘Manifest Destiny’ and modernisation theory, demonstrating the confluence of US perspectives and experiences in articulations and understandings of the contributions of marketing practice and consumer research to society. Our narrative subsequently engages with the rise of social marketing (1960s-) and finally TCR (2006-). We move beyond calls for an appreciation of paradigm plurality to encourage TCR scholars to adopt a multiple paradigmatic approach as part of a three-pronged strategy that encompasses an initial ‘provisional moral agnosticism’. As part of this stance, we argue that scholars should value the insights provided by multiple paradigms, turning each paradigmatic lens sequentially on to the issue of the relationship between marketing, development and consumer well-being. After having scrutinised these issues using multiple perspectives, scholars can then decide whether to pursue TCR-led activism. The final strategy that we identify is termed ‘critical intolerance’