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State of the Craft: Reflections on the 2010 CCT Conference, Part 1

I just returned yesterday from attending the 5th Consumer Culture theory (or CCT) conference in Madison, Wisconsin, held at the Grainger Center of the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin School of Business. The conference is an annual get together dedicated to people who are doing cultural research in the field of marketing and consumer research. I thought this was the best CCT Conference yet, with some lively conversations, great facilities, and the highest quality sessions ever.

I’m going to provide some recap and reflections of the conference in the next few blog entries this week. I’ll start in this entry with the first session, which provided plenty to think about, as it seemed like it was intended as the “kick-off” session of the conference.

The session was called “Pushing the Theoretical Boundaries of CCT” and it began with a very nice overview of the CCT research by Gokcen Coskuner-Balli of Chapman University. Gokcen’s presentation reflected on marginalization and stigmatization in the field, looking at a range of different marginalized consumer groups, including Star Trek fans, stay-at-home dads, and immigrant women, and comparing them to the out-group or marginalized status of CCT researchers in the overall field of consumer behavior and marketing. Her presentation offered lots of strategies and practical advice on negotiating and ameliorating the low-status, less-access-to-material-resources implications of this lower status.

The session closed off with a good presentation by Lotte Salome of Tilburg University that presented some of her subcultural research on lifestyle sports and argued that we need to build in more emphasis on producers, something that has been argued by a lot of people, such as Norm Denzin, and brought in through a lot of research over the years, including that by Lisa Penaloza, and, I think, by the American Girl and ESPN Zone research I have been involved in with my research team members.

The middle presentation of the session is the one I’ll focus in on. It was delivered by by Eric Arnould of the University of Wyoming, and was co-authored with Craig Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, and Markus Giesler my colleague at York University’s Schulich School of Business. It was titled “Three Waves of CCT: On Transcending Anachronistic Rhetorical Conventions.”

The presentation took a historical overview of consumer culture research, and argued that there were three distinct stages of waves of this type of research that we can understand by virtue of the way the work was written, or its rhetorical gestures.

This was a fairly complex presentation with a lot of diagrams, terminology, and slides, and the presenter, Eric Arnould whipped through most of them at a pace that left me wishing he had more time to linger on and digest their richness. I hope there’s a paper published out of this (Craig just told me via comment to this post that there is indeed one).

Looking at cultural articles in the area of retail (a fairly small subsegment of overall cultural consumer research), the authors purported to examine the genealogy, the rhetorical scientific language “games” of the articles, and to examine the epistemology, ontology, and axiology of certain key “exemplary” texts.

Now, for those of you who are not up on your philosophy of science, it’s well worth brushing up on. I learned this from classic works in our field authored by Beth Hirschman, Laurie Anderson (then Hudson), and Julie Ozanne,:

ontology is how scientists and philosophers reason about the nature of reality,
epistemology is what the nature of knowledge or understanding consists of, and
axiology is about our purpose or goals

You can find much more detailed definition on Wikipedia, or other online philosophy encyclopedias if you like. Reading through this stuff brings into sharp relief (belief?) the torturous birth pangs of the field of what is now called CCT in the 1980s.Back to the presentation….

They termed the First Wave to be the Romantic Era, which ran from the 1970s to late 1990s. The ontology was the reality of “the cultured consumer,” the epistemology was “scientism, post-positivist, and assimilationist” and the axiology was anti-establishment (as exemplified by the study of alternative retail markets such as swap meets, etc., such as in John Sherry’s work, like Sherry and McGrath).

The Second Wave’s ontology was that of “cultured groups” (a move, apparently from the reality of individuals to groups-change in level of analysis?), the epistemology was “narrative reflexivity” and the axiology was critical engagement with firms. Exemplary texts here were Lisa Penaloza and John Sherry’s work on Niketown, or Penaloza and Gilly’s work on the Changer and the Changed that looks at marketers as cultural change agents who teach immigrants to be consumers.

The epiphanous present moment is included in the Third Wave, which they called “Towards cultural marketing management” and in that third waves they saw the ontology as one that engaged or focused upon “networks, post-natural and post-authentic” (again, the networks seems like a level of analysis change), an epistemology that is multimodal, multiple method, multisensory, and uses multiple diverse teams, and an axiology of engagement with both consumers and managers.

So there seem to be two trajectories in the historical overview. The first was towards a more network-embedded view of consumption. The second was towards an engagement with both producers or firms and consumers or consumer communities. We could see both trajectories as interlinked.

The presentation highlighted the very interesting differences from seeing brands as collections of associations in people’s information processing noggins (a la Kevin Keller) to seeing brands as part of a “brand matrix,” a type of actor-network theory of brands and branding in which brand are cultural insertions that take on a life of their own and affect various constituents and stakeholders (beyond the consumer-sounds a bit like Kotler’s megamarketing on the brand side).

But the defining moment in the presentation, and the biggest controversy and most pointed attention to it came from the summary, in which the presenter called for there to be “no more case studies” in consumer culture research. Apparently, this is part of the epistemological trend towards more multiple methods research, more diverse research teams, and, apparently, the move to multi-sited ethnography.

No more case studies? Let’s pick up that discussion-and it was one of the big discussions at this year’s conference-in tomorrow’s posting.

This entry was posted on June 14, 2010 at 11:03 am and is filed under Ethnography, Consumer Culture Theory, Qualitative Research Methods, Academic Life, Marketing Research, Conferences & Presentation, Marketing Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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6 Responses to “State of the Craft: Reflections on the 2010 CCT Conference, Part 1”

mridula says:
June 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Great, I would be waiting for more.
Craig Thompson says:
June 14, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Hi Rob,

Thanks for the starting this thread on your blog. A few quick follow-ups. We do plan to publish this paper somewhere (over the rainbow).

Second, the wave metaphor was a simplifying trope that Eric used to reduce an already info-dense presentation. In the published form, we will abandon the wave metaphor in favor of the trope of overlapping but historically distinguishable language games of discursive systems (now you can see why Eric used the readily understood “wave” framing when constrained to a 20 minute presentation).

Finally, Eric did the co-author team a major favor by putting the presentation together, despite having a lot of demands on his own plate. I was too overwhelmed with the conference preparation and Markus had other constraints.
In Eric’s opening slide, he also noted that we had some differences of opinion that still need to be ironed. This issue is one of those. As you know from the discussion, Eric and I had some different takes on this methodological proposition. If you don’t mind, I would like to chip in with some additional thoughts after reading your post tomorrow.
earnould2 says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:34 am
It is very kind of Rob to single out my paper as there were many fine sessions at the recent CCT conference in addition to those in the session in which I presented. I especially liked one organized by Per Ostergaard with presentation by Per and cp-authors, Pauline Macalaran filtered through Chris Hackley and James Fitchett. These colleagues really brought attention back to the radical disquiet that inspired some of the opening moves by the early proponents of cultural approaches to marketing and consumer phenomena and suggested powerfully that organizing frames like consumer society, culture of consumption, society of consumption have very different potentials for guiding scholarship than consumer culture. I also liked a method session that featured several very interesting papers on visual methods of data capture and representation featuring Rita Denny and Kristina de Leon, the latter from UC-Irvine.

That said, I would like to turn to a point that seems to have concerned several colleagues to the neglect of many of the other points I made in the paper that I presented but co-authored with Craig Thompson and Markus Geisler. The neglect of the other points is salient to the interpretation of my point, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Rob and others were concerned by my plea for no more “case studies.” It would probably have been more judicious of me to plea for “more than case studies” since one of the more significant points I was making in the presentation was to trace the evolution of methods to incorporate more multi-method research, a technique that has been part of my own research for a long time, but which as others showed during our conference, is part of others’ practice as well. In this reading, one might interpret me to mean, “please no more stand alone case studies.”

But there is more….

First let’s suppose that like Popeye I said what I meant and I meant what I said. Let’s evaluate case studies in terms of a 2 x 2 (I feel like Jag Sheth!) Oops cant copy a table in, so I’ll list these points.

Epistemological/methodological pluses:

Familiar
Theoretical sampling
Established warrant in managerial research generally.
Consistent with classic CCT works.
Able to capture some holistic insights.
Generative of mid-level theory

Epistemological/methodological minuses/weaknesses/dangers:

Classically focused on human actors in delimited social contexts.
Convenience sampling
Preference sampling.
Not great at generating higher level theory
Reifies cross-sectional results
Reifies place boundaries

Pragmatic strengths:

Quicker than some methods.
Better cost/benefit calculation than with long term ethnographic field research

Pragmatic weaknesses:

Increasingly hard to publish.
Cheap way for reviewers to question the “generalizability” of a study. (I see it ALL THE TIME even though they are mixing their epistemologies badly.)
Leads to paradigmatic outsiders dismissing projects as the “Star Trek” study, the “Starbucks” paper, etc.

So as we can see case studies are not without their issues…

Now I also want to make a distinction between case studies and ethnographies. Although there are areas of overlap, the latter has traditionally been much broader in scope, duration, breadth, etc. than the former. Now in marketing we actually see VERY FEW ethnographies. I’ve done some, Rob’s done some; John Sherry too of course, and all of us with various collaborators. However, what mostly gets done is ethnographically oriented case studies because most graduate students have neither the training, time, money or inclination to do a proper ethnography. There are exceptions of course. So our ethnographic case studies in marketing tend to fall victim to the weaknesses of the case study approach and struggle to realize the benefits.

Finally, let me get back to the CONTEXT of this remark, something that we as good ethnographers are attentive to.
In the presentation, I had just gone through, as Rob kindly, pointed out, a relatively detailed exercise in which I traced out the epistemology, ontology, axiology, and importantly the putative object of three distinctive orientations in CCT. They happen to be quasi-sequential, but this is not so important, since exemplars of the first orientation continue to be produced, especially by junior scholars mimicking the ancestors. Now what I had pointed out was that all three of these elements of the most recent incarnation of CCT research propose or entail some radical departures from the first orientation. But much more importantly, I was situating this argument in the CONTEXT of retail studies. And basing my argument on the exemplary work of Diamond, et al. 2009 and Borghini, et al. 2010, we think it no longer makes much sense to think in terms of case studies in the context of CCT-oriented retail research. Why? First, ontologically speaking, the recent work shows that we need to think in terms of networks of actors, only some of whom are human, and of the humans, it is hard to classify them anymore as producers, retailers, and consumers, but more hybrid terms are needed. The networks are key. Second, epistemologically speaking it is pretty clear that retail brands do not reside in the store, but also consist of a matrix of phenomena that transcend the retail PLACE. Finally, as another wonderful presentation by Robert Harrison at the conference also made clear, even retail places as seeming solid as the big middle, big box retailers, melt into air when confronted by the chaotic forces of hedonic consumers experiencing the steroid-laced atmosphere of Black Friday.

Thus, while case studies have their place, and certainly have their place in managerial practice, I think we should urge young scholars to “think different” when it comes to academic research especially in the retailing space.
Craig Thompson says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:31 am
HI all,

I just read Eric’s post and on this specific issue, we have some differences of opinion (which is totally cool, colleagues and friends can debate ideas without things getting personalized).

Since we are co-authoring, we will need to find a compromise position.

I personally would like to negotiate this difference in less public space but, like Michael Phelps learned through his infamous bong at the party scandal, in Web 2.0 the private is fully publicized and the genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

My overall impression is that Eric’s response is, though not entirely, a rhetorical gesture that hails from a prior positivistic framing of CCT via naturalistic inquiry, though spun in a more sophisticated way.

Let’s take Robert Harrison’s example. That was in some sense a case study of Black Friday. He may have had multiple retailers but it was focusing on specific event diffused across multiple outlets. And the impact of his analysis did not come from the multiple site per se but through the contrast to existing theory. As Eric notes, the hedonic/chaotic Dyonisian elements conflict with conventional notions of big middle retailers. That “extended case method” (see Michael Burawoy’s writings on the topic) is where the theoretical insight lies.

I completely disagree that single site or single event ethnographies are not good for generating theory. I would concur that there are certain kinds of theoretical claims that require multi-sites to tease out but that is far from being a general rule. Let us, not that this year’s winner of the Levy award (Luedicke, Marius, Craig Thompson, and Markus Giesler (2010), “Consumer
Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (April), 1016-1032, could technically be classified as a case study, though we investigated the Hummer brand across multiple inflections.

The empirical evidence points to the power of more case study oriented research for theory development (again appropriately framed and interpreted). For example, many people regard Doug Holt’s cultural capital paper as having had a huge influence on the field. Well, that was a single site study in an odd ball college town. The power lies in the way Doug was able to use that data to engage with the corpus of Bourdieuian theory.

It is clear to me that an indepth multi-year investment in a site (as Rob K. did with Burning man or Lisa Penaloza did with Western Stock shows) can allow for kinds of claims that can not be developed with multi-site “blitzkrieg” approaches (to poach a classic term that John Sherry used to critique the Odyssey’s 365 sites in 365 days approach).

Let’s note, that the quality of CCT analysis has significantly improved since we abandoned making pragmatic concessions to positivistic formulations of generalizability. WE DO NOT NEED TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK!!!!

I TOTALLY Disagree that it is getting harder to publish “case study” research. These matters are decided on a case by case basis (ironically enough). Zeynep Arsel dissertation paper for example moved through quickly and cleanly at JCR and it fits a case study profile (consumers of indie music in specific regional locale) and it sailed through because she used that case to challenge and enrich existing theorizations on the relationships between myth, identity, a cultural capital.

My response is going on too long but I think the overall mantra for cultural research should be too find ways to tell more interesting and challenging stories. If multi-site ethnographies serve that purpose for a given research project, fantastic but we should not elevate those particular situations to epistemological rules.

I am stunned that we are having this retrograde conversation in 2010.
earnould2 says:
June 15, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Ah ha. It appears from Craig’s post that we disagree on what a case study is. I tried to be draw a narrow profile of this in my little non-table in a previous post. Many of the examples he recounts are not what I would call exactly a case study, and that is part of why they have been successful. I would place narrower limits on the case study approach as I thought my little table indicated. Case studies in our area of work that tend to be less successful are those framed as “a study of (fill in the blank with a cool unstudied phenomenon) rather than “a study in” (fill in the blank with appropriate set of theoretical constructs). The Holt paper is a good example of the latter rather than the former. Such work tends as Craig says to “tell more interesting and challenging stories.” I would also suggest that I did NOT say that case studies are not generative of theory, on the contrary. However, I think they do not lend themselves to the formulation and reformulation of Major (note caps) theoretical contributions because of their inductive nature. Big theory comes from elsewhere. That’s all. Regret the confusion.
Craig Thompson says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Eric’s last comment does clarify quite a bit. If I am tracking this corectly, Eric’s use of case study is more on the Harvard Business case side of the world than single site ethnographies or let me add hermeneutic and historically oriented cultural work that does not fit the ethnographic frame.

I am still not on board with the rhetorical framing of this point “hey, stop doing case studies.” My first reason is that the misunderstanding which Eric highlights is bound to happen. My sense from the CCT5 session is that the majority of the room interpreted “no case studies” in a manner more consistent with my earlier reservation. Also, I believe that Rob took away a more methodological restrictive implication. So, I think no case studies admonition is not an effective communication device because it has to come with so many caveats and qualifications.

My second reservation is that I continue to believe that this a rhetorical gesture from a prior discursive moment in the CCT tradition. When we were developing this paper, as with our original CCT paper, we took a lot of cues from what was being published and in this case, the cues were that CCT is clearly moving toward a more actor-network oriented ontology. To elaborate, let’s take the brand gestalt via American girl analysis [full cite Diamond, Nina, John F. Sherry, Jr., Albert Muñiz, Robert V. Kozinets, and Stefania Borghini (2008), “American Girl and the Brand Gestalt: Closing the Loop on Socio-Cultural Branding Research,” Journal of Marketing, 73 (May), 118-134.]. This paper is a great exemplar of ongoing theoretical turn toward a network view (and interestingly applied to branding) but it is not a stand-alone harbinger. Rob’s analysis of technological fields (based on interviews with I believe 7 consumers) offered a network view of consumers-technology relationships. My work with Gokcen Coskuner-Balli on countervailing market systems (in the context of community supported agriculture) exhibited this kind of network perspective as did Markus Giesler’s analysis of the historical shaping of a market system (downloadable music) by dramatic narrative structures. The work I did with Zeynep Arsel on the hegemonic brandscapes and Doppelganger Brand Images (again based on the analysis of Starbucks) had a similar orientation. McAlexander, Schouten, and Koneig (2002) Journal of Marketing study of building brand communities displays the same network orientation. Jean Sebastian Marcoux’s recent JCR on consumers seeking to flee the gift economy has a network perspective. Amber Epp’s recent work on family identity and their use of possessions is explicitly framed as a network orientation. Ashlee Humphrey’s has recent papers in JCR and JM which are steeped in a network world-view.

So, I suggest that the normative proscriptions should be stated in a more positive manner as in look at what makes these papers so interesting and innovative. This papers are setting the cutting edge, do more work like this. That we can avoid restrictive pronouncement that can be misunderstood; that fail to give credit to all the researchers (and many new assistants who are bringing beau coup talent to this area of inquiry) who ARE doing network oriented work as a matter of course; and that fails prey into the very kind of thinking that Eric and I railed against in our 2005 CCT review piece: being overly obsessed on method. It is clear that Eric’s intent was not in that direction but the rhetorical gesture of saying “no cases studies” invariably invokes the anachronistic, neo-positivistic vernacular of the natural inquiry era.
So, I am going to contradict myself be making my own definitive pronouncement. It is time to stop framing our discussions in terms of neo-positivistic rhetoric. If we want to advance a network ontology, then we need a network epistemology. I have read enough Bruno LaTour, and interact with enough sociologists who are implementing those ideas in their field work, to feel confident in saying that devout actor-network theorists, would have collective apoplectic fit (at the sound of “no case studies).”

Rob, sorry for hijacking your blog in this way but thank you so much for the opportunity to discuss these issues in this forum.

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State of the Craft: Reflections on the 2010 CCT Conference, Part 1

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