Jonathan Schroeder anime une communauté de chercheurs autour de la notion de brand culture depuis 2005, date de la sortie du livre collectif que vous pouvez télécharger via ce lien.
Voir en particulier le Chapitre 10 Symbolic brands and authenticity of identity performance de Richard Elliott and Andrea Davies :
In a consumer culture people no longer consume for merely functional satisfaction, but consumption becomes meaning-based, and brands are often used as symbolic resources for the construction and maintenance of identity.
The consumer is engaged on a symbolic project, where she/he must actively construct identity out of symbolic materials, and it is brands that carry much of the available cultural meanings.
Recent social and cultural theory has paid much attention to the ‘aestheticization of social life’ because it is widely assumed that the techniques used by individuals to perform their identity concern aesthetic or cultural practices and, moreover, that these performative aspects of the self increasingly constitute cultural resources or cultural capital maintains that within consumer culture a new conception of self has emerged: ‘The Performing Self, which places greater emphasis on ‘appearance, display and the management of impressions’.
This chapter explores authentic and inauthentic identity performance through an ethnographic and co-operative inquiry study of the dynamics of symbolic brand communities and their consumption of brands. Through a focus on style subcultures and the consumption of fashion brands and music we show how identity is performed, how authenticity is communicated and recognized and how consumers learn ‘to get it right’ as they move from novices to a respected member of the subculture.
A l'occasion de la sortie de Building Brand Culture, j'ai échangé avec plusieurs d'entre eux. Voici 2 retours intéressants :
Dear Daniel
Thank you for your email. It would be really interesting to read your book and to see the links to our article in it. Indeed I can see how Judith Butlers work is relevant to our chapter although we did not develop in that direction at the time of writing. I look forward to reading the book, please do send me the pdf and also the ISBN number so I can make an order for our University library.
Best wishes
Andrea
Dr Andrea Davies
Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Dear Daniel Bô,
I am glad to hear Brand Culture and its chapters inspired others to take up brands in a different way. Interesting, also, I have written about Judith Butler and performativity (Sociological Review 2005), and Jonathan Schroeder and I draw upon Butler when we write about interations in marketing communications generally. So, we do share theoretical and conceptual foundations, and perhaps sympathies.
We tend to go to Consumer Culture Theory and Association of Consumer Research conferences, but will shortly be attending Art of Management and Organization. We find that our approaches allow us to discuss with many audiences.
Best wishes for your project and on-going work and I will hope to speak again,
Janet Borgerson