Abstract
In this article, I argue that an elevated macro-level perspective is imperative for conducting critical studies in the fields of marketing and consumer research. There are epistemic barriers to operating in this manner, and I offer several suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Finally, I review the research spaces for critical studies of marketing in various global settings and conclude that United Kingdom and Nordic Europe have the best epistemic climate, and this region needs to take leadership in promoting greater range of macro and critical studies of marketing in the rest of the world.
Introduction
In the established earth-related fields of geology and geography, prior to the emergence of powerful technologies that could observe our planet from a high-flying airplane or an orbiting satellite, our knowledge of what lay on or under the earth and of what happened on the surface of the planet could only be gleaned by the application of relatively micro-level methods (Laudan 1977). Geologists and geographers of the past diligently set forth with safari gear, hiking boots, sun hats, compasses, and pick axes to create maps and descriptions of the earth and its hidden treasures. Today, the fields of geo-mapping and earth sciences use new apical technologies—operated from the sky with remote sensors—that offer wider views of our planet (Blumberg and Jacobson 1997; Lane 1996). Such observations are panoramic and holistic, and also often penetrating and panoptic (Lane 1996), but of course are not free of epistemological and ideological controversies (Raab and Frodeman 2002).
In the fields of marketing and consumer research, apical and elevated views of the domain—the 40,000-foot view, to use an Americanism—are possible and occasionally offered, including from critical perspectives (see Dholakia and Firat 2006; Firat and Dholakia 1982; Firat and Dholakia 2003; Firat and Dholakia 2006; Firat and Venkatesh 1995). The dominant research praxis, however—at least at the center of the academic marketing universe, viz. in North America—shuns or sidesteps or devalues such macro-level and critical views. Regardless of ideological slant, the macro perspectives in marketing and consumer research are relegated to what can be termed second-class citizenship: such views are tolerated but not celebrated or rewarded.
This commentary article explores the reasons for the relative lack of macro-level approaches in critical studies of marketing, reasserts the importance of macro-level approaches for critical marketing studies, and offers suggestions for overcoming the underlying epistemic barriers and problems.
Epistemic Problems and Barriers
Like geographers and geologists of the past, the self-anointed research elites in marketing and consumer research fields prefer to trek out with safari attire, jungle boots, sun hats, compasses, and pick axes. The epistemic assumption is that only digging deep at particular spots and observing at close range can unearth knowledge of marketing phenomena. Of course, such micro-research adventures are admirable, but the deprecation of macro-research endeavors is not. By not adequately encouraging or sustaining macro-level research perspectives, the marketing and consumer research fields are not only missing out on a more complete view of market and consumption processes, they are ceding ground to researchers from social sciences and humanities, many of whom wield macro-level analytic and interpretive tools quite skillfully to examine the terrains of marketing, brands, advertising, and consumption (see, e.g., Arvidsson 2006; Lears 1994; Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 1997; Lury 2004). Some of these and similar perspectives are available now in the Zwick and Cayla (2011) collection. The examination of issues of marketing by humanities and social sciences is of course a salutary trend. There is, however, a loss for marketing. Since marketing scholarship is seen by those outside the field as noncritical, excessively micro, and compromised by corporate ideologies, the marketing literature is rarely referenced, even when the topics of writings in social sciences and humanities are about marketing.
The epistemic barriers to critical studies in marketing, and especially to macro-level work, are internal to the discipline of marketing—it is our colleagues who erect these. Also, as will be discussed below, the nature and ferocity of these barriers vary across global regions. The means to dismantle these barriers exist; it is the will that is sometimes lacking.
The Macro Imperative
For critical and radical studies in marketing and consumer fields, the macro-level perspectives are absolutely essential. Only from 40,000 feet (or even better, an orbiting satellite telescope) is it possible to observe the ideologies, obfuscations, manipulations, and mystifications playing out in markets and consumption contexts, phenomena that critical perspectives strive to discover and bring to light—to promote wider understanding and trigger actions that are resistive, emancipatory, or revolutionary. Indeed, radical approaches are concerned with the roots of the observed phenomena. Of course, micro efforts to dig out and observe particular roots are of value, but the rhizomatic thicket of roots of market and consumption phenomena is now spread globally (Appadurai 1996). The macro-level approach—with critical “remote sensing”—is necessary to create at least an approximate map of the intertwined and not-so-visible rhizomes, linkages, influences, and flows. Table 1 summarizes my view of some of the benefits and insights that can be added to critical marketing studies by encouraging macro-level views.
Benefits to Critical Marketing Studies from Macro-Level Perspectives
Macro perspectives indeed can offer most of the insights that micro and macro perspectives can offer, albeit at a zoom out analytic/interpretive level. More importantly, however, it is only from the zoom out level that processes occurring in and among institutions, nexuses of institutions (i.e., inter-institutional settings), regions (subnational and supranational), nations, societies, and classes can be observed and studied. Moreover, the observing and critiquing of ideological stances is much easier at the macro level than at other levels—because elevation affords a measure of dispassion in observing the “goings on” at the surface way down below. This is why the macro levels are so important for critical marketing studies.
Like social scientists and humanities scholars who adopt macro and critical perspectives (e.g., Hardt and Negri 2000), the minority of researchers in marketing and consumer research who adopt macro and critical approaches understands that the maps produced by such approaches are approximate—and subject to updating and refinement. This, however, should not make such critical maps of market and consumption phenomena objects of derision or neglect. Indeed, if such maps are shunned, then marketing and consumer research would face the same epistemic stone walls that geologists and geographers sometimes face—instrumental–technical, and perhaps historical–hermeneutic–interpretive, approaches are permissible but critical and emancipatory ones are not (Perkins 2009). The result is that the field remains somewhat lopsided, incomplete, and epistemologically immature—and suspect in the gaze of other knowledge fields that do not have such blinders.
Macro-Critical Perspectives
Critical marketing studies represent an evolving field that redefines itself continuously as new scholarship and innovative perspectives come into play, from both within marketing academia and outside the marketing discipline (Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008b). Rather than embarking on (the impossibility of) defining critical marketing, I would like to offer guideposts for those wishing to engage in macro-level and critical scholarship in marketing.
The research spaces—we can call these “researchscapes”—in marketing and consumer research can roughly be divided into three categories: a very large mainstream of positivist research from noncritical perspectives, a minor but growing substream of research—mostly noncritical—that uses interpretivist approaches, and a yet smaller space of critical studies. The latter usually lies outside the mainstream (though it need not, as Tadajewski 2010b has argued) and therefore could be characterized as “off-stream” or “counterstream” research. Such divisions exist in many other research fields (see, e.g.,, Perkins 2009). Table 2 outlines the chief characteristics of these researchscapes.
Philosophical Distinctions across Researchscapes in Marketing
Source: Author’s summarization based on Dholakia (1982), Perkins (2009), Tadajewski and Brownlie (2010b).
As argued in the concluding section, some permeability exists between the instrumental–technical and the historical–interpretive researchscapes in academic marketing studies; but at least in North America, a nearly impermeable barrier separates these two from the critical–radical researchscape.
The research elite of the discipline creates this barrier. It has, fortunately, been widely breached in the marketing researchscapes of the United Kingdom. Thus, no inherent knowledge-systemic reason dictates that greater research attention should not be focused on the critical–radical researchscape. The most productive way to boost such attention is to bring macro-level perspectives to critical marketing studies. Firat and Dholakia (2003) attempted this in the book Consuming People, but a critical mass of such works needs to build up so that literature of this type—produced from within the marketing discipline (see Zwick and Cayla 2011 for another example)—achieves some visibility outside the discipline. Once dialogic traffic between critical (and I would argue macro-level) literature in marketing and other disciplines is created, then through greater cross-referencing a rising spiral of such work in all disciplines will emerge.
What then can be done to encourage macro-level work in critical marketing studies? I do not want to delve here into issues of intellectual gatekeeping (in terms of review processes, doctoral topic selection, hiring, and promotion practices), but rather to suggest general intellectual directions for advancing macro, critical research in marketing and cognate disciplines.
Interdisciplinarity
If the same phenomenon is analyzed or interpreted from (say) a political and a psychoanalytic perspective, it could generate critical insights not just from each of these perspectives but also from the interaction of the perspectives. This is not always easy, but it is done fairly commonly in social sciences and humanities.
There is a real concern as to how far critical analysis, especially if done in post-Marxist frames, can go in business school research settings (Harney 2009). With the 2007–2009 Great Recession, some calls came from b-school-linked researchers for reforming capitalist markets to make them “inclusive” or “conscious” (Barton 2011; Sisodia 2011), but no real proposed alternatives for markets that are freed from the iron cage of Finanzkapital. Limits can only be found by testing them, and if the limits are impossible to surmount, then interested b-school researchers should seek collaborations outside their disciplines.
Crossing Levels
If the same phenomenon is studied at multiple levels—say micro, meso, and macro—then the “zooming in–out” process could reveal aspects of the phenomenon that are likely to remain obscure when observation is from only one level. This of course is exactly what critical studies want to achieve—the unmasking of otherwise hidden links and processes. Again, crossing levels increase time and effort of a research endeavor, but there is payout in terms of greater critical understanding.
Historical Depth
While the contemporary world characterized by hyper-speed technocultural changes seems to be escaping the gravitational pull of history, in reality the tether to history is intellectually very important for critical studies (Dholakia 2012). Seeking historical depth does not mean a rearguard view. Indeed, far from it, critical and radical studies are typically committed to vanguard views. Looking ahead without a careful mapping of where we have come from, however, is often a recipe for intellectual disaster. Critical research work needs to refer to historical maps even as it charts pathways to new emancipatory and transformational futures.
Praxis
Mutuality of theory and action is very important in critical and radical work (Dholakia 1982). To the extent possible, in research and in teaching (where it is often easier to do), academics should strive for praxis; wherein theory informs (inspires, guides) action and action informs (enriches, develops) theory. When it clicks, this is another virtuous, upward bending spiral.
Systemic and Dialectic
Systemic models that allow for contradictions should be tolerated, even encouraged. Contradictions do not vitiate a theoretical structure—in critical studies, they are a part of the theoretical structure.
Dynamic Theoretical Openness
While scholars recognize that long-enduring paradigms are not key substrates in many social science endeavors, they nonetheless resist theoretical renewal and change for reasons often of intellectual conceit rather than anything else. Radical theories are dynamic. As the usual quip goes, Marx—if he were to reappear in contemporary times—would refuse to be a Marxist. Critical and radical theories are about change, its possibilities, and the obstructions to it. These are also theories for change, in the sense of guiding the actions that change social and intellectual structures. Critical marketing studies require a much greater degree of theoretical openness than prevails in the field at this juncture.
The conditions outlined above appear daunting but are not impossible to overcome. As surveyed in the next section, there are indications that such conditions are being met in the leading edge work in critical marketing studies in some parts of the world, and the situation is ripe for propagating such work styles in other parts of the world.
Surveying the Global Field
In the twenty-first century, somewhat greater attention is being paid to the critical and macro-level approaches to the study of marketing and consumption phenomena (Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008a). Such attention is emanating from Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and Ireland (see, e.g., Bradshaw, McDonagh, and Marshall 2006; Hackley 2002 and 2009; McDonagh 1995; Tadajewski and Maclaran 2009), and to a lesser extent from the Scandinavian countries (see, e.g., Moisander, Markkula, and Eräranta 2010). Mark Tadajewski (2010a) has written a synoptic history of critical marketing studies, covering the stunted American base of such work as well as the burgeoning European base. From 2011, he and Pauline Maclaran have established a new book series on critical marketing studies, under the Routledge publishing label. The English language scholarship in Oceania occasionally reflects the British trend and includes a small but significant measure of critical scholarship, at least in management (Clegg and Palmer 1996).
The largest academic bloc in continental Europe, Germany, remains mostly uncritical in its studies of marketing. This is because in Germany, the separation between business schools and other disciplines is very sharp, and critical work is left to “proper” disciplines such as cultural studies, sociology, and political science. Ironically, France—the home and source of much of the critical theory that is shaking up the humanities, social sciences, and the applied fields of management and marketing the world over—itself does not show much evidence of critical approaches to marketing, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Cova and Dalli 2009).
In the United States, attempts to create radical and critical discourses in marketing (e.g., Firat, Dholakia, and Bagozzi 1987) have been sidestepped and stone walled. American marketing and business scholars who dare to broach critical topics are often forced to seek publishing outlets located in or managed from Europe (e.g., Dholakia 2009 and 2011; Firat 2009; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008).
The largest demographic mass, and therefore the largest future base of intellectual activity in all fields, is in Asia. This should be the future site of major critical marketing studies, too, with Asia increasing its presence and weight in such studies. In this respect, however, the past and the present of Asia are hardly encouraging. Critical marketing scholarship in Asia is either nearly absent or confined to linguistic corrals. Japan, for example, has a long history of critical scholarship in marketing, but the work is in Japanese language and thus inaccessible to the larger world, except in the form of occasional glimpses provided to the English-reading world (Usui 2011). China, the nominally communist nation, shuns critical studies. The only occasional exceptions occur in the freewheeling intellectual entrepôt of Hong Kong. India, while home to some strong critical social science and critical humanities traditions (e.g., Nandy 2009), also mostly shuns critical approaches in fields like marketing and management. Indian marketing scholars attempt to ape the tried-and-true mainstream research patterns of the West, pursuing what Varman and Saha (2009) have characterized as “mimesis of the West and silencing of local subaltern stakeholders” (p. 811).
Even as Asia—along with Latin America and Africa—expand the intellectual presence of their scholars in various fields, including hopefully critical marketing and consumer studies, for the foreseeable future the circuits for legitimation and propagation of knowledge will continue to pass through the gateways of the West. This is the stark realpolitik of research in almost all fields of intellectual endeavor. In marketing, therefore, for those wishing to see wider and more varied critical studies the onus of promoting such works falls on the leading critical marketing scholars of the West. In light of the hobbling financial crisis of 2008, there could be some openness to critical perspectives in the United States, though the possibility is really small. Most of the critique-oriented post–Great-Recession work in the b-school settings of the United States has a moralist tone: stronger leaders and better CEOs will bring us all back to a more wholesome path (Barton 2011; Sisodia 2011). In the United States, even the slightest ray of economic optimism tends to rechannel the academic work in business-related fields into celebratory rather than critical avenues. This is the nature of scholarship in a nation built on manifest destiny and future orientation. Historical reflection and critical perspectives gain some footing in tough economic times but are cast aside when optimism returns, especially in applied fields like business disciplines.
This means the onus of promoting greater, varied, and globally more balanced types of critical marketing scholarship falls on Northern Europe, especially the United Kingdom. It is hoped that France and Germany would eventually join the trendsetting endeavors from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Eventually, as has happened in the humanities and many social sciences, North American and Asian academics also will have to acknowledge and join in such critical study endeavors and establish dialogues with the critical marketing studies happening in Europe.
Concluding Observations
Let me offer again a geographic metaphor to visualize the intellectual landscape of marketing. Imagine a vast and rolling meadow where most of the researchers in marketing studies prefer to locate and work. This is the instrumental–technical–positivist space, or what can also be called mainstream research. This space is safe, nonthreatening, and well stocked with rewards for high performers.
At one edge of this vast space is a deep and foreboding chasm. On the other side of this abyss lies the historical–hermeneutic–interpretive space characterized by some wild brush but otherwise a generally pleasant landscape. A few, somewhat precarious footbridges cross the chasm moving from the vast mainstream rolling meadow and into the smaller though often very exciting and interesting research space on the other side. In the historical–hermeneutic–interpretive space, the rewards are fewer and often cornered by a few intellectual giants. Still, room is available for newer and younger scholars, and some are opting to move to this space.
Now imagine the other edge of the historical–hermeneutic–interpretive space. There is a double-barbed wire fence interspersed with guard towers equipped with trained machine gunners looking for trespassers who want to cross into the next space—the critical–radical space. The landscape on the other side is stark, but stoically primitive and beautiful, much like the compelling stark beauty of the desert southwest of the United States. There are no rewards on the other side. If one finds a way through the barbed wire and evades the fusillade of machine gun fire by mainstream and even interpretive guards, it is possible to enter the critical–radical space. Of course, trekkers have to carry their own water and provisions to sustain in this space. However, in this space, await the intellectual possibilities of discovering fundamental patterns and truths.
What I have described is of course the research landscape for academic marketing studies in North America. The situation is different in various parts of the world. Especially in the United Kingdom, the chasm is being quickly reduced to a mere ditch and the barbed wire rolls and machine gun guard towers are few and easy to evade. It is possible, therefore, for researchers to move easily into different types of researchscapes, and the rewards, which are fewer than available in North America, are not necessarily reserved for the denizens of any one type of research space. The boundaries between the spaces are mere dotted lines to be crossed easily and without fear of losing rewards or even one’s job. This is already the case in critical management studies in the United Kingdom, and critical marketing studies are moving in this direction, though with a footing that is not as sure as in management studies.
In many social science and humanities disciplines—sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies for example—the soft-boundary intellectual landscape described in the previous paragraph exists on a global scale. Researchers can be located in any part of the world and work with any style of intellectual exploration. This is what needs to happen in the field of marketing. As I have said—and I say this aware of the unfortunate postcolonial irony entailed in this—there is need for active leadership to invite and promote critical–radical scholarship in marketing, globally, and such leadership has to come from Northern Europe at this historical juncture. A landscape of marketing scholarship with soft and easily permeable boundaries across disparate intellectual styles—including of course critical marketing studies—would be diverse, productive, interesting, and might just help transform our world into a better place.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 25th National Conference of the Japan Society for Distributive Sciences, Osaka, Japan, November 11–14, 2011. Comments from Mark Tadajewski, Terrence Witkowski, Kazuo Usui, and Detlev Zwick are gratefully acknowledged.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.