AANK13502U Anthropology of Marketing; Performance and Tricksters

We approach marketing and promotion (PR) as ethnographic fields, as we look into anthropological perspectives on the market and related practices of convincing, seducing and selling as socio-cultural phenomena.

We draw upon classic anthropology and ethnographic studies to critically engage with the business field of "marketing" as a field of cultural communication and performance. We discuss the social formation of persuation in light of anthropological performance theory, drawing on ritual theory and studies in rituality and the liminoid. We work from a constructivist approach, inspired by philosophically informed configurations of reality and its construction, as well as the significance of temporary modes. In this light the course addresses how something is socially conjured and becomes real and convincing as a particular social form.

In the course, our discussion is driven by the wellknown mythological Trickster figure of multiple meanings. Concerned with better understanding the role of this figure in social life (as both a dynamic force and a marker related to limits and border crossings as well as to significance and interpretation) we aim to understand phenomena related to marketing, in which performance and particular forms of sociality inform perceptions and decisions.

We look at the West African trickster figure of Legba and its relation to the concept of the fetish, historical and contemporary elaborations of Trickster, fate as “god at play” and the interrelation between market, performance and joker.

Whilst exploring ethnographic and anthropological perspectives on marketing practices and touching upon theories of consumption, the course is not as such an instrumental guide to the functional use of ethnography in practical marketing nor on the use of ethnography in modern, Euro-American marketing systems. Nor is it predominantly a course in market theory (for this you may follow a course in Economic Anthropology).

This course is of interest to students who wish to explore classic anthropological theories of performance, consumption and creation, and experiment with applying these to contemporary phenomena such as sales and marketing.