The Hindu Business Line : Photos never represent objective evidence

What is culture? "The systems of representation through which people make sense of their everyday life," write Johanna Moisander and Anu Valtonen in Qualitative Marketing Research: A Cultural Approach, from Sage (www.sagepublications.com) . "Culture is produced in the communication and interaction processes and practices of everyday life where meanings are continuously being reproduced, contested, negotiated and changed."

Can cultural methods and knowledge help marketers? Yes, "in the systems of representation where the wants, meanings, ideas, norms and values associated with marketplace behaviour are discursively produced," aver the authors. "Cultural research problematises taken-for-granted ideas, and questions received wisdoms in an attempt to offer new perspectives ... It thus can provide a space for alternative constructions of real-life phenomena or marginal versions of them." A book heavy on research but worth plodding on, I'd suggest, especially to those who'd love to delve deeper into entrenched habits of marketing.

A chapter on ethnography explains the field as "a research process in which the researcher closely engages in the daily life of some social setting and collects data." For example, when studying `a consumption-oriented community such as a Vespa-club,' the ethnographer may study the practices through which members of the community represent themselves as `Vespa-people.' Also: "How they talk about themselves as Vespa-people, how they represent themselves in their personal Web pages and in the Vespa community Web site, how the Vespa brand is displayed in the clothes of the members of the community, and so forth."

Transplantation of ethnography to cyberspace is the `virtual' variety. "Newsgroups, for instance, may be viewed as a form of social action." Because, "the Internet represents a place where culture and social relations are formed and reformed." Researchers use `online interviewing' as a technique to interact; and, in the absence of `non-verbal cues such as eye contact and body language,' they watch for `paralinguistic cues' such as emoticons, like ;-) and :-().

A different chapter questions whether interviews can be a method of gathering information. Are they rather `a vehicle for producing cultural talk, which can be analysed to gain cultural knowledge about the marketplace?' The book cites the work of Paul Atkinson and David Silverman (1997), who speak of `interview society' - where "personal interviews and the confessional mode of discourse have been turned into a form of entertainment, in the form of `heart-to-heart' type of TV talk shows and radio programmes, for example."

Important elements of consumer culture are visuals. These come not only as advertising images but also `visibilities in many forms,' in numerous different sites such as "streets, museums, shopping malls, computer screens, charts in marketing textbooks, maps of tourist resorts, directional signs ... "

Before you rummage through photographs of all those places, the authors alert that photographs never represent objective evidence; "they merely appear realistic, because we have been taught to see them as such." The very act of observing is interpretative, says Douglas Harper. "To observe is to choose a point of view." So too, "the decisions that the photographer makes, choosing the angle, composition, lighting and the depth of field, may have profound effects on the kinds of interpretations and claims that result from the images." Every picture therefore invites a question, say Moisander and Valtonen. "What is left outside or rendered invisible?"

A book for the meditative marketer.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali