lionel.sitz - Research interests

Le Marché et la Communauté sont souvent considérés comme deux catégories incommensurables. Récemment, certains travaux ont essayé de réduire la distance entre les deux en montrant que les comportements qui s’inscrivent dans la « cité marchande » (Boltanski et Thévenot, 1991) sont « encastrés » dans le social et le culturel (Granovetter, 1985 ; MacKenzie et Millo, 2003, etc.). Cette prise en compte du caractère hybride à la fois du Marché et de la Communauté donne lieu à une révision des logiques sous-tendant les échanges. Ceux-ci ne seraient pas basés seulement sur une logique maximisatrice et économique, mais également des logiques (entre)mêlant l’économique, le social et l’émotionnel (Miller, 1998 ; Belk et Coon, 1993…). Comment, dans cette optique, parvenir à comprendre ce qui constitue une expérience pertinente pour les marketers ? En effet, les processus marchands se sont largement étendus dans le champ social pour recouvrir des espaces relevant préalablement de l’économie familiale (i.e. non marchande). Dans ces conditions, le marketing ne fait-il que « récupérer » des espaces expérientiels préalablement dévolus aux relations sociales intimes ? Ne fait-il que coloniser ou marchandiser des choses qui s’inscrivaient dans le social ?

Human sciences decided to set apart different areas of human life. They chose to focus their researches on human beings . The latter were clearly demarcated from other beings (objects, animals, cyborgs...). Nevertheless, the systems described by these studies are not complete. They lack the rhizoid reality of reality (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).

Hence new streams of researches are developing that underline the fluctuant and complex nature of reality (Morin, 1973). Too often researchers talk about "construction". Everything, they argue, should be conceptualized as a social construction. However "construction" is frequently no more than a rhetorical device (Hacking, 1999), a metaphor allowing a semantic transport (Ricoeur, 1975). Everything is, by and large, "constructed" by the individual mind (cf. cognitive psychology) or some social collectives (cf. cognitive sociolgy and cognitive anthropology)... In these conditions one might dismiss the interest of construction.

Marketing has recently taken into account the importance of cultural, social and symbolic elements in the consumption procoesses. In a recent litterature review, Arnould and Thompson (2005) coined the expression "Consumer Culture Theory" to refer to the "sociocultural" (or socio-anthropoloically-oriented) researches published in JCR in the past 20 years or so. While these researches vary considerably in their focuses, methods, objects of interest and results, the share a "family resemblance". Despite this family resemblance, we should remain sensitive to the numerous discrepencies in their results, their limits, and their heterogeneity (note that Arnould and Thompson acknoledged that fact numerous times).

Maybe CCT is actually MCT : Marketing Culture Theory. In a way "consumer" is a result of the marketing ideology that emerged throughout the 20th century (Cochoy, 2002). It is important to remain sensitive to the performative nature of every scientific discipline, especially economics and management sciences (cf. Knorr-Cetina and Preda, 2001; Mackenzie and Millo, 2003).

Thus, rather than talking about cultural or social influences, marketers should acknowledge the complex nature of consumption practices: they are neither "symbolic" nor "utilitarist" nor "cultural". Rather, they are everything at the same time... The grammar of consumption is a complex constellation of influences that are more or less pregnant depending on the "action regim" in which the actor is situated at a given time... Producers and clients always inhabited the markets (Braudel, 1985), but it is not until the second half of the 20th century that "consumers" and "consumption" appeared in the discourses. Hence marketers should attempt to trace the genealogy of their concepts and the performative nature of their practices and discourses. They change and are changed by their environment. No way to distinguish between cause and consequence. We , as marketers, can only try to follow the complex flows of influences that are always intertwined...