Advertising, Production and Consumption as

Cultural Economy
DANIEL MILLER

Presenter
Md. Tahmid Hasan
Department of Anthropology
University of Rajshahi
Radical Empiricism

 A philosophical doctrine by William James in The Meaning of Truth

(1909).
 It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between
those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our
explanations.
 Radical empiricism is a postulate, a statement of fact and a conclusion 1
 “The only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be
things definable in terms drawn from experience“ (James, 1909)

(1) http://www.wikipedia.com/radical empiricism

Cultural Economy

 Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes
 Methods include case studies and theoretical and empirical modeling of cultural transmission within and across social groups [1][2].
 Cultural economics develops from how wants and tastes are formed in society. This is partly due to nurture aspects, or what type of
environment one is raised in, as it is the internalization of one’s upbringing that shapes their future wants and tastes [3] .Acquired
tastes can be thought of as an example of this, as they demonstrate how preferences can be shaped socially [4].
 A key thought area that separates the development of cultural economics from traditional economics is a difference in how
individuals arrive at their decisions. While a traditional economist will view decision making as having both implicit and explicit
consequences, a cultural economist would argue that an individual will not only arrive at their decision based on these implicit and
explicit decisions but based on trajectories. These trajectories consist of regularities, which have been built up throughout the years
and guide individuals in their decision-making process [5].

(1) Throsby, David (1995). "Culture, Economics and Sustainability". Journal of Cultural Economics. 19: 199–216.
(2) Cowen, Tyler (2008). "Why everything has changed: the recent revolution in cultural economics". Journal of Cultural Economics. 32: 261–273
(3) Stretton, Hugh (1999). Economics. Pluto Press. pp. 247–255
(4) Hutter, Michael (1996). "The Impact of Cultural Economics on Economic Theory". Journal of Cultural Economics. 20: 263–268
(5) Weber, Roberto; Dawes, Robyn (2005). The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Second Edition. Princeton University Press. p. 101
Case Study One: Making an Advertisement

“The Primary factor in determining the nature of the advert actually produced is commonly
neither profitability per se nor a consideration of the consumer. Rather, it tends to be a reactive
fear of the competition. In many cases this may act to hinder rather than promote consumer
desire and actual profits.” (Miller, p-84)

Telling a Specifying a
Total de-
story consumption
contextualization
context
Capitalist Realism

 The word ‘capitalist realism’ was first used in the title of the 1963 art exhibition in Düsseldorf, Demonstration for
Capitalist Realism.
 Capitalist realism has been used, particularly in Germany, to describe commodity-based art, from Pop Art in the 1950s
and 1960s to the commodity art of the 1980s and 1990s.
 In the mid-1980s, Michael Schudson used the term "capitalist realism" to describe mainstream practices in advertising.
 The realism of advertising promotes a way of life based on private consumption, rather than social, public
achievement[1].
 This is a realism that is not based on veracity to the outside world…rather this is a realism constructed by the long term
role of advertising in constructing a genre within which commodities are supposed to be part of a kind of hyper real
idealized world of consumption (Miller, p.81).

(1) Richards, Harry; MacRury, Isin; Botterill, Jackie. The Dynamics of Advertising, Routledge, 2000, p99.
 Case Study Two: Advertisement and Consumption

 Supligen- a Soya milk product made by Nestle. Consumers

Nourishment,
Health Drink,
A Light Blub

Commercial
was Based
on the theme
of SEX
Based
Creative Expert who entirely
Based upon
SEX The company who
made the upon SEX make the product
Advertisement
Explanation of the case Two
Case Study Three: Production and Consumption

 Institution that have become global often start to grow local roots that begin to break down their original
homogeneity and turn them into something varied.

Black Sweet Drink

(Coca-Cola) Descendent of
Slaves
Population
of
Trinidad
Red Sweet Drink South Asian
Indentured
laborers
Case: Coca-Cola

 Coca-Cola is is an American multinational beverage corporation, and manufacturer, retailer,

and marketer of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups.
  The Coca-Cola Company and its subsidiaries only produce syrup concentrate, which is then
sold to various bottlers throughout the world who hold a local Coca-Cola franchise. Coca-
Cola bottlers, who hold territorially exclusive contracts with the company, produce the
finished product in cans and bottles from the concentrate in combination with filtered water
and sweeteners. The bottlers then sell, distribute, and merchandise the resulting Coca-Cola
product to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants, and food service distributors.
 This bottlers are literally throughout the world including Australia, UK, Philippine, Mexico,
Chili, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan, Trinidad and so on.
 Sugar needed for production comes from an industry central to history of the island, that the
gas is a by-product of chemical plants which symbolizes the island’s modernity and that
Trinidad is expanding in glass production to the extent of exporting to the US.
 Government for some time period protected drinks such as Coca-Cola as “Local Products”.
They saw Coca-Cola as more importantly ‘local than global’
Coca-Cola‘s corporate headquarter,
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Conclusion

 “In former times the role of Anthropology seemed obvious because cultural diversity as a prior condition of the
world seemed obvious. My stance is that at a time when we constantly talk about globalization and homogenization,
anthropology is more important than it ever used to be since the new cultural diversity that develops from the
breaking down of global institutions is not merely so evident, and will be denied, if anthropologists failed to confront
the assumptions behind general terms such as ‘capitalism’. Within this I suspect almost every time we see a factor as
obviously more ‘cultural’ or more ‘economic’, we get it wrong.”

 Example: McCann Erickson, global advertising company.

Thank You.