Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590

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Journal of Business Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres

Imagining post-marketing: Neo-animist resource circulation and

value cocreation
Eric Arnould a, *, Anu Helkkula b
a
Aalto University School of Business, Ekonominaukio 1, Espoo 02150, Finland
b
CERS - Centre of Relationship Marketing and Service Management, Hanken School of Economics, Arkadiankatu 22, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The research question that drives this research is what kind of marketing can we imagine in a future in which the
Gifting capitalist market economy is dethroned from its dominant position? The paper’s purpose is thus to suggest a path
Neo-animism to a future eco-economy (Helkkula & Arnould, 2022). These goals lead first to a succinct critique of managerial
Reciprocal exchange
marketing’s axioms; second, to a concise synthesis of neo-animist principles derived from the recent ontological
Eco-economy
Sustainability
turn in anthropology. From there, the paper examines three relational modes through which animists organize
Value cocreation resource circulation and value cocreation, and contemporary manifestations of practices and systems that show
Resource circulation the enduring significance of gifting, reciprocal exchange, and predatory symbiosis to resource circulation and
value cocreation. These examples can prefigure the kind of neo-animist eco-economic system we can imagine in a
post-marketing world. Directions for future research build from the strategic steps towards a neo-animist post
marketing systems and the challenges identified within prefigurative experiments in post-marketing resource
circulation and value cocreation.

1. Introduction
The question that drives this research is what kind of marketing can
we imagine in the future? This will be a future in which the capitalist
market economy is dethroned from its dominant position. This is inev­
itable because a global supply of cheap labor, virtually free natural re­
sources, and endless technological development (the latter dependent
upon the former two), which are the three preconditions for the growth
of industrial capitalism, have come to a necessary end. Dramatic market
driven economic development in the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India, China) is emptying the inexpensive human labor pool and
has depleted non-human resources on which the growth economy de­
pends (Karatani, 2014, 284). Moreover, there is no doubt to scientists
that perpetuating this economic model is producing slow, global
ecosystem collapse. Radical change is required.
Therefore, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to suggest a path to
a post-marketing world, that is a post managerial marketing world. We
posit a future eco-economy defined by a different relationship between
humans and the non-human biome, which reverses the unsustainable
tenets of the modern marketing paradigm (Helkkula & Arnould, 2022).
In this eco-economy, marketing is just one among other mechanisms
through which resources circulate and values are cocreated. Phrased
another way, we want to use insights from adjacent disciplines to shift
the marketing paradigm beyond sustainability (Belz and Peattie, 2012).
This requires refocusing research and practice of resource circulation
and value cocreation on processes other than managerial marketing as
currently constituted.
The paper first makes a detailed critique of the dominant managerial
marketing paradigm, including its sustainable marketing variant. The
paper then examines three neo-animist relational modes of resource
circulation and value cocreation, namely gifting, reciprocal exchange
and predatory symbiosis. Next, it describes contemporary manifesta­
tions of practices of resource circulation and value cocreation, which
show the enduring significance of these relational modes. The claim is
that these examples can prefigure an eco-economic system for a post-
marketing world. The path forward also means shifting the focus of
research and practice from the firm customer dyad to a broader range of
stakeholders (Chandy,et al., 2021) in resource circulation and value
cocreation including non-human actors (Helkkula & Arnould, 2022).
The discussion proposes some implications of these ideas to help tran­
sition away from current marketing practice and towards a post mar­
keting eco-economy and for future research.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: eric.arnould@aalto.fi (E. Arnould), anu.hekkula@hanken.fi (A. Helkkula).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114590
Received 9 April 2023; Received in revised form 29 November 2023; Accepted 19 February 2024
Available online 1 March 2024
0148-2963/© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
2. The flawed ontological foundations of managerial marketing
The general subject of managerial marketing is the circulation of
resources and the creation of economic value. More specifically,
managerial marketing adopts an exchange paradigm as its foundational
axiomatic nexus. However, this exchange paradigm is closely associated
with Adam Smith’s model of capitalism (Clarke, n.d.). This assertion
derives from foundational texts in marketing on exchange (Bagozzi,
1978; Hunt, 1976; Lambe, Wittmann & Spekman 2001), and Adam
Smith himself (2003/1776). Managerial marketing’s exchange para­
digm can be presented in eight axioms, shown in Table 1. Table 1 also
summarizes the critique and presents alternative principles of neo-
animist thought.
First, only human beings individually or collectively are parties to
economic exchanges. Thus, this exchange paradigm is resolutely
anthropocentric. This in itself is deeply problematic. Taking a critical
perspective, Moore (2016a, b) argues that contemporary global chal­
lenges are accurately described as stemming from a geological epoch
called the Capitalocene. In defining the Capitalocene, Moore (2016a, 7)
elaborates that from an ecosystem perspective,
Capitalism is a way of organizing nature as a whole … a nature in
which human organizations (classes, empires, markets, etc.) not only
make environments, but are simultaneously made by the historical
flux and flow of the web of life. In this perspective, capitalism is a
world-ecology that joins the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of
power, and the co-production of nature in successive historical
configurations.
Moreover, in this system
[vast numbers of humans — slaves, serfs, indigenous people, people
of color, and, above all, women — [are] essentially equated with
“nature” in a key way: the cost of their labor — like the true costs of
nonrenewable natural resources — never [has]to be taken fully into
account (Moore 2016b, 91).
In equating people and natural resources with nature, Moore here
refers to the reduction of the factors of production within market capi­
talism to money equivalents, and their subject to principles of compet­
itive supply and demand. Thus, implicit in marketing’s
anthropocentrism is the hierarchical ontological division between cul­
ture (above) and nature (below) foundational to Western philosophy
and liberal capitalism (Descola, 2013; Suell, 2022). As Moore points out
this dichotomy separates human activity from nature, and reserves
agency only to a subset of human actors.
A second managerial marketing axiom is the presumption that actors
exchange of their own free will, because if exchanges were not satis­
fying, they would not engage in exchange. A third axiom is that any
actor will choose alternatives from those available that brings them the
greatest benefit. Parties must derive satisfaction from every exchange
into which they enter. However, both axioms are violated by the fact
that oligopolistic control of consumer markets and limited consumer
resources severely constrain choice, a fact most obvious to the 3.5 billion
living on less than five dollars a day (World Bank, 2018), but no less true
for the global middle class. Because of its focus on exchange, violations
of these axioms are generally ignored in managerial marketing. At the
same time people, firms, and even nature itself are compelled to sub­
ordinate other personal and social goals to optimize their productive
potential as workers and consumer role as responsibilized consumers
(Giesler &Veresiu 2014). The subfield of ecosystem service economics
well illustrates the requirement laid on nature to demonstrate the
financial value of various bits of nature extracted from their ecosystemic
logic (Sullivan, 2009).
Fourth, like Adam Smith’s ideal market system, managerial mar­
keting presumes a radical separation of exchange from both production
and disposition (e.g., waste), unless the latter can be subsumed into the
former. Managerial marketing considers exchange as a purely allocative
2
Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
mechanism. Again, under oligopoly and because of unequal power dy­
namics people are as constrained in their employment options (pro­
duction) as in consumer choice. Thus, consumers generally cannot
choose products which are not environmentally destructive and with
limited choice as producers, often work in environmentally destructive
businesses.
Fifth, money plays both a central, but also a neutral, technical role in
marketing management (as do other resources like knowledge or cul­
tural capital that we now recognize as structuring market formation
(Holt, 1998). That is, a prior allocation of resources to parties is
assumed. Managerial marketing ignores the financial structures that
systematically redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich. And we
know that things like financial literacy training or micro-
entrepreneurship movements, whose ostensible purpose is to equip
parties with such resources, are generally unsuccessful, even counter-
productive for structural reasons (Dolan & Rajak, 2016; Fernandes,
Lynch & Netemeyer, 2014; Viswanathan, Umashankar, Sreekumar &
Goreczny, 2021).
Sixth, despite thoroughgoing critique (McDonagh and Prothero,
2014; Stiglitz, 2020), social development is equated with economic
growth, and in many formulations is reductively measured via GDP.
Unfortunately, this measure remains central to the UN SDGs (Sustain­
able Development Goals) (Hickel 2017). Some texts in sustainable
marketing substitute the euphemism “continuous improvement” for
growth (Belz and Peattie, 2010, 12).
Seventh, hidden in managerial marketing’s mission of meeting
consumer needs is the fact that “capitalist production… is accomplished
not for the fulfillment of needs in general, but for the fulfillment of one
particular need: profit” (Elliott, 2016, 47) to which the fulfillment of
customer needs is subordinate. In other words, profit is assumed to be
requisite to continued economic activity. And finally, defects in existing
market capitalism derive not from capitalism itself. Instead, consumer
and institutional inadequacies are blamed. For example, decision-
making biases and inadequate consumer responsabilization (Giesler &
Veresiu, 2014) are to blame for suboptimum consumer choices,
including the attitude-behavior gap in green consumerism. Or poor
marketing intelligence and inadequate application of customer orien­
tation (e.g., Prahalad, 2006) impedes the realization of firm value.
3. The critique of sustainable marketing: two fatal flaws
Managerial marketing is keen to make use of its conceptual appa­
ratus for social good including responding to the global environmental
and social crises (Chandy,et al., 2021). However, sustainable marketing
approaches to sustainability ignore the foundational, systemic critique
entailed in the concept of the Capitalocene. Instead, sustainable mar­
keting aims for good via a focus on actions of individual firms within the
conventional market economy. Recent literature show that sustainabil­
ity marketing offers many practical and strategic opportunities for or­
ganizations to change their marketing mixes and incorporate broader
stakeholder perspectives, but without a fundamental change in axioms
(Belz & Peattie, 2012; Kemper & Ballantine 2019). Companies recog­
nized within the business world as leaders in sustainability, address the
environmental and social costs of products and seek to eliminate waste
during production and consumption. They may incorporate extended
producers’ liability, life-cycle analysis, reduced materials and resource
flows, eco-efficient energy use, and adopt social and/or environmental
goals (Beattie & Pelz 2012; Kemper & Ballantine, 2019; 290; McDonagh
& Prothero, 2014). However, these initiatives are marginal to most
marketing practice. Some companies adhere to standards supported by
global sustainability reporting rubrics. However, the impact of such
standards is constrained by the limitations of the measures voluntarily
agreed (Press & Arnould, 2014), measures that never question the
axiomatic commitment to growth and profits. Moreover, the steps taken
and promised do not lead to the reductions in climate damaging activ­
ities scientifically required (Remy, et al., 2024). In sustainability
 E. Arnould and A. Helkkula Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590

marketing, “treating socio-ecological problems as a starting point of the

marketing process, not as a set of externalities or constraints” (Belz &

Regenerative development ensures sustainable resource-sharing with non-

Actors exchange in the interests of respect.Systems of resource circulation

Defects in existing market capitalism are systemic and derive from its A regenerative resilient system of eco economic resource circulation and
Consumers have limited channels to affect unsustainable production Actors are guardians or curators of resources.Recognize all living beings
Peattie, 2010, 10) is a progressive move. However, internalizing

complementarity (reciprocal exchange), respect (predatory symbiosis)

resources (skills and abilities) can be integrated in value cocreation.

provide resources and integrate resources to create value within an

Existing financial regimes funnel resources from resource providers Not all ecosystem values can or should be monetized.Nonmonetary

human ecosystem actors rather than protecting or exploiting them.

ecological problems is inadequate to address the problems with the
axioms of managerial marketing summarized above, which thus limits
Extend principle of foundational sociality to all living beings

its contribution to solutions to the crisis of the Capitalocene.

Benefits are relative to ecosystemic regenerating priorities.

Actors choose alternatives that display generosity(gifting);
In addition to the flaws in the logic of sustainable marketing linked to
managerial marketing’s eight axioms, sustainable marketing contains
two additional fatal flaws. First, sustainable marketing relies on the
and value creation are embedded in obligations.

‘green’ consumer to demand change (Wymer & Polonsky, 2015). Even as

unsustainable products retain dominant market shares (Peattie & Crane,
2005), studies show consumers have little understanding of differences
among green claims and are also easily deceived by exaggerated claims
Remedial neo-animist principles

(Iovino,Testa & Iraldo, 2023). Pufferey, greenwashing and inconsistency

in claims foment consumer confusion and distrust (Chen & Chang, 2013;
Moon,Costello & Koo, 2017; Steenis,et al., 2023). Moreover, sustain­
ability claims become just another competing sign of differentiation

value cocreation
little different from other markers of distinction (Baudrillard 2019/
1972). Finally, sustainable marketing relies on consumers to maintain
ecosystem.

economic growth while simultaneously and contradictorily, demanding

they drive the economy towards sustainability (Akenji, 2014). Never­
theless, marketing persists in relying on consumers to demand sustain­
The exchange paradigm is resolutely Vast numbers of people and non-human actors are reduced to objects.

make alternative choices.Everyone, including nature is subject to the

able products (Kemper & Ballantine 2019). In the end, even if “consumer
to resources owners.Money profit is both the measure and goal of
Economistic optimizing is prioritized Persists in relying on consumers to demand sustainable products.

Competition compels businesses to prioritize financial goals over

Parties must derive satisfaction from Oligopolistic markets curtail choice.Consumers lack resources to

Endless growth is incompatible with an ecologically sustainable

environmental attitude (CEA) and… green purchase intention (GPI)”

Nature can be owned and exploited without replacement and

(Malik,Singhal & Tiwari, 2017, 259) could translate into mass green
Cost, availability, and boomerang effects constrain choice.
reproduction costs by those who “own” the land.System

consumerism, the positive effects of sustainable marketing on global

countenances unrecompensed depletion of resources
Fatal flaws for a resilient, regenerative eco-economy

sustainability if not decoupled from economic growth will remain

systems of resources circulation and value creation.

negligible (Remy et al., 2024).

Managerial marketing’s axioms, fatal flaws, and remedial neo-animist principles of resource circulation and value cocreation.

The second fatal law is adherence to the paradigm of economic

growth within sustainable marketing and the “better marketing for a
better world” movement generally. Hickel (2019) examines the capacity
of the marketing management paradigm to contribute to a solution of
logic of competition to optimize

environmental and social goals.

the climate crisis of the Anthropocene while maintaining a commitment

to growth. Specifically, Hickel asks:
and disposition decisions.

foundational axioms.

The more immediate matter is a straightforward empirical question:

economic activity.

whether it is possible to achieve 3 % annual global GDP growth

through 2030, as [UN SDG] Goal 8 demands, while at the same time
upholding the SDGs’ commitment to the sustainability objectives,
specifically (a) achieving sustainable use of natural resources and (b)
reducing greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough to keep us within
the carbon budget for 2 ◦ C (p.875).
almost always subordinate to profit.
A prior allocation of monetary (and
Managerial marketing assumptions

every exchange into which they

Economic growth is reductively

Fulfilment of customer needs is

Hickel (2019) shows empirically that no mitigation scenarios that

Exchange is a purely allocative

inadequacies impede smooth

retain the principle of economic growth can achieve the carbon reduc­
other) resources to parties.

Human and institutional

tion goals recommended by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on

marketing funcioning

Climate Change). Insofar as it internalizes economic growth as a taken

in decision-making.

measured via GDP.

anthropocentric.

for granted aspect of resource circulation and value cocreation, this is a

powerful critique of the sustainable marketing paradigm. Critique of this
mechanism.

type leads to proposals for a circular economy and for a degrowth

enter.

economy (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Hickel, 2020), proposals we support

but are outside the scope of this paper.
Some well-intentioned solutions to the problems of the Capitalocene,
Any actor will choose alternatives from
Actors exchange of their own free will

A radical separation of exchange from

Production is accomplished for profit.

Defects in existing market capitalism

because are based on economic growth, would in fact worsen these

those available that brings them the

Social development is equated with

collectively are parties to economic

Money plays a central, but neutral,

Only human beings individually or

problems. The UN SDGs build economic growth into all of their strate­
both production and disposition.

derive not from capitalism itself.

Managerial marketing axioms

gies for betterment, which Hickel shows is a contradiction. Bottom-of-

the-Pyramid initiatives like micro lending aiming to lift people out of
poverty and into the formal economic life have led to increased
purely technical role.

indebtedness, marginal gains, or ephemeral effects on financial well­

economic growth.
greatest benefit.

being (Banerjee & Jackson, 2017; Khare & Varman, 2016; Roll,Dolan &
Rajak, 2021; Schicks, 2014). However, were these well-intentioned ef­
exchanges

forts successful as measured by increases in GDP and in consumer de­

mand, they would in fact worsen the global ecological crisis. A similar
flaw applies to so-called techno-utopian solutions (Kozinets, 2008) to
the climate crisis within the economic growth paradigm. According to
axiom

axiom

axiom

axiom

axiom

axiom

axiom

axiom
Table 1

existing studies and modelling, carbon capture and storage technologies,

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th
1st

for example, are linked to increased petroleum production and increased

3
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
material and energy flows. These technologies are beset with technical
problems, involve subsidies to industries responsible for emissions, and
entirely fail to curtail increasing emissions (Heckel 2018; Douglas,
2023).
To offer a final argument about the limitations of managerial mar­
keting to address the challenges to human and biotic well-being, we note
that “Despite decades of international environmental agreements and
frameworks under the auspices of the United Nations, the richest nation
states competitively collaborate to safeguard privileged access to
carbon-based energy sources…through military means [i.e., war]. This
is not a symptom of moral failure …. It is rather clear evidence of the
intrinsic nature and limits of neoliberal [economic] governance”
(Elliott, 2016, 26; see also Karatani, 2014, 284). Both managerial mar­
keting and its sustainable variant are silent on the violence at the heart
of the fossil fuels driven economy.
In sum, without changing the governing paradigm, that is, the
ontological and epistemological axioms in managerial marketing, social
and environmental sustainability initiatives cannot effectively tackle the
challenges of the Capitalopocene, that is, climate change, species loss,
and growing human inequality (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014). The
noted lack of overlap between the concerns articulated in reports asso­
ciated with the UN SDGs and mainstream marketing scholarship is
indicative of this chasm (Chandy et al., 2021). The paper turns next to
what these changes in paradigm entail.
4. Reframing circulation for a resilient regenerative eco-
economy
One way people confront the market and market institutions is as
consumers. They are agents endowed with economic resources and
imaginative desires (Belk,Ger & Askegaard, 2003; Slater & Tonkiss,
2001). Stated a different way, consumers are “agents of resource cir­
culation” (Karatani, 2014, 290; Vargo & Lusch, 2017). As popularly
expressed in various forms of consumer resistance (Jones & Bradshaw,
2023), this gives consumers power relative to marketers. While con­
sumers’ ability to escape the market has been called into question
(Kozinets, 2002), nevertheless, capitalist firms do not have the power to
force consumers to buy, nor as producers to sell labor as a commodity if
they can imagine alternatives. Market institutions have no effective
means of combating nonviolent legal resistance (Karatani, 2014; 291)
except through commodification and reappropriation of grass roots
initiatives (Holt, 2004). But as discussed further below, many prefigu­
rative examples of resource circulation and value cocreation already
exist outside of the axioms presumed by managerial marketing or in
which the axioms’ role is considerably reduced. Prefiguration is the
creation of alternatives in the here and now, a way of theorizing social
change through action (Maeckelbergh, 2011; Parker, 2021; Törnberg,
2021). Consequently, these prefigurative experiments in organizing
resource circulation and value differently show there is a way forward.
However, adopting a set of principles different than the axioms associ­
ated with market capitalism outlined above could facilitate successful
replication and adaptation of these innovations in novel institutional
environments. This is what Riddell and Moore (2015) call outscaling.
We discuss these principles next.
From contemporary anthropological research on animist ontology
(Holbraad & Pedersen, 2017; Bird-David, 1999; Harvey, 2013; Descola,
2013), in combination with biosemiotics (Hoffmeyer & Favareau, 2009),
that is, the study of non-human circulation of information and matter,
some principles of resilient, neo-animist resource circulation have been
distilled (Arnould, 2022; Helkkula & Arnould, 2022). These are not
spiritual principles but represent a different ontology and epistemology
than those underlying managerial marketing. These principles are
summarized in the table.
Neo-animist principles begin with a rejection of the nature-culture
dualism, recognizing that we humans are a part of nature and nature
is in us, in the sense that we are are ourselves microcosmic ecosystems.
4
Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
Second, neo-animism perceives all living beings as intentional actors,
that is persons. Thus, neo-animism extends the principle of shared so­
ciality, that is, a capacity for social life, to all living beings (Arnould and
Rose 2015). Third, and relatedly neo-animism recognizes that living
beings are fundamentally resource interdependent. All living beings
provide resources and integrate resources from others to create value
within an ecosystem. Similarly, animist ontology among foraging peo­
ples (Costa & Fausto, 2010: Descola, 2013; Bird-David, 1999; Kohn,
2013), from which the neo-animist framework is developed, recognize
metabolic links between humans and the non-human biome. Neo-
animism also interrupts the capitalist axiom that non-human others,
that is, nature, can be owned and exploited without paying replacement
and reproduction costs by whoever “owns” those resources. Ownership
itself is replaced by principles of guardianship, curation, or partnership.
Thus, rather than exploiting or “protecting” non-human ecosystem ac­
tors, neo-animist principles insist on compensating pertinent non-
human ecosystem actors so they can continue to provide resources
both to one another and to human actors. Restoring this recognition is
why a future eco-economy must “pay” the reproduction costs of natural
resources used by people, as even some economists recognize (Dasgupta,
2021).
Finally, as an epistemological principle, neo-animism harnesses
biosemiotic science to improve communicative feedback between
human and non-human actors to better understand and improve
resource circulation and value cocreation among and with non-human
partners. Space constraints prohibit fuller development of these princi­
ples. Instead, subsequent sections focus first on the extension of neo-
animist mechanisms of resource circulation and value cocreation,
namely gifting, reciprocal exchange and predatory symbiosis built on
these foundational principles. Second, we develop some implications of
the extension of neo-animist principles to marketing practice.
Our point is that to make a better world, sustainable marketing, like
managerial marketing generally, should reconsider its axiomatic
boundaries. It needs a paradigm shift. A starting point is embracing the
fact that neo-liberal markets are only one among many institutional
mechanisms through which resources may circulate—be produced, ac­
quired, shared, exchanged, and integrated– and actors may cocreate
value. Anthropological, geographic, and archaeological research con­
firms the diversity of resource circulation and value cocreation in­
stitutions across human history and prehistory (Graeber & Wengrow,
2021: Meillassoux, 1971). More narrowly, Karatani (2016, 15–17) notes
that as late as the 19th century, political economy embraced the circu­
lation of resources between humans and the natural world:
In [German Philosopher Moses] Hess’ view, the relation of man and
nature is intercourse. More concretely, it is metabolism (Stoffwech­
sel), or material exchange. In German, Wechsel literally means ‘ex­
change’, so that the relation of humans to nature is one of intercourse
or exchange. This is an important point when we consider Marx’s
‘natural history’ perspective – as well as when we consider envi­
ronmental problems. The material exchanges (Stoffwechsel) be­
tween man and nature are one link within the material exchanges
that form the total earth system.
Moreover, other systems of resource circulation and value cocreation
persist in contemporary society and they prefigure (Maeckelbergh,
2011; Törnberg, 2021) the kind of post-marketing system that could
emerge if marketing researchers and practitioners embraced a paradigm
shift that supported their development.
To summarize, the table presents managerial marketing’s founda­
tional axioms, its fatal flaws, and alternative neo-animist principles for a
resilient, regenerative post-marketing. In the next section, we discuss
modes of resource circulation and value cocreation that put animist
principles in action and prefigurative experiments that seem to draw
some inspiration from models found in the anthropological record. In
the discussion, we develop a strategy for moving towards resilient,
regenerative post-marketing, offer directions for future research, as well
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
as suggesting some implications for existing marketing practice.
5. Neo-animist modes of resource circulation and value
cocreation
5.1. Gifting
The first mode of resource circulation and value cocreation is gifting,
which Descola (2013, 352) describes as the Campas relationship type.
Among the Campas of the upper Peruvian Amazon, the principles of
“generosity, solidary, and the predominance of common welfare over
the interests of individual parties have been elevated to the rank of the
supreme canon of behavior”. As among the New Zealand Maori (Mauss,
2016/1924), the forest and its denizens are recognized as the primary
source of resources and to which human beings have obligations. Strictly
speaking, gifting is a system of one-way transfers of resources without
the expectation of return. Thus, nowhere does “nature” articulate a
specific demand that resources nature provides be reciprocated. In
practice animist gifting is embedded in three obligations of giving,
receiving, and returning intrinsic to foundational sociality (Mauss,
2016/1924). At the same time, neither things nor persons are fully
alienable in such systems, as ownership of living agents is not counte­
nanced. Inalienability and obligation grounded in sociality are the glue
which inheres in gift systems. To summarize the concept very succinctly,
animist gifting couples the idea of ontological equivalence between
parties with positive asymmetry, which is to say the giver offers a
resource the recipient accepts as an obligation to further giving. An
ethos of “dutiful generosity” between people, and people and others in
the shared biome prevails (Karatani, 2014; Mauss, 2016/1924; Descola,
2013, 354; Wilk, 2010).
Partial realization of these gifting practices can be detected across a
host of practices of resource circulation and value cocreation. Gifting or
“sharing” is a common, if under the radar, means of recirculating used
children’s clothing in the UK (Ritch, 2019). In another study in the UK,
White and Williams (2016) assessed the type of work used to cocreate
mundane value within domestic groups. They discovered that 70 % of
these value cocreating activities were non-monetized and performed
without reciprocation. They point out,
In only 20 per cent of cases was non-exchanged labour used purely
out of necessity. Many additional rationales are given, including that
it is easier to get the job done this way, that it is a pleasurable and
satisfying way …Importantly, and common across both affluent and
deprived households, the social/cultural benefits of undertaking jobs
‘as a family’ (to encourage self-care and communal care) were
strongly emphasised. …The relations …was a valuable way of…
appreciating the work that other family members do for the collec­
tive good (White & Williams, 2016, 328).
A second under-researched example of contemporary gifting is the
thousands of DIY videos broadcast on YouTube and other social media
channels (Corciolani & Dalli, 2014). While scholars have examined how
influencers monetize online cultural capital from social media (Brooks,
Drenten & Piskorski, 2021), little attention has been paid to the many
posters who do not monetize their cultural capital, nor the impact of
these videos on those who view them. However, a lone study shows that
viewers internalize the value creating know-how diffused and that it has
identify effects; that is, viewers come to share something of the identity
of the posters (Wolf, 2016). This is precisely congruent with the
inalienable logic of the gift; something is given that enriches the other
with no loss to the giver (Mauss, 2016/1924).
In consumer research, we see copious examples of one-way transfers
in the value-creating welcoming practices in on-line communities
(Perren & Kozinets, 2018; Corciolani & Dalli, 2014; Sharma, Singh &
Sharma, 2021; Schau, Muniz & Arnould 2009), and extensions of
empathic support to community members (Hartmann, Wiertz &
Arnould, 2015). Gift systems are attested, such as the file sharing
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Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
practices in Napster, which were explicitly associated with an anti-
utilitarian, communitarian ethos (Giesler, 2006). Similarly, couch-
surfing builds trust through belongingness both of which increase
through hosting, which in turn, increases the likelihood of being hosted
when traveling (Rosen, Lafontaine & Hendrickson, 2011). Consistent
with how objects acquire worth in animist gift systems, geo-caching
tokens circulate through a non-monetized system in which token value
accrues via provenience, that is, through passing of hands (Figuereido &
Scaraboto, 2016). The simultaneous accrual of value and strengthening
of the objects’ linking value is typical of animist gift systems. In
analyzing the circulation of gifts during Mardi Gras in New Orleans,
Weinberger and Wallendorf (2012, 89) show,
.…[I]ntracommunity gifts provide tensile strength to the network of
connections between people in different social positions within the
same community. In a nation dominated by market economies,
intracommunity gift practices foreground the moral economy and
make visible generalized social ties and obligations. …[I]ntra­
community gifting creates a heightened sense of moral order and
social solidarity through expressions of generosity and gratitude,
while concurrently granting status and cultural authority to givers…
This is an example of the hidden moral economy which creates trust
in small social worlds and “increase[s] the stability of systems of re­
lations” in society (Cheal, 1988, 17), the gift economy, in short. In sum,
the free circulation of both material (tools, hand-me-downs, furniture,
rounds at the bar, meals, alms, etc.), and immaterial (know-how, how-
to, empathy, etc.), constitutes a moral economy analogous to the sum
of eco-economic relations in some animist cultures of the Campos type
described by Descola and others (Mauss, 2016/1924).
5.2. Reciprocal exchange
The second mode in resource circulation and value cocreation is
reciprocal exchange, which Descola (2013,345) identifies as the Tur­
kanos type. The Turkanos of the Colombian Amazon strive to respect
obligations of reciprocal exchange “meticulously in all their interactions
with other inhabitants of the cosmos”, which they conceive of in ther­
modynamic terms. That is to say, the conservation of energy is central to
their exchange practices. To summarize the concept very succinctly,
Turkanos exchange couples a perceived symmetry between actors
disposing of complementary resources, with basically recognized rules
of fair trade. The principal is that all human and non-human actors are
interdependent. They possess both rights and obligations to participate
in an essentially closed thermodynamic system of energy and matter
circulation. In addition, it features a scalar distribution of resources,
meaning that greater efforts to marshal resources are rewarded (Kar­
atani, 2014; Mauss 1924; Descola, 2013; Wilk, 2010). Such systems
countenance complementary forms of economic specialization among
organized groups. Elaborated forms of this system produce redistribu­
tive economic systems, basically systems of indirect reciprocity, which
is, the collective marshalling of resources to redistribute to those with
particular needs (Karatani, 2014).
Here prefigurative examples are legion. In the UK household labor
study, White and Williams (2011) found 12 % of needed service was
provided through both informal monetized and non-monetized ex­
changes. More elaborate systems have sprung up everywhere. Thus,
citizens’ energy cooperatives in Alsace labor to organize new equitable
energy production and distribution systems in the face of challenges
linked to sunk infrastructural investments and regulatory requirements
(Arentsen & Bellekom, 2014; Kunze & Becker, 2015; Energie Partagée,
2023).
Ozanne and Ozanne (2021, 373) provide an example from New
Zealand of a widespread system of non-monetized exchanges of service,
the time bank (see also Papaoikonomou & Valor, 2016). As they write:
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
TBs…create a local exchange market for services in which customers
are also service suppliers. Members offer an hour of their labor to the
TB market, generating value by providing different services. The TB
is an egalitarian market in which its currency is hours of service; one
hour of any members’ service is “sold” for one hour of another’s
service that is later “purchased.” TBs are … driven by a different
logic of enhancing community well-being rather than making a
profit…
While the New Zealand case showed how a robust lateral exchange
system of value cocreation bolstered existing community ties, other
examples concern efforts to create new communities based on restoring
regimes of common property management and non-pecuniary principles
of exchange. The classic kibbutz of post-war Israel could be an example
of a redistributive economy although observers debate whether and to
what extent kibbutz question conventional economic models (Abra­
mitzky, 2011; Cheng & Sun, 2015). In contrast, ecovillages do question
conventional economic principles. Ecovillages are (Global ecovillage
network 2023):
intentional, traditional or urban community… consciously designed
through locally owned participatory processes in all four dimensions
of sustainability (social, culture, ecology and economy) to regenerate
social and natural environments.
There are hundreds of these ecovillages around the world. In one
Irish example, participants cocreated infrastructure and dwellings. It
contains a hostel that provides revenue from visitors and “features a
community farm, owned by all of its members and … farmers leave the
food in a shed in the adjoined village, and farm members take what they
need” (Casey, Lichrou & O’Malley, 2020, 1663). But also exemplifying
the prefiguration concept, it is also an imagined community insofar as
members are actively experimenting the modes of resource circulation
and value cocreation that will sustain the community. Similarly in a
study of 4 ecovillages in Spain, the authors observed:
The multiplicity of exchanges in ecovillages reveals material ratio­
nality connected to purposes of self-sufficiency. It shows plural
economy practices with a predominance of domesticity and reci­
procity (Polanyi, 2001). Reciprocity appears in voluntary exchanges
that materialize in diffuse practices and intersubjective interactions,
and not in economic benefits of a financial-monetary nature (Pola­
nyi, 2001). Symmetry is the guiding principle adhering to isonomy.
Domesticity, in turn, consists of production for one’s own and/or
collective use with motivations that are not based on profit or any
other market criteria, or on institutions (Tres & de Souza, 2022, 5).
As in the Turkanos case, engaging multiple indigenous communities
(Descola, 2013), the contemporary Catalan cooperative movement in
Spain organizes not single, but multiple communities to develop alter­
native systems of housing, access to food, and industrial production
based on principles of democratic control and social benefit rather than
profit taking. The movement is marked by “historical legacies of the
Catalan context, a firmly rooted tradition of cooperation and civic
engagement as well as autonomist and anarchist traditions” (Gio­
vannini, 2020, 506).
These cooperative movements in Catalonia, have given rise to so­
phisticated alternative, social currencies. These alternative currencies
are used to obtain a wide variety of goods and services generally from
local providers. The currencies are independent and autonomous. Local
currencies can be exchanged for one another electronically, originally
via the South African Community Exchange System or CES, and subse­
quently through an indigenous mechanism. All these currencies permit
accounts to operate negative balances because the cooperative mobilizes
mutual debt as a mechanism to foster solidarity. This is possible because
no interest is charged on debt, and because through ongoing exchanges
accounts will tend to operate around parity; there is also no possible
profit-taking. Participation in the local currency scheme allows people
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Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
to join a cooperative at the same time, and if they wish, to pursue in­
dividual entrepreneurial activity but as part of the overall cooperative in
which they are members. Membership satisfies certain fiscal re­
sponsibilities towards the Spanish state without undermining individual
autonomy or the regional cooperative economy (Rasillo, 2021).
Thus, cooperatives, ecovillages, alternative currencies, and con­
sumer supported agriculture (Press & Arnould, 2011) all illustrate pre­
figurative examples of reciprocal exchange at varying scales and with
varying degrees of success. Their struggles to sustain reciprocal econo­
mies (Très, de Souza & de Moura Ferraz 2022) illustrate the need for
research on best practices and how to link them to a new ontological
orientation.
The most elaborate form of reciprocal exchanges is the redistributive
economy, exemplified in the Nordic welfare states, always listed among
the world’s happiest countries. State agencies redistribute childcare,
education, healthcare, leisure opportunities, transport, retirement, and
security resources to their populations (Greve, 1996). In a more devel­
oped neo-animist economy, one could imagine the expansion of the
sphere of operations of both decentralized entities like local ecovillages,
energy cooperatives, community supported agriculture, regional co­
operatives, as well as state level redistributive economies.
5.3. Predatory symbiosis
The third example is predatory symbiosis, which Descola calls the
Jivaro case. It is a more exotic concept than gifting or reciprocal ex­
change but an equally important foundation for a post-marketing neo-
animist economy. Predatory symbiosis combines negative symmetry
between actors, which is the idea that one party requires some essential
resource from the other to survive, with a norm of equal, rights-based
distribution of resources. In other words, predatory symbiosis links a
right to take with a norm of social responsibility, that is, rules such that
taking contributes to systems cohesion. In fact, among non-human ac­
tors, predation is integral to eco-system health (Karatani, 2014; Mauss,
2016/1924; Descola, 2013; Wilk, 2010). To illustrate predatory symbi­
osis with an example from biology, resource stressed trees will demand
resources from non-stressed trees along their mycelial networks but not
to the extent of threatening the entire community (Simard 2021).
Similarly, Tsing (2015) shows how exotic matsutake mushroom mycelia
have opportunistically colonized secondary growth forests in North
America. Researchers at Norway’s arctic university studying the kitti­
wake birds have shown a surprising example of predatory symbiosis
between people and animals. In a conservationist move, government
placed the kittiwake’s nesting cliffs in a “protected” zone, off limits to
traditional human egg gathering. However, it seems that human pre­
dation during the breeding season offered the birds some protection
from other avian and mammal predators, which the birds lost in people’s
reserve. Hence, the bird has migrated from its nesting cliffs to the nearby
town. Seemingly, they moved to be nearer their human predators, pro­
voking new challenges for their human neighbors (Førde & Granås,
2023).
Some kinds of foraging represent neo-animist predatory symbiosis.
The matsutake mycelia mentioned above have fostered a culture of
foraging in the American NW practiced by a host of folk who are mar­
ginal to “mainstream” economic life and whose livelihoods depend upon
the unpredictable florescence of the matsutake fruiting bodies (Tsing
1975). Predatory symbiosis can be likened to traditional pastoralism, for
example cattle or reindeer herding. Some pastoralist peoples lived
almost exclusively from resources provided by semi-domesticated live­
stock. These livestock in turn, imposed a nomadic mode of life on
pastoralist people. Hunting is crucial to many foraging economies, but
among animists, hunters generally take only such game as they are
“allowed” by imagined animal guardians (Hill, 2011). Pastoralists and
foraging peoples have not disappeared, and much might be learned from
them about both relations with animal others but also resource circu­
lation and value cocreation in common property regimes (Manzano,
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
Fig. 1. Steps along the strategic path to a future neo-animist inspired eco-economy.
et al., 2021; Renom, Mwamidi & Dominguez 2020).
Successful common property management as among pastoral peo­
ples or in contemporary ecovillages is hardly novel. A number of authors
have documented the features of successful common property systems
including clear boundaries defining the community doing the managing;
reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a fair balance of costs and
benefits for participants; predictable, rapid, and equitable conflict res­
olution; graduated punishments for overconsumption; and supportive
relationships between the community and other layers of authority
(Lansing, 1987; Netting, 1976; Ostrom, 2015). These authors have
debunked the pessimistic pretensions in Hardin’s (1968) “tragedy of the
commons” thesis. Vigorously defended foraging rights in public and
private forest lands are enshrined formally in law in the Nordic coun­
tries. Everyone has unimpeded access to berries, and mushrooms; these
resources subsequently nourish informal exchange networks. This type
of common property regime is a resistant counter-hegemonic practice to
the tendency of capital to monetize such resources (Caffentzis & Fed­
erici, 2014; Peredo & McLean, 2020).
Predatory symbiosis has already been incorporated in circular
economy initiatives. For example,
[permaculture] systems have been designed which enable fish and
ducks to live in rice paddies where the animals fertilize the rice and
control pests. Rice, eggs, and meat are all produced simultaneously
on the same piece of land (Hathaway, 2016, 246)
Thus, ducks are widely introduced as predators within rice cultiva­
tion (Teo, 2001) and featured in Australian Castle Rock Estate winery
(ABC news, 2023). Thus, predators are increasingly recognized as an
integral part of permaculture management (Graves, 2023). In agrofor­
estry, goats are successful biological agents in the eco-ecological reno­
vation of pastures (Luginbuhl,et al., 1999). Similarly, targeted cattle
grazing can be instrumental for transforming conventional oil palm
agriculture into more biodiversity-friendly agroecosystems (Tohiran,
et al., 2017). Managed predation increases systems resilience and re­
duces use and costs of petrochemical based herb- and pesticides.
These examples of predatory symbiosis apparent in agroforestry and
permaculture are privileged zones of experimentation little consulted in
marketing. However, situated as they are at the top of many value
chains, they provide guidance for a neo-animist economy in which
symbiotic interdependence among humans and other members of the
biome are recognized and valorized.
6. Discussion
The question that drove this research was what kind of marketing we
7
Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
can imagine in a future in which the capitalist market economy is
dethroned from its dominant position. To answer this question, we make
several contributions. Our primary contribution as shown in Fig. 1 is to
propose a strategic path towards a post-managerial marketing era, one
that transcends traditional managerial marketing. By offering the
alternative ontological principles and prefigurative examples of neo-
animist modes of resource circulation and value cocreation presented
above, we move beyond mere critique or utopian imagining to address
the question of how to move towards a neo-animist post marketing
system. Next, as shown in the figure, we present several simultaneous
and iterative steps along the strategic path to a future neo-animist
inspired economy, which is characterized by a transformed relation­
ship between humans and the non-human biome, challenging the un­
sustainable axioms of the contemporary marketing paradigm.
Paraphrasing Layton (2011, 259), we define a neo-animist eco-
economy shorn of private appropriation of nature and the profit
imperative as “a network of individuals, groups and/or entities;
embedded in a regenerative [bio]social matrix; linked directly or indi­
rectly through sequential or shared participation in [resource circula­
tion]; which jointly and/or collectively creates … value with and for
[stakeholders], through the offer of; assortments of products, services,
experiences and [information]; and that emerge in response to or
anticipation of [stakeholder] demand” within the regenerative capacity
of resource circulation and value cocreation. The application of neo-
animist principles and modes of resource circulation and value cocrea­
tion can lead to a circular economy of plenitude, producing an abun­
dance of values that matter, such as safety, security, connection to
others, access to means of self-realization, pleasure, and so forth (see
Schor and Thompson, 2014 for details). In this future, the dominant
concern of marketing is no longer pursuit of capital. Instead, marketing
becomes only one among the mechanisms through which resources
circulate and values are cocreated more like the simple commodity
markets which preceded capitalism (Polanyi 2001).
The first strategic step towards a neo-animist post-marketing system
is the ontological change we outline above and present in the table by
way of the critique of the axioms and fatal flaws in the existing mana­
gerial marketing (and its sustainable variant) ontology, and the alter­
native neo-animist principles. To reverse the unsustainable tenets of the
modern marketing paradigm we imagine a different “economic” rela­
tionship between humans and the non-human biome as well as between
human actors. In particular, we emphasize recognition of the intentional
personhood of non-human actors and extension of foundational sociality
to them (Helkkula & Arnould, 2022). We imagine replacing ownership
and “free” exploitation of the non-human biome with guardianship,
curation and partnering; adopting circular economy principles that
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
reject the growth orientation (Geissdoerfer,et al., 2017; Hickel, 2020);
and broader adoption of neo-animist modes of resource circulation and
value cocreation.
An additional contribution of this research is to present future
research avenues for the path to a resilient regenerative neo-animist
system of resource circulation and value cocreation. Some future
research opportunities involving the ontological change we outline,
include:
• In their appeal for marketing scholarship more relevant to addressing
social problems Chandy, et al. (2014) limit their perspective to a
dyadic firm-world nexus, in which the world is conveniently ill-
defined but does not seem to include non-human others. From a
neo-animist perspective, our recommendation is to pursue research
on value creation among human and non-human entities and to
assess them in terms of metrics associated with the UN SDG with the
caveat that the imperative for profitable economic growth is
suspended.
• We provide examples of modes of resource circulation and value
cocreation that seem to embody neo-animist principles. However,
future research calls for more examples. The examples discussed
represent only a fraction of the prefigurative experiments currently
ongoing around the world. They should not be hard for marketing
scholars to identify. Chandy,et al., (2021, 3) also recommend that
“We should explore beyond the familiar large businesses most often
studied in academic marketing research.” We endorse Haase, et al.’s
(2017) plea for more research on alternative value cocreation in
contexts like those described above.
The second step shown in the figure is the application of alternative
modes of resource circulation and value cocreation for which we found
evidence in numerous prefigurative examples. Thus, we present three
relational modes through which animists organize resource circulation
and value cocreation. We illustrate contemporary manifestations of
practices and systems which show the enduring significance of gifting,
reciprocal exchange, and predatory symbiosis to resource circulation
and value cocreation. The claim is that these examples can prefigure the
kind of neo-animist system we can imagine in a post-managerial mar­
keting world. In advocating for the three relational neo-animist modes of
resource circulation and value cocreation, our goal is to achieve a post-
managerial neo-animist economy as the desired outcome.
Some future research opportunities stemming from the examples
described include:
• The prefigurative examples adduced above incorporate, however
disparately, the relational modes of resource circulation and value
cocreation identified among animist communities remote in time or
place from market-mediated consumer culture. However, across the
board, more systematic research on the nature and extent of value
experiences that emerge from participating in gifting, reciprocal
exchange or symbiotic predation is warranted in the interests of
extending the application of neo-animist principles in practices such
as those documented.
• In addition, in reviewing the examples, one has the impression that
stakeholders are improvising, absent a coherent ontology alternate
to the dominant economic paradigm (Très, de Souza. & de Moura
Ferraz 2023). This suggests a need for action research and an insti­
tutional orientation to foster the systematic application of the neo-
animist principles discussed.
• One limitation of the study is treating the neo-animist resource cir­
culation and value cocreation practices separately when in practice
many of the new grassroots initiatives combine practices for value
cocreation. For example, practices within bookcrossing.com include
gifting, reciprocal exchange, as well as practices that are imbued
with the calculative logic of material accumulation (Corciolani &
Dalli, 2014). More such research on the diverse ways in which
8
Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
resource circulation and value cocreation practices are integrated in
collectivities, and the tensions and contradictions that arise there­
from would be of use in fostering post-marketing systems of resource
circulation and value cocreation.
A third strategic step to be taken in parallel with the previous two
entails integrating animist principles into existing marketing practice.
We illustrate some examples of such steps. In rethinking product pro­
cesses, for example, some initiatives are already offering products
incorporating benefits to non-human actors. Regenerative permaculture
at scale could explicitly offer products differentiated based on their
contributions to local ecosystems resilience or regeneration. Other
companies are offering frugal products, those defined by “a set of
product characteristics that particularly appeals to consumers who, by
necessity or choice, value products with a low cost of consumption that,
at the same time, are sustainable, simple, and offer basic quality” (von
Janda,et al., 2020). Other producers could differentiate themselves
based on product principles enunciated already twenty years ago when
designers called for cradle-to-cradle products, the production or dispo­
sition of which return resources to the environment (McDonough &
Braungart, 2002). In the construction industry, some designers are
advocating net positive construction, a “short-hand for buildings that
generate more resources/energy than they consume” (Mang & Reed,
2015, 7).
Predatory symbiosis could be harnessed to expand the production
and consumption of game as an alternative to industrial meat produc­
tion. As mentioned, indigenous hunters know how to manage value
cocreative relationships with game animals although pressure from
market systems can drive them to unsustainable practice. Research
shows that game meat is more environmentally benign than industrially
produced meat (Nunes,et al., 2021). Some stakeholders seek to return
hunting to a more intimate relation between predator and prey where
the terms are more equal. In some countries, hunting cooperatives exist
and participate in permit-based hunting lotteries that sustain game
populations.
In terms of pricing, some major retailers in Germany, Sweden, and
the Netherlands are experimented with true pricing, which builds into
retail prices the costs of the ecological damage of the production of each
ingredient of products. Initial research shows that “consumer accep­
tance of true price food products can be promoted by practitioners:
(promotional) appeals to social status and to the ‘green value’ that true
pricing can deliver” (Taufik,van Haaster-de Winter & Reinders, 2023).
Future research opportunities are many. Among them:
• So far, research has paid inadequate attention to the role of com­
modity exchange in a post-marketing eco-economy. For example,
time banks and local currencies face the challenge of developing
principles of conversion between these special purpose monies and
fiat currencies. Research should address how these challenges might
be overcome.
• The political economic critique of managerial marketing and eco­
nomics more generally has established the necessity of decoupling
commodity exchange from the axioms of unlimited economic
growth, primitive accumulation of natural resources without
recompense, and techno-utopian myth (Karatani, 2014; Hickel,
2019; Saito, 2017; Foster, 2022). Thus, we encourage research to
explain how to adapt principles of commodity exchange that pre­
dated capitalism (Polanyi 2001) in service to a neo-animist post-
capitalist post-marketing world. Rasillo’s (2021) investigations of
blockchain instruments developed within the Catalan cooperative
movement could inspire fruitful future marketing research on this
topic.
• Efforts to decarbonize logistics and reduce its environmental foot­
print seem locked within seeking cost saving and uncertain techno­
logical fixes, like decentralized hydrogen-based transport, for
existing globalized supply chains (McKinnon,Petersen & Evans,
E. Arnould and A. Helkkula
2021; Yu, 2023). Research could apply localization lessons already
built into the ecovillage, community supported agriculture, and new
cooperative movements which reduce carbon miles, to mass market
logistics.
• Moving beyond so-called green logistics motivated by regulation,
research could examine the potential to develop restorative, regen­
erative supply chains.
• Efforts to expand the scope of game hunting is hampered by a host of
socio-cultural contradictions between interest groups. A contempo­
rary debate argues in favor of hunting as both an ethically and
ecologically defensible practice, but the debate is far from resolved
(Cahoone, 2009; Demetriou & Fischer, 2018). Cultural branding
research might identify ways to resolve these contradictions (Holt,
2004).
• Expanding consumption of game is challenged by unhelpful regula­
tions, lack of distribution channels, and consumer uncertainty (von
Essen, 2020). Each of these components invites conventional market
research.
• Additional research on consumer acceptance of true price food
products that have been promoted by appeals to social status and to
‘green value’ could be refined. Research could investigate the effects
of showing that some costs are due to firm efforts to regenerate local
ecosystems, rather than just offset the environmental production
costs.
The fourth step shown in the figure is outscaling and upscaling
existing prefigurative experiments. Reinforcements of practices are
needed to realize the potential of the neo-animist resource circulation
and value cocreation experiments identified here. Some challenges are
internal to the examples discussed above. In part, the challenges are due
to difficulties in implementing neo-animist principles since these are not
well articulated as a system of principles in any of the examples dis­
cussed. For example, in work on the Catalan cooperatives Rasillo (2021)
remarks on the oft-noted problem of recruiting people to alternative
currencies that facilitate reciprocal exchanges. Très, de Souza. & de
Moura Ferraz, (2023) discuss challenges associated with motivating
communal labor, while evidence from other contexts shows its feasi­
bility (Lansing, 1987). Ecovillage communities embrace an anthropo­
centric protectionist philosophy towards the non-human biome
(Marchais, Roux & Arnould forthcoming) rather than a reciprocal or
symbiotic one as neo-anmism would propose. Some challenges are
external to the experiments. As noted in other research on consumer
driven market driving, rules and regulations hamper the outscaling and
upscaling of many prefigurative experiments (Maciel & Fischer, 2020;
Press et al., 2014).
Research is needed on how to articulate and diffuse the challenges in
implementing neo-animist modes of resource circulation and value
cocreation.
• A good example is investigating how to move away from pro­
ductionist or protectionist models of relations with the non-human
biome to the reciprocal or symbiotic relations that characterize
these relationships among animist peoples.
• Why do some prefigurative experiments thrive in some cultural
contexts, e.g., ecovillages in the British Isles or cooperatives in Cat­
alonia? How can these models be replicated?
• Research should focus on how to reform the rules and regulations
that hamper the outscaling and upscaling of specific types of pre­
figurative experiments.
• Ecovillages and cooperatives sometimes receive public support as in
the Irish and Catalan examples. Research is needed on why such
support exists and how it could be replicated in other contexts.
The fifth step in the figure is the emergence of a resilient regenerative
neo-animist inspired post marketing system of resource circulation and
value cocreation. The prefigurative examples adduced above
9
Journal of Business Research 176 (2024) 114590
incorporate, however disparately, the relational modes of resource cir­
culation and value cocreation identified among animist communities
remote in time or place from market-mediated consumer culture. Like
the animist communities in which these modes were dominant, these
examples show that alternatives to the prevailing take-make-waste
economy are possible even if either embryonic or encapsulated in iso­
lated contexts.
7. Conclusion
Calls for better marketing for a better world like calls for sustainable
marketing, entailing apparent major changes in strategy and tactics to
incorporate some environmental or social equity concerns, nevertheless
maintain the profit and growth priorities intrinsic to the marketing
paradigm. Because of the growth and profit imperative, these ap­
proaches do not effectively respond to the demonstrated incompatibility
between growth and the carbon reduction targets climate science deems
necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change and massive extinction
events. Further, these approaches maintain the anthropocentrism that
entails objectification of all non-human biological actors, which
threatens their well-being and capacities for reproduction. Their well-
being and capacities for reproduction are now so threatened that
human survival is at risk. That is why an ontological, paradigmatic
change is required to imagine systems of resource circulation and value
cocreation beyond the current marketing paradigm. This paper imagines
what that paradigm can look like beginning with principles based in a
neo-animist conception of human non-human relationships. Expansion
of gifting, reciprocal exchange and predatory symbiosis as systems of
resource circulation and value cocreation, building from existing pre­
figurative examples, is proposed as a path forward both in research and
practice. In addition, transitional marketing practices are proposed,
which partially incorporate neo-animist principles that respect the rights
of non-human actors to resources. Further research is needed to address
shortcomings and challenges to outscaling and upscaling faced by these
prefigurative examples.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Eric Arnould: Writing – original draft, Investigation, Conceptuali­
zation. Anu Helkkula: Conceptualization, Visualization, Writing – re­
view & editing.
Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.
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Dr. Eric Arnould is Emeritus Professor at the Aalto University Business School, Helsinki,
Finland. He has pursued a career in applied social science since graduating from Bard
College in 1973. He earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982.
From 1977 until 1990, he worked extensively as an applied anthropologist primarily in
francophone West Africa. A global nomad, he has been on faculty at four European uni­
versities and several in the US. He briefly held a Chair in the Danish Institute for Advanced
Studies (DIAS) at University of Southern Denmark. Aalto University awarded him an
honorary doctorate in 2016 and SDU also awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2020 that
recognized his scholarly work in codifying the field of consumer culture theory and in
bringing ethnographic work into academic marketing research. With Melanie Wallendorf,
he initiated the Qualitative Data Analysis roundtable, now an annual feature of the Con­
sumer Culture Theory Consortium conference. Eric’s research on consumer culture, cul­
tural marketing strategy, services marketing and marketing and development appears in
over 90 articles and chapters in major social science and managerial periodicals and books.
He has co-edited a second edition of Consumer Culture Theory for Sage Publications. He is
an Area Editor at International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Anu Helkkula is Senior Research Specialist, Research Ethics, at Hanken School of Eco­
nomics. Her expertise includes service experience, value co-creation, and service design
and innovation. Her research has appeared in a wide range of journals and edited books.
She is interested in healthcare service, well-being, intelligent technology, service culture
and sustainability. https://harisportal.hanken.fi/en/persons/anu-helkkula. https://orcid.
org/0000-0001-7041-037X