Présentation

My research interests revolve around two aspects of the study of markets and consumer capitalism. Firstly, I am fascinated by the historical development of marketing, in particular of branding, advertising research, and of market/consumer research services. In particular, I believe that the role that market and consumer research techniques play in assembling the agents of market exchange deserves more empirical as well as historical research.

Secondly, I more and more intrigued by the role of religions in the shaping of markets. By default, I am interested in the contribution that the study of theology can make in helping us understand the economic sociology of consumer capitalism. For example, the question to what extent markets are a form of secular religion is something that sociologists of markets have so far ignored too much. Recently, I have begun to look more closely at the role of religious concepts like ‘choice’ and ‘salvation’, and political metaphors of ‘democracy’ and ‘voting’ for the making of the rhetorical and metaphysical framework of modern consumer capitalism.

I have pursued a historical-sociological research approach to the rise of markets and consumer capitalism in a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals, three edited books, and over twenty chapters in edited collections. In addition, I have presented my work at over 90 workshops, conferences and seminar series, and co-organised numerous workshops and conferences myself. So far, I have received 5 awards for my research. My PhD thesis, a political history of the advertising industry in early twentieth-century Britain, was accepted without changes in December 2008 and won the ABH Coleman Prize for the best dissertation in British business history in 2009.

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Conférences

Market Research and Political Ideology

Mercredi 20 mai 2015, de 15h à 17h
EHESS  (Salle 1) - 190, avenue de France - 75013 Paris

“This seminar introduces a new way of reading the history of market and consumer research since 1900. Instead of interpreting market and consumer research merely as a response to the needs of commercial actors, like manufacturers and retailers, this seminar will focus on the political ideologies that influenced the making of this professional field in the United States as opposed to Europe. Surprisingly, we find that both American and European market and consumer researchers did not always abide by the ‘ideo-logic’ of neoliberalism and its various predecessors. More often, they used their research practices to promote more social-democratic, at times even socialist, political aims which included consumer protection, education and general socio-economic equality. It might be argued, though, that market and consumer researchers of all ideological proveniences were essentially – to quote Carl Schmitt – political romanticists.”

The Theopolitics of Markets

Vendredi 22 mai 2015 de 11h à 13h
EHESS  (Salle 1) - 190, avenue de France - 75013 Paris

“Following on from the seminar on marketing and political ideology, this seminar aims at discovering an as yet hidden connection between specifically protestant religious sentiments on the one hand, and the modernization of marketing management since 1900 on the other hand. This hidden connection I call the ‘theopolitics of markets’. It can be shown that virtually all early American marketing management thinkers and marketing practitioners, including opinion pollsters and market researchers, had strong roots in Protestant sects (Wesleyan Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians). Key figures in the American movement to create wider acceptance for marketing as a ‘science’, and for advertising as a modern communication means, were either lay preachers themselves or sons of Protestant and/or Reformed preachers from the mid-West. Historical research of this kind provides us with key insights into possible explanations for why a customer-driven market ideology shares so many characteristics of a secular religion."

Contact : Marie Chessel (chessel@ehess.fr) - Stefan Schwarzkopf (ssc.mpp@cbs.dk)

Acuueil et séjour

• Invité par Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel

• 1 mois (mai 2015)