“Conflict Market” Research Article

Here you can read my first introduction of the ‘Conflict Market’ as a notion published in Journal of Consumer Culture 2022. The abstract reads:

“At the beginning of the millennium, consumer culture researchers predicted that people
would increasingly demand that marketplace actors subscribe to contemporary ethics of
liberal democracy. Although their prediction indeed came true, they did not foresee that
an algorithm-powered media ecosystem in combination with growing authoritarian
movements would soon come to fuel an increasingly polarized political landscape and
challenge the very fundament of liberal democracy per se. In this macroscopic, conceptual
article, I discuss three assumption-challenging logics—counter-democratic consumer
culture, de-dialectical algorithmic manipulation, and growing illiberal consumer
resistance—according to which the market increasingly monetizes the conflicts accompanying
this polarization and, thereby, reinforces it. I call this new logic a conflict
market and illustrate it through three, historically situated and currently conflicting,
consumer ideoscapes—the neoblue, the neogreen, and the neobrown—between which
consumers engage in marketized conflicts, not in a de-politicizing way, but in an increasingly
un-politicizing, de-dialectical, and polarizing way. At the technologically manipulated
conflict market, the role of marketers is to monetize politically sensitive topics
by creating conflict, knowingly renouncing large groups of consumers, and giving fodder
to the political extremes.”

“Plant versus Cow: Conflict Framing ..” Research Article in JMMK

In this article I and Christian Koch explore and identify the way famous brands (in this case Oatly) amplify and capitalize on conflict in their advertising. Here the orchestrated conflict is between an animal-based food industry framed as corrupt and misogynist, and a plant-based food industry framed as wholesome and fair. This is the abstract:

“In this article we focus on the cultural mechanisms of market evolution accompanying the marketplace discord between a market actor and a dominant industry. We situate our analysis in the intersection between marketing and institutional theory and engage specifically with the constructs of legitimacy and framing strategies, but also with Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy concept of agonistics. To better understand the blurry impact of market-driven activism and conflict on the shaping of markets, we use the ongoing “milk-war” between plant- versus animal-based drink producers as backdrop, and empirically explore how a market actor and their supporting institutional actors frame a previously legitimate industry in an attempt to delegitimize it, without sacrificing its consumer market. We find a rhetorical juggling-act of attempted legitimization of the market alternative and delegitimization of the status quo, where the intricacy of framing strategies constitutes what we call conflict framing. In line with the market-critical fundaments of agonistics, this conflict framing can work to (partly) delegitimize the status quo industry and to relegitimize its market at the same time, but cannot radically disrupt the system. Drawing from research predicting a growing absorption of politicized conflict by the market in general, we problematize and critique a potential rise in presence of marketmediated conflict framing. Our insights contribute to ongoing conversations on market evolution, markets for alternatives, ethical consumption and the ideological functioning of markets.”

“Tickling Tensions” Research Article in MT

In this article I go into the manifestations of what I later, in the “Conflict Market”, call the “neoblue” and “neogreen” movements  and explore how “woke” branding gives fodder to the fantasies of the “neobrown” movement. This is the abstract:

“This article explores why cultural branding – ideo-affective market communication addressing intense political tensions – paradoxically seems to lead to political inertia rather than political mobilization. I critically analyse advertising addressing political tensions related to race, ethnicity and immigration, but instead of only following the traced-out trajectory of postcolonial theory, I use the lens of Žižek’s radicalized Lacanian psychoanalysis and treat the therapeutic visuality in cultural branding as ideological fantasies of the market’s multicultural imaginary. Through critical visual methodologies, I situate four ‘multicultural’ commercials in their culture- and idea historical contexts, and juxtapose a postcolonial with a Žižekian reading for each of them. I come to argue that the market’s multicultural imaginary (unconsciously) serves important ideological functions in sustaining the political status quo not foremost because it placates anxiety, but because it doesn’t. Tapping into previous discussions in critical marketing on fetishistic disavowal and inversion, I offer yet another explanation. The political inertia following from ideo-affective dimensions of cultural branding does not primarily come from therapeutic sedation, but from the opposite, namely the parallax object’s upholding of gruesome tension and suspense; a fetishistic tickling. This article ends by critiquing the compulsory use of postcolonial theory in research on racial and ethnic relations. From the Žižekian reading, it appears that the postcolonial gaze is now a punishing agency like any dominant ideology, where the social inequality of global capitalism is deemed a more bearable alternative than the traumatic horror of visible racism, which, subsequently, closes the circuit from radical politics.”

 

 

My TEDx Talk on “How Consumption Promotes Political Visions” January 2019

This TEDX talk was my first official talk about the ‘Conflict Market’.