Kozinets, R. V. (2002). Can consumers escape the market? Emancipatory illuminations from burning man.
interesting paper. Kozinets, R. V. (2002). Can consumers escape the market? Emancipatory illuminations from burning man. At Burning Man, when people think that they've somehow escaped or eluded the market, they have a great time. They are people who think that the social logics dominated by the market lead to a less expressive, less communal, less fulfilling life. In the absence of the market, life itself turns in art, and a festival. Kozinets says that it's not necessary to escape the market at all to fulfil this hunger for community and even self-expression. There are many other ways that retailers can go about configuring the experience of retailing to satisfy these deeper, human, spiritual needs of consumers that we seem to shy away from as business people, but which I believe will be increasingly urgent as business plays a more therapeutic role in the 21st century social economy. There are lots of other implications: that consumption has become institutionalized as a "good" (and engine of progress no less) and thus invisible and impervious to many kinds of important social critiques.
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