Living in the material world: marketing and meaning

Rather than being a social evil, consumer goods are an important medium of our culture. They are a place where we keep our private and public meanings.

Living in the material world: marketing and meaning

Grant McCracken

Anthropologist Grant McCracken looks at marketing as the management of meaning in culture. He argues that the meanings carried by material goods come from the culture we live in and go into the goods that we consume in pursuit of identity, to help make choices and communicate with others. Marketing facilitates the movement of meanings from cultural artefacts to consumers via branding.

Materialism is becoming the villain of the piece

Increasingly it's the explanation we resort to when things go wrong. Drugs on the rise, divorce rate up, kids dropping...

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