This chapter provides a critical review of research concerning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer, and other non-heterosexual people (LGBTQ+) 1 in the field of marketing and 1 While many phenomena are complex, dynamic, and contingent, sexual identities are a particularly contested discursive terrain (see Ghaziani, 2017;Weeks, 2007Weeks, , 2017. We understand sexuality as a fluid entanglement of desires, practices, and identity propositions that are continually negotiated by individuals and collectives. These characteristics pose a challenge to researchers seeking a parsimonious but accurate label that encompasses all nonheterosexual sexualities. The acronym LGBTQ+ refers to the five main identity categories within this collective -Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, and Queer. Trans* is the umbrella term used by those who do not identify with the gender identity that they were assigned at birth (known as cis people; 'trans-' stems from the Latin word for 'across', while its antonym 'cis-' refers to 'this side of'). Words like transgender, transsexual, and transvestite are also used, but each has a different (and often controversial) meaning (Devor & Dominic, 2015). The asterisk (*) is borrowed from computer sciences where it represents a wildcard placeholder, meaning that trans* encompasses everyone who does not identify as 'cis'. The '+' is used to appreciate that even these five broad labels do not encompass the full variety of sexual and gender subjectivities, and can refer to asexual or questioning people, heterosexual allies, and intersexuals, amongst others. As discussed in the "Future Frontiers" section below,
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the work of Deleuze and Guattari can help place marketers to think differently about places and place brands. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper that draws together a range of resources to develop a Deleuzoguattarian approach to place marketing. Findings Deleuzoguattarian thinking helps place marketers to reconceptualise places as “becomings”, which in turn encourages them to look between, beneath and beyond their usual foci. The Deleuzoguattarian spirit of critical-creativity is also noted, encouraging readers to develop the ideas presented here in new directions. Research limitations/implications This paper expands the epistemological imagination of place marketing scholars to consider the places between their place brands, the subconscious influences beneath the surface of salience and phenomena beyond the anthroposcale of everyday experience. This enriches existing conceptualisations and extends place marketing with several new areas of enquiry that can be empirically elaborated through future research. Practical implications This paper helps place marketing practitioners to consider and respond to the flows of matter–energy that influence their place brands between, beneath and beyond their intentional management practices. Social implications This paper develops critical schools of thought within the place marketing literature, providing some suggestions about how to develop and manage more inclusive place brands. This may also have implications for activists and others seeking societal improvements. Originality/value This paper develops a Deleuzoguattarian approach to place marketing, stimulating new lines of inquiry and experimental practices.
This paper develops the Möbius strip as an ‘ordering theory’ (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2020) that brings CCT studies into dialogue with mainstream marketing approaches. The aim is to work toward a transdisciplinary understanding of market spatiality, a topic that has become increasingly important for theorists and practitioners (Warnaby and Medway, 2013; Castilhos et al., 2016; Chatzidakis et al., 2018). Building on psychosocial interpretations of the Möbius strip as a ‘tactical’ way of thinking, a range of insights and ideas are organized along a single strip of theorization. This paper maps a continuous plane of logic between the concepts of space, place, emplacement, spatiality, implacement, and displacement. The potential applications of the Möbius strip are then demonstrated by showing how the transdisciplinary topic of ‘atmosphere’ can be theorized from multiple perspectives. The paper concludes by exploring how the Möbius strip might also be employed in other areas of marketing theory and practice, potentially generating further transdisciplinary conversations between CCT and the marketing mainstream.
In the popular imagination sex sells. Yet, marketing theory has relatively little to say about sexuality per se. Drawing on Žižek’s metaphor of critical theory as ‘short-circuiting’ the dominant discourse, we conceptualise marketing as a field that theorises sexuality only in a series of ‘closed circuits’. Knowledge becomes hierarchical when some topics, such as sexuality, are denied the theoretical freedom to roam in wider open circuits alongside other ‘mainstream’ marketing topics. We identify four ways in which certain topics are enclosed: theoretical, empirical, institutional and neo-colonial. We then seek to short-circuit this state of affairs by bringing together a heterogeneous group of scholars interested in sexuality. By crossing their critical insights like unexpected connections in a circuit, we create sparks of inspiration that challenge the contents, contexts and concepts that relate to marketing theories of sexuality. Our paper makes a specific theoretical contribution in arguing for sexuality to be treated as a phenomenon worth studying and theorising in its own right. However, it also makes a wider methodological and epistemological contribution in showing how various topics within marketing theory might be short-circuited to help flatten the hierarchies of knowledge created by closed and open circuits.
The psychoanalytic tradition is split. Most marketing theorists work with a linguistic model, treating the unconscious as an extension of conscious language. This article promotes the machinic model of Deleuze and Guattari, which treats the unconscious as asubjective but also asignifying. This means that the unconscious is comprised of colliding forces and their contingent connections, rather than a chain of signification in a wider symbolic structure. There are a small number of machinic or proto-machinic articles in marketing theory, but this article explores how explicating the Deleuzoguattarian model could reconceptualise: (1) the unconscious, (2) its relation to sociomaterial systems, (3) its relation to marketing practice, and (4) the role of critical marketing theory. This article also argues that there is a strategic benefit in searching for complementarities between Deleuze and Guattari, on the one hand, and other psychoanalytic thinkers, on the other. A united front of unconscious understandings would be advantageous in a discipline that lionises conscious choice. As such, this article presents the machinic model as another perspective in the already pluralistic tradition of psychoanalytic marketing theory.
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