Categories participate in the construction of markets by defining their producers, consumers and substitutable goods. Until now, research on categories has mainly focused on their effects, overlooking questions relating to their emergence. This article fills this gap by studying the role of a trade fair, the Ethical Fashion Show, in shaping ethical fashion. Based on a qualitative analysis of interviews, secondary data, observations and physical objects, it studies the practices aimed at elaborating the critical project of ethical fashion, defining its principles and diffusing the category. Four contributions stem from this research. First, it reveals the role of critiques in the emergence of categories. Second, it shows that their content is shaped by practices of purification and hybridisation. Third, it highlights the role of spokespersons in the representation of categories. Fourth, drawing on actor–network theory, it theorises market categorisation as a process of translation.
Whereas categories are important cogs of market dynamics, their construction process has been largely overlooked to date. Drawing on the Actor–Network Theory, the article tackles this issue by redefining categorisation as a translation process transforming multiplicity into unity through inscriptions. This process sheds light on the very practices of categorising, the devices involved and their agency. Combining multiple data sources, it describes how organisers and exhibitors at a trade fair use visual inscriptions like pictures and movies, logos and maps, catalogues and fashion parades to define ethical fashion, make compromises between ethics and aesthetics, and project a fashionable image of the nascent category. This offers new insights into the construction of markets by breaking down the performative process of categorisation and revealing the visual mediations involved.
Markets are sites of conflicting practices that raise controversies over their very organization. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, this article defines controversies as dispute processes during which actors make sense of a situation by confronting their interests, beliefs, values, and opinions with those of others, and, in so doing, elaborate social facts. It develops propositions to study and narrate such controversies around three key methodological questions: case selection, data collection, and data analysis. The intention is to respect the complexity of controversies while at the same time structuring their analysis in a way that allows for intelligible accounts. The article therefore contributes to the study of modern agora and market shaping. It enables macromarketing scholars to go beyond dichotomies between human and non-human and between theory and practice, and to push forward our understanding of the links between markets, marketing, and society.
This article considers the concept of heterotopia in the context of public space. Based on the observations and interviews with 19 disposers and/or gleaners operating on bulky item collection days, it shows that the sidewalk is (1) a liminal space for unwanted objects that are in transition between disposal and destruction or reappropriation; (2) a regularly practiced space, the meaning of which is redefined by disposers (for depositing) and gleaners (for provisioning); (3) a place of illusion that mirrors the profusion of goods produced by the linear economy; and (4) a space of compensation for the pitfalls of the consumer society. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the new concept of parasite heterotopia, a term that refers to a space that is appropriated by a tactical use of a regulated place, which both reflects and contests a dominant ordering on its own territory. The article adds to previous literature on heterotopias and sustainability by questioning how this "time-space" is involved in the dialectics of capitalism and criticism.
Résumé Les catégories participent à la construction des marchés en définissant les producteurs, les consommateurs et les produits substituables. Jusqu’à présent, la littérature sur le sujet s’est concentrée sur les effets des catégories au détriment de leur émergence. Cette recherche comble cette limite en étudiant le rôle du salon Ethical Fashion Show dans la formation de la catégorie mode éthique. Sur la base d’une analyse qualitative d’entretiens, de données secondaires, d’observations et d’objets, elle analyse les pratiques visant à formaliser le projet critique de la mode éthique, à définir ses principes et à diffuser la catégorie. L’article offre quatre contributions. Il révèle le rôle de la critique dans l’émergence des catégories. Il montre que leur contenu est façonné par des pratiques de purification et d’hybridation. Il éclaire le rôle des porte-paroles dans la diffusion des catégories. Enfin, en s’inspirant de la théorie de l’acteur-réseau, il théorise la catégorisation comme un processus de traduction.
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