PLANT VERSUS COW: Conflict Framing in the Ant/Agonistic Relegitimization of a Market

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.

Futureless vicissitudes: Gestural anti-consumption and the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer

“…Similarly, Mikkonen et al (2011: 99) illustrate how online cadres of lifestyle activists who reject the hyper-consumerised ways of celebrating Christmas engage in mischievous anti-consumption discourses as a way of pursuing a cynical and playfully self-aware identity project, ‘the Scrooge’, rather than to genuinely educate and rescue seasonal shoppers from marketers’ manipulation. Even commercial brands sometimes seek to incite consumers’ rejection of – and resistance against – dominant market institutions, not in the pursuit of any kind of post-market politics but simply to achieve legitimacy for their own offerings (Koch and Ulver, 2022).…”

Advertising Frames and the Legitimation of the Armed American Woman

“…This literature has demonstrated that the process of (de)legitimation can be facilitated by a range of actors – including producers, mainstream media, policy-makers and politicians, and consumers – and can pertain to markets (Huff, Humphreys, and Wilner 2021), brands (Giesler 2012), policies (Humphreys 2014), consumer movements or practices (Sandıkcı and Ger 2010) becoming more or less acceptable. Market actors’ work aimed at creating acceptable regulations, meanings, and understandings can enable new phenomena to attain legitimacy (Rosa et al 1999); can facilitate a shift toward legitimacy for contested phenomena (Scaraboto and Fischer 2013; Wilner and Huff 2017); and/or can facilitate a shift away from legitimacy for existing phenomena (Koch and Ulver 2022). Rather than focusing on the legitimacy of a product or market, our study focuses on the legitimacy of a specific consumer – a woman owning and using a firearm – as an institution.…”

“…Market actors can strategically use frames to achieve a desired understanding or response within a specific audience (Benford and Snow 2000). For example, prior macromarketing research showed how a plant-based milk producer used marketing messages to frame the product as wholesome and the company as sustainability-oriented, while framing conventional dairy milk as unhealthy and the producers as profit-oriented in order to shift the existing legitimacy of both categories (Koch and Ulver 2022).…”

“…We use the colloquial term, “American,” to denote women living in the United States of America. Building on macromarketing literature that examines legitimation and framing strategies at the intersection of markets and society (e.g., Coskuner-Balli, Pehlivan, and Hughes 2021; Humphreys 2014; Koch and Ulver 2022), we analyzed ads in Guns & Ammo magazine, the publicly available gun-focused magazine with the largest circulation in the U.S. Notably, magazines published by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a prominent gun rights lobbying group, claim a larger circulation, but are available only to NRA members.…”

All Creatures Great and Small: A Review and Typology of Employee-Animal Interactions

“…The final category of interaction involves employees working on animals as commodities, where animals serve as integrated components of the supply chain in the process of production or experimentation (Clarke & Knights, 2022;Koch & Ulver, 2022;Magri et al, 2021). The category is dominated by farmers (Ceccato, Lundqvist, Abraham, Göransson, & Svennefelt, 2022;Medaas et al, 2021), stock people (Losada-Espinosa et al, 2020), and abattoir workers (McLoughlin, 2019) but also includes scientists in research laboratories that conduct animal testing (Ferrara et al, 2022;Hobson-West, 2012;Wigham, Grist, Mullan, Wotton, & Butterworth, 2020).…”