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Markets, Exchange and the Extreme
Author(s)
Date Issued
1998
Date Available
2014-09-11T09:19:29Z
Abstract
Marketing is contemplating its End, in at least two senses of the word (Brown 1993b;
Brownlie and Saren 1992; 1995). Ruminations on its demise are unsurprising, since crisis
and images of death are primal parts of our attempt at making sense of the world (Kermode
1967). Such apocalyptic visions occur with particular sharpness at fin de siècle times, not to
mention towards the close of a millennium, which might explain the recent flurry of
announcements of the End: of the world (Meadows et al. 1972), industrial society (Touraine
1974), capitalism (Lash and Urry 1987), the social (Baudrillard 1988), history (Fukuyama
1989), and work (Rifkin 1995). Latter-day predictions of marketing's imminent downfall can
be seen as prototypical of this phenomenon. Moreover, these declarations are singularly
characteristic of modernity, with its passion for re-invention, for new Ends and new
Beginnings. But histrionic proclamations of the End often fail to deliver on their promise of
finality: for beneath the cloak of eschatological language is modernity's ongoing teleological
project of rampantly re-visioning the future. We prefer, therefore, to demur from the current
discussion on the End of Marketing. Rather, we shall focus, in this chapter, on the End in
Marketing. Here, we interpret End as meaning limit, extreme or margin, and, in particular,
the extremes of the human condition.
Type of Material
Book Chapter
Publisher
Routledge
Language
English
Status of Item
Not peer reviewed
Part of
Brown, S., Bell, J. and Carson, D. (eds.). Marketing Apocalypse: Eschatology, Escapology and the Illusion of the End. pp. 147-172
ISBN
9780415173568
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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