Everardo Rocha - Advertising and Consumption

This book argues for the study of consumption and its relationship with media images, particularly advertising, from a cultural perspective. Focused on Brazil, it draws on decades of research by the author and engages with theory and concepts from a range of classic anthropological works. The chapters examine how advertising professionals view their craft, the resistance to capitalism amongst native Brazilians, images of women and their bodies in magazines, and the case of the first soccer player to become a national media celebrity. Rocha supports the study of consumption as a classification system that materializes culture and creates relations between people and goods. The book presents advertising as a mode of magical thinking that mediates the passage from the machine-driven sphere of production to the humanized sphere of consumption, converting meaningless impersonal things into goods that have name, origin, identity, and purpose. It will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, and others working on advertising, marketing, communications, and consumer research.

Everardo Rocha is a Full Professor in the Graduate Program in Communication of the Department of Social Communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His research has the support of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for the Support of Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro (Faperj). Everardo Rocha is author of numerous books, edited volumes, and articles on the anthropology of consumption, advertising, and Brazilian culture.

Anthropology and Business
Crossing Boundaries, innovating praxis
Series Editor: Timothy de Waal Malefyt

Both anthropology and business work at the forefront of culture and change. As anthropology brings its concerns with cultural organization and patterns of human behavior to multiple forms of business, a new dynamic of engagement is created. In addition to expanding interest in business as an object of study, anthropologists increasingly hold positions within corporations or work as independent consultants to businesses. In these roles, anthropologists are both redefining the discipline and innovating in industries around the world. These shifts are creating exciting cross-fertilizations and advances in both realms: challenging traditional categories of scholarship and practice, pushing methodological boundaries, and generating new theoretical entanglements. This series advances anthropologys multifaceted work in enterprise, from marketing, design, and technology to user experience research, work practice studies, finance, and many other realms.

Titles in series:

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/AnthropologyBusiness/book-series/AAB

First published 2022

by Routledge

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2022 Everardo Rocha

The right of Everardo Rocha to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rocha, Everardo P. Guimares, 1951- author.

Title: Advertising and consumption : anthropological studies in Brazil / Everardo Rocha.

Description: 1 Edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |

Series: Anthropology and business | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021020697 (print) | LCCN 2021020698 (ebook) |

Subjects: LCSH: AdvertisingSocial aspectsBrazil. | Consumption (Economics)Social aspectsBrazil. | Consumer behaviorBrazil. | BrazilSocial life and customs.

Classification: LCC HF5813.B8 R634 2022 (print) | LCC HF5813.B8 (ebook) | DDC 306.30981dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020697

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020698

ISBN: 9781032004648 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032010212 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003176794 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003176794

Typeset in Sabon

by codeMantra

What are we to make of the terms advertising and consumption? Are they possible windows into a culture and to the values of a society? Are they a way to read and interpret a local repertoire of consumer behavior in a capitalist society, whereby marketing and advertising efforts ostensibly underpin economic growth by enlisting citizens into efficient consumers? On the one hand, they represent controversial terms in anthropology, carrying notions of unchecked consumer fetishism and privileged relationships between humans and things that might obscure more important relations between people. On the other hand, anthropologists, such as Daniel Miller (1998), claim understanding these terms is essential to uncovering meaning in the everyday lives of people in the contemporary world, because consumption, for one, underscores the implicit and explicit set of values in relations among and between people in the things they buy for others. It is in this latter sense that Brazilian anthropologist Everardo Rocha introduces us to the values, semiotic meanings, and structural relations that exist relative to these terms in Brazilian culture.

While anthropological studies of consumer culture and the advertising industry in different parts of the world have proliferated since the late 1970s, not much has been written on Brazilian advertising and consumption to English speaking audiences, to which this present volume addresses. Anthropologists such as Brian Moeran (1996) have provided a fascinating look at Japanese culture through the lens of its advertising agencies, showing the delicate work of balance and trade-offs in Japanese social relations that is played out among advertisers, media, and agencies. William Mazzarella (2003) shows us the work of advertising and consumption in India, where such processes afford a means for modernizing society, bringing Western culture to Indian people through images of alternative lifestyles. Timothy de Waal Malefyt and Robert Morais (2012) reveal advertising practices in the US from an emic perspective of work within ad agencies, revealing rituals of transformation and separation, impression management, and the various creative processes that bring high-level advertisements to ordinary people. Now, Everardo Rocha adds to the global study on consumer culture by providing a rich and detailed investigation of Brazilian culture through the lens of consumption and advertising.