Genres and Styles: How to Disrupt a Market

Proceedings of the 2nd International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Science

Year: 2019

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2iachss.2019.02.41

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Genres and Styles: How to Disrupt a Market

Pragyan rath

 

ABSTRACT: 

Markets have been studied through methods popularised by market research. Narrative Theory studies the formal properties of narratives. But narrative structures have market properties in terms of the value creation they develop in their consumption practises. What marketing research or narrative research has not leveraged is the inter-convertibility of both into each other, resulting in consumption patterns. Berger was the game changer in establishing the genre of narratives as producers of consumption needs through his definition of the consumer phenomenon called publicity. The Frankfurt School of Critical thinkers in Marcuse through his affirmative character of culture and Benjamin through envy / aura discourse have discussed the logic of mass cultural behaviour for developing distinctive identities. Sociologist Bourdieu has discussed various forms of economic capital in the form of cultural capital and their forms. Using the inter-disciplinary interconnectivity of BergerBourdieu-Marcuse-Benjamin, through the research method of theoretical speculation, the author attempts to develop schematics of consumption investigation called the Genre GPS. Through the method of the global positioning system, we can track travellers. Through the Genre GPS we can track the consumption need developing / saturating / disrupting the mass consumption pattern in a market context, where the consumption need can be identified or developed or transitioned from one type to another from the kind of narrative or the genre of story-telling that is being used for representation in the given system. Thus, the attempt in the paper is to develop the conversion of genres of representation into economic value creations.

Key Words: Publicity, Narrative Genre, Landscapes, Affirmation, Cultural Capital, Aura, Envy, Markets.