Interpretive Magic!: Ethnoconsumerism with Prof. Alladi Venkatesh

I must admit that although I say that technology usage is grounded in a cultural context, I struggle to operationalize “culture” for the fear of reducing it to some causal variable or some vague concept that dilutes what I am arguing. I haven’t found much solace in sociology’s linear models that isolate “culture’s” effects - as it repeats the whole divide of structure versus agency. Neither have I found much clarity in the interpretive tradition of culture, not because I don’t agree with it, but because am confused at how to methodologically move forward with an interpretive approach.

Well then came my meeting with Prof. Alladi Venkatesh, Assoc. Director of UC Irvine’s Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) (thanks for gloria mark for the introduction!).

Prof. Venkatesh has created methodology magic!
Ethno-consumerism is a methodology for doing cross-cultural research. It encourages the researcher to “study culture not merely as providing the context for the study of consumer behavior but study consumption itself as culturally constituted behavior. “In principle, the ethnoconsumerist perspective goes beyond the distinction of emic and etic research approaches.” The etic approach encourages the researcher to interpret from her/his point of view. On the other hand, the emic approach tells the researcher to look at the subject’s point of view. But ethnoconsumerism advocates for the next critical step, which is to then develop knowledge from subject’s point of view. “The research becomes more than an etic interpretation (researcher’s point of view) of the culture, but a view of the culture informed by the culture itself as demonstrated by the above” (Venkatesh and Meamber, 1997).

Venkatesh makes clear that this is methodology, not a method. It does not seek to promote any data collection methods.
Of course I think that qualitative methods (or a mixed-method approach of qual + quant) is the best way to arrive at what he is saying is the crux of ethnoconsumerism - developing a cultural framework of analysis from the consumer’s point of view.

Read his paper and other writings here.

I highly encourage you to read his 1995 paper below on Ethnoconsumerism (citation below). It’s a beautifully written paper that feels intellectually and spiritually moving at the same time. When I read it I felt as if the words has fallen out of the sky onto self-organizing fractals of joy. After 3 years of sociology coursework, I’ve become averse at times to theories by sociologists because the words just don’t stick in my brain or they just don’t inspire me anymore. There was something this 1995 piece that helped me deconstruct 3 years of wonderful and hellish sociological self-discovery to even learn about the cultural divide within the field of sociology (culture vs structure or culture as interpretive model). Dr. Venkatesh, coming from a business/economics background, beautifully reconstructs all the various authors of the interpretive tradition who I have come to love. He has inspired me to think of these authors - such as Geertz, in a new way for my own work on new technology users.

I will be thinking about this methodology for a while as I try to figure out if this framework makes sense for my dissertation. So I will be writing more about this model. In the meantime, two things come to my mind: how I can apply this for my research and how this intersects with Stuart Halls, et. al. 1997 book on Sony Walkmans.

How do I apply this this my research?

• study how new users use their technology as culturally constituted behavior.
• look at tech usage as  set of practices
• Do not treat new tech users as objects.
• Do not treat their practices as economically motivated.
• People use techology to get things done. It is my job to understand as an outsider what is being “done” in their context.
• Don’t be culturally reductive by picking one feature of the culture and anchoring all analysis around the feature.
• If I want to compare two different regions with a cultural framework - this takes a realllllly long time because I have to understand the cultural categories and experiences of all the sites.

Circuit of Culture
In 1997, Stuart Hall, Paul Du Gray, and Linda James published Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. They created a model for the analysis of cultural objects called the circuit of culture. On page 3, they show this graph below. The book walks one through on how to deconstruct the Sony walkman as a cultural object.

In an upcoming post, I would like to discuss ways I could combine Ethnoconsumerism and the Circuit of Culture to work for my research. What’s interesting is that while both authors are talking about objects and the people who use the, these are two slightly different approaches. I want to think about to spatialize these approaches. I need to give this some more thought so until the next post on this!

Suggested Reading:

Gay PD, Hall S, Janes L. Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. SAGE; 1997.

Easterly W. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Penguin Press; 2006.

“Ethnoconsumerism: A New Paradigm to Study Cultural and Cross-cultural Consumer Behavior,” Alladi Venkatesh. Marketing in a Multicultural World, J.A. Costa and G. Bamossy (eds.), SAGE Publications, 1995, 26-67.