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METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20160202T111347Z
DTSTART:20160210T140000Z
DTEND:20160210T150000Z
SUMMARY:‘Can brands save the world?’ On the ethical projects of commercia
 l communications
UID:{http://www.columbasystems.com/customers/uom/gpp/eventid/}u16x-ik5b4p
 ht-cobr5t
DESCRIPTION:Corporations increasingly draw upon notions of sustainable co
 nsumption to address consumers\, employees and other stakeholders. The p
 aper draws upon primary research into the commercial field of sustainabi
 lity communications in the UK\, and secondary sources on the history of 
 advertising\, marketing and public relations. The presentation first add
 resses an increasingly prominent business discourse concerning the relat
 ion between brands\, consumerism and sustainability: what I call brand-m
 ediated sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption is deployed as 
 an ethical project by commercial communications and increasingly as a le
 gitimation discourse for corporate capitalism\, in the context of the tw
 in crises of sustainability and neoliberalism. Secondly\, I suggest we c
 an discern two previous such ethical projects in the history of commerci
 al communications\, both of which similarly came to serve as capitalist 
 legitimation discourses. The first we find in Edward Bernays (1929) conc
 eption of the role of Public Relations in democratic society and the sel
 f-understanding of Scientific Advertising as the medium of representatio
 n for consumer sovereignty. The second is found in the ‘creative revolut
 ion’ of advertising in the 1960s\, and its self-understanding as the ava
 nt garde of the new\, emancipatory consumerism. The historical and conte
 mporary examples each emerge in the context of cultural and economic tra
 nsformation or crisis\, and accompany transformations in the everyday pr
 actices and institutional arrangements of the commercial communications 
 industry. Finally\, the paper relates brand-mediated sustainable consump
 tion to Boltanski and Chiapello’s “new spirit of capitalism” (2005) and 
 suggests that it frames corporations’ purposive interventions into the f
 ield of sustainable consumption\; addressing employees\, as much as cons
 umers\, as consuming subjects.\n\nAll welcome.\n
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:Board Room\, Arthur Lewis Building\, Manchester
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