Discuss cultural economy and brand integration

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- Discuss cultural economy and brand integration，文章讲述在晚期资本主义中，品牌已成为一种独特的现象。沃尔特·本杰明（Walter Benjamin，2008）曾详细阐述了光环在艺术品复制中的衰落，但即使他对当今的品牌文化也可能感到惊讶。例如，H＆M和Zara之类的快速消费品（FMCG）品牌指示了光环的再现和褪色的时间，这反过来又使它们更容易获得，因此很受欢迎。但是像LV这样的奢侈品牌通过使品牌显得“优雅”，“经典”和“独特”来重建其“光环”。品牌不仅是一种推广产品的方式，而且还是一种促进生活方式的方式（Berger，2008）。我们生活在一个不同品牌的世界中。

Discuss cultural economy and brand integration

1. Introduction
In the late capitalism, brand has become a distinct phenomenon. Walter Benjamin (2008) once elaborated the fading of aura in the reproduction of art, but even he may be surprised at the brand culture today. For example, the Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands such as H&M and Zara indicate the time of reproduction and fading of aura, which in turns makes them more accessible and thus desirable; but the luxury goods brands such as LV rebuild their “aura” by making the brand seem “elegant”, “classics” and thus “unique”. Brand not only serves as a way of promoting product, but also a way of promoting lifestyle (Berger, 2008). We live in a world of different brands.
Brand as cultural phenomenon is now getting more and more diverse and complicated, and in modern times brand involves complex cultural sub-systems, including the consumer, the product, the symbolic system, the capitalism system. We need new theoretical tools to analyze the brand as “new media object” (Lury, 2004). In this article, the author tries to put the brand in a complex systematic network drawing on the theory of “brand as assemblage” (Lury, 2009), which is “made up through multiple heterogeneous processes in which different forms of marketing, management and design expertise converge” (Bennett& Healy, 2009, p. 6) Contemporary scholars borrows the concept of “assemblage” from STS study and ANT to reconsider the brand as a complex cultural systematic network, which gives ontological stress on different involved subjects and their interactions.
This article discusses the “brand as assemblage” in theoretical and empirical perspective. In theoretical part, I will discuss the Marxism and Frankfurt school critique, the traditional persuasion theory and public relation theory, and brand as symbolic object following Roland Barthes’s semiotics and Bourdieu’s critique of symbolic distinction and violence. I will then discuss “brand as assemblage” (Lury, 2009) compared with these theories to show how these theoretical perspective understand the new phenomenon in the modern world. And I will also discuss the knowledge making process in the modern world, which helps us understand how the “assemblage” is possible in the symbolic perspective. I argue in this article that the material network background and the symbolic system make the capitalism cultural economy possible.
In empirical perspective, I will discuss two cases to show how brand can be seen as assemblage and how it contributes to our understanding of symbolic commodities.
In the second section, I would look into two brands to explain the value of thinking of brand as an assemblage. The Chanel brand is based on the legendary life stories of its founder: Coco Chanel. It has successfully established its brand image on the basis of creating a lifestyle instead of simply a piece of clothing. The lifestyle of France and a unique class were carefully packaged into her signature collections.
Nike:

2. Brand as Assemblage
(1) brand and academy
Brand is an essential cultural representation of capitalism system. As Lury (2004, p. 47) argues, brand is “a part of the rise of a virtual economy, an economy in which feedback systems of information, communication and control fundamentally reconfigure the temporality of production and processes of objectification”. Brand can be thus seen as a multi-determined configuration, a cultural phenomenon shaped by different powers. Scholars in different lines of theory may put different theoretical stress on it. Following the Marxism tradition, many scholars argue brand value as part of “surplus value” (Arvidsson,2005) or analyze the brand phenomenon as “commodity fetishism” (Kline & Leiss,1978). The recent Marxism scholars put more emphasis on the symbolic exchange of the brand economy. For example, Baudrillard (1993) stresses it’s the symbolic capitals that maintain the capital economic system. Brand is valuable because of the symbolic exchange in this way. He claims that “This (the game of power) goes for detergent brands as much as for a 'peaceful co-existence” (Baudrillard, 1993: 208),

(2) brand as assemblage
(a)assemblage as a useful concept in socio-economic analysis
This part provides the theoretical discussion of “assemblage”. What assemblage is in line of ANT theory, how assemblage helps us understand the network of material, human beings, geography, and how the critical potential of assemblage is will be discussed here.
(b)Brand as assemblage
(c) (3) assemblage in our mind

Arvidsson, A. (2005). Brands a critical perspective. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(2), 235-258.
Baudrillard, J. (1993). Symbolic exchange and death .London: Sage.
Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Penguin UK.
Berger, J. (2008). Ways of seeing . Penguin UK.
Kline, S., & Leiss, W. (1978). Advertising, Needs and'Commodity Fetishism'. Canadian Journal ofPolitical and Social Theory 2(1), 5-30.
Lury, C. (2004) ‘Just do what? The brand as new media object’ in Lury, C. (2004). Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy.
Lury, C. (2009). Brand as assemblage: Assembling culture. Journal of Cultural Economy, 2(1-2), 67-82.
Tony Bennett & Chris Healy (2009) INTRODUCTION, Journal of Cultural Economy, 2:1-2, 3-10

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