Since “postmodernism”
has begun to spread among academics as a new philosophical and scientific
concept, management theory has also witnessed, though with different tones in
some of its components, a debate concerning a new interpretation of issues as
well as of the discipline. This debate offers new horizons to the academics and
could bring about some interesting developments as those experienced in other
disciplinary fields. With this work, we try to interpret the epistemology of
marketing, a specific part of management theory, by conducting an analysis of
the literature as it has developed so far and by constantly creating links
between the level of philosophical elaboration and that of marketing research. It is the enrichment that the research
experiences, and not only that, witnessed by the researcher, brings to the
knowledge of the individual and of the community. It is clear that the process
of creation of knowledge is endless and unstoppable as the more the individual
(and the community) is enriched, and therefore learns, the more he realises
his/her lack of knowledge. Knowledge “calls” knowledge.
The
body of marketing
The origins of
marketing take their roots in the American management literature of the late
Fifties and of the beginning of the Sixties, when some researchers started to
investigate into some management practice and, above all, into the origin of
the market success. Those articles are now considered the landmark of marketing
and have established the main concepts upon which this field of human knowledge
has been developing for many decades and is still today accepted (Felton, 1959;
Borden, 1964). The concept of marketing mix was then defined. This concept has
since been considered a pillar of this discipline thanks to its simplicity and
the possibility it offered of liaising the concept of economic value (which is
crucial in marketing) to the actual managerial action.
In the course of the
years, these approaches have been object of a constant process of
systematisation and refining in order to define tools and technique to meet the
needs of the market and, at the same time, those of the manager. This process
has strongly contributed to the spreading of the discipline, thus creating a
language universally shared and recognised as principles of Marketing
Management by the academic community, by that of the practitioners and, last
but not least, by undergraduate and postgraduate students. Customer orientation
is thus the management philosophy which legitimises marketing actions and makes
its ensemble coherent and harmonious.
Since the Seventies,
this definition of marketing has met a growing, rapid and general consensus,
thus transforming it to an evergreen or, in a “marketing megalomania” or even
in a “Kotlerite” (Brown, 2002) as defined by the critics. The considerable simplicity
of use of marketing mix, which was initially created to translate the marketing
concept into operative terms, has been one of the main reasons of the great
diffusion and credibility of marketing as a discipline on a global scale.
The perceived need of
improving the effect of marketing policies, in a context whose evolution is
increasingly fast and less intelligible, have necessarily induced researchers
to increase their specialisation, thus becoming great experts of single tools
and aspects of marketing. The evolutionary trend of marketing contributions has
been fostered by the editorial choices of A Journals which tend to publish very
specialised papers, supported by solid empirical analysis, but which turn out
to be scarcely comprehensive. For this reason, they have been also critically
labelled as Journal of Marketing Obscurity (Piercy, 2000; Baker, 2001).
If on the one hand this
trend tends toward a specialisation of competencies and allows the discipline
to progress in a “scientific” way, on the other hand there is a considerable
risk of losing sight of the conceptual frame of reference of the domain in
which such competencies are applicable. Owing to this tendency also, marketing
has been the object of strong criticism in the course of the time, which
nevertheless has not changed its initial general approach and has only affected
the following phase of its evolution. This relatively simplistic approach to
marketing has transformed both the general theory of marketing and the
consumers themselves into victims. Consumers have been preferably reduced to
mere numbers (that is quantitative data) by marketing operators, not to mention
university students who have been forced to learn the principles of marketing
as a simple recipe book made of ingredients that can be mixed and formulas
(which most of the time are quite rigid) that can be applied according to the
circumstance. In most businesses, many marketing activities are still today an
exclusive task of some specialists who are considered the only responsible for
the firm orientation and who only have to apply formulas and recipes learned in
their education and refined by practice (whose partial dynamic and
heterogeneous matrix has been recognised) Dissatisfaction toward this situation
has started to manifest in a plurality of forms: from consumerism to feminism,
sociological incursions and so on. They generally are very fragmented and
little systematic trends, with the exception of two trends which have acquired
an identity in their own right: relationship marketing and experiential
marketing.
Criticism
directed at marketing
The scientific
advancement proceeds in the domain of human knowledge through what is now a
standard process: theory, criticism and new theory. Marketing follows this
general approach as well. In practical terms, this means that every
contribution of marketing – as for every kind of discipline – starts with the
analysis of literature, pinpoints a critical point due to a poor correspondence
between theory and reality, and continues the reconstruction of knowledge for
that specific area, thus contributing to the improvement of the knowledge of
society.
Within marketing
literature, it is possible to trace some critical approaches that share common
features and give rise to actual movements for the refounding of the
discipline. In particular, the main trends which have addressed marketing with
strong criticism are two: relationship marketing and experiential marketing.
They both have accused the discipline of involution, and of being devoted only
to modelling of interpretation schemes of reality which have proved to be too
far from it and were therefore not suitable to provide an exhaustive and
generalizable explanation.
Chronologically, the
first trend to cause a crisis within the discipline has been later called
relationship marketing. During the Seventies, a part of marketing literature
started to question the object of the discipline and its extendibility to other
realities. In particular, the Swedish School of Industrial Marketing and the
Nordic School of Services have contemporarily criticised marketing by
maintaining that it adjusted well to the exchange relations of the mass
consumption goods market, for which it was initially studied, but lost
analytical and interpretative effectiveness when used exactly in the same way
in other kinds of situations, especially in the industrial goods and service
industry.
Mass consumption goods
market is characterised by a strongly atomistic demand in which the personal
features of the purchaser lose relevance and give space to anonymous and
homogenous expectations. These can be analysed, in the most sophisticated
cases, through segmentation techniques that are sometimes quite refined.
According to this
scheme, the consumer is clearly passive and is subjected to the company policy
without the possibility of affecting it in any way. The only possible action is
the choice among alternatives of a predetermined supply. Exchanging power is
therefore asymmetric and unbalanced: the single purchaser does not have
decisional weight as his/her contractual force is proportioned to the
percentage of his/her purchase in relation to the total turnover of the company
and is therefore almost nil. According to the representatives of the
“relationship” vision, the above described situation is considerably different
in the industrial goods and service market. The peculiar features of this
industry make it a different kind of market altogether in which the customer
retains a particular and active participation and emerges as a consumer,
producer and production resource. This calls for a reconsideration of
marketing. If, as far as the market of mass consumption goods is concerned, the
literature had put the exchange at the centre of the relation between demand
and supply, and consequently at the centre of the analysis too, the new
reflections which had been developing between the Seventies and the Eighties
replaced the concept of exchange with that of relationship, that is the
relationship that is established (in a more or less continuous way) between the
purchaser and the seller: in analysis this is what really counts and not the
single exchange act (which is often sporadic). Both the Swedish School of
Industrial Marketing and the Nordic School of Services stressed how crucial the
role played by the long term perspective is in the management of these markets.
From this common point, both schools have independently developed their line of
thought: industrial markets researches have focused mainly on the relations
among companies, in particular on the role of trust and on the concept of
relationships network (Håkansson, Östberg, 1975; Håkansson, 1982; Jackson,
1985; Hallén, Sandström, 1991; Ganesan, 1994; Morgan, Hunt, 1994; Doney,
Cannon, 1997; Smith, Barclay, 1997; Duncan, Moriarty, 1998). Services
researchers have concentrated on the differences in services in relation to
goods and in particular on the continuous and necessary interaction between
producer and consumer (Berry, 1980; Normann, 1985; Turnbull, Valla, 1985; Grönroos,
1991; Grönroos, 1994; Vavra, 1995). Moreover, in the course of the time, the
importance of the relationship approach has spread in the consumer markets as
well, thus making it necessary to consider the consumer perspective in all
marketing choices. In the light of the specificity of the new analysed
contexts, these authors have highlighted the weak points of the traditional
approach of marketing, and defined it “traditional marketing” or the
“traditional paradigm” of marketing, which does not result suitable in the
contexts in which the firm can pinpoint the counterpart and treat it
individually.
The second and
important criticism to “universal” marketing was put forward by the trend of
experiential marketing, some years later. The experiential interpretation of
consumer behaviour started at the beginning of the Eighties in contrast with
the traditional and prevailing view of studies of consumer behaviour whose
first contributions date back to the Sixties and constitute what the
experiential authors consider an utilitarian view (which is still today the
major research trend within consumer behaviour).
Since the middle of the
Eighties, some researchers have started to suggest an extension of the consumer
behaviour interpretation, highlighting some limits of the utilitarian view of
thought, such as the thesis of univocal rationality of the individual
(Hirschman, Holbrook, 1982; Holbrook, Hirschman, 1982). By focusing on the mere
act of purchasing, the utilitarian view has highlighted the rational component that
leads the purchaser toward the resolution of the decisional problem faced with
– a problem of choice among product alternatives. Resolution of the decisional
problem is, in fact, an area which can be easily object of a rationalistic
interpretation of consumption, and especially of a sophisticated modelling
which becomes sometimes exasperated. Therefore, if on the one hand consumer
behaviour researchers have acquired a considerable store of knowledge
concerning the issue, on the other they have almost completely neglected all
the other aspects of consumption which do not have a rationalistic component,
especially the interaction between consumer – and not purchaser – and product.
This is the real experience of consumption whose definition is, by nature, elusive
and difficult.
Although the
experiential view openly criticised traditional marketing only in 1999 (Schmitt
B., 1999), the first criticism attacks could actually be dated back to 1982
when Hirschman and Holbrook carried out an initial comparison between the
traditional and the experiential approach to the study of consumer behaviour.
The two researchers, who are the pioneers of this trend of study, which has
slowly encountered agreement and support in the course of the years, have
ascribed the differences of the two approaches to the mental construction used,
to the categories of the analysed products, to the use of product and finally
to the consideration of individual differences among individuals. They have
carried on this comparison by defining the essential features of the
experiential interpretation of consumer behaviour. Criticism to the traditional
approach concerns in particular the thesis of rationality and utilitarianism of
consumer. According to the traditional theorists of consumer behaviour,
founders of the traditional approach, the behaviour of the consumer is
regulated by a general rationality which allows an easy resolution of every
decisional problem, in particular the purchasing decision, in order to pinpoint
the supply which maximises the utility for consumer. In this sense, the object
of study of these researchers is the decisional process which leads an
individual to make a specific purchasing choice, with the final objective of
creating, with the same process, a universal model of reference. It is clear
that the origins of such interpretation of consumer behaviour could be traced
to the utilitarian vision of the general economics theory (Sherry, 1991).
Seventeen years later,
Schmitt (1999) resumes the same process of comparison analysis by slightly
modifying the categories compared and especially by highlighting once more the
contrast between the traditional view and the emerging experiential one. In
Schmitt’s contribution, however, the comparison analysis regards traditional marketing,
expression that seems to define the ensemble of principles, models and tools of
marketing management. In any case, the experiential view develops initially in
an antithetical way in relation to the
prevailing trend, thus constituting a real reaction to the traditional
model of consumer behaviour and aimed at a revision of models and tools in
order to improve adherence to reality. It is, in fact, with the objective of
studying the consumption behaviour of hedonistic products (considered as non
strictly “rational”) that the concept of experience is defined, making the
importance of individual emotions emerge (Carù, Cova, 2002).
Modernism
and postmodernism
Although the term
modernism refers to a system of thought that has developed in the course of the
last four centuries, its actual definition can be traced to the last decades,
when a new thought, postmodernism, emerged, thus contrasting with the precedent
one. In order to understand the postmodern system of thought, whose unsettling
effects are being delivered to every aspect of human knowledge, it is necessary
to start with the analysis of modernism. Modernism is the vision of the world
which imprinted the human action in the modernity era. The latter is
conventionally said to have started with the Industrial Revolution and
experienced its highest moment between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth
Centuries. During these centuries, an extraordinary development of western
societies was witnessed : since the second half of the Eighteenth Century, the
European continent has enjoyed a period of great stability and wellbeing. The
numerous innovations, the great scientific and geographic discoveries, the
demographic growth, that took place in that period, gave a new impulse to the
economy (from the industrial sector to the agriculture sector) and fostered a
diffused and generalised wellbeing, thus stimulating growth and development of
the populations. In Europe, the First Industrial Revolution, more than the
second one, gave rise to a process of wellbeing and improvement of the general
living standards which seemed unstoppable. The machine was considered the
solution to the problems of humanity which, if on the one hand was freed from
the servile oppression of physical work, on the other one was elated by a surge
of wellbeing which had its expression in the possession of goods whose
physicality was the tangible sign of their existence. In a geo-political
context of stability and economic prosperity, the twists and turns of hope were
superseded by the certainty of optimism. First the members of the Enlightenment
and then those of the Positivism movements were convinced that with the support
and guide of rationality only, humanity could reach higher levels of economic
and social wellbeing and, therefore, of happiness, thus building a fair society
and dominating nature (Best, Kellner, 1997). It all took the form of a
continuous and linear process of progress of society, made possible and
justified by rationality. The human thought was obviously affected by this
approach and resulted in “modernism” which gathers the philosophical currents
of thought of Neopositivism, Logical Empiricism, Logical Positivism and
Neo-empiricism: dating back to Descartes and Kant, Smith, Locke and Hume, the
members of the Positivism movement are generally considered the pioneers of
modernism which received a considerable contribution from Newton research
(Cobb, 1990; Abbagnano, 1995). According to the modern thought, machine and
science have the same role: they are both at the service of the individual.
Machine allows to reach an economic wellbeing whereas science contributes to
the social prosperity. They both seem to be led by reason, by an omniscient
rationality, which is able to reach certainties, knowledge of reality and
therefore the truth. In the modern perspective, the recognised ability of the
individual to understand nature, reality and its truths, allowed him to
intervene on the state of things and to guide and improve them. Thinkers and
researchers’ attention was therefore aimed at defining the laws regulating
economic and scientific phenomena in order to understand their applications
allowing, above all, their replication and improvement (Chiurazzi, 1999). In
this sense, history was considered a linear evolution of society which proceeded
through a continuous process of accumulation, and therefore, of progress. On
the contrary, everything that seemed foreign to the evolutionary logic did not
retain any interesting secret to be discovered and was, therefore, neglected. A
finalised pragmatism dominated scientific analysis and its disciplines.
Knowledge advanced toward reality and truth from which laws replicating
repeatable and perfectible phenomena, and therefore suitable codes of conduct,
were derived. Knowledge was aimed at “good” as it was fostered by the certainty
of truth of the real. The will of reaching increasingly higher levels of
wellbeing necessarily extended the concept of science to every discipline of
knowledge: the mere application of the “scientific” method transformed every
discipline into Science. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, in fact,
with the birth of psychology, sociology and psychoanalysis, the rationality of
the individual is further valued and emphasised; in those years, modernism
established as the prevailing trend and was considered an uncontested point of
reference for every science. In the light of the breakthroughs obtained by
humanity, the modern term has acquired strongly positive meanings, thus
coinciding with the term “advanced”. Today, instead, the term modern indicates
a past era that has been ending, at least for those who are more sensitive to
social change (Cobb, 1990).
In the second half of the Nineteenth Century,
some philosophers – Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger above all – started to
doubt the inflexible faith of their contemporaries in rationality and in the
ability of defining, circumscribing and knowing the truth (Jackson, 1996; Best,
Kellner, 1997). The very same meaning of truth lost its immanent sense of
holistic and salvific heurism, which had distinguished it in the previous
thought. Although it was only an opposing trend at the time, their thought
emerged and developed in the reflections of a group of French philosophers
connected with the Poststructuralism – Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and
Baudrillard to mention the most famous ones– that are today known to have been
the first postmodernism theorists (Best, Kellner, 1991; Williams, 1998;
Chiurazzi, 1999). It was only during the Eighties, however, that their thought
began to spread all over the world and started to encounter new followers such
as the American philosopher Rorty. In Kierkegaard’s thought there was already a
strong criticism addressed to the faith in human rationality as well as to
every reflection aimed at knowing the real and the true. These concepts,
according to Kierkegaard, imprison humanity and delude it to possess
certainties, thus destroying feelings, inspiration and spontaneity. Those
constitute the essential part of human beings and of their inclination toward
God. In this perspective, Kierkegaard called for the role that irrationality,
spontaneity and subjectivity play in making a human being, and that the prevailing thought reduced to a series of
rules and norms which limit his/her potential, thus causing spiritual
frustration and alienation. Kierkegaard demands the rebirth of inner passion
and spirituality which motivate individual actions and unify individuals. It is
a clear reference to Christ’s spiritual Passion as a unifying force for all
humanity, which always and in any case reigns over rationality. Reference to
the Christian religion allows the philosopher to consider the subjective
passion as a different concept of truth, transformed in daily life. According
to Kierkegaard, religion redemption replaces the exasperated truth of the real
as a principle of life. In Kierkegaard’s thought, passion and rationality,
feelings and calculation, instinct and reasoning are in constant opposition and
synthesise the contrast between the individual and the machine, spirit and
physicality (of the individual and things).
Nietzsche’s criticism
concerning modern thought is even stronger as it lacks any religious reference.
Nietzsche extols individuality, its power and autonomy in strong contrast with
any form of aprioristic, immanent, rational, definitive, and in any case
salvific, ideology. According to the philosopher’s perspective, any ideology is
nothing but an attempt of the individual to protect himself/herself from the
daily course of life and is a false source of truth and certainty. Once the
deception of ideology is revealed, God ceases to exist too, thus every faith
tracing everything to a unique explanation vanishes (Chiurazzi, 1999).
Rationality, modern science and its utility in life, the search of the truth,
objectivity – all concepts exalted by the Enlightenment and Positivism
movements– are object of a strong attack by the philosopher. This attack will
find a resolution in postmodernism. There are no eternal truths, nor
demonstrable or univocal truths. Everything should be contextualised to the
place and to the historical period. Metaphysics, the idea of a permanent
knowledge and of a transcendental reality, are nothing but constructions that
are created to alleviate human sufferance, and prevent the individual from
fully accomplish his/her capacities and of experiencing the true sense of
his/her life which is made of opposing forces and passions. At the same time,
there is not a unique and absolute truth, but only perspectives (visions) of
every individual concerning different events. Moreover, these perspectives need
to be relativised to that individual, to the moment and to the historical and
social context. According to the philosopher, true knowledge is the
simultaneous existence of a multiplicity of interpretations, each of which is
the result of a particular perspective that is essential and should therefore
be valued; this manifold knowledge leads the individual to the appreciation of
difference. However, it is also the result of a long process requiring
considerable efforts and will of knowledge, an unappeasable and humble desire
to know, where the knowable is endless as every knowledge is source of other
consequent researches and knowledge. Knowledge generates knowledge. Nietzsche
also reconsiders the concept of subject and interprets it as a mere idealised
construction which encapsulates a multiplicity of emotions, thoughts, ideas and
stimuli created by modern thinkers to delude individuals to have an identity
and to fictitiously remove them from the anonymous mass in which they live. In
this situation, humanity can advance but only thanks to the efforts of
individuals who are free and open to knowledge, who are able to liberate their
individuality and creativity and are not afraid of not possessing a truth. The
truth does not exist. Individual interpretations of the real do, but failure of
possessing the truth, if perceived and accepted, is the strength and the
inspiration that makes knowledge possible. Through the knowledge of the new,
the individual questions him/herself, encounters risks but can find fulfilment.
The third father of
postmodernism is Heidegger who can be considered an essential point of
reference for the most recent postmodern thought. As a matter of fact,
Heidegger, is one of the major critics of the basic thesis of modernism and one
of the philosophers that have most influenced contemporary philosophy. His
thought developed around the question of being. This issue allowed him to face
several issues and to detach himself from the prevailing modern thought. It is
not surprising that he chose to focus on issues that philosophy of that time
neglected and took them for granted, almost obvious. In his thought, Heidegger
distanced himself from the traditional concept of truth – it is true what
correspond to reality – and considers freedom the original truth. The modern
notion of knowledge and of being appears, therefore, to be the result of the
dominance and power of individual over another
individual. Heidegger criticised the interpretation of theoretic
conceptualisation as the only way toward knowledge by highlighting that primary
knowledge of the individual is not conceptual at all and that it is not
possible to make everything the individual knows completely explicit. Heidegger
gave to art and poetry, neglected by the modern thought, a particular meaning
as he considered them an alternative way of learning and therefore of knowing.
At the same time, Heidegger defied the modern distinction between subject and
object as objectivity is a result of an interpretation as well. Moreover,
according to Heidegger metaphysics cannot be considered a branch of philosophy
as it is, instead, a global perspective which concerns every human activity. In
this sense, in Heidegger’s thought, language is superior to the individual as
it is not a simple means of communication as considered by modernism. It is a
privileged manifestation of being. Language is the extension of being and is
therefore a way of being in its own right.
From a social point of
view, Heidegger accused modernity of having transformed peoples in amorphous
masses and of having levelled their tastes, ideas, languages and habits through
a constant process of homogenisation which eliminated every manifestation of
individuality. Truth and knowledge are searched at the expense of the
individual specificity which is, instead, his/her expression and richness. This
evolution is heavily supported by the modern technological development which,
in Heidegger’s perspective, only creates powerful tools of dominance over
individuals who are considered mere resources that can be replaced (Best,
Kellner, 1997) and surrogated by machines–to which they are reduced. As a
result of his ideas and critiques concerning modernism, Heidegger does not
offer an unifying system of thought, but only fragmented reflections concerning
some issues (Clark, 2002), parts of a truth to be invented and not discovered.
The thoughts of those
philosophers, sometimes fragmented, that constituted an opposing trend during
the Nineteenth Century, became an actual system of thought during the following
century, when historical events highlighted the frailty of human certainties.
Political conflicts and crises, world wars, the fall of political blocks and
nations, the weakening of social groups and family, the proliferation of
impersonal and standardised communication technologies, social dissatisfaction
are all phenomena which characterise postmodernity and have undermined the idea
of political stability and of possibility of a univocal convergence of
different and multiple interests. At the same time, they have imparted new
vigour to the criticism of the precedent philosophers and started a process of
revision of the idea of progress, in the light of the evidence that the
objective of a minimal level of wellbeing, common to all social classes, cannot
be achieved and that is, on the contrary, the result of a concept that can be
historicised relative and questionable, certainly not absolute: postmodernism
“refers to the consistent deconstructing of the entire program of early
modernism” (Cobb, 1990, p.150).
Despite the benefits
induced by the development achieved thanks to biotechnology, to the economic
globalisation, to the information highways and to the new genetic technologies,
the current situation is uncertain and discriminating. Apart from few rich
peoples, most of the world population is poor, unemployed and alienated. The
world is full of contradictions, increasingly unsecured, dissatisfied and
deprived of any certainty: certainty has become a good in its own right. During
the Sixties, the voices of Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard and
Julia Kristeva, started to rise in unison against the certainties of
rationality and reported the failure of the Enlightenment movement and of
Descartes’ subject (Best, Kellner, 1997). Few years later, the
poststructuralists’ thought became part of postmodernism, whose term can be
attributed to Charles Jenks.
The word
“postmodernism” does not contain a precise meaning, and refers to many
fragmented cultural phenomena, to the extent that some have suggested the need
of using the plural and therefore of referring to “postmodernisms” in line with
the postmodern spirit (Featherstone, 1991; Brown, 1994; 1995; 1997; Chiurazzi,
1999). In spite of that, it is possible
to recognise in this complexity, fragmentation and even unknowability of
reality, that was so far defied by modernism, the central element of the new
philosophy (Cova, 1996). The very same concept of reality is then questioned
together with that of truth. More generally, it is possible to suggest that
postmodernism doubts any certainty of modernism (Cobb, 1990). As a matter of
fact, each philosopher has developed his/her own thought in a specific way.
Deconstructionists, in particular Derrida and Lyotard, emphasised the concept
of difference and highlighted its link with language in such way that
difference and language are complementary (Chiurazzi, 1999; Best, Kellner,
1997) Lyotard, specifically worked on the relationship between fragmentation
and globalisation and defined the features of the postmodern condition
(Williams, 1998). Vattimo (1983) focused his attention on the critique of
rationality, and eventually defied the possibility of identity and opted for a
celebration of difference and tolerance that was a “week thought”, in fact.
Bocchi, Ceruti, Morin and others developed the theory of complexity, that is
the celebration of multiformity as the basis of the world whose ambiguity and
confusion makes it impossible for science to develop an interpretation scheme
which can be valid always and in absolute terms (Bocchi, Ceruti, 1985).
Foucault concentrated on the subject and denounced its submission to society
and to its false constructions. He considered the subject a mere construction
which indicates unity and identity, a result of social logic and rules. Rorty
analysed western philosophy and defied its role within the political life of
society, which results to be lacking its own critical interpretative conscience
and therefore searched original certainties.
All these trends of
thought, though with their own peculiarities, claimed the validity of the
differences among historic periods, geographic places and single individuals.
The idea of the existence of a linear development of history leading to a
situation of an increased wellbeing and emancipation for humanity in the course
of the time, was strongly rejected. There is no core, no structure to be known.
Every single thing cohabits with the other, without a precise aprioristic and
absolutist meaning. The end of universalism, fundamentalism, hierarchies and
boundaries was declared and, at the same time, contingence and diversity was
exalted (Firat, Venkatesh, 1993; 1995). The individual is elated by the thought
of dominating the machine and of having been freed by the servitude of work.
However, it is the machine that dominates the individual, thus defying his/her
own specificity and depriving him/her of the freedom of being different, of
being him/herself. As long as the individual can be reduced to a machine, s/he
has no qualities.
Reference:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.200.8440&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Stefano Podestà
Università L. Bocconi
Michela Addis
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.509.5508&rep=rep1&type=pdf
