Marketing

commerce, culture, and the profession (part II)

Abstract

The most overtly commercial dimension of society is often focused in the academia from an arrogant, pessimistic and shallow viewpoint. On the opposite side, it is seen through some op­timistic yet naive perspective, typical from a celebratory approach. The sociological study of advertising and marketing is strategic to face such fruitless Manichaeism, for it favors the exa­mination of hidden links between capitalist industrialization and market behavior, between urbanization and modernization, among media, family life, and consumption, be it material or symbolic. The article reviews some important bibliographical titles recently issued in the USA from a perspective based on the sociology of culture.