Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Getting ‘behind’ the Fetish: ‘Following the Thing’
Part 1
Commodity Fetishism - The Fetish
• The way commodities have this normalised value in of itself – Objective value

• The social character of their making (the labour and time relationship) is completely
absent of the product

• As such we’d say it has ‘phantom objectivity’ (Watts, 2005)

• Associated to this is a critical project of ‘lifting the veil of production’ (Harvey, 1990)

• Of removing all the things that get in the way of us knowing the relationship the
product has to the making and makers

• Under this project- we see that the academic must attempt to ‘truth tell’ – to
expose the ‘real value’ of the product - the labour

• As such we see various theorises of this ‘truth’ telling – Network/Chain/Cycle – but at
the heart of all of them is this broad attempt to explain commodities’ connection/
connectivity/relationships/relationality

The process was like a jigsaw: My White T- Shirt
• Started with the materiality of the product (the actual shirt), I found a little information…

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I could see it was white , so that narrowed it down further

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I could see by the label inside it was ‘Made in Bangladesh’

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...

• From this, I visited the Next website to see if I could find out anything else;

• There was a helpful ‘Size Guide’ – useful for consumption- but less so for
understanding how and where it was made

• Description of the product ‘Made from soft washed fabric and featuring a crew
neckline
...

• Corporate and Social Responsibility Information;

• Supplier Conduct Statements assuring me that Next Plc has a ‘key priority’ to
trade ethically, source responsibly and work to ensure safety and human rights
of workers (Next, 2018)

• 90% of factories that were manufacturing for Next were audited in 2016

• I can see that 2,046 compliant audits were carried out

• I can see that there are 47 members of the global audit team

The ‘following’ attempts revealed that…
• Information is not all in one place and it takes a lot of time to find the info we are after

• Information tends to be hidden, if at all available - you have piece together bits of
information to form a ‘whole’ narrative

• We find some information, but we don’t know all we would like to know in order to
account for ALL of the supply chain

We’re beginning to recognise that it’s not easy to create a commodity chain
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e
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; calling into question the existence
of ‘one truth’ of value that needs to be revealed


• Whilst we are aware of our globalising commodity chains, and their increasing
complexity, we find it difficult to consistently work out (through following) these placebased dynamics

• So we find ourselves in an odd situation; on the one hand there is a moral imperative to
lift the ‘veil’ and on the other the question of whether it is even possible (Harvey, 1990)

So what we find out is
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Apple $170 Billion

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8 Billion

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So, what makes a brand valuable?
• (Middleton, 2010) Brands (at least in of themselves) are not ‘logos’ or names of
companies

• What makes a brand powerful, meaningful and (ultimately) valuable- is its coherence
and clarity of meaning; a thing that takes time and hard work

• It relies upon careful brand management and orchestration, a process which
strategically coordinates cultivating given associations, and discouraging others

• This involves the careful coordination of packaging, promotion, advertising, brand and
product positioning, distribution, pricing etc
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’no darkly lit, sleazy side alley building’

• The store’s design and location inspired & cultivated a heightened product value

Building a Brand: Supporting Brand Communities
• Product Placement and Brand Communities

• Lastly, we are seeing how ‘the brand’ has now expanded beyond the sphere of
strict ‘selling’- with the cultivation of brand communities epitomising this

• Brands sponsor particular events, that although may not lead to more sales,
endeavour to promote values that emulate the commodity’s branded cultural
values

• We see the emergence of ‘lifestyle’ branding, where brands support and
promote given lifestyle ideals

• Red Bull is a good example; they sponsor a community of fans and activities,
occupying spaces and fandom’s which compliment their purported product’s
values; fast, exciting

• Another example is how contemporary brands wish to attract the attention of
vloggers and bloggers who emulate their values, to promote their products
through placements and reviews

Co-dependent contradictions of ‘value’?
• There emerges two co-dependent logics of value; one of labour relationality, (make
cheap) and one of symbolic and cultural value (sell high) - They rely upon each other to
secure profit

• Yet within this, we can begin to see how uneven, indeed how contradictory these
‘value’ logics emerge and manifest themselves

• E
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How can a brand maintain it’s luxury and prestigious brand aura, whilst
simultaneously pursue the most cost-efficient/cheapest options of labour/time relations
(sourcing)?


• If there is no ‘one truth’, but different and partial ‘narrations’ of commodity value, then
it’s through highlighting and juxtaposing these extreme contradictions within the
narration of the commodity, that a political project emerges

• It’s about bringing into conversation these differing narrations of commodity and value

This is the power of

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