Oct 10 course review and upcoming goodies to read and watch

What's In This Blog
¶ Lexicon from class.
¶ Readings for Tuesday, and a video to watch, a web-page to visit
¶ One New Case
¶ Some ideas about your projects (forthcoming)

Please remember: Tuesday we meet in Colloquium.  If its not too chilly we'll meet outside to start with.  Then work in groups as before.

Lexicon from Class
Positioning (could be the fifth "P")
Discourse vs. Practice
(What people say vs. what they actually do)
Free-listing: an inductive method to get at cultural categories and meanings.
Hegemony

Bibliography: for further reading.
Miller, Daniel
A Theory of Shopping (1998)
Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach (1997)
Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary

Video and Readings for Tuesday

Please read diMooif Chapters 4 and 5 for class tomorrow.  This, plus the "day in the life" reading, the video, and the website here will all be discussed on Tuesday (the diMooj material is not terribly dense, but give it a good skim).

Here is the website about denim use in India.  Read it.  Its fun.  And its by Dan Miller, who cares about material goods and their local expression.  Its an anthropological site: can you find the marketing relevance, here?

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-denim-project/ww

Here is an introduction to village economy in India. Its 18 minutes long.  Take a look.  This is village, not urban India.  I am trying to connect the Puducherry team to the ethnographers who did the work on this film.  I sent a Facebook note to Ramanathan today, and hope to hear from him soon).Here's the link in case this won't play in the blog.  There is a business case story behind this video about Microsoft's somewhat misguided efforts in India that I will tell you about in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8u3mNp6Rc

I hope we can do for Italy, China, and Cameroon what I we are doing here for India.  We'll spend some class time trying to identify and understand some business cases from each location, and you can help me find and share video and web resources on your locations.

One New Case

FYI: There is an additional case posted here, about L'Oréal.. If you missed a classd or a quiz, you'll want to follow the instructions in the syllabus and do a brief case-write up and email it to me, following the instructions in the syllabus. You may download it from the link at the right.

Ideas About Your Projects

I've discovered that it is possible to find street-scenes and market scenes from places like Pondicherry.  I've found that most of the Facebook entries for Cameroon are of Cameroon people (Cameroonians?) who live in Los Angeles.  Those are two pathways.

The main point is that you will need to actually talk to someone who lives in these places.  I'm trying to find my Cameroonian former student, but so far no luck.  Try Facebook.  Try Orkut.  Look around for blogs, universities, and so on.  Go to International Student Office and find a local student from Cameroon, Pondy, or Italy or China.  Heck, talk to you Chinese colleagues in class!

If you missed the group meeting (and I know I did miss on!), here's the marketing plan outline for you: it is called "Marketing Plan" and its available for download, here.