Product Communication and the Nationalisation of Consumption

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Product Communication and the Nationalisation of Consumption

Veranstalter
Oliver Kühschelm / Franz X. Eder, Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Universität Wien; Hannes Siegrist, Universität Leipzig
Veranstaltungsort
Springer Schlößl, Tivoligasse 73, 1120
Ort
Wien
Land
Austria
Vom - Bis
01.10.2009 - 03.10.2009
Deadline
20.09.2009
Website
http://wirtges.univie.ac.at
Von
Oliver Kühschelm

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries products, marketed on a nationwide scale, became essential resources for the constitution of individual and collective identities. Therefore, they were well suited to constructing and disseminating national images, as well as to structuring self-perception and the perception by third parties. High-profile examples, to name but a few, include Italian pasta and Swiss chocolate, the VW Beetle and the East German Trabant. The focus of the conference will be on (mostly 20th century) Europe, but cases from Japan and Canada will also be discussed. The keynote speech by Karl Gerth will open up a comparative perspective on China.

It is evident that companies have often appealed to national sensitivities with marketing goals in mind. But to what extent have national connotations been promoted by other actors, politicians, journalists, or consumers? Which social groups act as driving forces of nationalizing product communication? What goals do they pursue, what are the discursive and social results? In bourgeois societies, housekeeping and crucial parts of aesthetic consumption (domestic culture, fashionable clothes) were considered female domains. The consequences of this ideology extend to contemporary gender relations. How has it affected the nationalization of product communication?

Investigating the extent to which product communication played a role in the construction and stabilization of national identities also brings up the issue of their relativization, whether by competing regional and national imagined communities, or for the benefit of supranational figures of identification. This dynamics will be investigated with respect to the following product-centered questions: By means of which attributions were products configured as objects of national identification? How were imported/foreign products coded to find a place on the market? Were they “nationalized”, and if so, through which attributions? Or was the product communication aimed at transcending the national framework? And if the latter was the case, which imagined communities were envisaged for the integration? Could both strategies be combined? Which intermediate positions between emphatically national and markedly non-national products could be taken? How did the position of a certain product evolve in the course of its “biography”? To what extent did the intensity of “nationalization” vary? How did the meaning and form of national references evolve in the context of growing affluence and the accompanying changes in patterns of consumption?
Apart from presenting the results of empirical research, the conference will provide a forum for discussing methods of opening up the field of research in question. The instruments of discourse analysis, of image and film analysis seem to possess special relevance because the medialization of products in verbal and visual communication is a prerequisite for their nationalization.

Programm

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

October 1
15:00-15:30

WELCOME
Michael Viktor Schwarz, Dean of the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, Univ. Vienna

INTRODUCTION
Hannes Siegrist, Univ. Leipzig
Consumption and Mental Mapping in Modern Societies

15:30-18:00
CLAIMING TRADITIONS, STAGING TERRITORY, CELEBRATING PROGRESS

Chair: Heinz Gerhard Haupt, Univ. Bielefeld / European University Institute Florence

Roman Rossfeld, Univ. Zurich
«High as the Alps in Quality»: On National Identity and the Rise of the Swiss Chocolate Industry, around 1900

Oliver Kühschelm, Univ. Vienna
Branded goods and the Construction of a National Self in Postwar Austria

Artemis Yagou, AKTO art and design College, Athens
Narratives of Heritage and Modernity. National Production and Consumption in Greek Advertising

18:30-20:00
KEYNOTE LECTURE

Karl Gerth, Merton College, Oxford
Variations on a Global Theme? A Comparative Perspective on Nationalism and Consumerism in Modern China

October 2
9:00-10:30
BRANDING NATIONAL IDENTITIES – (ONLY) A STRATAGEM OF COMPANIES?

Chair: Oliver Kühschelm

Brita Lundström, KTH Stockholm
The Brand of Sweden. Narratives Constructed by Nation and Companies to Promote a Swedish image in Historical Perspective

Lisa Sumner, McGill University, Montreal
Distilling Unity: Popularizing Canada in the International Imagination

11:00-12:30
CODING THE NATION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Chair: Franz X. Eder, Univ. Vienna

Katrin Gengenbach, Univ. Leipzig
Nationalising European Luxury in Early Postwar Japan

Sándor Horváth, Academy of Sciences, Budapest
Aping the West, Consuming the Socialist Budapest

14:30-16:00
THE (DE)NATIONALIZATION OF ADVERTISING

Chair: Franz X. Eder

Susanne Hilger, Heinrich-Heine Univ., Düsseldorf
“Clashing Cultures?” Americanised Product Communication and German Consumer Habits after World War II

Ulrich Ermann, Univ. Leipzig
Modernisation through Fashion? The Geographies of the Marketing of Fashion Brands in Postsocialist Bulgaria

16:30-18:00
WHAT’S DRIVING THE NATION?

Chair: Hannes Siegrist

Manuel Schramm, TU Chemnitz
Motorisation and Nationalisation. Small Cars in Western Europe, 1950-1970

Luminita Gatejel, FU Berlin
Volkswagens of the East. The Trabant, Lada and Dacia in the Crossfire of Western, National and Socialist Propaganda

October 3
9:00-10:30
HOUSING NATIONAL IDENTITY

Chair: Franz X. Eder

Mikael Hård, TU Darmstadt
Products for the Folkhem. The Swedish People’s Home as a Consumption Junction

Natalie Scholz, Univ. Amsterdam
Something Old, Something New. National and International Dimensions of the Discourse on ‘Modern Living’ in West-Germany during the 1950s

11:00-12:30
FEEDING COMPLEX IDENTITIES

Chair: Hannes Siegrist

Detlef Briesen, Univ. Gießen
Regional Cuisines in Germany and the U.S. and the Challenges of Creolization. Case Studies on Products, Recipes, and Popular Tastes
Maren Möhring, Univ. Zurich
Staging Spaghetti. The Medialisation and Italianisation of Food Consumption in the Federal Republic of Germany

12:30-13:00
CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

Please register for the conference via email: oliver.kuehschelm@univie.ac.at

CONFERENCE ROOM
Seminarhotel Springer Schlößl
Tivoligasse 73
1120 Wien
www.springer-schloessl.at

The conference is funded by:
Gerda Henkel Stiftung
BM für Wissenschaft und Forschung
Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien (MA 7)
Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät der Universität Wien
Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft

Kontakt

Oliver Kühschelm

Univ. Wien, Inst. f. Wirtschafts- u. Sozialgeschichte

+43-1-4277-41333

oliver.kuehschelm@univie.ac.at

http://wirtges.univie.ac.at