Beyond the Odyssey: Interpretations of Ethnographic Writing in Consumer Behavior

Abstract

The literature on the use of naturalistic enquiry in consumer behaviour focuses primarily on the researcher and the research process, although the ethnographic account and the reader are often implied. The focus of this paper is on the crafting of such interpretative accountsrealist, confessional, impressionist and jointly constructed. It is argued that ethnographic accounts are not only interpretations of a culture but texts that raise theoretical, philosophical and epistemological issues. By using alternative frameworks and methodologies, ethnographies create the ‘other’ in order to understand the ‘self. Joy examines these issues through discussion of a swap meet, the Odyssey Project (see also the following paper by Belk) and two gift stores.The last few years have witnessed both ideological and intellectual ferment in consumer behaviour over what constitutes knowledge and how it is generated, interpreted and generalized across situations (Anderson 1983; Belk, Sherry and Wallendorf 1988; Belk, Wallendorf and Sherry 1989; Hirschman 1986; Holbrook 1987a; Holbrook, Bell and Grayson 1989; Hudson and Ozanne 1988; McCracken 1988; Mick 1986; Sherry 1987a, 1988: Stern 1990). To date, there are very few publications in the Journal of Consumer Research that use naturalistic enquiry1 (although Sherry and Camargo (1987) predates the Odyssey Project), and doubts remain in some scholars’ minds as to the usefulness of such alternative paradigms and research techniques in the field of consumer behaviour. There is some unease about such deconstruction processes2 where knowledge creation and dissemination become the focus of analysis (Anderson 1986; Holbrook 1989).