Stockholm university

"Woke" Authenticity in Brand Culture: A Patchwork Ethnography

Dissertation

Date: Tuesday 1 February 2022

Time: 13.00 – 15.00

Location: Online via Zoom

Public Defence of Doctoral Thesis: Jonatan Södergren

"Woke" Authenticity in Brand Culture: A Patchwork Ethnography

Authenticity is often considered the holy grail in marketing. Prior research has focused on authenticity in consumption and marketing communications based on countercultural images of personal freedom, including mythologies based on resistant rebels and social outlaws. In turn, research has constructed an androcentric view of authenticity using only one-half (i.e., the masculine/agentic) of its inherently ambivalent dialectic of meaning. Little is known about the authentication of more feminine/communally gendered consumers such as stigmatized seekers and other marginalized consumer segments.

This thesis fills an important gap in knowledge regarding the circuit of cultural ideologies around authenticity, particularly in relation to brand culture and consumers’ authenticating acts.

Read more about "Woke" Authenticity in Brand Culture: A Patchwork Ethnography


Chair
Associate Professor Susanna Molander, Stockholm Business School (SBS), Stockholm University

Opponent
Professor Shona Bettany, Department of Logistics, Marketing, Hospitality, and Analytics, University of Huddersfield, UK

Examination Committee
Professor Christian Fuentes, Department of Business Administration and Textile Management, University of Borås, Sweden
Associate Professor Susanne Sweet, Department of Marketing and Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm
Associate Professor Andrea Lucarelli, SBS, Stockholm University
 
Supervisors
Professor Jacob Östberg, SBS, Stockholm University
Associate Professor Nishant Kumar, SBS, Stockholm University
 
Join the Public Defence via Zoom:
https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/69509371657