Craft Production in the Kingdom of Crystal (Glasriket) and Its Visual Representation Constructing Authenticity in Cultural/Marketing Production

Doctoral Thesis

Craft production in the Kingdom of Crystal (Glasriket) and its visual representation Constructing authenticity in cultural/marketing production

Songming Feng

Jönköping University Jönköping International Business School JIBS Dissertation Series No. 140 • 2020

Doctoral Thesis

Craft production in the Kingdom of Crystal (Glasriket) and its visual representation Constructing authenticity in cultural/marketing production

Songming Feng

Jönköping University Jönköping International Business School JIBS Dissertation Series No. 140 • 2020 Doctoral Thesis in Business Administration

Craft production in the Kingdom of Crystal (Glasriket) and its visual representation: Constructing authenticity in cultural/marketing production JIBS Dissertation Series No. 140

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Abstract

Authenticity is a core concept and phenomenon in contemporary marketing, as both marketers and consumers seek the authentic. Individuals, companies, and industries all work to establish and accomplish authenticity for themselves and related stakeholders. As a marketing point for creating differentiation and singularity, authenticity has the potential to augment the value of a product above and beyond its promising functional, esthetic, or experiential significance. However, authenticity is a concept with heavily debated characteristics, and it is not well understood in its market manifestations. Academic work on authenticity remains vague in terms of both its definition and its marketing relevance. There has been limited empirical understanding of and theorizing about what is meant by authenticity and how it is manifested in production and consumption in the marketplace. In practice, the nature and use of authenticity in the field of marketing is still full of ambiguity and confusion. For marketers, brand authenticity is easy to recognize but hard to manufacture. How producers and marketers manage the development, positioning, and communication of authentic offerings and how they engineer, fabricate, or construct authenticity remain unanswered questions.

This dissertation answers the call of Jones, Anand, and Alvarez (2005, p. 894) to determine which strategies are used for creating and defining authenticity and how these strategies shape our understanding of what is authentic and the call of Beverland (2005a) to find out how brands and marketers create and develop images of authenticity. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how authenticity of market offerings is constructed in two cultural/marketing production sites—the craft production of glass objects and commercial photographers’ image production as visual representation of the former—to understand the mechanisms behind the authentication of market offerings and the paradoxes within the construction work.

This purpose was fulfilled by pairing the two theoretical domains of cultural/marketing production and authenticity for the investigation of an empirical site—the Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket” in Swedish)—located in southern Sweden. As a traditional craft-producing industrial region and a tourist destination, the site has been dedicated to making consumer glass products, maintaining its production mode and ethos as a handmade craft, for more than one hundred years. Being producer focused, the craft sector and craft production offer a strong empirical instantiation of authenticity and can serve as a fertile field to explore and problematize the issue of authenticity at the intersection with cultural/marketing production. The research was conducted over a three-year period with an interpretive and ethnographic approach tapping into multiple sources of data.

This dissertation finds that the glass producers in Glasriket substantively construct five categories of authenticity (technique, material, geographical, temporal, and original) of market offerings via craft production and that commercial photographers communicate and authenticate the craft production world via their image-making practices, which are dimensionalized into a typology consisting of five categories of

7 practice: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. Illuminating the two-step micro process of cultural/marketing production—the concurrent practices of the product makers and the promoters, this dissertation theorizes about how authenticity operates vis-à-vis two types of production (substantive product making and communicative image making), yielding a number of contributions to authenticity scholarship and the literature on cultural/marketing production. It provides managerial implications for marketers/producers in Glasriket regarding how they can leverage cultural resources to conduct retro marketing as well as suggestions for marketers beyond this context about visual marketing and authenticity-based marketing.

Keywords: Glasriket, the Kingdom of Crystal, glass, craft, authenticity, cultural production, photography, image, semiotics, practice theory, materiality.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 15 1.1 Craft: A subject with contemporary cultural relevance and an empirical instance of authenticity ...... 16 1.2 The craft-producing region Glasriket as the research context...... 18 1.3 Authenticity ...... 19 1.3.1 Using “authenticity” as a theoretical lens and heuristic device ...... 19 1.3.2 Contributing to authenticity scholarship ...... 19 1.3.3 Contributing to marketing practices ...... 20 1.4 Cultural/marketing production ...... 21 1.4.1 Why focus on the production side? ...... 22 1.4.2 Paradoxes in the construction of authenticity ...... 23 1.5 Purpose of the study and research questions ...... 24 1.5.1 Purpose of the study ...... 24 1.5.2 Research questions ...... 24 1.5.3 The loci of authenticity in this research context ...... 26 1.6 Positioning of this dissertation ...... 27 1.7 Key terms, terminologies, and glossary ...... 29 1.7.1 Key terms ...... 29 1.7.2 Terminologies in semiotics applied in the analysis of visual data ...... 30 1.7.3 Glossary related to the research context ...... 31 1.8 Outline of the dissertation ...... 31 2 The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”) ...... 33 2.1 Seeing this research context theoretically ...... 33 2.2 Background information on this region...... 34 2.2.1 General profile ...... 34 2.2.2 Community and regionality ...... 37 2.2.3 Glass as a material and objects ...... 38 2.2.4 Glass products in consumption ...... 38 2.3 Authenticity anchors ...... 41 2.3.1 The craft mode of manufacturing: A key authenticity attribute ...... 41 2.3.2 Craft-manufacturing-induced tourism: Authentic experience ...... 42 2.4 Cultural/marketing production ...... 43 2.4.1 Marketing communications of three types of organizations ...... 43 2.4.2 Photographer John Selbing: Exemplary creative worker and marketer ...... 44

2.4.3 Photographic images as marketing texts and cultural products ...... 46 2.4.4 The art dimension in the region ...... 47 3 Theoretical Inspirations ...... 49 3.1 Cultural/marketing production ...... 49 3.1.1 How does this study treat the two types of production? ...... 49 3.1.2 Cultural production ...... 51 3.1.3 Cultural production at the intersection with marketing ...... 54 3.1.4 Marketing literature examining “production” ...... 55 3.1.5 Research on photographers’ work within the field of sociology ...... 63 3.1.6 A practice theory-based approach to studying photographers’ image making ...... 66 3.1.7 Summary ...... 71 3.2 Authenticity ...... 72 3.2.1 What is authenticity? ...... 72 3.2.2 Site of production ...... 79 3.2.3 Site of mediation: Advertising and marketing communications ...... 80 3.2.4 Summary ...... 82 3.3 Craft or craftsmanship ...... 83 3.3.1 Definitions ...... 83 3.3.2 Craft as production ...... 84 3.3.3 Craft as products ...... 85 3.3.4 Craft as a tourist experience...... 86 3.3.5 Craft as consumption ...... 87 3.3.6 Summary ...... 88 3.4 Relationships among the three theoretical domains and a conceptual framework ...... 88 3.4.1 Authenticity vs. cultural/marketing production: Dialectic between authenticity and reproduction ...... 88 3.4.2 Craft vs. authenticity: Overlapping conceptual dimensions ...... 89 3.4.3 Craft vs. cultural/marketing production: Domain shift ...... 90 3.4.4 A conceptual framework ...... 90 4 Methodology ...... 93 4.1 Research philosophy and approach ...... 93 4.2 Data collection ...... 95 4.2.1 Photographic images ...... 95 4.2.2 Interviews ...... 96 4.2.3 Other data ...... 98

4.3 Data analysis ...... 100 4.3.1 Analysis of the craft production of glass (RQ1) ...... 100 4.3.2 Analysis of photographers’ image production practices (RQ2) ...... 102 4.3.3 Analysis of the relationship between the two types of production (RQ3) ...... 103 4.4 Reflections on research quality ...... 104 4.5 Consideration of ethics and copyright ...... 106 5 Findings ...... 109 5.1 Substantive construction of the authenticity of market offerings via craft production of glass objects ...... 109 5.1.1 Construction of technique authenticity...... 110 5.1.2 Construction of material authenticity ...... 119 5.1.3 Construction of geographic authenticity ...... 128 5.1.4 Construction of temporal authenticity ...... 137 5.1.5 Construction of original authenticity ...... 144 5.1.6 Summary ...... 159 5.2 Communicative construction of the authenticity of market offerings via photographers’ image making practices ...... 161 5.2.1 Commercial photographers as practice carriers ...... 162 5.2.2 Commercial photographers’ image creation process ...... 165 5.2.3 The circuit of practice ...... 168 5.2.4 A typology of photographers’ image making practices for constructing authenticity ...... 172 5.2.5 Paradoxes in authenticity construction in photographers’ image- making practices ...... 192 5.2.6 Summary ...... 200 5.3 Relationships between the two types of production ...... 204 5.3.1 Commonalities ...... 204 5.3.2 Differences ...... 205 5.3.3 The relationship between the two types of production ...... 206 5.3.4 Summary ...... 209 6 Discussion ...... 211 6.1 Recap of empirical findings addressing the research questions ...... 211 6.2 Authenticity rendered in production...... 215 6.2.1 The attributes or meanings of authenticity ...... 215 6.2.2 Manifestations and dynamics of paradoxes in authenticity construction ...... 219

6.2.3 Photographic images: Authenticity in advertising and marketing communications ...... 222 6.2.4 Experiential offerings at Glasriket: Authenticity in tourism ...... 226 6.2.5 Authenticity examined through a visual approach ...... 230 6.3 Production that authenticates ...... 234 6.3.1 Production that renders market offerings authentic ...... 234 6.3.2 Authentic production? The ironic pairing of the words “authentic” and “reproduction” ...... 238 6.3.3 Cultural/marketing production examined through a practice-theory lens ...... 243 6.3.4 The salience of production for consumers and marketers ...... 247 7 Conclusion ...... 253 7.1 Theoretical contributions ...... 253 7.1.1 Contributions to the literature on authenticity ...... 253 7.1.2 Contributions to the literature on cultural/marketing production ...... 255 7.1.3 An additional note ...... 257 7.2 Managerial implications ...... 258 7.2.1 Cultural resources and retro marketing in Glasriket ...... 258 7.2.2 Authenticity-based marketing ...... 260 7.2.3 Visual marketing ...... 262 7.3 Limitations ...... 264 7.4 Future research ...... 266 8 References ...... 269 9 Appendices ...... 295 9.1 Appendix 1: List and profiles of interview informants ...... 296 9.2 Appendix 2: Interview questions ...... 298 9.2.1 Interview questions for production manager ...... 298 9.2.2 Interview questions for designers ...... 298 9.2.3 Interview questions for photographers ...... 300 9.2.4 Interview questions for marketing managers ...... 302 9.3 Appendix 3: Photographic images ...... 305 JIBS Dissertation Series ...... 333

List of figures

Figure 1. Positioning of this dissertation ...... 28 Figure 2. A conceptual framework ...... 91 Figure 3. Peirce’s triadic semiosis (Mick, 1986, p. 198) ...... 104 Figure 4. Overview of findings addressing RQ1 in Section 5.1...... 110 Figure 5. The continuum of the degree of reproduction of objects ...... 159 Figure 6. Roadmap of findings addressing RQ2 in Section 5.2 ...... 162 Figure 7. Parties involved in photographic image creation ...... 166 Figure 8. Commercial photographers’ image creation process ...... 167 Figure 9. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” ...... 169 Figure 10. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (doing) ...... 170 Figure 11. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (objects) ...... 171 Figure 12. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (meaning) ...... 172 Figure 13. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (the typology) ...... 173 Figure 14. Relationship between the two types of production ...... 207 Figure 15. Discussion “Authenticity rendered in production” situated in the conceptual framework ...... 215 Figure 16. Discussion “Production that authenticates” situated in the conceptual framework ...... 234

List of tables

Table 1. Definitions of authenticity ...... 73 Table 2. The loci of authenticity ...... 77 Table 3. Summary of substantive construction of authenticity of market offerings via craft production ...... 160 Table 4. Summary of the typology of photographers’ image-making practices to construct authenticity ...... 202 Table 5. Matrix indicating how empirical findings relate to the two theoretical domains ...... 214 Table 6. Similarities in conceptual dimensions about authenticity between this current study and previous literature ...... 217

1 Introduction

The first chapter of this dissertation explains the motivations, logics, boundaries, purpose, and directions for conducting this research project. Section 1.1 introduces the craft concept and related phenomena as having relevance to the contemporary marketplace and as an empirical instance of authenticity. Section 1.2 introduces the research context, the craft region of Glasriket in Sweden. Section 1.3 provides three reasons for the logics of applying the theoretical domain, “authenticity,” in this research. Section 1.4 explains the reason for applying the second theoretical domain, “cultural/marketing production,” in this dissertation. Section 1.5 presents the research purpose, the three research questions, and the issue of the loci of authenticity in this study. Section 1.6 elaborates on the positioning of this dissertation (its placement in a conceptual framework comprised of three theoretical domains). Section 1.7 provides explanations for the key concepts, the terminologies of semiotics, and a glossary related to the research context. Lastly, Section 1.8 outlines the overall structure of this dissertation.

Authenticity is a core concept and phenomenon in contemporary marketing, as both consumers and marketers seek the authentic—the “real,” “genuine,” and “true” (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland, 2006; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Brown, Kozinets, & Sherry, 2003; Cohen, 1988; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Peterson, 2005). However, academic work on authenticity remains vague in terms of both its definition and its marketing relevance. There has been limited empirical understanding of and theorizing about what is meant by authenticity and how it is manifested in production and consumption in the marketplace. This dissertation explores how authenticity is created in cultural/marketing production in the empirical instance of craft production. The craft sector and craft production offer a strong empirical instantiation of authenticity, and the current study aligns craft production with wider long-running debates about “authenticity” within the realm of marketing. In doing so, this study turns to a craft production site for insights into authenticity and cultural/marketing production.

Authenticity has sometimes been conflated with craft. “Authenticity” and “craft” have been marketing points for companies and brands to promote their products, services, and experiences as a means of creating competitive differentiation and uniqueness. Marketers’ presentation of the “artisanal,” the “handmade,” and the “authentic” appeal to consumers. Such terms reflect human ends, purposes, and desires as well as some instrumental characteristics of marketing. Entangled with shared conceptual elements, “authenticity” and “craft” are recurrent analytical constructs in culturally informed research about marketing phenomena. Nevertheless, conceptual blind spots exist when it comes to our understanding of how authenticity is constituted vis-a-vis craft in the marketplace. It is argued in the current study that authenticity can be a way of thinking about craft and vice versa; craft can be the

15 Jönköping International Business School empirical instance, evidence, or reification of authenticity; and craft phenomena have a bearing on conceptualizations of and discussions about authenticity.

1.1 Craft: A subject with contemporary cultural relevance and an empirical instance of authenticity

In our current era heralding artificial intelligence, robotized production and labor, and the digitalization of businesses and consumer life, the term “craft” maintains its currency given its cultural foci and humanity-rooted value orientation. This is evidenced by the popularity of such phenomena as Swiss-made watches, Cuban cigars, artisanal bread and coffee, and craft beer and wine (Chapman, Lellock, & Lippard, 2017; Smith Maguire, 2018), the farm-to-table movement (Zevnik, 2012), the rebirth of vinyl analogue records (Bartmansk & Woodward, 2015), and craft consumption (Campbell, 2005). Today, in the marketplace, artisans and craft offerings are again on the front line, pitted against industrial giants, in the form of small-batch, independent production set-ups such as a private beer brewery, a glass art studio run by a glass artist/blower, or an artisanal guitar luthier’s workshop and retail store. Ironically, even large multinationals are climbing onto the bandwagon. Some large global brands either acquire or create their own “craft” sub-brands or product lines. The US-headquartered natural and organic food supermarket chain Whole Foods has its own seal attributing the label “Authentic Food Artisan” 1 to goods offered by “small, family-run enterprises passionate about handcrafting the finest foods in small batches using traditional methods.” The e-commerce giant Amazon.com launched “Handmade at Amazon” in 2015 for artisans making handcrafted items to compete with Etsy.com (Weise, 2015), the e-commerce website focused on handmade, vintage items, and craft supplies. Since 2013, Starbucks has rolled out coffee Reserve Roasteries in Seattle, New York,2 Shanghai, Milan, and Tokyo to offer consumers an artisanal coffee experience. Each of these Starbucks retail places is a working coffee roastery, where master roasters, who have trained for years in the craft of coffee, roast small-batch single-origin coffees in front of customers (“Starbucks opens reserve roastery New York,” 2018).

The term “craft,” a shortened version of the word “craftsmanship,” is usually used interchangeably with other terms like “artisan,” “handmade,” “craftsmanship,” and “handicraft” by producers, marketers, consumers, and researchers. As a signaling term, such labels have often been used by brands as a claim, appearing on advertisements, product packages and labels, and other marketing discourses (Bhaduri & Stanforth, 2017; Fuchs, Schreier, & Osselaer, 2015; Waldron, 1978). Such marketing messages celebrate handcrafted market offerings with a romanticized, nostalgic imagery of the traditional, different, authentic, or genuine, produced with care or produced locally. In a study of craft chocolates in the US,

1 https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/support-local-artisans 2 https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-opens-23000-square-foot-immersive-coffee- destination-in-new-york/

16 1. Introduction

Leissle (2017, p. 42) observed that the term “artisan” revives advertising’s earliest goal: “to comfort wary consumers by assuring them a real person made the products pouring forth from anonymous factory floors.”

Contemporary Western consumer societies are characterized by cultural homogeneity amidst the apparent diversity of commodity spectacle and consumer choice (Wernick, 1991). Swamped by a flood of mass-produced products that are viewed as being commoditized, banal, and inhuman, some consumers yearn for products that are handmade, artisanal, environmentally and ethically produced, or locally produced using natural materials. Artisanal or handmade products enrich the marketplace with variety and satisfy consumers’ desires for distinct products, authenticity, and provenance (Campbell, 2005; Chapman et al., 2017; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Terrio, 1998; Thurnell-Read, 2019; Waehning, Karampela, & Pesonen, 2018; Yair & Schwarz, 2011). Crafts and artisans help to heal the alienation of people from the provenance of the goods that they consume (Hobsbawm, 1984). Consumers can feel the labor and heart of the maker in the finished object, which is not possible with commodities. Buying handmade products is a way of quietly protesting against mass- produced goods. Consumers’ choices in turn contribute to the actualization of their meaningful ways of life, as craft is a way of seeing the world, a way of being, and a way of thinking. Enriching our society in many ways, craft has triggered new forms of consumption and production. In contrast to the exploitative production terms of machine-based mass production, the craft mode of production offers goods that are materially desirable and ethically sound to consumers. Craft stands in opposition to the disenchanting rationalization aspects put forth by Ritzer (1993).

Craft phenomena (i.e., craft production, craft object, craft experience, and craft consumption) resonate strongly with the notion of authenticity, given that the extant literature and conceptualizations about authenticity have recurrently touched on the dimensional elements that are central to craftsmanship—small scale, independent artisanal producers, handmade production techniques, the use of culture and history as referents, natural ingredients or materials, the concept of terroir, and quality commitments (Beverland, 2005b; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Smith Maguire, 2018; Waehning et al., 2018; Wherry, 2006). Craft items are uniquely imbued with authenticity, and craft phenomena are approached by researchers via the language of authenticity. Wherry (2006, p. 29) considered how craft is related to authenticity: handicrafts are immune to the loss of authenticity and offer one of the more stable product forms for investigating the meanings of authenticity in the age of intensified global–local interactions. Handmade objects have been said to “offer a sense of the ‘authentic’ in an ‘inauthentic’ world” (Luckman, 2015, p. 68). In the world of craft food and drink, the language of authenticity is used to distinguish products made by hand rather than through industrial processes (DeSoucey, 2016; Ocejo, 2017). The increasing number of craft breweries is in alignment with consumers’ heightened need for authenticity (Kadirov, Varey, & Wooliscrof, 2014). For example, in their study of craft beer consumption in Mexico, Gómez-Corona, Escalona-Buendía, García, Chollet, and Valentin (2016) found that the main motivation for consumers to drink craft beer, in comparison with mainstream industrial beer consumption,

17 Jönköping International Business School seems to be the quest for authenticity in building identity. In his conceptualization of craft consumption, Campbell (2005) connected the craft consumer to his or her search for authenticity by suggesting that craft consumption can be viewed as a means of self-expression and self-authentication in a world dominated by commodification and marketization. Studying craft souvenirs in the context of tourism, Littrell, Anderson, and Brown (1993) concluded that uniqueness, workmanship, esthetics, cultural and historical integrity, genuineness, and the characteristics of the craftsperson are the factors that contribute to the authenticity of a craft souvenir.

The above observations by scholars indicate that craft phenomena are an empirical instance of the abstract concept of authenticity. Given its contemporary relevance to the consumer society and the marketplace, as well as its entanglement with the concept of authenticity, craft production is selected as the context of the current study. This dissertation selects Glasriket, a traditional craft-producing region in Sweden, as the research context and adopts the two theoretical areas of authenticity and cultural/marketing production as tools to investigate the craft phenomena. In doing so, the study turns to a craft production site for insights into authenticity and cultural/marketing production.

1.2 The craft-producing region Glasriket as the research context

This dissertation unpacks the concept of authenticity in a craft production site—the glass-making region called “Glasriket” (“Glasriket” is the Swedish name; the English name is “the Kingdom of Crystal”). Located in southern Sweden and with a history extending for more than one hundred years, the industrial region of Glasriket has been dedicated to producing consumer glass products, maintaining its production mode and ethos as a handmade craft. The region is world famous for such brands as Orrefors, Kosta Boda, and Målerås, which produce and sell utility and art glass products with a sleek Swedish and Scandinavian esthetic sensibility to global consumer markets. Most of the glassworks 3 are unique, small-scale firms, their craftsmanship being passed from one generation to another. This region has been transitioning into a living tourist destination since the 1980s, attracting tourists from Sweden and abroad every year. Tourists partake in various activities, such as a guided tour of a factory, shopping in factory stores, enjoying a “Hyttsill” banquet in a factory (a dinner event mimicking indigenous traditions), or attending a “blow your own glass” event, among others. Chapter 2 provides detailed accounts of this research context.

Craft phenomena often cluster in a specific geographic place or “provenance,” such as the chateau-made grand cru wines of the Bordeaux region in France (Peterson,

3 Glassworks is a Swedish word, referring to a company that runs the business of manufacturing and selling consumer glass products. It also refers to a factory where glass manufacturing is conducted.

18 1. Introduction

2005), handmade guitars in Spain (Dawe & Dawe, 2001), oriental carpets woven in Turkmen (Spooner, 1988), and handicrafts sold as ethnic and tourist arts in the Hang Dong district in Thailand (Wherry, 2006). Despite their peculiarities, craft regions have a lot in common: small-scale, “authentic” forms of production, low technology, rich heritage, struggles and reinvention in the face of threats from machines and industrialization, and the contestations and paradoxes at play in sustaining the craft mode of production and ethos. As a traditional craft-producing region, the site of Glasriket is symptomatic of other craft sectors or regions, exemplifying similar contestations, changes, and challenges.

Glasriket is an appropriate site to examine the issues of authenticity and cultural/marketing production given its craftsmanship in making objects, rich cultural heritage, and comprehensive market offerings—products, brands, visual images, tourist experiences, design artists, marketing communications, and so on. All these properties of this context hold important insights for this research. Though the term authenticity is seldom explicitly claimed or verbalized by actors in this region, issues of authenticity are apparently evidenced by observations framed in the following questions. Why do the glassworks and the destination marketing organization (DMO) love to use the words “craftsmanship” and “handmade” in their marketing collateral? Why do these glassworks offer a “factory tour” as a tourism experience to visitors, during which they can see real craftsmen blowing glass in a real factory? Why do some of the photographic images in the marketing materials demonstrate the “handmade” procedure in making glass? Do these efforts aim to showcase or highlight the “true” or “real” aspects of the glass products, their making, or the brands that they bear? The observations mentioned in these questions indicate certain ways in which producers and marketers construct authenticity.

1.3 Authenticity

1.3.1 Using “authenticity” as a theoretical lens and heuristic device This dissertation uses “authenticity” as a theoretical lens and heuristic device that provides a language and a methodology able to understand craft phenomena. Little research has been conducted about craft phenomena using an authenticity-inspired theoretical lens (examples include Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Kettley, 2016; Smith Maguire, 2018; Thurnell-Read, 2019). The concept of authenticity can help with the understanding of craft phenomena. Craft and craft production can be a natural mediator that can aptly channel meanings of authenticity. With its theoretical significance in the marketing literature, the theoretical concept of “authenticity” can function as a currency to link the current study (concerning the Glasriket context and its craft production) to broader conversations in the realm of marketing.

1.3.2 Contributing to authenticity scholarship Authenticity has broad theoretical significance in the marketing literature. Brown et al. (2003, p. 21) argued that the search for authenticity is “one of the cornerstones of

19 Jönköping International Business School contemporary marketing.” Individuals, companies, and industries all work to establish and accomplish authenticity for themselves and related stakeholders.

According to the literature about the consumption aspect, consumers actively seek authentic products, brands, places, experiences, and persons as well as the fulfillment of a genuine self (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Gannon & Prothero, 2016; Goulding, 2000; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Rose & Wood, 2005; Visconti, 2010). Postmodern consumers crave the authentic in a world that is becoming increasingly contrived and commercialized. Consumers’ desire for authenticity emerges from “malaises of modernity” whereby disenchantment, individualism, and instrumental rationality lead to the “narrowing and flattening of our lives” (Taylor, 1991, p. 6). Authenticity can be resorted to as an ameliorative remedy to the alienating influences of modernity (MacCannell, 1976). Critiques of mass culture and consumer society in the latter part of the twentieth century (Baudrillard, 1998; Benjamin, 1969; Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002) discussed the proliferation of inauthenticity in the modern world, which bestows authenticity with its meaning and value. In a postmodern market environment characterized by hyperreality (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995), globalization (Askegaard, 2006), and deterritorialization (Arnould & Price, 2000) as well as standardization and homogenization (Thompson, Rindfleisch, & Arsel, 2006), people are dissatisfied with modern work, consumption, and social life. According to the literature about the production aspect, authenticity can help to position a firm or brand as being different from industrial mass production (Beverland, 2009; Beverland, Lindgreen, & Vink, 2008; Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Visconti, 2010). Authenticity can create an aura around a brand or firm (cf. Brown et al., 2003) that differentiates it from its mass market counterparts. Producers and marketers respond to consumers’ quest for authenticity by supplying authentic market offerings, treating authenticity as the new business imperative (Beverland, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Visconti, 2010). The best brands have street cred—a kind of soul rooted in something real and authentic.

Authenticity is a cultural concept (Grayson & Martinec, 2004) and a valued quality in modern culture. As noted by Peñaloza (2000), authenticity is a quality of which the characteristics are heavily debated, and it is not well understood in its market manifestations. This dissertation answers the call of Jones et al. (2005, p. 894) to investigate the strategies that are used for creating and defining authenticity and the way in which these strategies shape our understanding of what authentic is. Such an endeavor will make timely theoretical contributions to authenticity scholarship.

1.3.3 Contributing to marketing practices Authenticity has managerial significance in the marketing industry. Being a cornerstone of contemporary marketing practices (Brown et al., 2003), authenticity has instrumental value for producers and marketers. It has the potential to augment the value of a product above and beyond its promising functional, esthetic, or experiential significance. Authenticity has been a marketing point as a form of

20 1. Introduction differentiation and a point of uniqueness. It is often used as a marketing narrative or product label by firms that draw on it to reinforce their status, command price premiums, and ward off the competition (Beverland, 2005b). However, the nature and use of authenticity in the field of marketing are still full of ambiguity and confusion. There are different situations: companies in traditional craft sectors promote their products as genuine and authentic offerings, and companies in mass production claim “authenticity” through the wording, packaging, and labels that serve as a value proposition in the marketing rhetoric. As pointed out by Busdieker (2017), for marketers, brand authenticity is “easy to recognize, hard to manufacture.” How producers and marketers manage the development, positioning, and communication of authentic offerings and how they engineer, fabricate, or construct authenticity remain unanswered questions. This dissertation addresses the production aspect of authenticity, contributing insights relevant to marketing practices.

1.4 Cultural/marketing production

Authenticity operates at the core of mass cultural production (Frosh, 2001; Peterson, 2005). Cultural industries manufacture authenticity to distinguish their products and services from the competition and to respond to the perceived needs of consumers. The tilt toward the production side in this current study draws on and is inspired by exemplary research on authenticity fabrication performed by producers in the cultural industries and/or marketing realm—photography in marketing (Frosh, 2001; Guthey & Jackson, 2005), country music (Peterson, 1997), an advertising agency (Moeran, 2005), film production (Jones & Smith, 2005), and luxury wine (Beverland, 2005b; Beverland & Luxton, 2005). These studies used different verbs to label production: marketers’ projecting of the authenticity of brands through advertising (Beverland et al., 2008), fabricating authenticity (Belk & Costa, 1998; Peterson, 1997), creation and recreation of the images of authenticity (Beverland, 2005b), or staging authenticity in tourism (Cohen, 1988; MacCannell, 1973). Such studies theorized about how cultural/marketing producers respond to users’ quest for authenticity in the marketplace by constructing authentic cultural products such as texts, images, music, or other objects with meanings. As an example, in his study of the country music industry in the US, Peterson (1997) proposed that, in cultural industries, the success of a given cultural product and its acceptance by its audience often depend on the appearance of authenticity. He elucidated the deliberate strategies used by powerful actors in the industry to legitimize various types of authenticity. By problematizing and researching the producers and their production work, this dissertation joins the conversations of these studies and contributes to the domain of cultural/marketing production. The expression “cultural/marketing production” refers to two types of intermingled production: cultural production and marketing production. Throughout this dissertation, I use the punctuation “/” between “cultural” and “marketing” in the expression “cultural/marketing production” because these two fields (cultural production and marketing production) are intermingled. Section 3.1 in Chapter 3 (“Cultural/marketing production”) provides more elaborations to explain the rationale for such a usage.

21 Jönköping International Business School

1.4.1 Why focus on the production side? Production, due to its inherent nature, can serve as a fertile field to explore and problematize the issue of authenticity. Authenticity is a social construction, as it is not something that exists inherently in an object, a text, or an experience (Beverland, 2005b; Cohen, 1988; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Peterson, 1997, 2005; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; Wang, 1999). Rather, these objects are made and rendered authentic, to be deemed so by certain beholders (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a). Previous studies have agreed that authenticity is a socially constructed and negotiated interpretation of the essence of what is observed by certain evaluators relative to their particular contexts and goals (Beverland, 2006; Beverland et al., 2008; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Grazian, 2005; Peñaloza, 2000; Peterson, 2005; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; Rose & Wood, 2005; Thompson et al., 2006; Wang, 1999; Zukin, 2010). The types of authenticity are inscribed in a socially constructed way, as they obtain their authenticity through processes of performativity or what Peterson (2005, p. 1086) called “authenticity work.” Therefore, authenticity is something that is done in addition to something that is. Authenticity can be examined as something that is “achieved,” “fabricated,” or “produced” (Peterson, 1997; Zukin, 2010). The current study takes a production-focused perspective on the issue of authenticity in relation to craft production.

Large amounts of extant studies in the marketing literature have privileged the consumer, problematizing such issues as identity construction, self-authentication, personal authenticity, re-enchantment, self-cultivation, and so on (Arnould & Price, 2000; Badot & Filser, 2006; Brown et al., 2003; Gannon & Prothero, 2016; Giesler & Luedicke, 2009; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Rose & Wood, 2005). However, these studies have implied that such pursuits of consumers are decoupled from the production sources of brands and products. Though it is consumers who will ultimately valuate or experience products to determine their authenticity, the production of these items can shape consumers’ evaluations and experiences. As pointed out by Smith Maguire (2018), consumers’ judgment or evaluation of authenticity is subject not only to individual interpretations but also to strategic mobilization and marketization. Besides a large proportion of authenticity literature examining consumers’ evaluations of authenticity, some researchers have dealt with how evaluations are scripted or channeled through the texts and practices of market actors (Smith Maguire, 2018, p. 64). Producers’ authenticating work provides the fertile ground, creating reliable pathways and cues for consumers to perform the evaluation and mobilize their behaviors. In some situations, contrary to the norm that companies must cater to consumer needs, producers shape the landscape of authenticity. For example, in an empirical examination of Scottish goods sold to tourists at retail outlets and festivals, Chhabra (2005) found that vendors are the definers of authenticity, which is supply driven.

It is not enough to attribute authenticity only to the consumption sphere. It is necessary to add the authenticating acts of marketers or cultural producers to the authenticity equation, as few studies have attempted to elucidate the authenticating processes and mechanics through which authenticity is fabricated or constructed by

22 1. Introduction marketing/cultural producers. As a delimitation, this dissertation does not address the consumption side (e.g., consumers’ self-authentication practices for achieving the authentic self). The current study focuses on the authenticity construction practices performed by two types of producers in Glasriket—glass makers (i.e., craftsmen and designers) and commercial photographers—as part of the marketing system. Many actors may be involved in authentication, and the consumers (end users) have a strong voice in judging and actualizing the authenticity. However, the current study chose to focus on the work of these two types of producers, who are the pivotal and visible actors in substantively and communicatively fabricating, rendering, and shaping the authenticity of offerings in the marketplace.

1.4.2 Paradoxes in the construction of authenticity Authenticity is barely as normative or prescriptive as producers wish or present. Researchers have continually investigated the interplay and intermingling of the authentic and the inauthentic in the marketplace (Askegaard, Kristensen, & Ulver, 2016; Boyle, 2003; Hietanen, Murray, Sihvonen, & Tikkanen, 2019; Stern, 1994). The authentic and the inauthentic are often expressed as binary oppositions: true vs. contrived, real vs. fictional, originality vs. reproducibility, original vs. fake, real vs. imitative, and authentic commodities vs. counterfeit commodities. Authenticity is frequently characterized by dilemmas and paradoxes in its construction and emergence. The construction of authenticity by cultural/marketing producers in the current study inevitably involves a number of paradoxes. As a craft-producing region that is ambiguous and hotly contested in its own right, Glasriket has witnessed the contestations of competing forces. On one hand, glassworks have had to resort to rationalization, commercialization, and commoditization to sustain their businesses and adapt to environmental changes, leading to dis-authenticating effects. On the other hand, they have worked to authenticate their brands, products, and marketing messages via various mechanisms (e.g., singularizing, enchanting, and estheticizing) to authenticate their market offerings. Much of the effort of authentication in the two production practices examined in this dissertation (i.e., craft production and its visual representation) are characterized by situations in which authenticity and inauthenticity co-exist (Benjamin, 1969). The authenticating efforts are juxtaposed with the negative aspects of inauthentic commercial operations (machine-based production techniques, reproduction of objects for mass markets, reproduction of images for marketing, etc.).

Cultural producers and marketers, implicitly and explicitly, work to manage and resolve these paradoxes on a continuous basis. The authentication work carried out by cultural/marketing producers can also be viewed as presenting an opportunity to determine how they resolve these dilemmas and paradoxes. From a research perspective, the paradox premise provides a rich site for the investigation of the complexity and open-endedness of the notion of authenticity in the bigger context of brand meaning management in marketing (Brown et al., 2003). While analyzing the two types of production work involved in constructing authenticity, the current study also explores the complex interplay of dichotomies in paradoxes to chart the “dialectic of authenticity” as it plays out in the empirical instance of craft production.

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1.5 Purpose of the study and research questions

1.5.1 Purpose of the study To review the above, the purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how authenticity is constructed through two cultural/marketing production practices—the craft production of glass objects and commercial photographers’ image production as a visual representation of the former—to understand the mechanisms of the authentication of market offerings and paradoxes within the construction work.

Such a purpose will lead to the discovery of the mechanisms of authentication occurring in two production sites, which generate two types of cultural products, respectively glassware and photographic images. These two practices of cultural/marketing production bestow authenticity on market offerings and will inform our understanding of the nature of authenticity and various mechanisms of its formation. The market offerings here refer to the objects, products, brands, places, persons, marketing messages, and so on provided by companies and brands. Broadly speaking, the current study examines the ways in which authenticity plays out in a craft production site and locates the findings within the theoretical debates on authenticity and research about cultural/marketing production.

In this effort, authenticity is treated as something that operates in the arena of craft production, which is constituted by two key types of production: 1) the material, physical craft making of consumer products in the glass industry region of Glasriket; and 2) commercial photographers’ production of photographic images representing the former in the sphere of marketing communications.

1.5.2 Research questions To achieve the aforementioned purpose, the following research questions were composed: • RQ1: How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via the craft production of glass objects? • RQ2: How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing images representing the craft production? • RQ3: In what way are the two types of production related?

This dissertation examines two specific sites for the construction of authenticity: the craft production of glass objects and commercial photographers’ practices of producing images as a way of representing the former. The construction of authenticity is embedded in and mediated through these two types of production, which form a rich palette for researching the concept of authenticity and its manifestations in the marketplace. These two sites are analogous to the concepts of substantive staging and communicative staging in the study of tourism and

24 1. Introduction experiential consumption (Arnould, 2006, p. 189). Substantive staging refers to “the physical creation of contrived environments” (ibid., p. 189). As an example, the historical tourist site of Gettysburg in the US is substantively staged through tangible and physical artifacts: its landscape, monuments, museums, and buildings (Chronis & Hampton, 2008). Communicative staging refers to “ways in which the environment is presented and interpreted by commercial service providers or by consumer adepts and experts who become implicit or explicit confederates of marketers” (Arnould, 2006, p. 189). Taking the same example of the Gettysburg tourist site, tourist guides perform communicative staging by narrating stories about objects and events to transmit experiential meanings to visitors (Chronis & Hampton, 2008). In the current study, the two sites of production in Glasriket belong to the substantive and communicative acts, respectively. They are substantive construction and communicative construction of authenticity, respectively. By examining both arenas, this current study considers both the material/tangible and the symbolic dimensions in the authenticity of market offerings.

RQ1 concerns the physical production of glass objects that are manufactured, material products. The production involves various tactics employed by glass makers (craftsmen, designers, etc.) to project authenticity. The investigation of the production of physical objects is salient especially for the politics of craft, because, in our current societies with mass-produced commodities, there remains “human enchantment with the process of making” (Luckman, 2015, p. 70). Karl Marx (2000) raised the concepts of estrangement and alienation—originally, it was through making and possessing things that human beings came to feel their own humanity and efficacy. Marx (1970) pointed out the discomforting prospect that, even though consumers are surrounded by commodities that are produced by others, they are alienated from the production. The human experience of that production of the commodities is often forgotten or concealed. “The sense of joy, anger, or frustration that lies behind the production of commodities, the states of mind of the producers, are all hidden to us as we change one object (money) for another (commodity)” (ibid., p. 163). Production becomes what Marx referred to as a “hidden abode” (ibid., p. 279). An examination of the production of objects by glass producers can address this lack of knowledge in a consumer society by revealing how this type of production renders market offerings authentic. In addition, research on the concrete, physical production of products in the backend can correct the perception that authenticity can be constructed by marketers in a superficial way, such as by dressing up messages or putting claims on product packaging and labels (Lee, Sung, Phau, & Lim, 2019; Neff, 2010).

RQ2 concerns the way in which craft production and its attendant products are visually represented as authentic and the visual aspects of the communication of market offerings’ authenticity. The analysis focuses on how photographers create the authentic representation of different objects via the medium of photography in marketing materials or how the created images render market offerings authentic. This area belongs to marketing communications, peripheral to the actual production of products. As part of the marketing system, photographers project the authenticity

25 Jönköping International Business School of market offerings onto photographic images, which are symbolic, immaterial artifacts. The photographers work as intermediaries, who frame selected anchors as legitimate points of attachment for others’ evaluations of authenticity and craft (Smith Maguire, 2018).

Why did I investigate the production of photographic images? The extant studies about authenticity and craft have paid scant attention to the visual aspect (for exceptions, see Frosh, 2001; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; A.-S. Lehmann, 2012; U. Lehmann, 2012), but favored the analysis of written text—narratives, discourses, and stories (Hamby, Brinberg, & Daniloski, 2019; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Thurnell- Read, 2019; Visconti, 2010). Though some studies have explored how marketers employ a multitude of visual and verbal design cues to enable their products to be perceived as more authentic in the eyes of the consumer (Beverland, 2009; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Lee et al., 2019), little attention has been paid to photographic images, which are an important vehicle in advertising and marketing communications. A focus on the production of photographic images leads to the exploration of the visual dynamics within the construction of authenticity. In an image-saturated world, photographic images are juxtaposed with objects and verbal discourses for consumers as part of the totality of offerings in the marketplace. The images are a core component of the brand messages—true, relevant, and able to help retain a brand’s authentic attributes. Images function as informational cues for consumers to evaluate the authenticity of market offerings. The authenticity of the glassworks’ brands and their market offerings and the destination brand of Glasriket is constructed through such visual images in addition to textual narratives.

Lastly, RQ3 explores the linkage between the two types of production in their authenticity construction work. The production of glass products in the glassworks creates authentic referents (i.e., the objects) in the first place. Then, the photographic image production is a type of reproduction of the referents in its effort to enhance the sales of commodities or promote the place as a tourist destination. The photographic images establish an authentic connection with their referents—the objects to be captured by them. The authenticity rendered by the craft production is mediated by the photographic images. Convergence exists between these two arenas due to the concerted efforts of glass makers and photographers. The second arena exemplifies the authenticity paradox in different ways from the first one.

1.5.3 The loci of authenticity in this research context In this dissertation, where does authenticity reside? In other words, what are the loci of authenticity? I ask this question because authenticity can reside in or be associated with different entities: products, brands, places, human individuals (e.g., consumers or creative workers), experiences, or marketing texts (e.g., ads). Section 3.2.1 (“Where does it reside? The loci of authenticity”) in Chapter 3 contains more information about this issue based on a literature review. In the current study, the loci of authenticity are the market offerings in Glasriket: the products, brands, discourses, experiences, places, and images created and diffused by marketers and producers, which constitute the entirety of a good’s or service’s context of production. This

26 1. Introduction region churns out authentic objects: products, tourist experiences, brands, discourses and images in marketing communications, and so on. Cultural producers and marketers continually craft together these sources of authenticity to create rich brand meanings. These objects also constitute the contexts from which consumers develop meanings about authenticity for themselves (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010).

In Glasriket, authenticity is an implicit ideal referred to by actors such as craftsmen, designers, marketers, and community champions. The implicit message is that the craft products are authentic, deserving a premium price, higher than that of mass- produced, machine-made products. Unlike the situation in previous studies that have analyzed actors’ discourses or accounts of authenticity (e.g., Jones & Smith, 2005; Visconti, 2010), marketers and producers in this research context seldom overtly claim that they want to create authentic market offerings, nor do they use such a term or similar terms (real, genuine) in their discourses. It is a situation in which I, as the researcher, use authenticity as a theoretical lens or heuristic device to view their production practices, which demonstrate intentions and efforts to authenticate their offerings. Such intentions and efforts are often subtle and implicit. The glassworks in Glasriket and their offerings come off as authentic rather than claiming to be authentic. As noted by Peterson (2005), the constructedness of authenticity is not always overtly claimed by the actor who seeks to be identified as authentic. Blunt claims of authenticity by producers or marketers may do a disservice to their goal, as consumers may resist such messages as commercial propaganda that is inauthentic (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a). A company’s offerings can be perceived as authentic by its customers even though it does not claim them to be so. It may be easier for a brand to be authentic if it does not produce rhetoric about it.

1.6 Positioning of this dissertation

This dissertation is positioned within a theoretical framework pairing the two domains of authenticity and cultural/marketing production (see the two boxes at the top of Figure 1). As mentioned earlier in Section 1.3 in this chapter, the theoretical domain of authenticity serves three purposes: 1) to be used as a theoretical lens or heuristic device to understand craft phenomena; 2) to be leveraged and to be the domain to receive theoretical contributions generated by the current study; and 3) to be researched to yield contributions to marketing practices. As for the domain of cultural/marketing production, this dissertation draws on it and at the same time makes theoretical contributions to it with insights about the work of producers and marketers in carrying out cultural and marketing production as ways of authenticating market offerings (the research purpose, see the text within the circle connecting the three boxes in Figure 1).

This dissertation focuses on the craft region of Glasriket as the research context, and craft production is an apt site to examine the existence of authenticity and its paradoxes. The empirical context of craft production is compatible with the conceptualization of authenticity given the overlapping conceptual dimensions between these two (see the literature review in Section 3.4 in Chapter 3). Just as

27 Jönköping International Business School authenticity represents the hallmark of country music (Peterson, 1997), it also represents the hallmark of craftsmanship. The craft production of glass in Glasriket is an instance of the abstract phenomenon of authenticity construction. The craft sector provides a context for understanding the issues of authenticity as well as its construction delivered through cultural/marketing production. The research context sets the scene for the work of glass producers and photographers (as marketers) in authenticating market offerings. I turn to craft production for insights into authenticity to explore the ways in which authenticity plays out in a craft production site.

Figure 1. Positioning of this dissertation

In addition to being an empirical instance, craft is a conceptual domain that has been researched by scholars from various disciplines, such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, design, art history, archeology, and material culture.4 Craft exists as a practice, a skill, an object, an experience, a person (i.e., artisan), a business (trade or sector), a place (e.g., craft village), and a concept (Baudrillard, 2011; Campbell, 2005; Creighton, 1995; Peach, 2013; Risatti, 2007; Schaefer, 2013; Sennett, 2008). Therefore, craft is not only an empirical existence (see the text in the higher bracket in the box in the bottom in Figure 1) but also a theoretical domain (see the text in the lower bracket in the box in the bottom in Figure 1), given the sizable amount of academic work that has been conducted in multiple disciplines. Section 3.3 in Chapter 3 provides a literature review about craft research pertinent to marketing. Craft has theoretical dimensions, which help with the explanation of the research context. Eyes trained in the craft literature helped me notice something interesting in this research context, as theories of craft enabled my analytical capacity.

4 See two academic journals as dedicated forums and communities focusing on craft research: Craft Research and The Journal of Modern Craft.

28 1. Introduction

To sum up, this dissertation embeds (see the circle connecting the three boxes in Figure 1) a craft research context within the two conceptual realms of authenticity and cultural/marketing production. In another sense, it uses these two theoretical areas as tools to answer questions about craft phenomena. Craft is the contextual issue, while authenticity and cultural/marketing production are the conceptual issues.

1.7 Key terms, terminologies, and glossary

1.7.1 Key terms Craftsmanship: The Oxford Dictionary defined “craftsmanship” as “skill in a particular craft” (en.oxforddictionaries.com). Sennett (2008) defined craftsmanship as “an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (p. 9) and “the skill of making things well” (p. 8). For Sennett, craftsmanship includes not only traditional, skilled manual labor, such as pottery making, weaving, and carpentry, but also modernized, technology-assisted undertakings, like Linux programming or the medical practices of a doctor. There are some similar terms: craft, handicraft, artisanal, and so on. The concept will be further explained in Chapter 3 (Section 3.3).

Represent: The verb “represent” means “to symbolize” or “to stand for something that is not present” (Williams, 2014, p. 206). In art and literature, a representation is a symbol or a visual embodiment of something or the process of presenting to the eye or the mind (Williams, 2014, p. 208). The noun “representation” is tied to a sense of “accurate reproduction” (ibid., p. 208). A representation can be a symbol or an image. According to Hall (1997), “representation” is “the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events” (p. 17; emphasis in the original).

Authenticity: This term has been addressed in multiple disciplines and is notoriously difficult to define due to its polysemous, fluid, and contested nature. A unifying concern is the desire to locate the true or “real” expression of something in the face of the trends toward homogenization, rationalization, and standardization that have characterized modern life (Weber, 1978). Beverland and Farrelly (2010, p. 839) offered an explanation hinting about the connotations of the term: “… despite the multiplicity of terms and interpretations applied to authenticity, ultimately what is consistent across the literature is that authenticity encapsulates what is genuine, real, and/or true.” The concept will be further explained, reified, and discussed in the dissertation (in the literature review in Chapter 3, empirical findings in Chapter 5, and discussions in Chapter 6).

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1.7.2 Terminologies in semiotics applied in the analysis of visual data In this dissertation, photographic images are analyzed as visual data, in addition to other types of data. Semiotics is applied as the methodological tool in the analysis. Below are the key terminologies concerning semiotics to enable the reading of the relevant parts. • Semiotics: The term semiotics has been used by researchers in two ways. First, it can refer to the social science discipline specializing in the study of signs from a cultural perspective; it is a social science discipline that extends the laws of structural linguistics to the analysis of verbal, visual, and spatial sign systems (Oswald, 2012). Second, it can refer to the ensemble of signifying operations at work in a sign system, which can be an advertising text, a retail setting, or a brand (ibid.). • Semiology: Similar to semiotics, the word semiology has been used interchangeably with semiotics to refer to the science of signs (Mick, 1986). • Semiosis: This refers to the process of communication by a sign, which stands for something (its object), to somebody (its interpreter), in some respect (its context), according to Peirce’s theory (Mick, 1986, p. 198). In a broader sense, semiosis refers to the dynamics of meaning production (Oswald, 2012) or the act of signifying (Fiske, 1990). The overall process of semiosis is the basic subject of semiotics. • Sign, object, and interpretant: C. S. Peirce’s (1985) semiotic approach identifies a triangular relationship among the three basic elements: sign, object, and interpretant (Nöth, 1990; Peirce, 1998). The sign stands for something other than itself (the object). The object is something tangible and real in the world (Rose, 2016). The interpretant does not mean the interpreter or an interpretation but a mental image held by the interpreter as a reaction to the sign (Christensen & Askegaard, 2001). • Referent: This is something that a sign represents. It is also called “the object,” which is something tangible and real in the world (Rose, 2016). • Signifier and signified: According to Saussure’s structural linguistics, the basic linguistic unit, the sign, consists of two components: the signifier and the signified (Saussure, 1915). The signifier is the material form and can be the image, sound, object, or word. The signified is the meaning or mental concept to which the signifier refers (Fiske, 1990). For example, a rose, as a signifier, symbolizes the meanings of “romance and love,” which are the signified. • Indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs: As for the logical relationship between the sign and its object, Peirce (1955) created a taxonomy of three types of sign: iconic (based on resemblance), indexical (based on causal correspondence), and symbolic (based on convention). In iconic signs, the signifier represents the signified by having a likeness or resemblance to it. A photograph of a piece of glassware is an iconic sign of that object. For an indexical sign, the signifier relates to its signified by some correspondence of fact, and the relationship is frequently causal. As an example of an indexical sign, an image showing smoke infers the existence of fire. In symbolic signs,

30 1. Introduction

the relationship between the signifier and the signified is based on cultural conventions and the relationship is arbitrary. The concept that diamonds represent “love forever” is a classic example of a symbolic sign, as there is no intrinsic relationship between the stone of a diamond and a long-term love relationship.

1.7.3 Glossary related to the research context • Bruk: This a Swedish word, stemming from the Swedish word “att bruka” (“to use”); it also means “glass factory,” which is a building in which glass making takes place. In Swedish, “bruk” refers only to glass factories rather than factories in other sectors. • DMO: Destination marketing organization. • Glasbruk: This a Swedish word, meaning glass factory. • Glasriket: Swedish people use this word to refer to the region called “the Kingdom of Crystal,” which is an industrial region making glass products and a tourist destination, located in Småland in southern Sweden. The name “the Kingdom of Crystal” is used more by international audiences. • Glassworks: This a Swedish word, referring to a company that runs the business of manufacturing and selling consumer glass products. It also refers to a factory where glass manufacturing is conducted. • Hot shop: This refers to the central part of a glass factory, where the furnace is located.

1.8 Outline of the dissertation

This dissertation is organized as follows.

Chapter 2 “The context: Glasriket or the Kingdom of Crystal” introduces the research context, the region of Glasriket, to contextualize the study by touching on various pertinent dimensions of the region, which will be dovetailed implicitly with the two theoretical domains—authenticity and cultural/marketing production. It has four major sub-sections: a reflection on the choice of this research context in a theoretical sense, the general background, two anchors of authenticity (the craft mode of manufacturing and craft-manufacturing-induced tourism), and cultural/marketing production in this region. The last sub-section consists of four areas: marketing communications of three types of organizations, the photographer John Selbing as an exemplary creative worker and marketer, photographic images as cultural products, and the art dimension.

Chapter 3 “Theoretical inspirations” contains reviews of the literature in three theoretical domains: authenticity, cultural/marketing production, and craft. Finally, the relationships among the three domains are analyzed and a conceptual framework is presented.

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Chapter 4 “Methodology” discusses various aspects of the methodology used in this dissertation: the research philosophy and approach, the gathering of empirical data, the analyses of data yielding findings in three areas corresponding to the three research questions, a reflection on the research quality, and considerations about ethics and copyright.

Chapter 5 “Findings” comprises three sub-sections. Section 5.1 “Substantive construction of the authenticity of market offerings via craft production” addresses RQ1. Section 5.2 “Communicative construction of authenticity via photographers’ practices of image making” addresses RQ2. Section 5.3 “Relationships between the two types of production” addresses RQ3.

Chapter 6 “Discussion” first reiterates the empirical findings addressing the three research questions and cross-views them to see how they fit into the two theoretical domains to which this dissertation aims to make contributions (Section 6.1). Then, Section 6.2 and Section 6.3 abstract from the research context and empirical findings and branch out to broader issues. This is achieved by linking the empirical findings to strands of conversations in the two domains of “authenticity” and “cultural/marketing production” to make contrasts and comparisons, produce theoretically informed implications, and argue theoretical contributions. Section 6.2 “Authenticity rendered in production” contains discussions in five strands of conversations under the rubrics of “authenticity,” and Section 6.3 “Production that authenticates” includes discussions in four strands of conversations under the rubrics of “cultural/marketing production.”

Chapter 7 “Conclusion” ends this dissertation with four sub-sections: theoretical contributions, managerial implications, limitations, and future research.

2 The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”)

This chapter introduces the research context of Glasriket, trying to contextualize the study by touching on various pertinent dimensions of the region, which will be dovetailed implicitly with the two theoretical domains—authenticity and cultural/marketing production. This chapter starts with a reflection on the choice of this research context in a theoretical sense (2.1), followed by the introduction of the general background of this region (2.2), consisting of four areas: general profile, community and regionality, glass as a material and objects, and glass products in consumption. Section 2.3 introduces two anchors of authenticity: the craft mode of manufacturing and craft-manufacturing-induced tourism. Section 2.4 concludes this chapter by introducing four areas of cultural/marketing production in this region: marketing communications of three types of organizations, the photographer John Selbing as an exemplary creative worker and marketer, photographic images as marketing texts and cultural products, and the art dimension.

2.1 Seeing this research context theoretically

Authenticity needs to be evaluated in certain contexts. Researchers have made the claim that authenticity should be analyzed in each contextual setting (Bruner, 1994; Gundlach & Neville, 2012). Bruner (1994, p. 401) pointed out, “The problem with the term authenticity, in the literature and in fieldwork, is that one never knows except by analysis of the context which meaning is salient in any given instance.” The meaning given to authenticity is context and goal dependent (Arnould & Price, 2000; Rose & Wood, 2005; Wang, 1999). Given this nature of authenticity, the current study selected “the Kingdom of Crystal” (“Glasriket” in Swedish) as the research context that sets the scene in which the two types of production (glass making and image making) operate.

As demonstrated by the following sub-sections in this chapter, the properties of this research context are uniquely identified as significant and relevant to the research on the construction of authenticity through cultural/marketing production. First, consumer glass products are quasi-cultural products that have a strong tilt toward the esthetic, visual, and material dimensions. Glass products and the attendant visual images are “highly symbolic and richly connotative product classes” (Mick & Buhl, 1992, p. 320), and authenticity entails issues of meaning and symbolism (Beverland, 2005b). Second, craft is entangled with authenticity (Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Smith Maguire, 2018; Thurnell-Read, 2019), and the craft sector is subject to debates and contestations over authenticity. Third, with some of the oldest glass brands still in existence, this context potentially holds important insights into historicity, a key attribute of authenticity (Beverland, 2005b; Gundlach & Neville, 2012). Fourth, this region has comprehensive marketing communication elements consisting of

33 Jönköping International Business School advertising, a magazine, product catalogues, photographic images, narratives, and events, which hold implications for the marketing aspect of authenticity.

This research context is similar to those selected in past studies examining authenticity issues in several ways. First, both this study and prior research chose a less generalizable context or sector—Beverland (2006) studied the attributes of authenticity in 20 ultra-premium wineries, Smith Maguire (2018) focused on fine wine, Hartmann and Ostberg (2013) selected the Swedish guitar maker Hagström, Waehning et al. (2018) focused on craft beer producers, and Thurnell-Read (2019) interviewed workers in small and independent breweries. Second, all the contexts (including mine) are small-scale, provenance-driven, traditional, craft-producing, and low-technology niche sectors or regions. Third, all the contexts (including mine) articulate a “counter-logic” to that of mass production and large multinational giants representing the typical corporate capitalism, thus inherently possessing more distinctive attributes of authenticity. Furthermore, firms in such contexts do not engage in mainstream mass marketing.

This research context differs from other contexts in the authenticity literature due to the nature of the products, which implies different issues of authenticity to be contested and problematized. Glass products are more about the visual and expressive, while the product categories of wine and breweries are more concerned with taste and discourses (Smith Maguire, 2018; Thurnell-Read, 2019). For the product category of music, the issues at stake are fake, genre, and conventions (Peterson, 1997). Glass is a more endurable consumption object, while food and drinks are transitory and ephemeral. Glass is material and physical, and its authenticity is partially derived from its materiality (see Section 5.1.2 “Construction of material authenticity” in Chapter 5). Studies in the authenticity literature have seldom addressed the material dimension in authenticity (Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Bruner, 1994; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013).

Lastly, from a methodological perspective, this one-site approach has the strengths of enabling me to build a deeper relationship with the informants and allowing the depth of analysis gained from using a single site that would be difficult to achieve across multiple sites.

2.2 Background information on this region

2.2.1 General profile In the east of the Småland area in southern Sweden, there is a region that is popularly referred to as “the Kingdom of Crystal” in English and “Glasriket” in Swedish. The English name “Kingdom of Crystal” is for international audiences. Domestically, people call it “Glasriket” in Swedish. People sometimes refer to this region as a “glass-rich” area in Småland, Sweden. It is both an industrial region manufacturing consumer glass products and a tourism destination. It covers the four municipalities of Emmaboda, Lessebo, Nybro, and Uppvidinge, with 300,000 hectares of forests.

34 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”)

Hidden among the forests are some glassworks (or factories) with long histories and rich heritage (“Glasriket.se,” 2017). With a history of more than one hundred years, the industrial region still maintains its production mode and ethos as handmade craft.

The glass industry started in Småland in 1742, making household glassware for everyday use, such as sugar bowls and decanters (Holmér, 2011). Between the 18th century and the mid-1900s, the industry thrived, with 67 glassworks in operation (Holmér, 1998). The Swedish glass industry put its name on the global map in 1925, when several glassworks, especially Orrefors, received numerous awards at the Paris World Fair (Dawson, 2000). Orrefors became the dominant glassworks and a well- known brand of glass in Sweden in the 20th century. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Swedish glass earned a good reputation, and the term “Swedish Modern” was introduced (Dawson, 2000). Swedish glass gained a worldwide reputation during the 20th century, and it has symbolized Swedish craftsmanship, industry, and artistry ever since.

Since the 1950s, the industrial region has undergone restructuring and consolidation due to new manufacturing methods, foreign competition, changes in consumption needs, and worldwide financial crises. The total number of glassworks has been declining. Below is the evolvement of the total number of glassworks: • During the period 1850–1900, there were 77 glassworks (Holmér, 2002). • In the early 20th century, there were 40 glassworks (Holmér, 1998). • Around 2000, there were 13 glassworks (Holmér, 2011). • Currently, there are about 5 glassworks in operation—Kosta Boda and Orrefors (under New Wave Group), Målerås, Skruf, Bergdalahyttan, Nybro Glasbruk, and Pukebergs Glasbruk.

In the 1960s, to counter the decay of manufacturing, the glass industry coined the name “the Kingdom of Crystal” with the idea of attracting tourists (Thor & Rosén, 2004, p. 134). With offerings mingling factory visits, art glass activities, retailing in factory stores, and cultural heritage, the region became a well-established trademark that attracted a large number of tourist visitors in the 1980s. The vague term “glass kingdom” has also been used by people as an established concept.

The glass industry in this region has never been a significant sector in the Swedish economy (Andersson, 2017), but it has developed a cultural character and contributed to the formation of the Sweden national identity. As written by Ekström (2006, p. 407) in her ethnographic study of glass collectors in Glasriket, “Swedish glass is part of the Swedish soul … people have great pride in the glass history which exists in Sweden.” When the glass products of Glasriket were exported to Australia, they were positioned as a representation of the “Swedish design and culture” and “Swedish way of life” to the Australian consumers (Sweet, 1998, p. 190). Currently, the region has

35 Jönköping International Business School such well-known glassworks 5 as Orrefors, Kosta Boda, Skruf, Målerås, and so on. People here call companies or factories “glassworks.” They produce and sell consumer (utility and art) glass products, such as drinking glassware, vases, tableware, and decorative glass. It has been a tradition that the name of a glassworks (or company or brand) is also the name of the village or town where it started and is located.

Below are the brief profiles of three major glassworks brands that are in operation today and are covered in the empirical analyses in Chapter 5 (Findings). The information provides a contextualized background to enable a better understanding of the analyses and findings in the current study.

Kosta Boda6 Kosta Boda was founded in 1742 under the name “Kosta” by two of Swedish King Karl XII’s generals, Anders Koskull and Georg Bogislaus Staël von Holstein. The name “Kosta” was based on the first two syllables of their names. By the end of the 19th century, Kosta was one of Sweden’s leading glass exporters. Kosta Boda AB was created in 1977 through a merger of four glassworks, and in 1990 Orrefors was merged with Kosta Boda, both of which were acquired by the New Wave Group in 2005. Kosta is the oldest glassworks that still carries out handmade operation and is called the “mother factory” (“the parent of glassworks”), as its employees have left it to start up their own glassworks in the region. Kosta Boda is associated with colored glass and artistic freedom.

Orrefors Orrefors was founded in 1898 as two separate hot shops, one for window glass and one for domestic and ornamental wares. In 1990, it merged with Kosta Boda to become Orrefors Kosta Boda AB. Both Kosta Boda and Orrefors were acquired by the New Wave Group in 2005. In 2013, the Orrefors factory was closed down, but the brand was retained. Orrefors is now a trademark, and Orrefors products are made at the Kosta glassworks. The brand became a success at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. It is characterized by elegant, exclusive crystal stemware in a modern style and art glass.

Målerås Målerås was founded in 1890. In 1981, when Glasriket underwent a turbulent period, with factories merging and closing down, the designer Mats Jonasson, together with the glass workers and the villagers in Målerås, bought the company. Målerås is owned by the Jonasson family and is the largest privately owned glassworks in Glasriket.

5 The word “glassworks” refers to a company that runs the business of manufacturing and selling consumer glass products. It also refers to a factory where glass manufacturing is conducted. 6 “Kosta Boda” and “Kosta” are currently used by different stakeholders. The name “Kosta Boda” is used by the parent company the New Wave Group as a company brand and a product brand. Since this current study focuses more on the company brand and product brand, I chose to use the name “Kosta Boda.” Some stakeholders prefer to use the name “Kosta” because this company originated from the single word “Kosta” and the factory has been located in the village of Kosta.

36 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”)

The glassworks brand is characterized by art glass and small glass gifts with animal motifs.

2.2.2 Community and regionality The region has been a community industry. It used to be a place for people who worked as labor and dwelled. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, the communities existed symbiotically with the glassworks that had spawned them. A community was self-contained, with its own farms and gardens that supplied the inhabitants, who worked in a glassworks. At the center of a community, there was the glassworks (also called the “hot shop”) and its residential houses for employees. The road leading to the factory was lined with multi-family houses and tenement buildings, built by owners of glassworks for their employees as free housing. These multi-family residences formed communities.

Communities developed around the glassworks, which were located in little villages or towns with local services and a business community. Glassworks’ employees could shop at privately owned shops as well as workers’ cooperatives in glassworks villages. It was a local tradition that every glassworks had its own music band, which performed on major public holidays and at events and church festivals. The band members were workers in the factories. The owners of glassworks encouraged the bands by purchasing instruments and donating funds.

People gathered in the community center to attend various activities and events. The communities had various associations (e.g., the women’s club, shooting club, and Verdandi Association). In the village of Kosta, where the glassworks of Kosta has been located, there was the Kosta Community Center, First of May parades, and music bands. These organizations disappeared as young people moved out of this region after the 1980s.

Several generations of families used to work for the glass industry. The profession was often inherited, passed from father to son through generations, resulting in glassblowing families. It takes quite some years to train qualitied craftsmen. It used to be natural for young boys to start as apprentices in the glassworks where their fathers were employed. The older generations passed on knowledge and trade secrets to the younger generations. Fellow residents of the region took pride in being part of an unusual occupation that constituted the craft of making glass, a hallmark of the region’s identity.

Associated with the glass industry, the communities meant much for people’s local identity and are the result of dedicated efforts of several generations. The communities are an important part of the heritage of Glasriket and the memories of fellow residents. The region has developed its own distinctive character and ethos that unite people. In her ethnographic study of glass collectors in Glasriket, Ekström (2006) observed that glass collectors were proud of the Swedish glass history in this region: “glass objects which a relative produced had a particular place in collectors’ hearts” (p. 405). The collectors helped to preserve and perform the history. She wrote:

37 Jönköping International Business School

“collectors help out to preserve the Swedish glass history … a collector started his collection after visiting a glass factory which was going to close down” (p. 405).

2.2.3 Glass as a material and objects Glass is a man-made material, transformed from the sand in the natural world. Glass then becomes a cultural artifact itself, different from “mere things of nature,” such as stone and wood. There are different types of glass: quartz glass, flat glass, insulating glass, self-cleaning glass, plexiglass, lab glass, crystal glass, fiber glass, optical glass, and so on (Falk et al., 2011). Glass was used in mirrors and lenses during the Renaissance. In medieval times, stained glass was used for windows. The applications and significance of glass for science and modern society are numerous. Glass is found in computers, mobile phones, kitchenware, windows, mirrors, and cameras. In modern society, we are oblivious to the ubiquitous presence of glass.

The glass products that have been produced in Glasriket include domestic glass (bottles, vases, drinking glass, dishes, bowls, table glassware, jugs, candle holders, and jars), window panes (e.g., Orrefors during the period 1899–1918), bottles (e.g., for milk or whisky), glass containers for technical use, pharmaceutical glassware, lamps (e.g., Orrefors from the 1920s to the 1970s), and chandeliers for public buildings and the homes of the wealthy. The mainstay of the products made in this region has been household wares (everyday pieces) and domestic tableware.

Today, glass products are among the array of objects surrounding consumers’ life world, ranging from glass in windows to decorative items (e.g., vases) to vessels for drinking (glasses for wine and water) to tableware. Glass products are relatively inanimate things that sit in the background of consumers’ homes or act as a prop or tool for consumers to carry out certain consumption activities or practices. Glass products such as champagne glasses, vases, and stemware are an integral part of consumption practices and rituals like dining, soirées, banquets, gift giving, and home decoration.

2.2.4 Glass products in consumption In this sub-section, the introduction to the consumption of glass products is related to the context of Glasriket. In the 18th century, the customers buying products made in Glasriket were from the royal court in Stockholm and the nobility. Wine glasses and transparent glass window panes were luxuries, which only a few could afford. In the 19th century, glassworks in Sweden produced a large amount of glass dinner sets (including tumblers, bottles, dinner sets, and drinking glasses) for wealthy customers.

In the 18th century, new technologies (machine tools and the replacement of gas with wood as fuel for furnaces) revolutionized glass making, thus lowering the prices of glass products and putting glass products within reach of everyone (Catalogue for Exhibition “20th Century Swedish Glass” in Poland (1999–2000), 1999). Glass became affordable to more and more people, who bought jars, bottles, and other simple domestic wares in green and brown glass. People also adopted glass panes for

38 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”) windows. Glass products have evolved following changes in people’s drinking habits. On festive occasions, the habit shifted from guests drinking from a single large tankard circulated around the table to each guest having an individual glass. This change prompted the offering of wine glasses, drinking glasses, and decanters produced as sets sharing the same design patterns in the 19th century. The number of pieces making up a dinner set increased. It was common in grand parties for each guest to be served with five or even ten different glass items as table settings (Holmér, 2011).

In the 19th century, the demand for household glassware increased. In the latter half of this century, the number of different glass items for each guest on a dinner table increased to five or ten. Forms of social interaction changed, and members of industrial society’s new middle class often hosted large dinners to show off the family’s status. An important part of the event was the meal, which consisted of several courses, and consequently an ever-increasing set of glassware for each guest (Holmér, 2011). In late 19th century in Sweden, table glass maintained the bourgeois ideals of previous decades. The “sparkling crystal” provided dining with representative festivity of a nearly international character (Andersson, 2017, p. 306).

The 1950s post-WWII era was a booming period for the Swedish glass industry, with increasing living standards, rising purchasing power, and a large domestic market for glassware for everyday use (Holmér, 2002). The Swedish glass industry started to boom. “Scandinavian Design” supplemented the 1930s’ “Swedish Modern” as a new trend representing functional, stylistically pure elegance (Dawson, 2000).

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden was transitioning into a consumer society, in which middle-class families began to be furnished with more glass products. In stores selling glass, porcelain, and kitchenware, more and more glass items were sold as individual pieces instead of complete sets (Holmér, 2011). From the 1960s onward, consumption patterns shifted. Parents used to have a complete crystal set of 120 pieces for a family. Then, young people requested more robust glassware that could be used every day. The so-called “allglaset” (all-purpose glass) made its debut—a glass vessel could be used for everything: water, beer, wine, milk, or juice. The “Ruben” series designed by Signe Persson-Melin in 1967 and the “H 40” series designed by Erik Höglund in 1964 became successes (The Glass Factory Museum, 2017). In addition to household items, in the 1950s, glass was used as a building material. The Kosta glassworks made glass mosaics to be used for facades, and the Boda glassworks sold colored glass reliefs designed by Erik Höglund as mural walls of glass blocks and concrete.

In the 1980s, Sweden and Europe experienced an economic upswing, and young, career-oriented yuppies consumed glass as a status symbol. People wanted to show off their material abundance. Status was indicated when a consumer used fine glass tableware or several glasses per person were deployed at large dinners. Glassware became items for collecting and investment objects (field notes taken at an exhibition in The Glass Factory). The demand for classic, historical glass and auction activities

39 Jönköping International Business School blossomed. Glass products became an indication of class of the social climbers in the 1980s (The Glass Factory Museum, 2017).

During the 20th century, customers of glass products had the following key consumption practices: gift giving, consumption rituals, and collection. Gift giving was often entangled with consumption rituals. The glass objects played the ceremonial and symbolic roles in establishing personal and diplomatic relationships. It was a tradition to give glass products as gifts to mark an important rite or point of a person’s transition from one stage of life to another. Such occasions included family festivities, christenings, birthdays, confirmation parties, marriages, stag parties, or hen parties. Starting in the 1930s, when exclusive glass items became affordable and available to common consumers, they began to present engraved glass vases and other items on such important symbolic occasions (The Glass Factory Museum, 2017). For gift giving, consumers purchased glass products as souvenirs during tourist visits to Glasriket or at stores in major cities in Sweden or other countries. The gifts received were used for everyday consumption practices, such as drinking, dining, and home decoration. The gift giving of glass products also occurred in political and diplomatic arenas. For example, in 1927, a large ceremonial Orrefors jar (named the “Canberra Cup”) was presented as an official gift from the Swedish Chamber of Commerce to the Australian Government to celebrate the opening of the national Parliament House in Canberra and enhance diplomatic and trade relationships between these two countries (Sweet, 1998). Some products were developed and branded with “ritual”- related connotations. As an official supplier to the Nobel Foundation, Orrefors rolled out the official Nobel Prize stemware series, designed by Gunnar Cyrén, to mark the 90th anniversary of the Nobel Prize Banquet in 1991. This series has been used to serve the annual Nobel Prize dinner, and consumers can buy pieces; they are pricier and more exclusive than regular items in stores.

As for collection, Ekström (2006) conducted multi-sited ethnography in Glasriket to understand the meanings of collections of glass objects. She found that the collectors mainly collected art or exclusive glass objects and that collection was a form of materialistic luxury consumption. The motivations for collections included to express interest, curiosity, and willingness to learn more about glass; to be nostalgic, as the collected items symbolized links to the past; to express pride in the Swedish glass industry; to help preserve the Swedish glass industry; to seek social interaction; to know the glass object’s provenance or origin; to exercise creativity; and to take care of objects (ibid., pp. 405-406).

Since 2000, consumers’ tastes and habits have changed. Some traditions tied to rites of passage and gift-giving rituals have declined. “Gone are the specially ordered ceremonial gifts, the grand showpieces, and the many gift items with engraved figures,” as commented by Holmér (1998, p. 217) in her description of the history of the Swedish glass industry. Today, consumers do not buy the more expensive, hand- blown glass produced with care. In terms of shopping behavior, consumers tend to prefer to buy large packs (without personal service) at IKEA instead (interviews). There is not enough information on the package or in the store, so they read up on the

40 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”)

Web in advance. The role of tableware in weddings and other official settings has dwindled. Decorated and exquisitely set up tables are something from the 19th and 20th centuries. Beer, which used to be a low-status drink, has become a trendy drink. Today, social events in Western countries are characterized by such trends as informality, buffets rather than meals with courses, a simple set-up, easy-going and non-stiff spirits, and a sense of letting everyone feel comfortable (notes taken at the 2017 Nordic Utility Glass Conference). Glass is no longer a priority in the same way as clothing or technological gadgets for the younger generation. All these changes in consumers’ lifestyles and behaviors have exerted fundamental impacts on the glass industry in Glasriket, which has been working to adapt to the new circumstances to survive.

2.3 Authenticity anchors

This sub-section introduces two anchors of authenticity in Glasriket: the craft mode of manufacturing and the tourism experience. The first one is in line with previous authenticity studies (Beverland, 2005b, 2006; Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Littrell et al., 1993) that identified “traditional production methods” as a core attribute of authenticity. The second one, craft-manufacturing-induced tourism, can lead to an authentic experience for visitors. Both anchors contribute to the formation of the authenticity of the market offerings in Glasriket.

2.3.1 The craft mode of manufacturing: A key authenticity attribute People and glassworks in Glasriket have prided themselves in their long tradition of crafting glass as a contrast to mass production based on machines. The craft process is manual, as glass is mouth blown rather than machine pressed. With furnaces and melt, the blowing room is the heart of a glassworks. The making is performed in the “chair” system, which is a team of craftsmen who work collectively (Holmér, 2017). A “chair” consists of seven to eight workers, including the gaffers (also called “master blowers”), gatherers, mold holders, carriers in, cutters, and engravers (Suzhou Museum, 2014). Each worker carries out his specific tasks (Holmér, 1998). At top of the hierarchy is the master blower or gaffer, who would certainly have learnt the elements of his craft of blowing glass since he was a child. He would have learnt the individual skills of each member of the chair (“Catalogue for Exhibition ‘20th Century Swedish Glass’ in Poland (1999-2000),” 1999).

This traditional craft mode of manufacturing glass has implications for the business models of the glassworks in this region. It does not support large-scale production for a large quantity of outputs. Small-scale craft production of glass in small glassworks has been the norm. Most of these glassworks are small-to-medium-sized businesses, some of which are family owned. Some of the glassworks (e.g., Skruf and Målerås) emphasize the provenance of making—it is important that the products are made locally in Glasriket to be authentic. Currently, the Kosta glassworks, which was acquired by the New Wave Group in 2005, outsources the manufacturing of some

41 Jönköping International Business School product lines to machine-based facilities in Turkey, Slovenia, and Poland due to the cost pressure (notes from visits to the Swedish Glass Museum).

Since the late 20th century, Glasriket has experienced several rounds of crisis, with consolidations or closures of glassworks. It is a testing field for such questions as whether craftsmanship will survive against mass production and whether it can be used as a key differentiator to sustain the glass industry.

2.3.2 Craft-manufacturing-induced tourism: Authentic experience Glasriket has become a tourism destination that attracts tourists and visitors motivated by the glass making. Under the model of craft-manufacturing-induced tourism, tourism has been developed alongside artisanal modes of the production of goods, and the two have mutually reinforced the cultural authenticity of the region and its offerings—products and experiences. Local governments, glassworks, and other actors have long identified tourism as a key by-product type of opportunity afforded by the glass-making industry to sustain and develop this region. The tourism offering is in line with the global trend of post-industrial economies and the hipster phenomenon in urban cities. Tourists escape from urban and modern life to move closer to the products and craft techniques of a place from which they feel alienated.

Since the 1980s, in the face of imports of cheap and machine-made glass products, automated machine-based manufacturing, and manufacturing outsourced to other countries, the glass industry in Glasriket has been diminishing. The region has changed from an industrial region with thriving rural communities to a depopulated countryside (Andersson, 2017). It has evolved from a goods-producing region to a tourism destination since the 1980s. Today, some glassworks are still in operation, so the place is marketed as a living industrial region. Closed glassworks (factories) have been remodeled into tourism places or archives of resources, with new meanings resting on vintage buildings, deserted furnaces and machines, and historical memories. After acquiring the Orrefors and Kosta Boda group in 2005, the New Wave Group built Kosta as a tourism complex with a factory outlet and the glass- themed Kosta Boda Art Hotel besides the existing factory of Kosta. The place of Glasriket has the characteristic of the “craft village” phenomenon that combines craft factories with retailing (Frost, 2006; Horjan, 2011; Murphy, Benckendorff, Moscardo, & Pearce, 2011). Domestic and international visitors come here for a variety of reasons: taking a guided tour of a factory to observe how craftsmen make glass, visiting museums and galleries, shopping in factory stores, enjoying a “Hyttsill” banquet in the factory (a dinner event mimicking indigenous traditions), and attending a “blow your own glass” class guided by craftsmen, among others. Today, Glasriket has up to one million visitors annually (Bergström, 2018). Tourism is an important part of the region’s business, as it contributes revenues in the forms of overnight stays and sales of glass products in factory stores.

42 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”)

2.4 Cultural/marketing production

This sub-section introduces four areas of cultural and marketing productions in Glasriket: the marketing communications of the three types of organizations that are the key producers of informational and cultural products, the photographer John Selbing as part of the marketing system and as a cultural producer, photographic images as an important type of marketing text and cultural product, and the art dimension in which designers embrace art to create esthetic output.

2.4.1 Marketing communications of three types of organizations There are three types of organizations that conduct marketing—glassworks, the DMO, and the two major museums. The marketing of the three types of organizations are interrelated and influence each other. Their marketing efforts have the characteristic of “generic marketing” for “generic consumption”—to some extent, it does not matter whether it is for individual brands or glassworks. They consciously and unconsciously invest concerted efforts in increasing a category of consumption such as the use of wine glasses or visits to the place as part of the experience economy. Consumers sometimes perceive the region and its constituent offerings in a lump sum manner as “Swedish glass” or the destination of Glasriket.

The marketing landscape of this craft region is characterized by small firms, heavy product orientation, brands with a long history (old), and products that are not meant to appeal to the mass market. Unlike large-scale mass production industries, the marketers in the craft sector do not have to build authenticity from scratch, as they already possess it. Glassworks deliver authenticity through their manufacturing processes, which mighty brands lack. For them, it is not a matter of portraying products as “handmade” in ads or marketing messages. Most of them do not adopt the artifacts of a marketing culture—job titles, marketing functions, formal marketing planning, and consumer research. The organizations barely have typical marketing organizational structures. In summary, the marketing of the three types of organizations in Glasriket is different from mainstream mass marketing. Below is an introduction to the marketing communications of the three types of organizations.

• Glassworks

Glassworks use three key marketing communication vehicles—product catalogues, tourism experience, and trade shows (interviews). A key marketing vehicle in Glasriket is the product catalogue, a classic form of the provision of information about products. In the 1830s, glassworks started printing product catalogues (fieldnotes from a visit to the Swedish Glass Museum). The first product catalogues of Kosta were printed in the mid-1800s as a marketing tool to showcase the expertise and product range. A product catalogue has a typical format for organizing information in a publication: indexed sections, classifications of product lines, and photographic images accompanied by captions (product size, price, etc.). Glassworks have a tradition of being present at major trade shows in Europe and the US. Orrefors

43 Jönköping International Business School put its name on the map of the global market by impressing the audiences at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Today, major glassworks attend Formex (formex.se), the Nordic region’s largest trade show for design and interior design. Glassworks are product oriented and reluctant to respond to short- term changes in consumer fashions. Unlike fast-moving packaged goods, glassworks reject market-oriented practices and do not conduct formal consumer research.

• The DMO

Currently, the marketing communication of Glasriket as a tourist destination is managed by AB Glasriket, a registered marketing company staffed by one employee. With a limited budget, AB Glasriket conducts marketing through a website, social media, a magazine, trade shows, events, and other tactics. AB Glasriket has become the most important common denominator of various organizations in Glasriket. It connects and creates synergies among the various glassworks, museums, and municipal governments by producing an annual magazine and running joint activities. Each year, AB Glasriket produces the Glasriket magazine, a tourist publication in Swedish, English, and German, to be distributed for free in multiple retailing and tourist spots. Featuring tourist spots, experiential offerings, glass products, designers, and glassworks brands, the magazine is a joint effort between AB Glasriket and the glassworks. A glassworks can contribute 20,000 SEK per year for a quarter-page space in the magazine plus ads on the website of AB Glasriket (head of AB Glasriket, interview).

• Museums

There are two prominent museums in Glasriket: the Swedish Glass Museum and The Glass Factory. The Swedish Glass Museum in Växjö has one of Europe’s largest collections of glass objects, and it runs research and documentation programs concerning glass and glass making in Glasriket. The Glass Factory is an experience- based, interactive glass museum, offering exhibitions, artist residence programs, hot shops for glassblowing, lectures, workshops, theater performances, international collaboration projects, and so on. Both museums hold exhibitions periodically, and each exhibition is titled with a theme, which functions like storytelling. The marketing purposes of the museums differ from those of the glassworks—the glassworks aim to sell products, while the museums intend to promote their exhibitions and ideas of collections of glass objects (interviews of marketing managers of the two museums).

2.4.2 Photographer John Selbing: Exemplary creative worker and marketer For RQ2, this dissertation examines photographers’ image production practices, and I tapped into a sample of photographers in Glasriket. I had unusual access to data tied to the photographer John Selbing, who has passed away, through his son Anders Selbing (see the details about data collection in Chapter 4 “Methodology”). My

44 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”) analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2 in Chapter 5 includes much information about John Selbing, who serves as an exemplary figure in my data and findings (as a kind of extreme case). A dedicated section introducing the background of John Selbing7 is provided below.

John Selbing (1908—2001), who earlier had the name John Carlsson, was a Swedish photographer, designer, and artist dedicated to the glass industry throughout his entire professional life. He worked for the glassworks Orrefors as a photographer in residence during the period 1927–1973. At the beginning of his employment with Orrefors, he intended to be a glass designer, and he worked for three years as an assistant to Simon Gate and Edward Hald, two well-known glass designers. Initially, he worked in the drawing office, producing the original drawings of the images to be engraved on glass objects. He had limited education and had to develop his skills on the job. Prior to the job at Orrefors, as a teenager, Selbing worked for a local merchant while studying in the evenings at the Technical Institute in the town of Kalmar in southern Sweden. From the beginning of his employment at Orrefors, John Selbing wanted to be a glass designer. He worked as a glass designer for some time and developed a deep knowledge of glass and design. Ironically, he was made a photographer because the glassworks could no longer use freelancers for budget reasons.

Due to financial difficulties in the economic recession that occurred across Europe in the 1930s, the glassworks Orrefors asked Selbing to become a photographer, as commissioning external photographers was very expensive. Though a little reluctant, Selbing took on the role and carried it out for almost four decades. During his employment at Orrefors, the company rose to be a leading Swedish glassworks with international recognition, and it was a potential goldmine for Selbing to explore the full potential of creativity and expressiveness via photography about glass. He created some outstanding photographic images for the glass industry in Sweden at a time when Orrefors was expanding and becoming a world-famous brand.

Selbing was familiar with all forms of photography: still life, portraits, and reportage. Some of Selbing’s works show his artistic approach as a photographer. The management of Orrefors recognized his artistic ambitions and gave him freedom and independence. The management allowed him to engage in glass design on the side in addition to his core task of photographing. He experimented playfully and professionally in photography, exploring backdrops inside and outside of the studio and trying out new ways of lighting. He not only shot photographs for the company but was also responsible for some of the company’s advertising materials, such as catalogues, posters, and advertisements. He even took the initiative and made two films about glass making. One of them was premiered in New York in 1951, and the

7 The profiling of John Sebling is based on multiple sources: interviews with his son, Anders Selbing, the Selbing family archive, the book Behind the Camera and the Glass Façade edited by Carola Selbing in 1995, and the book John Selbing: The Unintentional Photographer, edited by Mats Fredrikson, Jonas Sällberg, and Maria Lantz in 2018.

45 Jönköping International Business School other, titled Glaslek, made in 1968, was accompanied by specially composed music from Bo Nilsson (Fredrikson, Sällberg, & Lantz, 2018).

In 1973, after 46 years of employment at Orrefors, John Selbing retired from the glassworks, leaving behind him a large archive of photographs and written materials. The photograph archive includes an unknown quantity of negatives in the form of black and white glass plates and other photographic formats. The subject matters of his photographic images cover glass objects, scenes on the factory floor, and people (designers and craftsmen) working in the factory.

2.4.3 Photographic images as marketing texts and cultural products Photography is widely applied in marketing communications by the three types of organizations in Glasriket. The region’s adoption of photography dates back to the 1930s, when the Orrefors glassworks shifted from drawing to photography in its advertising catalogues. Prior to that, glassworks used drawings in their product catalogues and brochures to describe the products. Since the adoption of photography, glassworks have seldom used drawings to show glass products. The photographic images are placed in these media contexts: • Print ads • Point-of-purchase displays • Product catalogues • Product packaging • Books • Texts in exhibitions • Websites, including e-commerce sites selling products, social media accounts of glassworks, and the DMO

In terms of subject matter, the photographic images circulated in and beyond Glasriket include the following types: • Product shots (a product is the central object) • Capturing the craft making in glassworks • Portraits of designers • About buildings • About newsworthy events (e.g., the visit to the Kosta village of the Royal Couple of the Swedish monarchy in 2017) • Historical archival photographs (i.e., materials in museums)

The production and consumption in Glasriket are largely a visual or esthetic affair, because glass products have a substantial visual dimension, designers and craftsmen strive to make beautiful objects, and consumers gaze at and appreciate products that visually appeal to them. The glassware, as a valorized object, is photographed for its importance and nobility. Wine glasses, candlesticks, dishes, schnapps glasses, bowls, and so on need to be photographed. The photographic image serves as a

46 2. The context: The Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket”) communicative extension of the glass object. The glass objects and the related environment belong to the “visual world,” because some aspects of the reality cannot be described easily through verbal means. The photographic images represent, convey, and reproduce various objects—essential qualities of the material, glass products, craft persons, craft work, designers, glass-making procedures, places, and brands. The photographic images function as a visual manifestation of and contribute to the formation of the craft culture, myths, and ethos in Glasriket. The construction of the authenticity of market offerings in Glasriket operates through the communicative vehicle of photographic images.

2.4.4 The art dimension in the region This region has an art dimension. The Arts and Crafts Movement in the UK during the 1880–1920 period advocated the idea that beautiful, cheap products could be produced if the manufacturers hired artists. These ideas were introduced to Sweden in the 1910s with concepts such as “Beauty for All” and “Beautiful Everyday Products.” The slogan “Beautiful Everyday Goods” was created in 1919 by the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design.8 The organization worked to put the artistic forces in industries to create beautiful everyday life for citizens and shape the environment as an expression of its democratic social ideology. Artists were recruited to factories to improve the design standard of products. Following the 1917 Stockholm Home Exhibition, glassworks like Orrefors aimed to produce more beautifully designed products for everyday use. In the 1950s in Glasriket, simple domestic and household wares were phased out, partly because they could be manufactured with materials other than glass and partly because they could be provided through foreign imports at low prices. The region began focusing on unique art glass and handcrafted products to counter the cheap imports of mass-produced glass products. Glassworks in Glasriket resorted to art and artists’ creativity to face the foreign competition with machine-made glass to sustain the survival of craftsmanship.

The first half of the 20th century was characterized by the breakthrough of art glass in Glasriket. Increasing numbers of artists started to collaborate with glassworks. In around 1900, the Swedish glass industry began to invite artists to design products to address the criticism that the products copied foreign designs and lacked style and creativity. Kosta was the first Swedish glassworks to take on artists when it employed the artist Gunnar Wennerberg to design products with art nouveau taste during the period 1898–1904 (Nicklasson, 2007). At Orrefors, artists Simon Gate and Edward Hald designed glassware that won praise at the Paris World Exhibition in 1925. English critic P. Morton Shand coined the phrase “Swedish Grace” to describe the Orrefors display (Dawson, 2000). In 1977, to counter machine-made glass, the artist and designer Bertil Vallien at Åfors glassworks introduced the “Artist Collection,” a category of art glass produced in unlimited runs and based on the individual skills of

8 The initial Swedish name was “Svenska Slöjdföreningen,” and the current Swedish name is “Svensk Form.”

47 Jönköping International Business School the glassmaker (Falk et al., 2011). It turned out to be a huge success. The Kosta Boda glassworks has been associated with artistic freedom. All the designers have their studios close to the place of production, so they can discuss new ideas with everyone involved in the long process from design to finished product.

Over the years, numerous artists and designers, in one way or another, have contributed their artistic and creative touch to products of the glassworks in Glasriket, leading to a rebirth of the artistic edge in the glass industry. Art glass has sprung up and flourished beside the more utility-based, everyday glassware and made Swedish glass well known across the world.

3 Theoretical Inspirations

This chapter sets the conceptual stage for the empirical study by mapping out the theoretical and methodological approaches to researching the two types of production defined in the research purpose and research questions in Chapter 1. This chapter tries to answer the following questions. What are the natures of these two types of production from a theoretical perspective? What has been undertaken in the two theoretical domains of “authenticity” and “cultural/marketing production”? How can the extant theories in these two domains help with the research on the two types of production? What are the paths for me to examine the two types of production? This chapter starts with a discussion about the natures of the two types of production in question, followed by reviews of the literature in three theoretical domains: cultural/marketing production, authenticity, and craft. Finally, the relationships among the three domains are explored and a conceptual framework is presented. The conclusion is that the study of the craft production of glass (RQ1) will be conducted following an inductive approach and the study of photographers’ image production (RQ2) will adopt a practice theory approach.

3.1 Cultural/marketing production

3.1.1 How does this study treat the two types of production? The current study examined two types of production: the craft production of glass products and commercial photographers’ image production representing the former. Their differences as well as their characteristics were clarified to allow accurate and suitable theoretical and methodological means of examining each type.

These two types of production are two fields of “creative voice” (Peterson, 2005, p. 893) or cultural production (du Gay, 1997; Hesmondhalgh, 2013; Peterson, 1976). Both handle the fabrication of expressive symbol elements of culture—glassware has artistic and esthetic appeals conveying certain meanings, and photographic images also communicate meanings. Both are cultural products. Both involve a particular type of creativity and the manipulation of symbols. Both make and circulate products that influence our knowledge, understanding, and experience. Both can manufacture authenticity in cultural production and processes of authentication. The two production sites are located within specific cultural fields, commodity chains, or cultural circuits, in this case the glass-making industry in Glasriket. The photographic image production itself is a type of reproduction of the referent—the craft production of glass—in its effort to enhance the sales of commodities of the latter. The two production sites are different forces of cultural production processes. The following sections discuss their differences, paving the way to finding the right approach to researching each site.

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3.1.1.1 The craft production of glass: Production work in a hybrid of a consumer goods industry and a cultural industry The glassworks in Glasriket handle the production of physical goods rather than merely texts. How should I characterize the craft production of glass in this study? I argue that the production in Glasriket belongs to a consumer goods sector that has cultural dimensions, and the region is not a purely traditional manufacturing industry. Consumer glass products are quasi-cultural artifacts that have a strong tilt toward the esthetic, visual, and material dimensions. Glasriket can be considered as a hybrid of a consumer goods industry and a cultural industry. It has some attributes of a cultural industry according to Mato’s (2009) standards for judging whether an industry is cultural: first, the products (including both the physical objects and the tourism experiences) offer functional values as well as symbolic values, and some of the products (i.e., art glass and decorative glass) are visual, cultural, and esthetic in their own right, communicating cultural meanings. The glass products, as the output, are a type of cultural artifacts, which can also be viewed as texts because they have communicative goals and can signify meanings. Second, the industry has the ability to make and circulate products that influence consumers’ experience and knowledge. For example, Ekström (2006, p. 405) showed that one motive of glass collectors in Glasriket is to “learn more about glass … the knowledge about how glass is produced.” Third, the industry has the role of a system in the management of creativity. The region has an important dimension—art (see Section 2.4.4 in Chapter 2), which distinguishes the area of human creativity and is practiced by designers as artists and art glass studio activities. Designers’ work, as expressive–esthetic activities, stand-alone art glass pieces, the staging of galleries and exhibitions in museums, and classes teaching tourists how to blow glass, all involve a particular type of creativity—the manipulation of symbols and creative contents for the purposes of esthetic appreciation, entertainment, and even enlightenment. In conclusion, the glass making in Glasriket is a type of cultural production, and the glassworks are producers and vendors of cultural goods. In this sense, the craft production of glass is similar to that in other industries, like wine, tourism, and guitar making, that have been studied in the authenticity literature (Beverland, 2005b; Chronis & Hampton, 2008; Dudley, 2014; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Smith Maguire, 2018). Section 2.4 in Chapter 2 provides more details about the cultural dimension of this research context.

3.1.1.2 Photographers’ production of images: Marketing work that is also cultural production Regarding the characterization of photographers’ production of images in this study, I conceptualize “photographers” as marketing workers and their work as marketing work (Svensson, 2007) that is simultaneously cultural production.

First, the commercial photographers are the primary workers in the making of marketing texts, as part of the marketing system. They belong to the workforce of marketing, intending to sell and promote other cultural products (glassware, art glass items, and tourist experiences) in the glass industry. Most of them are self-employed workers or freelancers, to be contracted by clients (either a glassworks or an ad

50 3. Theoretical Inspirations agency) to be vendors. Only a small proportion work as in-house photographers for organizations. The photographic image is the result of the symbol-making work of photographers. As a type of visual commercial messages in the marketplace, photographic images are the output of the marketing system in Glasriket, comprised of glassworks, museums, and the DMO, which use the images to help with the sales of glass products, to educate the public about glass, and to promote the region as a tourist destination.

Second, commercial photographers’ production of images is also a form of cultural production. Holt (2002, p. 71) viewed marketers as cultural engineers, organizing how consumers think and feel through sophisticated marketing techniques in a system of commodified meanings embedded in brands. The commercial photographers studied in this dissertation are actors in the cultural production system. They are “symbol creators,” who are engaged in expressive–esthetic activities in the production of symbols and meanings encoded in cultural texts. “Symbolic creators” are those who make up, interpret, or rework artistic works, and they are the personnel who are responsible for the creative input in texts (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). In concert with the physical glass products, the photographic images are cultural products. Similar to and as part of advertising, photographic images are cultural documents, in the words of Sherry (1987, p. 441), as they are used as a vehicle for presenting and apprehending the world. Similar to magazines, ads, and other products of mass culture, photographic images are a type of material culture, which mirrors society. The images also bring esthetic experiences to viewers—the capacity to engage or bore, please or alienate (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, p. 50). In addition, commercial photographers are cultural intermediaries, who are market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture and between producers and consumers (Cronin, 2004b; Nixon & du Gay, 2002).

3.1.2 Cultural production To start with the term “production,” it is meant in its generic sense to refer to the processes of creation, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, exhibiting, inculcation, evaluation, and consumption (Peterson, 1976, p. 672). When it comes to cultural production, the central concern is symbol making (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, p. 6). According to Lash and Urry (1994), cultural production, as a symbol-creating domain, is the process of making, transforming, and circulating cultural products (e.g., goods, artifacts, visual and experiential objects, services, and art forms). According to the definition of “culture” provided by Williams (2014), the production of glass and the production of photographic images in question in the current study can be viewed as being “cultural,” as these two types of production fit two of the three categories of the modern usage of the term “culture”: 1) each type of production is a process of intellectual and esthetic development performed by producers—designers and artisans of glass making and photographers of image making; and 2) each type of production involves the work and practices of intellectual and artistic activity.

Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) stated in summary that there are three approaches to researching cultural production. 1) The political economy of culture (PEC)

51 Jönköping International Business School approach: this has a dual emphasis on the economic/commercial and symbolic aspects of the media and popular culture in relation to questions of power and political justice. The PEC aims to offer historicized accounts of the systematic and structural forces shaping cultural production. Political economists have carried out sociological studies of workplaces and conducted conceptual analyses based on secondary data. 2) The intertwined fields of organizational, business, and management fields (OBM): researchers have focused on the organizational dimensions of cultural production with various research topics, such as routines, rituals, and values (Gans, 1980; Tuchman, 1978), innovation and imagination in workplaces (Davis & Scase, 2000), and the specificity of cultural production as opposed to other forms of production (Hirsch, 1972). 3) Cultural studies: to understand popular culture’s imbrications with socio-historical forces and focus on questions of meaning, subjectivity, and power in relation to culture, research streams in this direction have included the “cultures of production” of culture-making organizations (du Gay, 1997), media production studies (Hesmondhalgh, 2006; Turow, 1984), and sociological and anthropological studies of meaning and ritual in production contexts (Caldwell, 2009). The three approaches covered by Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) mostly fall into the disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, and communication/media studies. Hesmondhalgh (2013) pointed out that there has been a lack of attention to textual analysis and meaning among scholars following the PEC approach.

Cultural production is associated with the concept of “cultural industries,” which are sectors specializing in producing cultural products bearing artistic and esthetic appeals. Industrialized cultural production began in the 1930s and 1940s and prompted the emergence of commercial mass culture (Bilton, 2011). According to the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory scholars Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), the institutional arrangements that produce the cultural order are collectively known as “cultural industries.” Adorno also used the term “mass culture” to describe cultural industries in comparison with “serious art” (Cook, 1996). Hesmondhalgh (2013) suggested that it is hard to define the term “cultural industries,” which are fundamentally ambivalent. He offered a simple definition—“those institutions (mainly profit-making companies, but also state organizations and non-profit organizations) that are most directly involved in the production of social meaning” (ibid., p. 26). The core cultural industries include television, radio, film, newspapers, magazines, book publishing, music recording, publishing, advertising, and performing arts. These sectors deal primarily with the industrial production and circulation of texts to be communicated to an audience. Hesmondhalgh (2013) also suggested that the above definition is used in a narrow sense, and there are some peripheral sectors, such as consumer electronics/cultural industry hardware, information technology, fashion, and sport.

In the sociological tradition, Peterson and Anand (2004) proposed the production of culture perspective to study abstract “cultural products,” such as science, the arts, law, ethics, and religion. Peterson defined the production of culture perspective as follows:

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the process by which elements of culture are fabricated in those milieu where symbol-system production is more self-consciously the center of activity … the term “production” is meant in its generic sense to refer to the processes of creation, manufacture, marketing, distribution, exhibition, inculcation, evaluation, and consumption. (Peterson, 1976, p. 10) The production of culture perspective focuses on larger social processes represented by aggregations of institutions producing similar products. Scholars following this paradigm have studied the structure of a marketplace (i.e., competitors, market potential, etc.) and how it influences the caliber and nature of the final output. Specific issues that have been researched include firm-level competition, market control, homogenization of products, interdependence of firms, cooperative endeavors in cultural production systems, and so on (Solomon, 1988). Solomon (ibid.) suggested that the production of culture perspective is applicable to a wide range of marketing domains. The distinctive characteristic of this perspective is its focus on the “infrastructure” that surrounds cultural production (Cluley, 2012).

Hesmondhalgh (2013) highlighted that the production of culture perspective has ignored the issue of textual meaning—the form and content of cultural artifacts. In addition, deducing meaning from reading texts is not a concern of the production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004). Meaning is important because, by looking at the meanings represented by the texts, the study of production and the study of texts can be linked to identify the causal effect that the former exerts on the latter (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). Hence, the meaning is the key nexus connecting the study of the production of photographic images and the textual interpretation of images. Such a blind spot left by the production of culture perspective and the PEC approach has been addressed by the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) scholars in the discipline of marketing.

Adopting an interpretive and humanistic approach, CCT scholars have prioritized and problematized textual meaning as a core concern in cultural production. Thus, cultural meanings, representation, and ideology have become the core theoretical and methodological issues in CCT research projects, which have viewed the cultural production process in the context of marketing or market. Scholars in this paradigm (Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Holt, 2002; McCracken, 2005a; Meamber, 2014; Peterson, 1976; Solomon, 1988) have proposed that marketing communication is a type of cultural production system. It systematically creates sets of symbols and meanings to predispose consumers toward certain kinds of identity projects or market ideologies (e.g., the fashion industry) (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). Solomon (1988, p. 330–331) nailed down the cultural production system by suggesting that it consists of three major sub-systems: a creative subsystem responsible for generating new symbols and/or products; a managerial subsystem responsible for selecting, making tangible, mass producing, and managing the distribution of new symbols and/or products; and a communication subsystem that gives meaning to and provides the product with a symbolic set of attributes to be communicated to consumers. Venkatesh and Meamber (2006) commented that these three sub-systems are all implicated in marketing, which is a practice and institution: first, the decision to

53 Jönköping International Business School create a cultural product is based on the need in a market; second, the management of marketing plays a role in the distribution (and pricing) of the cultural product the cl; and third, the communication subsystem corresponds to marketing communications, which constitute the “promotion” pillar in a classic 4P model in marketing (Belch & Belch, 2007).

3.1.3 Cultural production at the intersection with marketing Marketing is entangled with cultural production as well as the cultural industries. On one hand, cultural industries have a marketing aspect. Marketing has been integrated into the business of the cultural industries, influencing or shaping the production of the cultural product, its distribution, and its consumption through mediation within the symbolic system (Venkatesh & Meamber, 2006, p. 14). On the other hand, marketing itself can be a cultural practice or process, generating cultural output or consequences and leading to the culturalization of marketing. According to Solomon (1988), every consumer product industry is engaged to a certain extent in the production of cultural goods, especially when the meanings of these goods are anchored to social or esthetic expression. Examples include the fashion industry, the automobile industry, and the fast food industry, which all have a cultural character and socio-symbolical significance in addition to functional applications (Mato, 2009). The postmodern condition has enabled marketing processes to extend to other cultural domains (Firat & Venkatesh, 1993). In postmodernity, the increasing importance of marketing as a cultural institution has started to blur the distinction between the realities of art and commerce. Ads are juxtaposed with news, products are placed into films, and arts are appropriated in commerce.

In their conceptual article about the nexus of marketing and cultural production, Venkatesh and Meamber (2006) treated marketing as the context and as a facilitating framework for the functioning of the cultural production system. They suggested that cultural production is related to marketing in four dimensions: 1) managerial orientation: marketing principles are applied to facilitate the consumption of art and cultural products, practiced as the marketing of art; 2) consumption orientation: the consumption of cultural products, which include experiential, symbolic, and hedonic components; 3) everyday life orientation: arts/esthetic consumption occurs in everyday life situations; and 4) cultural product orientation: the content of cultural products provides insights to understand marketing and consumer behavior issues.

Venkatesh and Meamber (2006) further explicated that marketing is concerned with production, meaning transfer and consumption, which involve the production, circulation, and consumption of cultural products and accompanying meanings. However, for Venkatesh and Meamber (2006), so-called “cultural production” refers not only to producers’ cultural production but also to consumers’ cultural production (productive consumption).

I argue that the two domains—marketing and cultural production—have the following similarities:

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• Both domains have symbol-producing institutions, characterized by certain structures, organizations, markets, and networks. On the marketing side, there are advertising agencies, corporate in-house marketing departments, the media sector, and digital media platforms. On the cultural production side, there are organizations and industries in news, film, television, music, magazines, entertainment, gaming, fashion, tourism, and so on. • Both domains produce and circulate “immaterial” goods, such as texts, information, or content. According to Hesmondhalgh (2013), the core product of the cultural industries is informational text in various forms: newspapers, television programs, books, films, comics, music, and so on. Within marketing, the operation that is most analogous to a cultural production system is the “promotion” pillar in the 4P model. The “promotion” element in the marketing mix model of the Marketing Management School (Jones, Shaw, & McLean, 2011) produces various texts for brands and organizations via advertising and other marketing communication tactics. For both domains, the important output—the symbol—focuses on expressive, symbolic, and esthetic aspects of culture (Peterson & Anand, 2004) and can shape mass culture. Both domains are less likely to prioritize their work on the instrumental functionality. • Professionals from both sides are considered as creative workers or symbol makers. On the marketing side, there are copywriters and creative directors in ad agencies and brand/marketing managers inside companies. On the cultural production side, there are journalists, editors, musicians, filmmakers, designers, cartoonists, designers, and so on. It is common for talent from each side to jump to the other side.

The following sections will review three streams of research concerning “production” in the marketing literature: research on production in advertising, research on marketing-as-practice (MAP), and research on production in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT).

3.1.4 Marketing literature examining “production”

3.1.4.1 Research on the production of advertising The image-making work of commercial photographers in the current study is analogous to and closely related to advertising production in the following ways: • Their end products are very similar in terms of form (as text or messages) and distribution (a large proportion of the photographic images are placed in ads and other marketing materials). Photographers’ output, the images, are indisputably the core component of advertisements. • Both are instruments for effecting cultural meaning transfer from the culturally constituted world to goods (McCracken, 1988), belonging to “the commodity sign industry,” as coined by Goldman and Papson (2000, p. 85). • Both go through the creative process of encoding meaning and symbols in marketing texts.

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• In terms of practice, many commercial photographers work as contractors for ad agencies or brands, and they are the inner-circle parties in the advertising ecosystem. The client–agency relationship studied in the advertising literature (Keegan, Rowley, & Tonge, 2017; West & Paliwoda, 1996) is somewhat analogous to the photographer–client relationship.

The similarities mentioned above come as no surprise. As pointed out by Hackley (2011), the work of ad agencies is more like that in other cultural industries (e.g., media companies, orchestras, and theater production companies) than the work in the manufacturing of physical products or customer service delivery settings. Hesmondhalgh (2013) treated advertising as a cultural industry in itself, but at the same time all other cultural industries act as important vehicles for advertising. Lash and Urry (1994) showed how advertising plays a key role in sustaining and nurturing the cultural industry: in the context of marketing, advertising generates symbols and cultural meanings, providing commercially viable opportunities to the producers and distributors; at the same time, individual consumers can shape their identities by engaging in esthetically oriented consumption. From an anthropological and cultural perspective, Sherry (1987) approached advertising as a cultural system as it contributes to the organization of experience via the shaping and reflecting of people’s sense of reality.

Since the 1980s, a sizable amount of studies have examined advertising production through qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews and ethnography (Scott, 2006). Scholars have studied advertising as a practice, a craft, an institution, or a profession in the creation of ads or ad campaigns from the perspective of the management of ad agencies (Hackley, 2011). Almost all of the published studies have found that advertising practices are fragmented, uncertain, fluid, and stressful, showing that the work of producing advertising is characterized by varied strategies, agendas, and interpretations (Cronin, 2004a, 2004b; Eckhardt & Arvidsson, 2016; Hackley, 2000; Hackley & Kover, 2007; Kover, 1995a, 1995b; West & Paliwoda, 1996). Focusing on the internal dynamics of ad agencies, the researched topics are quite diverse and eclectic, covering such issues as specific roles (e.g., copywriters and account planners) (Hackley, 2000; Hirschman, 1989; Kover, 1995b), creativity and creative processes (Hackley & Kover, 2007; Kelly, Lawlor, & O’Donohoe, 2005; Tevi & Koslow, 2018; Turnbull & Wheeler, 2017), the agency–client relationship (Keegan et al., 2017; Sutherland, Duke, & Abernethy, 2004; West & Paliwoda, 1996), practitioners’ identity (Alvesson, 1998; Cronin, 2008), and others.

One sustaining stream of research concerns the values held by ad practitioners toward their work—novelty, creativity, and edginess. Ad people have always prided themselves on their creative work. Many past advertising production studies have focused on the issue of creativity (Kover, 1995b; Nyilasy, Canniford, & Kreshel, 2013; Nyilasy & Reid, 2009a;Turnbull & Wheeler, 2017), analyzing its nature, process, social context, and relationship with effectiveness. Nyilasy and Reid (2009b) treated “creativity” as a key element of the ontological status of advertising, which is a territory defined by creativity, art, and tacit skill. Creativity has also been identified

56 3. Theoretical Inspirations as the singular most important factor in ad effectiveness (Nyilasy & Reid, 2009a). The creative process has been characterized as idiosyncratic, personal, unpredictable, and similar to artistic work (Kover, 1995b), and there is “no rule” to be found to guide this process in advertising work, thus placing it mostly beyond the reach of scientific modeling (Nyilasy & Reid, 2009b).

Another stream of research is about the contentious management relationship between client and agency, focusing on issues of the contractual and relational aspects of the two parties. Today, large MNCs, NGOs, and even governments hire ad agencies and other types of marketing agencies (e.g., branding, digital, and marketing research), which play a pivotal role in the marketing strategy development and execution of their clients. The two parties may work together in a long-lasting partnership, but the relationship can also be a battlefield leading to contract determination or agency switching. In their systematic review of the literature published about this topic in the past four decades, Keegan et al. (2017) identified five main research themes: conflict, client account management, contracts and agency theory, cultural and international perspectives, and co-creation.

The field or practice of advertising has always been evolving, causing advertising to appear in alternative forms (Schultz, 2016). As a concept that has been popularized more by academics than by the industry, integrated marketing communication (IMC) has been researched by scholars with a normative, prescriptive stance for managers (for overviews, see Kitchen, Brignell, Li, & Jones, 2004; Muñoz-Leiva, Porcu, & Barrio-García, 2014). As a change, some scholars have conducted research to understand how IMC works in actual business “practices” and what practitioners actually do in their everyday work (Hall & Wickham, 2008; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Patti, Hartley, Dessel, & Baack, 2017). In the digital marketing landscape, new advertising formats, like native advertising, content marketing, and branded content, have proliferated since 2012 but have received limited research from the production/producer perspective (for exceptions, see Harms, Bijmolt, & Hoekstra, 2017; Holliman & Rowley, 2014). Feng and Ots (2018) used the business model lens to examine how native advertising is organized and produced in the advertising department of Forbes, which borrows the production logics of newsrooms and platforms.

Despite the linkage and similarities between “photographic image making” and “advertising production,” the literature about advertising production does not fully fit the empirical situation in this dissertation in terms of the following aspects: • The literature about advertising production has predominantly focused on the classic “ad agency” as the default institution or organizational setting. The photographic image making in the current study is not located in a typical organization like an ad agency. It is fulfilled by a much looser structure consisting of a client (glassworks), an ad agency (some glassworks do not have this), and a commissioned photographer. In this chain, most of the commercial photographers work as freelancers or are self-employed.

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• The studies in the advertising literature have often gathered empirical data from well-known ad agencies that are located in mega cities of advertising, such as New York or London. Such agencies handle clients that are mostly large, blue-chip companies. In the current research context, the clients are glassworks, which are small and medium-sized companies and cannot afford top-notch ad agencies located in metropolitan cities. The way in which photographic images are produced in Glasriket is less driven by formalized organizations and a fully fledged ecosystem in advertising, as alluded to in the literature.

To conclude, the research in this dissertation can gain inspiration and borrow from the literature on advertising production due to the similarities and linkages between photographic image production and advertising production, specifically how advertising researchers have worked to capture the creative process and the actual work of symbol makers in the marketing institution.

3.1.4.2 Research on marketing-as-practice (MAP) Svensson (2007, p. 275) once argued that most empirical studies in marketing “do not … pose the primary social–phenomenological question: ‘what is marketing work?’” Such a void triggered the emergence of practice-oriented research in marketing. Drawing on the “practice turn” in social theory (Bourdieu, 1977; Foucault, 1977; Giddens, 1984), management studies (Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Orlikowski, 1992), and strategic management studies (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Whittington, 2006), the research perspective “marketing-as-practice” (MAP) emerged to create a new space for new studies on marketing work informed by practice social theory (Skålén & Hackley, 2011). Marketing is viewed as a distinctive domain of the social, and practice theory localizes the social to practices (Skålén & Hackley, 2011). A practice is treated as an inherent part of the marketing process.

MAP is a conceptual domain in a stream of research applying practice theory to the study of marketing as work. Central to the MAP perspective is a focus on marketing actors and their work, which is viewed as an observable social practice (Svensson, 2007; Tadajewski, 2010). Skålén and Hackley (2011) suggested that marketing practitioners exist in at least three places: the marketing department of an organization, in formal organizations outside the marketing department, and in marketing intermediaries such as ad agencies. MAP scholars have suggested that the majority of the work of marketers consists of talk and writing, and marketing is viewed as a discipline worked up through discourse and symbolic practices (Skålén & Hackley, 2011, p. 191). MAP is concerned with how marketing is actually carried out in organizations, the organization of the marketing function, and how organizational actors/practitioners perform marketing activities/praxis.

MAP scholars rely on practice theory as a paradigmatic or meta-theoretical and methodological tool. MAP takes a “bottom-up” approach against the normative, prescriptive character of older research about marketing phenomena. The empirical

58 3. Theoretical Inspirations context is usually marketing, branding, sales, or service organizations. The research aims to understand marketing work through the eyes of practitioners in their everyday practices. MAP researchers usually adopt a qualitative, inductive approach to observe and capture what marketing practitioners actually do and how practices are performed.

I am aware that there is another stream of research about consumption practices (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Hartmann, 2013; Magaudda, 2011; Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009; Warde, 2005). Though this stream of research also belongs to the realm of “marketing,” it is not discussed here as this dissertation aims to study photographic image production rather than consumption. The review in this section focuses on studies about the practices of marketing practitioners/producers in fulfilling marketing missions.

Järventie-Thesleff, Moisander, and Laine (2011) applied the MAP approach to the domain of corporate brand management in the context of a large transnational company. Conceptualizing corporate branding as something that occurs within and as part of a field of socially instituted practices, their ethnographic study identified three types of practices of brand management: the practice of masterminding, the practice of notifying, and the practice of calibrating. These practices govern the praxis of brand building and are “carried” by different branding practitioners. They also analyzed the steering effects that these practices have on the collaborative production and delivery of brand promises in the everyday organizational activity.

Jaakkola (2011) researched service marketing, specifically the practices of “service productization,” by analyzing the discourse of practitioners in small professional service firms. Based on interviews with managers, the study identified three types of productization: specifying and standardizing the service offering, tangibilizing and concretizing the service offering and professional expertise, and systemizing and standardizing processes and methods. Each practice consists of the same set of dimensions: procedures (rules and facts, know-that), understanding (what should be done, know-how), and engagements (what is desirable and what are the correct goals). The study makes a contribution by describing the practices that managers draw on to cope with the abstract, elusive nature of the professional service.

Following an ethnographic approach, Ots and Nyilasy (2017) applied practice theory to study the phenomenon of integrated marketing communication (IMC) to see how integration is enacted in the life worlds of marketing practitioners. The study conceptualized IMC as a set of interrelated practices or routinized behaviors, which are repeated and organized by some social or formal rules and conventions. The notion of “IMC as practices” was unraveled as consisting of five dimensions: routines, material set-ups, rules and procedures, cultural templates, and teleoaffective structures. The study demonstrated a novel way of using practice-related theoretical and methodological tools—that is, to create a vocabulary and analytical tools to capture a phenomenon that escapes modeling.

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Published studies on MAP have demonstrated the following characteristics. They have usually used the case study method, examining one organization at a time. They have adopted the ethnography or interview method, tapping into the marketing functions inside an organization. They have studied everyday activities in organizations through deep engagement with the data and practice theoretical framing. In their findings, they have developed practice themes or typologies of practice phrased as “practice as XX” or “practice of XX.” The MAP perspective has also proven that practice-oriented research offers a novel set of theoretical and methodological tools to be used to understand marketing work. As a new theoretical tool, method, and language, practice theory provides a coherent theoretical and methodological framework to study marketing as work, enabling new types of questions to be asked.

Despite the opportunities shown by the MAP perspective, the extant studies do not neatly fit the research situation (“photographic image production”) in this dissertation. These studies have focused on organizations or companies with theoretical support from the literature in organization studies and strategy-as-practice (SAP). They have investigated practices of marketing, branding, service, or sales as a function in an aggregated manner by considering one organization or company at a time, geared toward such practices situated in an organizational setting. Thus, they have captured “practice” as activities within an organization. It is necessary and also possible to break this scaffold to study “marketing practices” in other institutional modes. Within marketing, some specific roles, functions, or professions (e.g., photography, copy writing, and design) cut across different organizations and exist in a nebulous form of organization. Examples include freelancing photographers, freelancing writers, freelancing video producers, and self-employed designers. These creative workers and marketing practitioners work as soloists for multiple clients. They do not hinge on an organization. What distinguishes and characterizes them is their work and practices. Similar to commercial photographers in many developed countries, most of the commercial photographers studied in this dissertation adopt the “freelance” or “self-employed” work mode. They are not bound by the structures of organizations.

3.1.4.3 Research on production in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Adopting the constructivist ontology and the interpretivist epistemology, the interdisciplinary research field of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) emerged in the 1980s, “oriented around developing a better understanding of why consumers do what they do and why consumer culture takes the forms that it does. Theorists focus on understanding the interrelationships between various material, economic, symbolic, institutional, and social relationships, and their effects on consumers, the marketplace, other institutions, and society. Researchers typically draw from and build on theories rooted in sociology, anthropology, media studies and communications, history, literary criticism and semiotics, gender and queer theory, cultural studies, and marketing” (CCT website, 2019).

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The “production” aspect of this research paradigm lies in the production of meanings and consumer culture. Cultural meanings are constructed and negotiated by organizations and consumers, who participate in cultural activities in a marketplace, to establish their positions with a meaning system (Venkatesh & Meamber, 2006). The term consumer culture refers to “the system of commercially produced images, signs, discourses, experiences, and material objects that social groups use to make collective sense of their environments and to orient their identities and social experiences (CCT website, 2019).

Unlike researchers studying cultural industries or media industries, CCT scholars have seldom studied the “cultural production” carried out by producers/marketers in a one-sided way. Rather, they have conducted research including both the producer and the consumer sides to determine how the cultural production or cultural products are co-created or negotiated by the two parties. They have preferred to capture the whole journey of cultural symbolism, from conception to consumption.

CCT scholars have brought the notion of “cultural production” into the realm of consumption, so the production of various cultural products is not only the mission of producers/marketers in the conventional sense but also a core affair in the life of consumers. CCT has deprivileged production (in a conventional sense) and prioritized consumption. CCT scholars have emphasized the role of consumer agency in transforming, reworking, co-creating, and determining the cultural meaning. The productive aspect of consumption lies in the fact that consumers can rework and transform the marketer-provided symbolic meanings encoded in marketing texts (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). Consumers act as interpretive agents who create meaning through their consumption activities (Hirschman & Thompson, 1997). Meaning is created through the interactive and interdependent processes of cultural production and what is termed “productive consumption,” in which the consumer is both a producer and a consumer of marketplace images and other cultural resources (Arnould, Price, & Malshe, 2006; Meamber, 2014). Production and consumption are viewed as having a dialectic relationship (Peñaloza & Venkatesh, 2006), being opposite as well as hybridized. The respective role for each side is not rigid, as marketers can consume and consumers can produce (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995). The dialectic is at the core of CCT—how market logics are produced, reproduced, opposed, twisted, and transformed by cultural, economic, political, and social forces (Peñaloza, Crockett, & Grays, 2010). CCT studies of co-creation and co-production of meanings by producers and consumers coincidentally resonate with the value cocreation logic of the Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic (Arnould, 2007; Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008).

As mentioned earlier, there has been limited research in CCT focusing solely on the producer/marketer side. Research about marketers’ “commercial mythmaking” is one such niche topic area. Rather than using the term “production,” CCT scholars have used the vernacular “commercial mythmaking” or “mythologizing” to title their published works (Crockett & Davis, 2016; Kniazeva & Belk, 2007; Tillotson & Martin, 2015). Douglas Holt (2003, 2004, 2016) is a notable thinker in this area. In

61 Jönköping International Business School his book How Brands become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, Holt (2004) defined “commercial mythmaking” as the efforts of advertisers, brand strategists, tourist promoters, and other marketing agents to situate their goods and services in culturally resonant stories that consumers can use to resolve salient contradictions in their lives and to construct their personal and communal identities in desired ways. In this book, written for both practitioners and academics, Holt provided marketers with prescriptive advice regarding how to build iconic brands with cultural branding principles—to turn brands into icons by helping consumers to develop their identity myths (“a simple story that resolves cultural contradictions”) through branded cultural texts and storytelling.

In three empirical studies—commercial mythmaking at a religious theme park in the US (Crockett & Davis, 2016), stories printed on food packages as a way of mythologizing brands (Kniazeva & Belk, 2007), and how myths merge with employee practice in the Finnish company Valio in shaping its brand (Tillotson & Martin, 2015), the authors just interpreted and presented the myths as meanings and themes rather than exploring the process and practices of actors and the mechanisms behind them. The verbs “making” and “mythologizing” used in the article titles lack empirical explanations in the studies, thus ending up as a rhetoric. These studies made the implicit assumption that brands, marketers, or symbol makers can accurately and successfully create and craft the desired meanings and myths as wished. However, it happens that companies or producers create mediocre or ineffective content/messages that may not be able to fulfill their goal of mythmaking. The authors did not problematize and investigate the production or creator side.

Even though this dissertation does not follow the norm in CCT of studying simultaneously production, consumption, and/or intermediaries to form a circuit, it can still leverage and benefit from CCT in the following respects: • CCT scholars have provided foundational theories about cultural production systems (Solomon, 1988; Venkatesh & Meamber, 2006), cultural meaning (McCracken, 1988; Thompson & Haytko, 1997; Venkatesh, Peñaloza, & Firat, 2006), advertising (Cronin, 2004b; Hirschman, 1989; McCracken, 1987; Mick & Buhl, 1992; Sherry, 1987), and semiotics (Mick, 1986; Mick & Oswald, 2006), all of which are apt tools for unravelling the production logics and mechanics in marketing/cultural production and can serve as theoretical underpinnings of this current study. • Some published empirical CCT studies have shown how producers/marketers produce cultural meanings in various forms (images, narratives, events, experiences, etc.), which can serve as illustrative examples for this current study. These examples include Peñaloza’s (2000) ethnographic study of the process of marketers producing cultural meanings, via discourses and practices, at a western stock show and rodeo in the US and the study by Thompson and Tian (2008) about the commercial mythmaking of “southernness” in the US. The latter study analyzed the representational strategies and ideological rationales used by two mythmakers (editors of two major lifestyle magazines) to shape popular memories.

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• The production of photographic images in this dissertation is strongly related to one of the four key theoretical domains of CCT: “Mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies” (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, pp. 874-875) in that the photographic images, as a unique symbolic resource and medium, are produced by marketers as a meaning system and as ideologies for consumers to appropriate. The artifact itself is worth decoding and interpreting, and the study of its production can reveal marketers’ meaning-encoding mechanisms.

3.1.5 Research on photographers’ work within the field of sociology The research about photographers’ work from a sociology perspective falls into the broader realm of the sociology of art or the sociology of cultural production. The leading American sociologist Howard Becker (2008) conducted considerable research about the sociology of art (Becker, 1974a, 1986, 2008). He treated the sociology of art as the “sociology of occupations applied to artistic work” (Becker, 2008, p. xi), viewing art as the work that some people undertake. He approached art from the standpoint of the sociology of occupations in the sense that the creation of art is a form of work.

Including photographers, Becker’s (2008) book Art Worlds provided the art world framework for analyzing cultural production. He elaborated a systematic sociology of art, demystifying artists and their works. As the universe of artistic production, the “art world” sets standards, determines esthetic values, and organizes production, distribution, and consumption. He examined the artistic activities and conventions that are essential to the operations in the art world.

Becker’s central thesis was that artistic work is a highly cooperative activity, in which artists and other actors work together (Becker, 2008, p. 1). He explored the constituent element of the art world, which is a network of interacting people as well as a set of conventions. Art requires an “extensive division of labor” (ibid., p. 13) and “elaborate cooperation” (ibid., p. 28) among many people: artists, patrons, critics, gallery owners, librarians, museum curators, agents, teachers, audiences, and even those who make the tools of the trade (e.g., canvas, ink, paints, and instruments). A world often follows a “formula,” which functions like a recipe comprising a set of widely held prescriptions telling practitioners how to combine elements within a genre. These diverse individuals together constitute an art world, “the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint network of conventional means of doing things, produces the kind of art works the art world is noted for” (Becker, 2008, p. x). Conventions are an artificial but agreed on (socially constructed) way of doing things (ibid., p. xiv). Artists’ works are “not the products of individual makers, ‘artists,’ who possess a rare and special gift. They are, rather, joint products of all the people who cooperate via art world’s characteristic conventions to bring works like that into existence” (ibid., p. 35). “Talent” is a social construct; art is “what an art world ratifies as art” (ibid., p. 156). Becker worked to show that social structures enforce conventional forms of cultural production but also allowed for social actors to innovate unconventional art work.

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As commented by Bourdieu (1993b, p. 34), Becker’s most important contribution to cultural sociology is the orientation of our attention to the ways in which cultural texts are created through structured collective action. His writings moved beyond the individual artists to show the interesting network of people who work around them. Tied to the nature of convention, Becker (2008) posited that the value of an art work (or its reputation) depends not on its own recognizable qualities but on its relationship to the conventions of such art worlds. He claimed that a work of art appears to have no intrinsic worth independently of a socially engineered reputation. Such a view has the shortcoming that it sees all artistic acts as equally devoid of any “deeper grounding” in human existence or the design of civilizations, and such a view overlooks the cultural dimensions of the life of art (Kavolis, 1982).

Following Becker’s (1974a) notion of convention, Barbara Rosenblum’s (1978a, 1978b) pioneering work Photographers at Work: A Sociology of Photographic Styles was a notable effort to study what photographers actually do and the social conditions that determine their production. She treated “convention” as an intervening variable, sandwiched between the organization of production and the characteristics of the final outcome. She explored the mechanisms through which the organization of photographers’ work shapes the nature of the work itself.

Rosenblum (1978a) conducted a sociological analysis of photographic style, which is determined by social structure. Using field methods (participant observation in three different settings—advertising photography, news photography, and art photography—plus interviews), she examined the behavior and intentions of photographers by asking the following questions. What do photographers actually do while making objects? What procedures are employed and for what purposes? How does the photographer foresee the outcomes of various processes? What kinds of constraints affect behavior? She compared the ways in which photographers make pictures in each of the three settings. She explored the differences among the three types of photography and argued that work organization plays an important role in influencing style. These three types also imply three differently organized settings and social structures. In the analysis of the organization of the work of photographers, her major analytical categories were division of labor, decision making, task allocation, technology, client–photographer relationships, occupational autonomy, alienation and the work role, and institutional features (ibid., pp. 5-6).

Rosenblum (1978a) found that the distinctive work requirements of the three kinds of photographers create three distinct esthetic standards or styles by which their work is judged. Each organization generates its own vocabulary of stylistic conventions pertaining to subject matters, physical dimensions, characteristics, place of exposure, and creativity. Her conclusion was that there is an association between the type of photographic style and the type of social organization and that style is partly determined by social organization. The stylistic conventions can arise from, and in response to, such structural and organizational features as the division of labor, technology, the structure of the market, and client relationships. Each of these factors

64 3. Theoretical Inspirations is a source of control, exerting different constraints on a photographer’s work, the photographic process, and the final photograph.

As a different perspective from Becker’s (2008) “art world” framework, Bourdieu (1993b) offered the concept of “the field of cultural production,” which is about the sociology of cultural production, distribution, and consumption. Bourdieu (1993b) described the social arrangements through which art is made—what he called a “field”—as if it were a field of forces in physics rather than many people undertaking something together. He analyzed the position of the field within the broader field of power by looking at the structure of the field itself, including the positions occupied by producers (e.g., writers and artists) and those occupied by all the instances of consecration and legitimation that make cultural products what they are (the public, publishers, critics, galleries, academics, and so forth). The principal entities in the field are forces, spaces, relations, and actors (characterized by their relative power), who develop strategies using the variable amounts of power that they have available. The field, by rules and practices, keeps outsiders out, making it impossible to be part of some collective activity without being chosen by the people who are already part of it. One of Bourdieu’s central concerns was the role of culture in the reproduction of social structures or the way in which unequal power relations, unrecognized as such and thus accepted as legitimate, are embedded in the systems of classification used to describe and discuss everyday life. The book concentrated on the subfield of restricted production rather than that of large-scale production.

In the book Photography: A Middle-Brow Art (Bourdieu, 1990), Bourdieu and his research associates examined the socially differentiated forms of photographic practice by drawing on the results of surveys and interviews and by analyzing the attitudes and characteristics of both amateur and professional photographers. This book revealed aspects of Bourdieu’s theories at an early stage, as commented by some critics. The book’s analysis of the practice of photography revealed the logics implicit in this cultural field: few cultural activities are more structural and systematic than photography, even the most trivial photographs serve social functions, and photography always operates in a peculiar and pervasive symbolic system. In the chapter about professional photographers, Boltanski and Chamboredon (1990) elaborated some discrete thoughts about the nature of photography as an occupation, which are valuable conceptual references for my investigation of photographers’ work in this dissertation. Boltanski and Chamboredon suggested that the photographic profession is a business and a manual occupation. Photography not only produces works of art but also supplies services, which may be subjected to rational examination. Photographers would like to work for the consecration of the profession when they move toward artistic milieus to show that they have taste or class. Boltanski and Chamboredon argued that professional photographers’ diverse operations require skill and dexterity in the use of an endless number of fragmentary formulas and techniques. As for what counts as valorized objects to be photographed by professional photographers, the major specialization is defined by the importance and nobility of the object (e.g., fashion and news) photographed. The photographed

65 Jönköping International Business School object itself only derives its “aura” from its symbolic participation in prestigious social milieus (ibid., p. 164).

In an empirical study, Solaroli (2016) drew on Bourdieu’s work on photography (Bourdieu, 1990) and field theory (Bourdieu, 1993b) to develop a framework of the “global photojournalistic field.” By examining major changes and dynamics in the field of professional photojournalism and the wider field of photography since the early 2000s, the study uncovered the “rules of the field” that govern the practices of production and symbolic struggles for distinction, authorship, boundary making, and power. Such a “field” consecrates a transnational elite of professional photojournalists in the face of boundary blurring between professional and citizen photojournalism and between news photography and fine-art photography.

Generally speaking, the sociology of art or cultural production provides some helpful theoretical thoughts, empirical examples, and vocabulary for this dissertation in relation to studying commercial photographers’ work sociologically. I found that the works of Becker (1974b, 2008) and Rosenblum (1978a, 1978b) fit my research context and purpose and could serve as conceptual foundations for my inquiry. Focusing on the structural aspects of an industry or a profession, Becker and Rosenblum explicated the social conditions of the production of art works and the way in which larger social processes shape the development of conventions. Convention forms the “basic unit of analysis” in the study of cultural production in the art world (Becker, 2008, p. 36), and convention structures the art world. Art is a collective action. It is necessary to place the production within some social structure, as cultural texts are not produced by an artist alone but by a network of actors working within particular material and discursive settings. Social structures influence artistic production and are responsible for shaping cultural texts. As for Bourdieu, much of his work on cultural production was concerned with the ways in which culture contributes to domination and to the process of social reproduction. Bourdieu’s (1993b) “field” theory concerns the processes of structuration, covering such issues as forces of various kinds, power, conflicts, control of resources, legitimation, esteem, recognition, and so on. His theory is on the macro level and centers on class and structuration, not the concern about or a good fit with the research purpose in this dissertation.

3.1.6 A practice theory-based approach to studying photographers’ image making

3.1.6.1 Why this approach? I should make it clear upfront that the photographic image production in this dissertation refers to the production from the producer/marketer side rather than consumers’ productive consumption or co-production by both sides. The commercial photographers, who mostly work as freelancers or are self-employed, are not situated in an ad agency or a formal marketing department of a company. I needed to take into account the specificity of the work of commercial photographers in a different setting from other forms of cultural production, which have been studied with an industry

66 3. Theoretical Inspirations approach, firm approach, or system/market approach. An alternative approach is necessary to analyze the specific ways in which they carry out their work. Their work takes place beyond the boundary of formal organizations and beyond traditional workplaces, in forms that might be better thought of as “practices.”

In the literature on advertising production and MAP (marketing-as-practice), there have been scant studies focusing on the niche leg of photographic image production within the ecosystem of marketing, even though photographs are so pervasive in ads, brand content, and other marketing communication materials. The extant studies in these two domains have tended to investigate a complete advertising production process consisting of a number of steps and key roles (Hirschman, 1986), the process of carrying out branding in a corporation (Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2011), or the ongoing operation of IMC in a company setting (Ots & Nyilasy, 2017). Their analysis has been performed at the meso level, with an organization or the ad agency as the research context or unit of analysis. The literature on the production of culture perspective (Peterson, 1997; Peterson & Anand, 2004) has mainly focused on an industry.

In terms of the unit of analysis, my point of departure from the previous literature is that I did not study commercial photographers’ image production as: 1) an industry; 2) an organization; 3) a market; 4) a field; or 5) a system or network. Instead, I studied it as “practice” enacted in the profession, trade, or craft of commercial photography. The analysis was performed on the micro level, focusing on discrete production moments, rather than a more aggregate, societal, meso, or macro level. The focus shifted from the impact of social structure on the style and ways of work to the impact of production practices on the meanings/symbols encoded in the images.

This dissertation adopts a practice theory-based approach to studying commercial photographers’ image production (RQ2) neither as a grand narrative of a cultural industry nor in terms of an organization. Rather, the interest lies in production insofar as to understand how the images are socially and materially constructed to potentiate their intended meanings through practices. A practice-based account of production puts the emphasis on the activity itself rather than on an organization, industry, market, system, or field.

A practice theory-based approach offers conceptual and methodological potential as well as an analytical language. According to Reckwitz (2002b, p. 249), practice theory treats practices as the “smallest unit” of social analysis. The practice approach is a micro-sociological one, which focuses on the day-to-day work of photographers. It can reveal their micro processes and activities. Their work is seen as a practice or something that they do. The analysis de-emphasizes the photographer as the individual subject, figure, or social role. The interest lies in the work (i.e., cultural production and a marketing practice) embedded in practices. Photographers are viewed as carriers of practices.

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The practice theory-based approach differs from conventional approaches to cultural production research in that a practice perspective emphasizes practical understandings and doings that are entangled with material configurations of objects/artifacts (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2002). The practice lens captures the processes and mechanisms of meaning making and symbol encoding. It helps to portray seemingly small, micro-level phenomena—routines, objects, meanings, knowledge, and materiality (Reckwitz, 2002). Practice theory can help researchers to observe actors’ situated engagements with each other and with their material environments as well as their emotional and social existence in a holistic manner. Practice theory offers the opportunity to study how photographers work among peripheral actors and objects in a rich, contextual, recursive, and interactive tapestry of socio-material practices.

The previous literature about cultural production (Becker, 2008; Bourdieu, 1993b; Rosenblum, 1978a) has not addressed production considering the configuration among multiple elements, such as material objects, doings, and meanings. It has mostly focused on social structures, relationships, and processes. A practice theoretical approach highlights the interrelatedness of the elements of doings, material objects, and meanings (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Magaudda, 2011). The practice theory-based approach differs from Becker’s (2008) framework of the “art world” and the production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004) in that the former looks up from the micro level of social action while the latter two look down from the macro level of the social structure (Cluley, 2012). Becker’s (2008) “art world” framework and the production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004) have the central tenet that the art world is a set of conventional activities determined by social structures. A practice-based approach considers both social structure and social action, which are interwoven. The logic is to start by capturing the actions and then to map out the structure.

3.1.6.2 Basics of practice theory Practice theory has emerged as a sensitizing framework, a heuristic device, and a theoretical vocabulary for research in social sciences, organization studies, and marketing, drawing on the “practice turn” in contemporary social theory (e.g., Bourdieu, 1977; de Certeau, 1984; Foucault, 1977). Practice theory is neither a coherent theory nor a theoretical system (Reckwitz, 2002b). There are different versions of theoretical readings of practice theory, and the common focus is on how social action is carried out and the constituting and conditioning of such micro processes of acting in social life (Halkier & Jensen, 2011). The essence of a practice theoretical lens (approach) is to focus on the practices as the unit of analysis (Giddens, 1984; Reckwitz, 2002b; Schatzki, 1996).

As units of a social setting or of social organization, social practices are recurrent categories of talk or action (Lofland & Lofland, 1984), which have analytical significance to observers and researchers. Basic categories of social action have often been termed “methods” or “practices” (Bourdieu, 1977; Garfinkel, 1967; Giddens, 1979). Examples are cooking practices, voting practices, industrial practices,

68 3. Theoretical Inspirations recreational practices, and correctional practices. Practices (plural form, different from practice or praxis) are the central analytical concept in practice theory. In the phenomenological and Wittgensteinian traditions that these social theorists followed, practices are viewed as the embodied skills that people bring to bear in their everyday activities. Reckwitz (2002b, pp. 249–250) offered a definition of “practice”: A practice … is a routinised type of behavior which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, “things” and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge. A practice – a way of cooking, of consuming, of working, of investigating, of taking care of oneself or of other etc. – forms so to speak a “block” whose existence necessarily depends on the existence and specific interconnectedness of these elements, and which cannot be reduced to any one of these single elements. A practice has the following elements: body, mind (mental activities), things, knowledge, language/discourse, structure/process, agent (individual), and routines (Hartmann, 2013; Reckwitz, 2002b). Schau et al. (2009, p. 31) argued that practices have an “anatomy” consisting of: 1) procedures—explicit rules, principles, precepts, and instructions called “discursive knowledge”; 2) understanding—knowledge of what to say and do, skills and projects, or know-how; and 3) engagements—ends and purposes that are emotionally charged insofar as people are committed to them. Hartmann (2013) suggested three types or variations of practices: object focused, interpersonal, and discursive.

Schatzki (1996) identified two central notions of practice: practice as a coordinated entity; and practice as a temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and sayings. To say that the doings and sayings forming a practice constitute a nexus is to say that they are linked in certain ways. Three major avenues of linkage are involved: 1) through understandings, for example, of what to say and do; 2) through explicit rules, principles, precepts, and instructions; and 3) through what is called “teleoaffective” structures embracing ends, projects, tasks, purposes, beliefs, emotions, and moods (Schatzki, 1996, p. 89).

Reckwitz (2002b) interpreted the dual sense of practice in social theory both as something that guides activity and as activity itself. Practices are the contexts in which routinized actions are carried out, things are used and desired, and things and actions are understood and may involve a multitude of different actions and patterned activities that interconnect in practices (Reckwitz, 2002b; Schatzki, 2002). Practices are a recurrent category of talk and/or action that have been determined to be of analytical significance to the researcher. Such actions are regarded by participants as unremarkable, as a normal and undramatic feature of ongoing life (Lofland & Lofland, 1984, p. 75).

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3.1.6.3 Operationalizing practice theory with the “circuit of practice” The “practice” is the main unit of analysis for the study of photographers’ image making (RQ2). In operationalizing practice theory, I adopted the framework of a “circuit of practice” in the studies of Hartmann (2013) and Magaudda (2011). The tripartite “circuit of practice” used by both studies consists of three elements: meanings, objects, and doings. The three elements or dimensions are intertwined with each other, contributing to the shaping of practices as socially shared patterns of activities. Treated as being equally important as and interactive with each other, the three elements and their configurations are analyzed to form certain “practices” of commercial photographers in a social–material context. The “circuit of practice” can help to elucidate how photographers’ doings leverage material objects to achieve meanings. The following parts explain the three elements.

• Doings Practices involve doings. Practices encompass routinized bodily activities as well as routinized mental (know-how, competences, particular ways of interpretation, and certain aims) and emotional activities (sketching, conceiving, envisioning, and imagining). What photographers do in practices, as the actual activity, was also termed “praxis” (a Greek word) by Whittington (2006, p. 619). Praxis is a socially meaningful activity on a day-to-day basis. The activity, as part of ongoing life, is normal, unremarkable, or undramatic for the doers. Doings are guided by shared templates of doings and understandings, ways of interpretation, aims, and emotions.

• Objects The term “object” could have a broad connotation. Objects, to which consciousness refers, can be human agents, non-living objects, or abstract entities (Reckwitz, 2002a, p. 204). In addition to being physical and material, an object could also be abstract or immaterial, such as an idea, experience, desire, story, product, brand, and so on. Etymologically, “object” (objectum in Latin) means “thrown against,” something that exists outside of ourselves, that is placed in front of us, and has a material nature (Heilbrunn, 2006, p. 87). Object is often treated as the opposite to subject (the subject–object dichotomy) (Kopytoff, 1986), and some form of exchange could take place between subject and object (Csikszentmihalyi & Rocheburg-Halton, 1981).

Objects, also called “artifacts” or “things,” participate in social practices as human subjects do. They are handled, applied, used, and interpreted by human beings in certain ways. They are constitutive in practices. They provide the requirements or components necessary for a practice. They act as resources that enable or constrain the specificity of a practice. Practice theory researchers treat objects as material artifacts or material arrangements within practices. Schatzki (2005, p. 472) explained a “material arrangement or set up” as below: By material arrangements, meanwhile, I simply mean set-ups of material objects. Whenever someone acts and therewith carries on a practice, she does so in a setting that is composed of material entities. The material arrangements

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amid which humans carry on embrace four types of entities: human beings, artefacts, other organisms, and thing. In the study of photographers’ image-making work, I consider the things or objects that are shaped, formed, used, and made in and through photographic image production—what photographers do with them, how photographers interact with them, and how the material objects shape photographers’ doings.

• Meaning as the teleoaffective structure According to the Heideggerian tradition, practices are always oriented and are performed for the accomplishment of the meaning and direction for which they are intended (Nicolini, 2012). A practice is composed of an array of activities with implicit and explicit aims and goals. Such aims and goals are what is called “meaning” or “teleoaffective structure” in practice theory. According to Nicolini (2012), the term “teleoaffective structure” refers to the fact that all practices unfold according to a specific direction and “oughtness,” or “how they should be carried out.” In this current study, I equate “meaning” with the “teleoaffective structure,” which includes the purposiveness, endeavors, ends, tasks, internalized set of “where next” and “how to get there,” and a set of emotions and moods that connote ends and projects affectively (“we feel happy when we win”) in practices. The teleoaffective structure is the internal structure and affective coloring of a practice. It can organize practices and provide a bridge to analyze the tripartite interplay among the objects, doings, and meanings within a practice.

3.1.7 Summary In this section (3.1), strands of research under the rubrics of “cultural/marketing production” have been reviewed to obtain theoretical and methodological tools and identify the gaps. Such tools can serve as enabling lenses for conducting research on the two types of production (craft production of glass and photographers’ image making). I have circumscribed, calibrated, and classified the two types of production so that suitable theoretical and methodological approaches to researching them become clear. For the analysis of the craft production of glass (tied to RQ1), I will inductively construct the findings with thick descriptions of emerging theoretical categories. For the analysis of photographers’ image production (tied to RQ2), I will adopt a practice theory approach, as other paradigms in researching cultural/marketing production are not suitable (see the explanations in Sections 3.1.4 and 3.1.5). Sub-section 3.1.6 (“A practice theory-based approach”) explains the reason for choosing the practice theory approach, its fundamentals, and how to operationalize it.

Production, due to its inherent nature, can serve as a fertile field to explore and problematize the issue of authenticity. Little is known about the processes by which companies or brands create and achieve the authenticity of their market offerings. The processes and mechanics through which authenticity is fabricated or constructed in marketing or cultural production is an under-researched topic. In addition, in the

71 Jönköping International Business School advertising and marketing literature, extant studies have seldom examined the producer side (e.g., creative workers in ad agencies) to understand their intentions, personal agendas, assumptions, and philosophies behind the resulting output. Researchers have just implicitly “imagined” a maker with some misconceptions about the conditions under which ads and images were invented and created. Scott (1994a, p. 271) pointed out such a void in advertising research and suggested conducting future research about the “intentions and artistic practices” of producers by using archival evidence, oral histories, or ethnographies of art production in ad agencies. Mick, Burroughs, Hetzel, and Brannen (2004) noted the absence of advertisers’ input in past semiotic advertising research, specifically why and how ads were constructed in certain ways to potentiate intended meanings. The study of the two types of production will address these voids.

3.2 Authenticity

A considerable number of academic studies have been conducted to explore the complex and shifting concept of authenticity as presented by marketers and experienced by consumers (Belk & Costa, 1998; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Beverland et al., 2008; Goulding, 2000; Goulding & Derbaix, 2019; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Rose & Wood, 2005). These studies have been scattered across a number of domains in the marketing literature, including service delivery (Arnould & Price, 1993), experiential consumption at tourist sites (Chronis & Hampton, 2008), consumers’ assessment and perception (Grayson & Martinec, 2004), advertising (Becker, Wiegand, & Reinartz, 2019; Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994), marketers’ production (Alexander, 2009; Beverland, 2005b; Duffy, 2013; Frosh, 2001), and co-construction and negotiation by producers and consumers (Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Visconti, 2010). The following sub-sections will unravel the concept from different perspectives based on the literature.

3.2.1 What is authenticity? Authenticity is a richly nuanced and highly contested concept that has been variably defined across disciplinary, historical, and cultural contexts. We can approach it in various ways—as definition, as forms (Peterson, 2005), as dimensions, or as attributes. According to Beverland et al. (2008), the so-called “form” is close to attributes but slightly different in that it indicates how authenticity is expressed or realized rather than the inner connotations or meanings of authenticity. The following sections will tackle this term in a manner of slicing a cake from different angles.

3.2.1.1 Definitions It is notoriously difficult to define the term “authenticity,” as definitions of this troubling concept are varied and contested. A concise and broadly accepted definition of authenticity is not readily available. Dictionary definitions of authenticity include qualities of genuineness, not being false or copied, and having a verified origin (Gundlach & Neville, 2012, p. 485). Table 1 presents a summary of the major

72 3. Theoretical Inspirations definitions in the literature. The left column contains a number of frequently used conceptual dimensions: original, real, genuine, true, grounded historically, relationship to place, method of production, being true to the self, anti-market, and anti-modernity. The majority of these labels are simple and self-explanatory. The second column includes similar descriptions provided by the literature. The right column includes literature examples. Despite the lack of unified definitions, authenticity has been conceptualized in fairly consistent ways with the following dimensions: genuine, real, and/or true (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Peterson, 1997). Another unifying factor is that the quest for authenticity has been seen as a symptom of dissatisfaction with modernity and modern configurations of social life (Boyle, 2003) in the face of the trends toward homogenization, rationalization, and standardization that have characterized modern life (Weber, 1978).

Table 1. Definitions of authenticity Conceptual Similar descriptions Literature examples dimension Original Being individualistic, unique, not fake Fine (2003); Grazian (2010); McGee (2005); Peterson (1997) Genuine Arnould and Price (2000); Beverland and Farrelly (2010); Fine (2003); Gilmore and Pine (2007a); Grazian (2010); McGee (2005); Peterson (1997); Spooner (1988) Real Not imitated, not fake Arnould and Price (2000); Beverland and Farrelly (2010); Gilmore and Pine (2007a); Peterson (1997) True, sincere Credible, trustworthy, honest Arnould and Price (2000); Beverland (2005b); Beverland and Farrelly (2010); Fine (2003); Gilmore and Pine (2007a); Moeran (2005); Peterson (1997) Grounded Avowal of commitments to traditions; Beverland (2005b, historically unbroken commitments to tradition; 2006); Beverland et al. heritage and pedigree (2008); Gundlach and Neville (2012); Peterson (1997) Relationship to Unbroken commitments to the place Beverland (2006); place of origin Beverland et al. (2008)

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Method of Rooted in traditional modes of Beverland (2005b, production production 2006); Gundlach and Neville (2012); Peterson (1997, 2005)

Being true to the The organic, true sense of self that Beverland et al. (2008); self exists apart from society and is Trilling (1972); Wang realized through the rejection of (1999) social and cultural norms; moral authenticity (consumers achieve self- authentication by connecting with personal moral values) Anti-market Public disavowal of the role of Beverland (2005b, modern industrial attributes and 2006); Beverland and commercial motivations, linked to the Luxton (2005); Fine moral authority of the creator; being (2003); Kozinets (2002) separate from the commercial sphere; being separate from the market sphere; downplaying commercial motives Anti-modernity Dissatisfaction with modernity and Boyle (2003); Weber modern configurations of social life; (1978) against the homogenization, rationalization, and standardization that have characterized modern life

3.2.1.2 Characteristics of the concept As a multilayered and polysemous concept, authenticity is not a matter of black or white but rather covers a wide spectrum of conceptualizations that are rich and ambiguous (Wang, 1999). Authenticity is “a cultural category, established or contested in rhetorical moves” (Jones & Smith, 2005). It is a social, cultural, and historical construct, the various meanings of which are not in themselves important (Moeran, 2005). It is ideologically driven or asserted arbitrarily (Boyle, 2003).

Constructivists have argued that the basis of authenticity is social or personal and hence unfixed, subjective, and variable (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). Therefore, authenticity is not fixed or objective reality and can be negotiated. Due to its socially constructed nature, it is better not to talk too much about its attributes or essence, as authenticity does not exist in any fixed objective form.

The connotations of authenticity have shifted over time (Postrel, 2003). In his study of American country music, Peterson (1997) found that what was deemed authentic changed over time. In each phase, music producers sought out artists who could provide the prototypical style of performance (e.g., the old-timer artistry of Jimmie Rodger, the hillbilly imagery of the Grand Ole Opry, and Hank Williams as the model for everyone), thus fabricating authenticity for each new generation. Authenticity is

74 3. Theoretical Inspirations thus a “renewable resource” (Peterson, 1997) that is periodically called upon as part of the ongoing processes of differentiation of commodities in the marketplace.

3.2.1.3 Paradoxes in the concept Trilling (1972, p. 94) cautioned: “Authenticity is implicitly a polemical concept.” The concept of authenticity is often wrought with contradictions, and paradox has been one of the essences of the elusive authenticity, illustrated by previous studies of consumers’ consumption of reality television programs (Rose & Wood, 2005), cultural producers’ work of producing cultural texts (Frosh, 2001; Guthey & Jackson, 2005), and dichotomies within the text of advertising (Stern, 1994). The politics are inherent in attributing authenticity to any market offering. Consumers have to negotiate paradoxical situations, and so do cultural/marketing producers.

The word “authenticity” is often not invoked unless the attribute is contested (Peterson, 1997), and the claim of authenticity imputes value relative to inauthenticity. One way for researchers to problematize the issue of authenticity is to view it as dichotomies: authentic vs. inauthentic, real vs. fake, original vs. copy, authentic vs. counterfeit, and so on. For example, in his study of American country music, Peterson (1997) examined the strange linkages of innocent esthetic birth vs. commodification, originality vs. forgery, relics vs. copies, reproductions vs. kitsch, credibility vs. hokum, and true/consistent/sincere vs. imitative/ artificial/ contrived/ phony behavior. Postmodern researchers have written about the interplay and intermingling of the authentic and the inauthentic, the real and the fake (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Hietanen et al., 2019; Stern, 1994).

However, researchers have come to realize that authentic and inauthentic are no longer perceived simply as oppositional poles but are fluid constructs that are open to negotiation by stakeholders (Hietanen et al., 2019; Rose & Wood, 2005). As written by Wang (1999, p. 353), “authenticity is not a matter of black or white, but rather involves a much wider spectrum, rich in ambiguous colors.” Rather than seeking normative decisions about dichotomies, it will be more fruitful to admit the complexities of the concept of authenticity and recognize that it is multidimensional, with porous boundaries. As pointed out by Brown et al. (2003), the paradoxical nature of authenticity provides a rich site for the investigation of the complexity and open- endedness of brand meaning management in a marketing context.

3.2.1.4 What constitutes authenticity? Its ontology Concerning “what constitutes authenticity” or its ontology, Peterson (2005, p. 1086) pointed out that authenticity, similar to “creativity” (Davis & Scase, 2000; Reid, King, & Delorme, 1998) and “entrepreneurship” (Davidsson, 2017), is not inherent in the object, persons, or performance said to be authentic. Instead, it is a “claim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance and either accepted or rejected by relevant others.” It has generally been agreed that authenticity is a socially constructed concept rather than an inherent quality (Cohen, 1988; Holt, 1998; Peterson, 1997). As a social construct, authenticity is to be observed and evaluated

75 Jönköping International Business School rather than being a property or attribute inherent in an object, person, or experience (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Grayson & Martinec, 2004;Peterson, 1997, 2005). The observation and evaluation are a result of human interpretation (Spivey, 1997), performed by individuals via acts and by groups via performances (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Gannon & Prothero, 2016; Rose & Wood, 2005). Human agents set the terms of authenticity within particular contexts (Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Grazian, 2005; MacCannell, 1973; Peterson, 1997). In the context of tourism, Wang (1999, p. 355, emphasis in the original) argued that authenticity is the projection of tourists’ own beliefs, expectations, preferences, stereotyped images, and consciousness onto toured objects. In the field of country music, its commercial success and sustainability hinge on its “fabricating authenticity,” an ironic phrase indicating that what is taken to constitute a defining criterion of the genre (namely its authenticity) in fact reflects a complex process of social construction, enacted by performers, promoters, and the audience, as an ongoing “socially agreed-upon construct” (Peterson, 1997). Previous research has found that authenticity is a type of negotiated and accomplished quality that is socially constructed by certain evaluators relative to their particular contexts and goals (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Cohen, 1988; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Grazian, 2005; Peñaloza, 2000; Zukin, 2010).

3.2.1.5 Who perceives, evaluates, arbitrates, determines, grants, or rejects it? Scholars have often said that “someone claims authenticity” as if there is a human subject who can see, evaluate, arbitrate, determine, grant, or reject it. This is not the case. As suggested by Peterson (2005, p. 1086), authenticity is not inherent in the object, person, or performance said to be authentic. Rather, it is a claim that is made by or for someone, something, or a performance and is either accepted or rejected by relevant others. Regarding the assessment of authenticity by human beings, it is subject to individual interpretation and negotiation (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Grayson & Martinec, 2004). However, this is the starting point and not the final judgment. It has to be agreed by someone else. No experts, authorities, or parties can control the particulars of the term’s meaning (Peterson, 1997), which is subject to the determination of multiple actors: product producers, marketers, governments, consumers, critics, media, or other relevant stakeholders. It also implies the fact that what one individual experiences as authentic can be inauthentic for others. Authenticity is contingent on the evaluator, who might agree that it is there. From the perspective of constructivist theorists, authenticity is to be co-created through the interaction among several stakeholders (Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 1988). The criteria for authenticity are complex and depend on negotiation among people (Spooner, 1988). As an example, in his study of American country music, Peterson (2005) found that the authentication of this music genre was made not by experts but by the end consumers of the music—the fans. He pointed out further that no one individual or group authenticates country music. Rather, it is the cycle of authentication involving everyone active in the field (ibid., p. 1091). Grazian (2010, p. 192) suggested that authenticity is constructed through the interplay of various social actors and cultural organizations whereby the staging of authenticity “is an integral part of the culture production process.”

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3.2.1.6 Where does it reside? The loci of authenticity Here, I use the word “reside” to invoke the understanding of the loci of authenticity in certain entities. This notion implicitly concerns the emergence of authenticity because, when authenticity arises or comes into being, it must “reside” in or be associated with a certain entity. It has to be pointed out that the notion of “reside” does not mean that authenticity can “inhere” in any object (Peterson, 2005), because authenticity does not exist in the object itself according to the literature (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; Wang, 1999). Spooner (1988, p. 226) expressed the relationship between authenticity and the object that is associated with it: authenticity “is a form of cultural discrimination projected onto objects. But it does not in fact inhere in the object but derives from our concern with it. In seeking authenticity people are able to use commodities to express themselves and fix points of security and order in an amorphous modern society.” As a way of viewing the loci issue, according to Beverland and Farrelly (2010, p. 853), objects, brands, and events provide the means by which consumers make assessments of authenticity. In terms of the formation of authenticity, it is a negotiated or accomplished quality that emerges through judgments or evaluations held by certain beholders or stakeholders. According to Grayson and Martinec (2004), people can ascribe authenticity to reality, which comprises the objects that they experience. Similarly, Holt (1998) and Peterson (1997) suggested that producers and consumers can impart authenticity to objects.

The quest of human individuals and organizations for authenticity has been researched in a wide range of marketing settings: brands (Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013), luxury products (Beverland, 2005b, 2006), the music industry (Peterson, 1997), mundane objects and mass-marketed products (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010), reality television programs (Rose & Wood, 2005), advertisements (Stern, 1994), consumers’ experience (Goulding, 2000), tourism sites (Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Grayson & Martinec, 2004), and marketing work (Frosh, 2001; Moeran, 2005; Weinberger, 2008). As for the loci of authenticity (where it ends up), these studies have tended to be vague. The literature has implied that authenticity can either “reside” in or be associated with various entities, as illustrated in Table 2, which includes three types of information: the type of hosting entities, example expressions, and authors (see the top row).

Table 2. The loci of authenticity Type of hosting Example expressions indicating Authors entity how authenticity resides in or is associated with certain entities Objects (e.g., To grant authenticity to the product Beverland and Luxton products and tourist (2005) sites) Various objects, tangible signs, and Chronis and Hampton communicative elements of a heritage (2008) site are authentic Authenticity can be seen as a product Chronis and Hampton feature (2008)

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Marketing text (e.g., Authentic ads Becker et al. (2019) ads and images) Authenticity as “a content cue” in Becker et al. (2019, p. advertising 25) Authentic photographic images of Guthey and Jackson corporate executives (2005)

Marketing as work Advertising, like other cultural Moeran (2005) productions, is “authentic reproduction” The performance of authenticity in Moeran (2005) front of a client by an advertising agency Human beings: Photographers’ personal and artistic Guthey and Jackson cultural producers authenticity as the human capacity for (2005) and creative workers creative self-expression and resistance to corporate photography practice Experiences, Authentic consumption experience Beverland and Farrelly services, and events (2010)

Authenticity can be seen as an Chronis and Hampton experience (2008)

Consumers’ authentic experiences Arnould and Price (2000); Belk and Costa (1998); Chronis and Hampton (2008); Holt (1997) Brands Firms develop brand positions based Beverland et al. (2008) on authenticity Authenticity is a core component of Aaker (1996); Beverland successful brands, as it forms part of (2005b) a unique brand identity Brands need to be perceived as Beverland (2005b) authentic to be commercially successful

As we can see from the example expressions in Table 2, authenticity has a variety of ways of manifesting itself in relationship to other objects in the marketplace. Authenticity does not inhere in any object, but it will emerge and dwell in some objects after the construction, assessments, or judgments of its beholders. The entities hosting authenticity can be human or non-human. The expressions in Table 2 also imply the complex processes through which authenticity appears in the context in which it is used (Baugh, 1988, p. 477). The following sections will review the literature studying two distinctive contexts or marketplace sites in which authenticity emerges or manifests itself—the site of production and the site of mediation. The site of production implicitly corresponds to the study tied to RQ1 (the craft production of glass to construct authenticity for marketing offerings), and the site of mediation

78 3. Theoretical Inspirations implicitly corresponds to the study connected to RQ2 (photographers’ image making to construct authenticity for marketing offerings).

3.2.2 Site of production In the current study, the craft production of glass in Glasriket can be classified by the site of production. The site of production is a source of authenticity and is where the manufacturing of authenticity (Jones et al., 2005) takes place. Cultural producers work to confer authenticity on market offerings (products, brands, experiences, places, ads, etc.) or to project authenticity onto them. The site concerns the construction of authenticity in production by cultural producers, including their authentication practices, mechanisms, and processes. The research questions could ask how authenticity is developed within cultural industries and how firms create and maintain images of authenticity (Jones et al., 2005).

Scholars have examined the construction of authenticity in various cultural industries, such as tourism (Bruner, 1994; MacCannell, 1973), photography (Frosh, 2001), art (Fine, 2003), and music (Peterson, 1997). These studies have revealed how contemporary culture industries manufacture authenticity in an effort to distinguish their products from the competition and respond to the perceived needs of consumers, who “increasingly value authenticity in a world where the mass production of artifacts causes them to question the plausibility of value” (Rose & Wood, 2005, p. 286). The site of production generates cultural resources for consumers to appropriate to achieve their authentic self. In the marketing realm, previous studies have explored how brands or marketers can exploit consumers’ search for authenticity by creating offerings that appear authentic to consumers (Alexander, 2009; Beverland, 2005b), how brand authenticity can be managed in general (Beverland, 2005a, 2005b, 2009), or how luxury wine marketers create and maintain authentic brands (Beverland & Luxton, 2005).

Another perspective concerning the production site is “authentic work,” which can take many different forms (Peterson, 2005): through ethnic/cultural identity (e.g., “authenticity of food in ethnic restaurants depending on the ethnic appearance and role performance of cooks and waiters”), through group identity (e.g., “who has the right to dance salsa in the world of salsa dance”), through status identity (e.g., “the value of the work depends on peculiarity of the identity of the artists – for example, whether the artist is untrained and poor”), seeking authentic experience (e.g., “people immerse themselves in what they take to be authentic experience”), technologically mediated authenticity (e.g., “face-to-face interaction to maintain a sense of identity and cohesion vs. Internet-based scene”), or authenticity of the constructed self (“remaining true to the self”).

As David Grazian (2010, p. 192) argued, authenticity is constructed through the interplay of various social actors and cultural organizations whereby the staging of authenticity “is an integral part of the culture production process.” Peterson (2005, p. 1086) suggested that Erving Goffman’s (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is actually an early example of the fabrication of authenticity at an interpersonal

79 Jönköping International Business School level. In his theory of “impression management,” Goffman views human behavior as a kind of play in which participants take roles as members of teams of actors, who, through their performances, seek to mystify and manage the impressions that others in the “audience” hold of them. In this process, participants may play roles that are incoherent or communicate in a way that is inconsistent with the characters that they are playing. Moeran’s (2005) ethnographic study of a Japanese advertising agency demonstrated that authenticity was achieved in cultural production in a social process—authenticity was played out in the interactions between executives of the ad agency and its client company. In this context, Moeran determined that authenticity is bound up with advertising executives’ need to be seen as original and different from their competitors. Peterson’s (1997) study of American country music was more about the fabrication of authenticity at an institutional level, speculating on the particular structural conditions (i.e., changes in the production system, generational cycles, and changing audience tastes) that could maintain and foster country music’s authenticity. Peterson examined the institutionalization of American country music as a genre during the commercialization process and explored how authenticity is attributed to music as a cultural product. His treatment of the social construction of authenticity provided some categories for thought: authenticity work, signifiers of authenticity, and the process of authenticity renewal.

3.2.3 Site of mediation: Advertising and marketing communications In the current study, commercial photographers’ production of images can be classified by the site of mediation, because: 1) their work, as part of the marketing system and similar to advertising work, mediates between the manufacturing of glass products and the consumers; 2) photography is a type of medium; and 3) the resulting images are similar to other marketing and media contents circulated in the marketplace. The research on photographers’ image-making practices in this dissertation will draw on and contribute to the literature concerning the site of mediation, which includes advertising and marketing communications.

Every company wants to be authentic and sell authentic products. Advertising and other marketing communication tactics are powerful tools through which companies can communicate authenticity to stakeholders. Marketers constantly seek to manipulate brands, products, and marketing communications to appear more authentic and respond to consumers’ expectations of authenticity (Kadirov et al., 2014). In another sense, authenticity is developed by marketers in response to an increasingly savvy, reflexive consumer, who is aware of the smoke and mirrors of contemporary advertising (i.e., digital photo retouching and editing) (Duffy, 2013). There are authenticity-based marketing campaigns, which are couched in the language of authenticity. Such advertising and communication campaigns are filled with the rhetoric of authenticity. An example of “authenticity advertising” is Dove’s 2004 “Campaign for Real Beauty,” which featured full-bodied women under taglines such as “Real women have real curves.” The campaign challenged stereotypes about beauty (for example, that only the thin, the blond, or the young are beautiful). The following parts will review the site of mediation in three respects: how advertising

80 3. Theoretical Inspirations and marketing work to deliver authenticity, authenticity within ads, and authentic marketing.

3.2.3.1 How do advertising and marketing work to deliver authenticity? Marketers can help companies to build authentic brands (retaining the brand’s authentic attributes) to earn the trust of consumers. Consumers’ interpretation of authenticity is generally mediated by advertising and marketing professionals. Marketers use advertising or other marketing communication tactics to communicate authenticity to stakeholders (Beverland et al., 2008; Chalmers & Price, 2009). The media or communication vehicles include advertising, photographs, endorsements, public relations, storytelling, and so on. Marketing tactics are designed to project an image of authenticity (Beverland et al., 2008), portray a brand as real and truthful, or confer authenticity on market offerings (products, brands, experiences, etc.). Advertising can enhance the claims of authenticity of a company, and the claims of authenticity are often stylized and created by marketers (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland et al., 2008). Marketing’s mission is to create and reinforce such claims (Beverland, 2006). The ultimate goals are to render brands, firms, or products authentic, create authentic brand images, or imbue a product with a set of values that differentiates it from more commercialized brands (Beverland, 2005b).

3.2.3.2 Authenticity within advertisements or marketing content Some advertising studies have focused on the content within advertisements (or ads), concerning the understanding of authenticity and inauthenticity in an advertisement context (Becker et al., 2019). The key issues investigated by this research stream include whether an ad is credible or authentic enough to be trusted, authenticity as a content cue, and ads perceived by consumers as authentic. Contents within ads or marketing messages draw direct links between a brand or firm and the relevant cues of authenticity (e.g., production method, crafts people, and history), and the cues convey the authenticity of an object. The reading of these ads by viewers and consumers is a kind of mass-mediated experience, as they do not have direct, personal experience of the objects depicted in the ads.

For ads or marketing texts to communicate authenticity, they themselves must be authentic, meaning that an ad must appear to be real (rather than fictional), show literal replication of cues, or be original (rather than simulated reality) (Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994). Becker et al. (2019) defined an authentic ad as one that is genuine, real, and true with regard to some executional elements or dimensions (e.g., showing a realistic plot and presenting a credible advertising message). This type of ad is more persuasive. Stern (1994) investigated the definition, nature, and management of authenticity within advertising text. She defined authentic ads as those that “convey the illusion of the reality of ordinary life in reference to a consumption situation” (ibid., p. 388). The key premise of Stern’s conceptualization of ad authenticity was the connection between everyday experiences and ad content. A self-referential process exists through which consumers relate their own experiences to an ad when evaluating it (Chalmers & Price, 2009).

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Inauthentic ads are those that are contrived and false, showing idealized human beings, absent of real objects, and engineered by the marketing machine in a profane world of commerce and commodity culture (Moeran, 2005). As for the antithesis between authenticity and inauthenticity in an ad, there is no absolute judgment. Stern (1994) pointed out the paradoxical nature of authentic ads—an ad, a representation by definition, cannot be something authentic or real even if it creates a convincing illusion of something that is real. Hence, even “authentic” ads contain elements of inauthenticity (Benjamin, 1969).

3.2.3.3 Authentic marketing Authentic marketing concerns the work of marketing and whether it is authentic. Such a concern exists because of the innate negative perception of marketing—marketing, particularly advertising, is believed to be antithetical to the positioning of the authenticity of brands (Beverland et al., 2008). Methods of mass marketing are deemed to be at odds with claims of authenticity (Beverland, 2005b). As an example, Fine’s (2003) study of self-taught art discovered that the use of mainstream advertising, segmentation techniques, and direct selling undermined the authenticity and value of artwork produced by the Reverend Howard Finster. Marketing, as a function, campaign, or institution, may have its own authenticity crisis, as the advertising and marketing industry often creates and circulates inauthentic depictions of products or brands. There are cases of phony or fake marketing, hollow promises, exaggeration of the fineness of commodities, and fake histories. For example, some firms’ purportedly authentic marketing campaigns have been based on a history that never really existed (Weinberger, 2008).

To carry out authentic marketing, what a firm says about its business and its offerings must match the reality that consumers encounter (Gilmore & Pine, 2007b). Holt (2002) suggested one approach to achieving authentic marketing—a firm or brand needs to show disinterestedness or distance from the profit motive. Holt’s solution is similar to that of Beverland (2006), who suggested “downplaying commercial motives.” Authentic marketing also means authentic representations of referents or authentic reproduction with credibility and sincerity (Moeran, 2005).

To sum up, in a general way, as pointed out by Becker et al. (2019), there is a common lack of understanding of authenticity in advertising. There is a paucity of research on the creation of authenticity through marketing and advertising (the study by Beverland and Luxton (2005) is an example). The extant research has tended to focus on the analysis of the ad or text itself (Becker et al., 2019; Stern, 1994) rather than what marketers actually undertake behind the scenes to create the text. Little is known about how marketers create and manage authenticity (Beverland & Luxton, 2005).

3.2.4 Summary In this section (3.2), I have reviewed the literature about various dimensions of the concept of authenticity as well as the two sites where it manifests. The review indicates that, when it comes to the fabrication or construction of authenticity,

82 3. Theoretical Inspirations previous studies have been vague about from which site it emerges and in which loci it will reside. It is not clear whether authenticity comes into being in the physical production of products or through the symbolic marketing work (e.g., image management and storytelling). Such vagueness makes the specific mechanisms of the creation of authenticity unclear and subject to further investigation. Some marketing industry practitioners have pointed out that “authentic” is a vague word and is especially problematic because of its hollowness (Teicher, 2017). It is either meaningless or contradictory. Academic work on the concept of authenticity has remained vague in terms of both its definition and its marketing relevance. Authenticity is a quality with heavily debated characteristics, and it is not well understood in its market manifestations. In spite of the growing body of research on authenticity, there has been no consensus on the definition of the term. Thus, there is a need to describe further the meanings of the term in specific contexts. To define the term, researchers have approached it from the producer side, from the consumer side, or from a co-production perspective. More research has been conducted on consumers (Arnould & Price, 2000; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Goulding & Derbaix, 2019; Grayson & Martinec, 2004) than on producers. Therefore, it is valuable to add marketing/cultural producers’ authenticating acts to the authenticity equation, as few studies have attempted to elucidate the authenticating processes and mechanisms on the other side of the fence. The literature has suggested that authenticity needs to be analyzed in each specific field. For example, Bruner (1994, p. 401) pointed out the problem with the term authenticity—in the literature and fieldwork, one never knows, except through an analysis of the context, which meaning is salient in any given instance. Therefore, the meanings of the word “authenticity” that are used in marketing are context specific. The image of authenticity is fabricated (Beverland, 2005b; Peterson, 1997) rather than being something that exists there inherently. To unpack the complex, indeterminate, and constructive nature of authenticity, it is necessary to investigate it in specific contexts or sites.

3.3 Craft or craftsmanship

Craft is a grand and elusive topic researched in a variety of academic domains: philosophy, sociology, anthropology, archeology, design, art history, material culture, urban development, tourism, and so on. This dissertation interpolates the concepts and phenomena surrounding craft into the realm of marketing, thereby backgrounding concerns that are less marketing oriented. In the field of marketing, craft exists as production, products, tourist experience, and consumption, which will be reviewed next.

3.3.1 Definitions Thinkers and scholars from various disciplines have tried to define the term without reaching a real consensus. Craft ends up being described as a loose system of ideas, practices, and values (Peach, 2013), and the craft field lacks a critical theory of its own, as pointed out by Risatti (2007). Since the mid-19th century, the idea of “craft”

83 Jönköping International Business School or “craftsmanship” has emerged as a way of thinking through modernity and its advances when industrialization was advancing at its most avaricious (Adamson, 2010).

The term “craft,” a shortened version of the word “handicraft” or “craftsmanship,” is a complicated concept with scientific definitions and folk definitions as well as colloquial and metaphoric usages. The word makes people think of other terms— “artisan,” “handmade,” and “authenticity.” The Oxford Dictionary offered multiple definitions of the word “craft.” When used as a noun, “craft” means: 1) an activity involving skill in making things by hand; or 2) skill used in deceiving others. When used as a verb, “craft” means “exercise skill in making (an object), typically by hand” (en.oxforddictionaries.com). A term with a meaning close to that of “craft” is “artisan,” which was defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand.” Synonyms of “artisan” include craftsman, skilled worker, mechanic, technician, maker, smith, and so on (en.oxforddictionaries.com).

Related to the term “craft,” there is the extended word “craftsmanship,” which shares some of the former’s core connotations. The Oxford Dictionary defined “craftsmanship” as “skill in a particular craft” (en.oxforddictionaries.com), and the Cambridge Dictionary defined it as “skill at making things” (dictionary.cambridge.org). According to Sennett (2008, p. 9), craftsmanship is “an enduring, basic human instinct, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.” For Sennett, craftsmanship can refer not only to pre-industrial, traditional handiwork, such as pottery making, weaving, and carpentry, but also to modernized, technology- assisted undertakings, like Linux programming or medical practices undertaken by a doctor.

3.3.2 Craft as production The concept and phenomenon tied to craft originated from production, implying rules and norms of making things. As activity, craft includes woodworking, basketry, weaving, metalworking, embroidery, stone carving, furniture making, glass blowing, and so on. It reminds people of the imagery of the act of an artisan throwing pots or looming cloth. As a form of manufacture, craft is related to the “hand” in manual work, which is directly under the worker’s control, compared with the machine-based factory system in which the machine is in control of the worker (Campbell, 2005). According to Becker (2008), craft implies a work ideology, an esthetic, and a form of work. He defined craft as “the knowledge and skills which produce useful objects and activities” (ibid., p. 274). In addition to making objects, craft could mean the ability to perform something, such as playing music, cooking a meal, or delivering a speech (Becker, 2008). Viewed through a sociological lens, craft implies ambiguous conglomerations of organizational and stylistic traits (ibid.). For Becker, craft implies an esthetic standard and an organizational form, in which the worker carries out his or her work for someone else—a client, customer, or employer—who defines what is to be done and what the result should be. Craft is closely related to arts, and the two can morph into each other. Becker (2008) noticed the distinction and blurring

84 3. Theoretical Inspirations between them—a craft can become refined as an art or an art can become redefined as a craft. “Craft is more utilitarian-oriented than arts” and “making art requires craft skills, and it happens that craftsmen work to support the work of artists” (ibid., p. 272).

With producer-focused conceptualizations, craft is used to refer to desirable attributes and to production values (Kettley, 2016). According to social critic Marx (2000), the form of labor undertaken by the craftsman is the most quintessential of all human activities. It was viewed as ennobling, humanizing, creative, and authentic (Campbell, 2005; Sennett, 2008). During the Industrial Revolution, factory-based mass production replaced craft production, resulting in a dehumanizing mode of rationalized production and a state of alienation (Marx, 2000). Production was separated from consumers, and a dichotomy between craft and machine came into being. The former mode can be described as being “inalienable, humane, authentic and creative,” while the latter is “mechanical, dehumanizing, unfulfilling, esthetically uninspiring, alienating” (Campbell, 2005; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Marx, 2000; Ritzer, 1999; Sennett, 2008). Not only is machine-based production alienating but the consumption of commodities made out of it is also considered to be alienating. Against the backdrop of the alienation effect, Kopytoff (1986, p. 80) suggested that a dialectic relationship exists between people’s yearning for singularization and commodification. Singularization is the spiritual pursuit of consumers for individualization, uniqueness, and sacredness.

3.3.3 Craft as products Craft products have become trendy or hipster lifestyle choices. Part of the manifestation is the growing number of products claiming to be “craft,” “handmade,” or “artisanal.” Craft, artisanal, or handmade products span sectors ranging from chocolates (Leissle, 2017; Terrio, 1998) to beers (Chapman et al., 2017; Dunn & Kregor, 2014) to acoustic guitars (Dudley, 2014) to vinyl analogue records (Bartmansk & Woodward, 2015). In his book Brew to Bikes: Portland’s Artisan Economy, Heying (2010, pp. 41–44) proposed six aspects of “artisan” or “craft” products: authentic, egalitarian, designed to age, locally distinct, appreciated, and handmade. Craft or artisanal products imply that a person is behind the process, so they “intentionally reveal the touch of the maker, and honor the inherent qualities of the material being shaped” (ibid., p. 41).

Why do craft products matter to consumers? Possessing craft objects may allow the owner to capture “the extended self of valued others” (Belk, 1988, p. 149), and the valued others can be the makers of the craft. A craft product bears its makers’ mark, being a mute witness to the performance that brought it into being (Kendall, 2014, p. 545). The craft products or objects are valued for the labor input, skills, and knowledge associated with the production. The finished object, which is a product, is the place where consumers encounter the material validation of the craft. Craft or artisanal products can take the consumer back to a time before the qualities and traditions of the product were eroded by mass production and tainted by the dominance of corporate profit motives. Craft products gain salience as a contrast to

85 Jönköping International Business School machine-made mass commodities, which are inherently alien. Machine-based mass production gives us useful but otherwise negligible products, while crafts give consumers “warmth” and “esthetic values” (Schaefer, 2013). Craft, handmade, or artisanal products are considered to be precious objects with some esthetic merit, imbued with multiple cultural characteristics: individuality, originality, authenticity, aura, mystery, and magic. Being one of a kind, craft objects or products are more expensive and luxurious than mass-produced items and can enrich users’ life. That the object came into being in the hands of a craftsperson who used traditional techniques is a primary rationale for the object’s desirability and price.

3.3.4 Craft as a tourist experience There is a type of “ethnic or cultural tourists” (Cohen, 1993) who like to shop for art and craft souvenirs when they travel. In the stream of research about the phenomenon of a “tourist shopping village” (Frost, 2006; Murphy et al., 2011; Timothy, 2005), the idea of shopping is an essential part of gaining a better destination experience, with heritage serving as a pleasant background for shopping in craft shops. A shopping village can be purpose built or a heritage town or village that promotes shopping as an experience for tourists to purchase local produce and crafts. Tourism shopping villages are supported by anchor attractions (i.e., indigenous crafts) that create an interest among visitors in learning more about the locality and its history, culture, and traditions (Murphy et al., 2011). Shopping experiences and meeting craftspersons provide salient memories on which meaning for crafts is built (Littrell, 1990). Unique or challenging interactions with a craftsperson or seller at the time of purchase provide memories about treasured crafts (Littrell, 1990). Through shopping and exchanges with craftspersons while traveling, tourists sample a way of life that is different from that at home and their worldviews are broadened. Empathetic encounters with local craftspersons and their work are common contributors to the meaning attached to the craft objects purchased (Littrell, 1990).

Craft is an embodied experience for craftsmen (Kendall, 2014), and it can become an experience for consumers, who are tourists. Creighton (1995) studied a special form of craft vacations in Japan, in which tourists practiced embodied craft work. Affluent urban housewives paid money to reside at historical villages in the mountains of Shinshu at the Apls of Nagano Prefecture to study silk weaving, which used to be a common domestic chore for wives in that region. During week-long residential weaving vacations, female tourists studied sericulture (silkworm cultivation and silk production) and practiced silk weaving as a leisure hobby pursuit. The participants lived communally in an apprenticeship-like situation. They learned to weave silk on large looms that required coordinated arm and leg movements. They were required to learn and experience the entire traditional silk-weaving process, including tending silk worms, boiling silk cocoons and processing the batting, spinning their own silk thread, and going out to the mountains to collect grasses and other natural materials from which they dyed the spun threads into various colors (Creighton, 1995, p. 465). In such a form of tourism, there is a reversed shifting of the two types of life arenas in the work/leisure dichotomy: “craft work” is practiced and experienced by tourists as “leisure” (ibid., p. 476). In this form of tourism, tourists can participate in making

86 3. Theoretical Inspirations things by hand to have a taste of craft work. What is offered is not a staged experience but tourists’ embodied experience, which makes them feel the authenticity of the craft activity and their own existential being.

3.3.5 Craft as consumption Campbell (2005) proposed the conceptualizations of “craft consumption” and “craft consumer,” exploring the “craft” dimension in various consumer practices. Campbell (ibid., pp. 23, 31) defined “craft consumption” as “activities in which consumers personalize their products by designing and making what they consume themselves,” with the application of “skills, knowledge, judgment and passion” for the production of something “made and designed by the same person.” Exemplary practices of craft consumption exist in such fields as interior decorating, gardening, cooking, and the selection of clothing “outfits,” among others. Under Campbell’s version of craft consumption, consumers buy mass-produced commodities from retailers as components to assemble and achieve new results, such as outfits and wardrobes of clothing, assembled furniture from IKEA, a cooked meal, or a do-it-yourself (DIY) project.

Craft consumption was classified by Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson (2012) as a type of prosumption, which is a practice mixing production and consumption, performed by consumers. Campbell’s version of craft consumption is inextricable from mass production, as craft consumers assemble and play with mass-produced retail commodities (Campbell, 2005, p. 27). The products in such practices are the hardware of consumption, functioning as tools and materials. The practice does not normally involve the physical “creation” of a product but the creation of an “ensemble” of products, each of which is a standardized or mass-produced commodity (ibid.).

As for the motivations for craft consumption activities, consumers “not merely exercise control over the consumption process, but also bring skill, knowledge, judgment, love and passion to their consuming in much the same way that it has always been assumed that traditional craftsmen and craftswomen approach their work” (Campbell, 2005, p. 27). Rather than severing themselves from the world of commodities, craft consumers use their own cultural and personal resources to transform commodities into “singularities” (ibid.). Participation in gardening, sports, and home improvement constitutes a form of everyday resistance to the alienating effects of contemporary society (Leadbeater & Miller, 2004). Consumers’ pursuit of craft can help them to reauthenticate and re-enchant their consumption (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Ritzer, 1999), fulfilling a significant part of their inner life and their distinctive cultural values. In the world of extensive and progressive commodification, craft consumption enables individuals to “make things special,” “singularly meaningful,” or “beyond price” without “turning one’s back on commercial society or be refusing to be involved in the world of goods” (Campbell, 2005, p.37).

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3.3.6 Summary In this section (3.3), I have reviewed the craft research literature pertinent to marketing. The existing conceptualizations of craft treat it in four forms: as production, as products, as tourist experience, and as consumption. The theories and studies reviewed in this section can help to explain the research context and enable the analysis of the two types of production tied to RQ1 and RQ2. Few studies have examined the marketing strategies and operation of firms in the craft sector, and the research on the two types of production in this current study can address this void.

3.4 Relationships among the three theoretical domains and a conceptual framework

This section explores the interconnectedness of the three theoretical domains that have been reviewed above, leading to a conceptual framework indicating the tripartite relationship among the three fields.

3.4.1 Authenticity vs. cultural/marketing production: Dialectic between authenticity and reproduction Authenticity is entangled with cultural/marketing production in terms of the dialectic between the concept of “authenticity” and the concept of “reproduction.” In modern capitalist societies, all cultural or marketing productions are reproducible, including the glassware and photographic images examined in the current study. The mechanical reproduction of objects is propelled by a basic economic logic of selling more products for revenues and profits.

In his essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” the philosopher and cultural critic Benjamin (1969) touched on authenticity, which he associated with the notion of aura and the realm of art and cultural production. He brought up the term “mechanical reproducibility”—art and cultural products such as music, film, and photographs are reproducible with modern technologies. He proposed that works of art have an “aura,” which is an effect of a work of art being uniquely present in time and space, and it is connected to the idea of authenticity. The aura, as the basis of an artwork’s authenticity, is jeopardized by modern reproductive technologies. His central thesis is that art objects would lose part of their aura, original meaning, and authenticity due to their ever-increasing reproduction and diffusion.

Commenting on the cultural industries in modern capitalist societies, the Frankfurt School critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (2002) deplored the debasing logics of production due to the commoditization and industrialization of culture, which lead to standardized, homogenized cultural products. They also pointed out that one elemental logic of the culture industry is repetition, reminiscent of Benjamin’s (1969) notion of “mechanical reproduction.”

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Peterson (1997) pointed out that the idea of “fabricating authenticity” is ironic and paradoxical in that it draws attention to the contradictions between “fabrication” and “authenticity” in cultural production. In his study of American country music, producers deliberately manufactured spurious “traditions” to appeal to consumers of the music. He contended that authenticity is “continuously negotiated in an ongoing interplay” among industry stakeholders (ibid., p. 6).

Given the arguments of the above thinkers, we can see that the two concepts of “authenticity” and “reproduction” have been tied together as an antithesis, and the dissonance between them represents the tension between manufactured authenticity and creative voice (Jones et al., 2005). Once in mass production mode, cultural/marketing production can have the stigma of inauthenticity (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a). Cultural/marketing production can slide from the authentic to the inauthentic. On the other hand, “authenticity” and “reproduction” do not have to be irreconcilable opposites and can be reconciled and mutually enhancing. Jones et al. (2005, p. 893) argue that “all work of culture industries, in some way or the other is preoccupied with claims of authenticity.” Cultural/marketing production can create and reproduce authenticity, as exemplified in empirical studies (Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Bruner, 1994; Duffy, 2013; Moeran, 2005; Peterson, 1997).

3.4.2 Craft vs. authenticity: Overlapping conceptual dimensions The two terms “craft” and “authenticity” have appeared recurrently in both academic literature and trade sources. In the discourses of scholars and marketing materials, an author focusing on one concept has often brought up the other. Both terms have been used by marketers as terms or labels in marketing messages and packages. Both of them represent long-standing, persistent, and contemporary marketplace appeals, being potentially significant and interesting topics for researchers in marketing.

Academic research on authenticity has usually chosen the craft sector as the research context (Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Smith Maguire, 2018; Thurnell-Read, 2019). The literature on authenticity has often referred to elements of craft: authenticity is usually rooted in traditional modes of production (Beverland, 2005b; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Peterson, 1997); authenticity is “linked to the fact that the object was made by hand, not mechanically produced” (Fine, 2003, p. 155); and sincerity (an attribute of authenticity) is projected through production methods, passion for craft, and production excellence (Beverland, 2005b, p. 1008). Holt (1998) identified artisanal goods (small handcrafted production runs), the rejection of mass-market production, and being untainted by commerce as attributes of authentic goods. On the other hand, craft can lead to authenticity. For example, in a study of artisanal guitar making, as bespoke craft production in the US (Dudley, 2014), the concept of “authenticity” emerged as the core of the cultural values of hand-making guitars, which was a site of “authentic” production, represented by the vital materiality of the bespoke guitar, the haptic experience of making it as a process of luthiers, and the labor model of master/pupil training (apprenticeships and mentoring).

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The literature about craft (Dudley, 2014; Littrell, 1990; Risatti, 2007; Sennett, 2008; Terrio, 1998) and the literature about authenticity (Beverland, 2005b; Beverland et al., 2008; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Littrell et al., 1993) contain the following shared conceptual dimensions between the two concepts: • Traditional method of production, craftsperson, handmade • Historicity (heritage, tradition, history, nostalgic) • Using place as a referent (provenance of making, country of origin) • Materials and ingredients • Uniqueness, rarity, exclusivity, singularity, originality • Anti-commodity and anti-mass production

3.4.3 Craft vs. cultural/marketing production: Domain shift The concept of “craft” has an effect of “domain shift,” as suggested by Sennett (2008, p. 127)—a tool that was initially used for one purpose can be applied to another task or the principle guiding one practice can be applied to quite another activity. Due to this “domain shift” effect, craft can be applied to various sectors, including the cultural/marketing industries. For example, academic studies about the advertising industry have described advertising and ad copywriting as “a craft” (Hackley, 2011; Kover, 1995a; Scott, 1994b) and advertising copywriters as “craft people” (Kover, 1995a, p. 607). In the media sector, when discussing the future of journalism in the digital age, Picard (2014) envisioned a “craft mode” of news production as a novel solution that is different from the traditional industrial mode of news production. Under the craft mode, news can be produced by individual entrepreneurial journalists and small-scale journalistic cooperatives that emphasize the uniqueness and quality of their news (ibid., p. 277). Therefore, craft can be used as a metaphor to characterize many different trades or activities with the expression of “the craft(ing) of [noun]” or “to craft [noun].” Essentially, craft can traverse different sectors and undertakings, all of which demonstrate a skilled and mindful engagement with some process of production as well as engagement with the problems posed by the materials and tools, whatever they may be (Adamson, 2010; Sennett, 2008). In the current study, both glass making and photographic image making can escalate to be a craft.

3.4.4 A conceptual framework In this chapter, I have reviewed the literature in three theoretical domains: authenticity, cultural/marketing production, and craft. Figure 2 illustrates the conceptual framework emerging from the review. This dissertation draws on and contributes to two key theoretical domains (see the two boxes at the top of Figure 2): “cultural/marketing production” and “authenticity.” These two domains are conceptual issues. The third domain, craft, is an empirical context but at the same time a theoretical domain (see the box at the bottom of Figure 2) due to the fact that craft is a theoretically charged concept that has been the subject of sizable academic research. Relevant theories about craft can provide conceptual tools and vocabulary for the data analysis and theorizing in the current study. This dissertation pairs the

90 3. Theoretical Inspirations two theoretical areas of “authenticity” and “cultural/marketing production” for the research in an empirical context of craft making.

In Sections 3.4.1, 3.4.2, and 3.4.3, the relationships among the three domains were also analyzed based on the literature. Section 3.4.1 explained that “cultural/marketing production” is related to “authenticity” because of the dialectic between the notions of “authenticity” and “reproduction” (see the arrow and accompanying text between the two top boxes in Figure 2). Section 3.4.2 stated that “craft” and “authenticity” are related, as they have a number of overlapping conceptual dimensions (see the arrow and accompanying text between the two boxes on the right in Figure 2). Section 3.4.3 explained that “craft” and “cultural/marketing production” are related due to the “domain shift” effect (i.e., a practice in cultural/marketing production can become a craft) (see the arrow and accompanying text between the two boxes on the left in Figure 2).

Figure 2. A conceptual framework

4 Methodology

This chapter discusses various aspects of the methodology used in this dissertation. It starts with Section 4.1 (“Research philosophy and approach”), followed by a description of the gathering of empirical data (Section 4.2). Section 4.3 (“Data analysis”) consists of descriptions of the analyses in three areas corresponding to the three research questions. The chapter ends with Section 4.4 (“Reflection on the research quality”) and Section 4.5 (“Considerations about ethics and copyright”).

4.1 Research philosophy and approach

The complexity of the authenticity construct and the conflicting research results on the attributes of authenticity (Beverland et al., 2008; Bruner, 1994; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Peterson, 2005; Rose & Wood, 2005) suggested the need for qualitative research methods. Given the constructivist, interpretive nature of authenticity, this dissertation is interpretive and constructivist, focusing on the conceptualizations of authenticity and how producers construct it.

This study took the ontological stance of social constructionism, which holds that truth is created and constructed rather than something that is out there, and science has always been a language of persuasive communication (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995; Foucault, 1977; Østergaard & Jantzen, 2000). Marketing is considered to be a socially constructed enterprise (Hirschman, 1986). What this dissertation investigated ontologically includes the meanings or attributes of authenticity and how it is constructed by producers and marketers. The research took a constructivist perspective—things appear to be authentic not because they are inherently so but because certain attributes (e.g., originality) are constructed by beliefs, perspectives, or powers (Wang, 1999). There is wide consensus that authenticity is a socially constructed interpretation of the essence of what is observed rather than the properties inherent in an object (Beverland, 2006; Beverland et al., 2008; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Rose & Wood, 2005; Thompson et al., 2006). The constructed authenticity is relative and depends on a context (Cohen, 1988). Constructivism stresses the social or intersubjective process in the construction of knowledge and reality (Wang, 1999). Reality depends on the beholder’s constructions and interpretations with an intersubjective nature.

This dissertation adopted interpretivism, whereby understanding is as important as scientific explanation in human and social sciences (Venkatesh, Sherry, & Firat, 1993). As an interpretivist, I followed a more historical, particularistic approach to the research, meaning that the realities to be observed and described in the current study are time and context specific. Qualitative data were gathered in context, emphasizing understanding rather than prediction and particularity rather than generalization (Arnould, Thompson, Grayson, & Marcoux, 2006). The research aimed to understand the phenomena in question rather than making predictions, and the understanding was more of a process than an end product (Hudson & Ozanne,

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1988). Rather than taking the generalizing approach of the positivist paradigm, the interpretivist approach of this dissertation treated the particulars of a phenomenon as having primary importance. The particularistic approach leads to so-called idiographic knowledge, which is not meant to be generalizable (Hudson & Ozanne, 1988). I produced knowledge that aims to be legitimate, not merely because it should be scientific but because it has worthwhile literary and narrative qualities as well. I conceptualized realities not in terms of objective realities but as virtual and imaginary realities (Solomon & Englis, 1994).

The interpretive approach has the following characteristics: 1) it has the goal of understanding the meaning of texts through interpretive procedures; 2) the context is important; 3) it uses qualitative data and qualitative analysis; and 4) it uses emergent research designs and inference processes (Spiggle, 1994, p. 491). I drew on the theoretical and methodological traditions from the interpretive or humanistic paradigm in the research about marketing, consumption, and consumer culture (Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Hirschman, 1986). This paradigm contends that marketers, consumers, and mass-mediated commercial messages are socio-culturally constituted in and through the manipulation of signs and practices (Venkatesh et al., 2006). This paradigm is a departure from the positivist school—cognitive psychology, information processing, and mathematical choice modeling, which are unidimensional science discourses with concepts of consumer satisfaction, information processing, decision making, and strategic marketing development, predicated on individual, semiautonomous marketing, and consuming agents.

I adopted an ethnographic approach to the research. As a socially constructed phenomenon, the issue of authenticity is best explored through ethnographic and in- depth qualitative exploration (Cohen, 1988; Peterson, 1997). This approach to research allows for rich data related to the meaning of authenticity created by the production processes and practices of cultural/marketing producers. Ethnography fits the interpretive epistemology, as it aims to explicate patterns of action that are cultural and social rather than cognitive (Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994). With a root in cultural anthropology and focusing on small-scale societies, ethnography concerns the nature, construction, and maintenance of culture, which is the “shared system of meanings” (Goulding, 2005). An ethnographic approach enables multiple entries in natural settings to explicate patterns of actions that are cultural and social. A researcher would triangulate different data sources as much as possible to seek the converging conclusions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) so that the interpretation can be constructed more accurately.

Lastly, I assumed a historical perspective on the research given that Glasriket has a long history with rich heritage. Peñaloza (2000) argued that history is not only a research method but also a source of cultural meanings. In Glasriket, for example, it has temporal authenticity, whereby glassworks often make references to their roots and historical traditions. I grounded the analyses in history and culture (Brown, Hirschman, & Maclaran, 2001). Throughout the process of the research project, I developed a sensitivity to the nature of the historical context in which the glassworks

94 4. Methdology were embedded. I studied the historical development of the region, histories of glassworks, and biographies of key photographers by tapping into museum exhibitions, archives, marketing materials, and an image sample spanning a historical time frame. The phenomena were interpreted in relation to the social and historical contexts of the activities of the actors.

4.2 Data collection

Over a three-year period (August 2016 to October 2019), I made a total of twelve trips to Glasriket and obtained data from multiple sources: interviews with actors, photographic images as cultural text, archival data, marketing collateral, and observations. The collections of three major types of data are detailed below— photographic images, interviews, and other data.

4.2.1 Photographic images This dissertation used photographic images, which are visual data, representing a valuable data source providing cultural meanings that are not revealed by other data sources. In addition to narratives, stories, and discourses, the photographic image is another type of persuasive messages created by marketers and cultural producers to convey meanings. Photography has an epistemological nature, as it is a medium for recording (McLuhan, 2003) and a tool for conducting sociological research (Becker, 1974b). Photographic images offer a wealth of detailed, culturally constituted information (McCracken, 1988), and they can serve as a lens to analyze broader cultural issues.

I worked to search for, scan, identify, and select a sample of photographic images (see Appendix 3). The selection of images was a three-stage procedure. First, I examined all of the available archival and marketing materials scattered among museums, factory stores, tourist spots, books, archives, websites, the John Selbing family archive, and so on. Second, I tentatively selected some images that demonstrated typicality and representativeness in important cultural meaning categories concerning the craft of making glass conveying authenticity. Such an approach implied that I had developed some pre-concepts based on reading the relevant literature, and I selected images against a conceptual framework. I followed the suit of precedent studies that had adopted a way of purposively sampling limited ads or images in marketing to exemplify theoretical points (Mick et al., 2004; Williamson, 1978; Zhao & Belk, 2008a, 2008b). The selection criteria concerned how conceptually interesting, rich, and compelling each image was (Mick, 1986; Mick & Oswald, 2006; Rose, 2016) in revealing cultural meanings pertinent to this research. I did not aim to find images that were statistically representative of a wider sample. The soundness of the sample depends on its analytical integrity and interest rather than its generalizability. Third, it was an iterative process with progressive refinement of the sample—I did not decide the sample completely at just one time point upfront. Instead, throughout the research process, during which I was immersed in multiple types of data and various theoretical literature, I kept on discovering and adding extra

95 Jönköping International Business School images that would call for a new theme or belong to an identified theme and at the same time replacing less illustrative images in the provisional sample.

The final sample consists of 42 photographic images, of which I obtained 39 from the research context and took 3 during field observation (see Appendix 3). The pool covers a range of photographs: product images, advertisements, photographs about designers, glassworks, and hot shops, documentary photographs, and so on. The time frame of the sample is 1950 to 2018. The decision to have a starting point of 1950 was because of the inclusion of photographs shot by Orrefors’s inhouse photographer, John Selbing, in the 1950s and onwards. The inclusion of works by John Selbing provides balance to the overall sample to afford a sense of diversity (old vs. contemporary, color vs. black and white) and a historical dimension. Placed in Appendix 3, each image is labeled with a “plate number” and is referred to recurrently in the text in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.

4.2.2 Interviews I conducted a number of semi-structured in-depth interviews with various actors in Glasriket. The interviews with photographers aimed to understand how they photograph glass products and related objects, their thinking and practices, the creative process, and how the work creates meaning. The interviews with other types of informants evolved around the topics of the craft of glass making, photographic image making, and marketing practices. All the informants were provided with a brief outline of the study.

I interviewed seven photographers, seven marketing managers, seven designers, and other pertinent actors. The sample consists of a total of 33 informants (see Appendix 1). The sampling was purposive, as I contacted people to meet specific needs tied to the research purpose. I found the informants through the snowballing method: I asked people whom I interviewed who else they thought I needed to consult. As for the photographers, I either obtained their names and contact details from the glassworks (their clients) or just cold called them after seeing their names in some marketing materials. I classified the informants by their professions and their roles in this research project (e.g., photographer, marketing manager, and designer). I built friendly relationships with some informants and conducted multiple interviews at different time points given the progression and adjustment of the research. I re- interviewed some of them during the data analysis as new questions emerged.

Appendix 2 shows the questions posed to the four key types of informants: production managers, designers, photographers, and marketers. During the interviews, photographic images were presented for discussion as a way of using the photo elicitation technique (Heisley & Levy, 1991): showing images to informants (e.g., photographers, marketers, and consumers) to elicit their comments from their own perspectives. With the photographer informants, I discussed other photographers’ practices and works (e.g., asking questions like “what can you see in this picture?”). Sometimes, the photographer informants voluntarily brought up and showed their

96 4. Methdology photographs to complement and illustrate their explanations. Each interview lasted for 30 to 90 minutes and was digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.

The total number of photographer informants was seven, which sounds like a small sample in the eyes of social researchers in other topics or contexts. The quantity of commercial photographers cannot match that of other types of informants, such as consumers or corporate managers. There are not large legions of photographers in any society (like consumers or company managers) due to the nature of this trade. There are currently only around five major glassworks in Glasriket, and each of them uses one or two external photographers as contractors in a stable client–agency relationship. Hence, around ten photographers were active in Glasriket during my ethnographic research time frame. Consequently, the criteria for judging the “size” of the sample of informants in other social research projects cannot simply be used in this research project. In addition, my analysis of the production practices of photographers was based not only on interviews with these seven photographers but also on much more beyond them: interviews with peripheral actors (20+ informants), images as artifacts produced by these photographers, archives, and ethnographic work. For the late photographer John Selbing, I had much deeper access to data than regular research projects would afford. After meeting his son Anders Selbing in September 2017 at a glass industry conference, I visited his house in November 2017 and spent two days talking with him and gathering ample archival files. We held numerous phone calls and email exchanges after that. I sent two drafts of this dissertation (only the pertinent parts) to him in January 2018 and April 2019, respectively, to invite him to read them and provide feedback.

For the study of photographers’ image production practices (RQ2), I did not rely solely on interviews as the data collection method. There are many unspoken practices and implicit intentions. Many aspects of photographers’ practices are non- discursive in nature. This is a problem with interviewing creative or esthetic workers, who are often inarticulate. Artists are often reluctant to talk about their work. They do not want to articulate its meaning separately from the act of creation itself, perhaps for fear of stifling inspiration or because the articulation is in the act of creation (Risatti, 2007, p. 224).

I experienced this difficulty in multiple interviews with informants who are creative workers. In one interview with a glass designer, at one point, the designer refused to answer my questions, as she felt some of my terms were “too big, abstract, and theoretical” (her original wording). She felt it was difficult to verbalize any thought or expression when I asked her to share her understanding of the material qualities of glass. She said she was barely exposed to the term material qualities and offered her stance bluntly: “designers focus on what they do rather than developing a language to talk about it” (interview, November 23, 2017). Photographer Jörgen took a similar stance when discussing whether photographers can talk about how they carry out their work: A lot of photographers cannot explain what they do because they really don’t know from time to time what is supposed to be done. They sound secretive, but

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the fact is—they don’t really know until they are there, with all of the stuff. I am one of them—I can’t explain what I am doing. (Photographer Jörgen, October 3, 2018) This reality was echoed by Rosenblum (1978a, pp. 10–11) in her study of the work of photographers: “fine art photographers seemed unable to articulate the simplest ideas, and I often grew impatient with their preciousness and ‘arty’ presentation of self.” The reality experienced and the relevant literature rectified my a priori assumption that these esthetic workers can verbalize what they do. Even if they could, they tended to talk about it in a vocabulary that was largely different from that of an academic researcher equipped with theoretical literature. Therefore, the interviews only offered one route for the research to answer RQ1 and RQ2. I also relied on other routes: their works (the images), comments from peripheral personnel related to the work of the photographers, archival data, and observations made in ethnographic fieldwork.

4.2.3 Other data Through the ethnographic fieldwork, which lasted for three years, I stayed grounded in the culture and social practices of the community of Glasriket and became more acquainted with the context. During the twelve visits paid to the region, I had direct contact with the actors under study, experienced phenomena, and then translated the experience into verbal interpretations. Ethnography is concerned with the building up of “embodied data and knowledge” (Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994; Denny, 2006). It means that the construction of analytical accounts should be produced by our very own bodies (through seeing, sensing, touching, hearing, and tasting) about life. With multiple entries into the studied context, I immersed myself in the social world of the actors (photographers, designers, craftsmen, marketers, museum curators, etc.). I experienced two cultural fields, the world of glass making and the world of photography, which are entangled in Glasriket. I conducted first-hand participant observation of glass making, photograph shooting, glass design, tourism spots, retailing in the form of factory stores, and so on. I acted as an ethnographer by living through the same experiences as the studied people. I worked to discover and share a common phenomenological sensibility and understanding. I took field notes of observations of events and made reflection notes after interviews. Through my engagement in the community of Glasriket, I worked to obtain insights from an insider’s view or knowledge of the shared meanings (Hudson & Ozanne, 1988) about glass making and photographic image making. Below are accounts of important data- gathering activities and efforts in the ethnographic work.

Textual materials: • Marketing collateral includes product catalogues, flyers, ads, and contents from websites and social media accounts. • Secondary data include news releases, exhibition catalogues, and news articles. • Archival data include notes and photographs taken during museum visits, from books, and from another doctorate dissertation about Glasriket (Holmér, 2017).

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I attended two glass industry conferences: • The “Glass Industry Day” (November 23, 2016 in Pukeberg, Sweden): participants from industry, industrial associations, educational institutions, and other actors discussed the future of the glass industry. • The Nordic Utility Glass Conference (October 5–6, 2017 in Växjö, Sweden): the theme was “glass, dining, and design”; sessions, speeches, and discussions were recorded and notes were taken.

Other experiences/observation activities (in chronological order): • 2016: Attended a glass-blowing class at Kosta Boda on April 20. • 2017: Visited The Glass Factory, a glassworks-transformed museum with exhibitions, events, glass-blowing demonstrations, and so on, located in Boda, and took photos (July 15–17). • 2017: FORMEX tradeshow (Stockholm)—attended the Nordic region’s largest trade show for design and interior products, with the presence of major glassworks from Glasriket (August 23–26). • 2017: Stayed for two nights at the Kosta Boda Art Hotel in November to experience it. The hotel is a glass-themed hotel built by the New Wave Group, the parent company of the Kosta Boda glassworks. • 2017: Spent six hours on November 16 observing the process and activities of glass blowing and manufacturing of the handmade stemware of the Intermezzo series on the factory floor of Kosta Boda, took photos and shot videos, and talked with the production manager and craftsmen. • 2017 (November in Linköping): Visited the family archive of Orrefors’s photographer John Selbing (who had passed away), located at the home of his son Anders Selbing; gathered archival materials (photographs, trade press articles, and biographical and historical materials); interviewed Anders Selbing. • 2016–2018: Visited, multiple times, the Swedish Glass Museum located in Växjö and took photos and notes. • 2016–2018: Observed the factory stores of Kosta Boda, Målerås, Orrefors, and Skruf (multiple times), collected marketing materials, observed the behaviors of consumers, and took photos. • 2018 (October): Visited the exhibition “Form for all senses: Glass designer Erika Lagerbielke” at the Swedish Glass Museum located in Växjö. • 2019 (April): Visited the exhibition “The involuntary photographer: John Selbing” at the Vandalorum museum located in Värnamo.

In addition, I learned about photography by reading practical “how to” books written for photographers. I tapped into trade resources of commercial photography: browsing the website of the Swedish Photographers Association (www.sfoto.se) and reading blog articles and discussions on the Web regarding the work of freelancing photographers in developed countries. I also learned about glass from books (e.g., Brewerton, Leperlier, & Cummings, 2013; Falk et al., 2011), blogs, and websites.

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Lastly, the originally perceived barrier of “studying a context in another language” turned out to be a non-issue thanks to the fact that the vast majority of Swedes speak English. I am not a native Swede and am not literate in Swedish. Most of the people I encountered in Glasriket speak English, except for some elderly people. For informants who do not speak English, I invited a translator to help with the interviews. Most of the marketing materials have an English version due to the intention of the region to attract international tourists and the need of glassworks to sell products in overseas markets. For archival materials that were in Swedish, I used translation software to translate them into English.

4.3 Data analysis

The data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This means that I started analyzing data in the middle point of this project, while continuing to gather more and adjust the research direction. The data analysis effort of this dissertation comprised three parts: the analysis of the craft production of glass (corresponding to RQ1. How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via the craft production of objects?), the analysis of photographers’ image production practices (corresponding to RQ2: How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing images?), and the analysis of the relationship between the two types of production (corresponding to RQ3: In what way are the two production practices related?). The procedures for these three analytical steps are explained next.

4.3.1 Analysis of the craft production of glass (RQ1) The analysis was conducted through the integration of multiple types of data: interviews, textual data from archives and marketing collateral, photographic images, and observations. The unit of analysis was the production strategies and practices of producers distributed across categories of authenticity. I underwent a process of dialectic tacking, moving back and forth between the data and the relevant literature as a means of theory generation.

There are two aspects to the analysis. First, I looked for themes that were theoretically sensitive and sensible (Glaser & Strauss, 1967)—in this study, themes concerning authenticity. Authenticity provides a vocabulary to analyze, and my analysis was informed by the existing literature on authenticity (Beverland, 2005b, 2006; Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Gundlach & Neville, 2012), which offered me theoretical sensitivity. While searching for what is authentic, I looked for references to “authenticity” and related cultural thematical concepts, such as the method of production, materials and ingredients, the use of culture and history as referents, the use of place as a referent, esthetics, uniqueness, and originality, among others. The meaning or genre of authenticity is “the essence of what is observed.” My capturing of the essence of authenticity was in line with the agreement among scholars about the ontology of authenticity, which is a socially constructed interpretation of the essence of what is observed rather than the properties inherent in any object

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(Beverland, 2006; Beverland et al., 2008; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Rose & Wood, 2005). Second, while investigating how glass producers in Glasriket construct or fabricate such categories of authenticity, I adopted an inductive approach to develop categories as ways of creating authenticity, inspired by previous studies of how marketers produce market offerings (Dion & Arnould, 2011; Peñaloza, 2000). Overall, my analysis process followed the basic steps of categorization, abstraction, comparison, dimensionalization, iteration, and refutation suggested by Spiggle (1994). I inductively constructed the findings that have conceptual relevance to the research question. Theoretical categories (what is authentic and how glass producers construct them) emerged as having explanatory power, and I used thick and rich descriptions to elaborate them to reconstruct cultural producers’ production behaviors.

For the analysis of photographic images, I applied two tools: semiotics (Mick, 1997; Nöth, 1990; Oswald, 2012) and the critical visual method (Schroeder, 2006). Semiotics, the science of signs originating from the works of Saussure (1915) and Peirce (1998), provides techniques and rich theories for analyzing visual images (Mick, 1986; Oswald, 2012). I applied both the Saussurean and the Peircean paradigm, and a combined or integrated way of using the two has been proven to be possible and promising (Holbrook & Grayson, 1986; Mick et al., 2004). The Saussurean tradition focuses on the presupposition that meaning comes about from differences, which are expressed as the binary oppositions of structuralism (Mick et al., 2004). Peirce (1985) described the signifying process, or semiosis, as a dynamic relationship between three elements: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. As for the relationship between sign and object, there are three types of relationship: icon, index, and symbol (Mick et al., 2004). In the current study, the physical objects of glass products, designers, factories, and so on are the “object,” the photographic images created by photographers are the “sign,” and the understanding or interpretation of the signs held by a reader is the interpretant. For each image, I looked at its denotations and connotations, the signs, their signifiers, and broader systems of meaning (Hall, 1980; Rose, 2016; Williamson, 1978). An image always refers to something more than itself or is a proxy for some other social meaning (Echo, 1976; Nöth, 1990). A sign is a fundamental unit used to represent something else (i.e., a relationship that links a signifier to a signified) (Nöth, 1990). There is a “sign relationship” that connects a signifier with a signified. The signifier is to be analyzed in terms of the signified. Section 1.7.2 in Chapter 1 provides brief explanations of the key terminologies of semiotics.

For the analysis of photographic images, besides semiotics, I applied the critical visual method (Schroeder, 2002, 2006), which is an interdisciplinary method for understanding and contextualizing images, connecting images to the cultural contexts concerning production and consumption. Following this approach, I looked at the building blocks or key variables of an image: subject matter, spatial composition, form, genre, medium, style, context, comparison, color, light, and so on (Barrett, 2005; Schroeder, 2006). The interpretation began with the description of a photograph and aimed to identify an analytical concept in an image. The visual

101 Jönköping International Business School features of a photograph were also taken into consideration: color, line, light, texture, and perspective based on the esthetic and scientific standpoints.

4.3.2 Analysis of photographers’ image production practices (RQ2) Section 5.2 in Chapter 5 addresses RQ2 (How is authenticity constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing images representing craft production?). For the findings for this research question, I adopted a practice theory approach. The “practice” is the main unit of analysis. I drew on an empirical inquiry into the trade and craft of photography, looking at the creative process and the discrete moments of thinking and activities as well as the patterns of practice that can be described and codified, based on the interviews with photographers and peripheral personnel (e.g., marketing managers, museum curators, designers, critics, and cultural journalists), triangulated with the images produced, archival data, and observations. I drew a parallel between my research about the production practices of photographers and past studies on advertising production (Eckhardt & Arvidsson, 2016; Hirschman, 1989; Kover, 1995a; Nyilasy & Reid, 2009a), and “marketing-as- practice (MAP)” (Geiger & Kelly, 2014; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Skålén & Hackley, 2011; Svensson, 2007), which served as inspiration and examples of researching the “production” aspect of advertising and marketing.

A.-S. Lehmann (2012, p. 12) observed that there are five approaches to studying the making of things: 1) direct observation of the process (anthropology and sociology); 2) scrutinizing objects for traces of making (archaeology, art history, and history of science); 3) analyzing textual descriptions of making; 4) engaging in reconstruction and reenactment; and 5) studying the visual documentation of making in drawings, paintings, photographs, or films. Given the inadequacy of data from interviews (explained in the previous Section 4.2 “Data collection”), I adopted approach #2 in the argument of A.-S. Lehmann (2012), which has been used by archeologists, art historians, and visual analysts, who extract information about making from the object (e.g., a produced photographic image or a painting work) itself. As an alternative to direct communication with informants, the intention and techniques of photographers can be inferred by analyzing their output, the resulting image. Thus, the image itself contributed to the practice-based analysis of production as an extra analytical tool. An example is a study of consumers’ brand community practices, in which Schau et al. (2009) used artifacts (e.g., images posted by consumers on online community websites), in concert with interview data, to theorize about consumption practices.

In the practice-based analysis, I embedded a semiotic perspective that can provide a logic of discovery (Mick, 1986) to help with the theorizing about image production. By referring to some images that had already been analyzed (Section 5.1 in Chapter 5), I could infer the intention and purposes of their photographers, following one of A.-S. Lehmann’s (2012) suggestion of studying the making of things (to extract information about the making from the resulting object). In Section 5.2 in Chapter 5, the three practices—the “practice of reproducing,” “practice of indexing,” and “practice of documenting”—borrow terminologies from semiotics: “ionic sign,”

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“index,” and “referent,” respectively. The detailed account of each practice explains the terminology and the way in which it was applied in theorizing about that practice.

The analysis of the practices of photographers involved social constructivist interpretation. As argued in Chapter 3, I adopted the “circuit of practice” (Magaudda, 2011) to operationalize the analysis. There were three organizing elements or building blocks in the circuit: object, doing, and meanings as teleoaffective structure. They served as categories of data analysis, which means that the analysis was directed toward a search for specific data falling into these categories. In addition, other relevant theoretical concepts in practice theory (e.g., the human–object relationship, community of practice, object-focused practice, relation-focused practice, etc.) were deliberately brought into play in the analysis and theorizing.

The analysis consisted of two steps. In the first step in a grounded, first-level exploration of the data, I used the three building blocks (object, doing, and meanings as teleoaffective structure) in the “circuit of practice” as theoretical codes to identify data falling into these preselected building blocks to build a picture of the texture of the practices in question. Descriptions were made to unfold theoretical insights to capture the significant properties of practices from the perspective of these three building blocks. In the second step, I developed a typology of photographers’ image- making practices, consisting of five different types: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. Typifying particular characteristics of the ways of performing photographic work, each of the five practices is characterized by a distinctive meaning or purpose in the teleoaffective property (“what do I do all these for?” or “objective of authenticating market offerings”), which photographers aim to accomplish, by performing activities (doings) and interactions with objects. Being distinctive from other practices, each type of practice, as a thematic category of conducting photographic work, was constructed by configuring the three interconnected building blocks within the “circuit of practice.” Inferences and conclusions were made about each practice as a typical way of carrying out photographic work rather than any pattern about individual photographers.

4.3.3 Analysis of the relationship between the two types of production (RQ3) This analysis started by comparing the findings for RQ1 and RQ2 to identify the similarities and differences between them. Then, their relationships were derived based on the logics of the indexical sign and the iconic sign in semiotics. C. S. Peirce’s (1985) semiotic approach identifies a triangular relationship among three basic elements: sign, object, and interpretant (Nöth, 1990; Peirce, 1998). These elements work in interaction with each other in a process called “semiosis,” which is a triadic entity (Mick, 1986, p. 198) (see Figure 3). The sign stands for something other than itself (the object). The object is also called the “referent,” something that is tangible and real in the world (Rose, 2016). Interpretant does not mean the interpreter or an interpretation but a mental image held by the interpreter as a reaction to the sign (Christensen & Askegaard, 2001). As for the logical relationship between

103 Jönköping International Business School the sign and its object, Peirce (1955) created a taxonomy of three types of sign: iconic (based on resemblance), indexical (based on causal correspondence), and symbolic (based on convention). In iconic signs, the signifier represents the signified by having a likeness or resemblance to it. For example, a photographic image of a piece of glassware is an iconic sign of the glassware (the object). For an indexical sign, the signifier relates to it being signified by some correspondence of fact, and the relationship is frequently causal. As an example of an indexical sign, an image showing smoke infers the existence of fire. For the two terms of “signifier” and “signified,” Section 1.7.2 in Chapter 1 provides explanations.

Figure 3. Peirce’s triadic semiosis (Mick, 1986, p. 198)

4.4 Reflections on research quality

The interpretive epistemology implies its own appropriate evaluative criteria, different from those of the positivist science (e.g., internal and external validity, reliability, objectivity, replicability, and generalizability). Since interpretations, by nature, are rhetorical devices (Holt, 1993), an interpretation cannot be judged based on objective criteria. Below are my reflections and views regarding the research quality of this dissertation.

I was aware of the subjective nature of the researcher’s role in carrying out interpretive and ethnographic research. I followed the tradition of the interpretive, humanistic mode of inquiry by serving as an instrument in the observation, selection, coordination, and interpretation of the data (Hirschman, 1986; Spiggle, 1994). My personally experienced knowledge functioned as scientific data. In interpretivism, the subjective positions of researchers are acknowledged as being legitimate for knowledge production (Venkatesh et al., 1993). Under the interpretive approach, the research inquiry is a social construction resulting from the subjective interaction between the researcher and the phenomenon, and the two sides are mutually interactive, complicit in the research endeavor (Denny, 2006). My interpretation of the findings was intersubjective in nature, as I obtained knowledge and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1993b) from the research context.

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I was aware that the data were produced rather than being gathered, as “gathering” implies an attendant assumption. The data were produced in the form of interaction between me and the context. Observers are implicated agents, pre-oriented in certain ways to interpret the data (Denny, 2006). Thus, the research for the current project is inherently value laden, as my values inevitably influenced the choice of phenomena, methods, data, and findings (Denny, 2006; Hirschman, 1986). Therefore, a sense of self-reflexivity is necessary. I had barely encountered glass or glass making prior to this research project. I acted as a researcher, an outsider, and a visitor to this region. I had some experience in managing the creative and productive aspects of photographic images in my previous marketing career. During the research process, I constantly questioned my own pre-assumptions about the topic under scrutiny and problematized the observations: 1) to question my own preconceptions about the studied phenomena, with a sort of unlearning about “what we think we know”; and 2) to be aware of the limits of my own experience and to be attentive to difference and multiplicity of understandings and truths.

I have to admit that I developed the conceptualizations of authenticity (the five categories of authenticity in Section 5.1 in Chapter 5) myself rather than through a co-construction process with consumers or other actors in Glasriket. To some extent, my analyses of the meanings of the five genres of authenticity in Section 5.1 are subjective or biased. For example, in “Construction of material authenticity” in Section 5.1, “material authenticity” is a type of objective authenticity (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). I made the interpretations about “material authenticity” without obtaining verification or judgments from experts or authoritative parties according to some objective criteria (Bruner, 1994; Trilling, 1972). I acknowledge that my findings are hypotheses and that they are my own constructions of meanings concerning authenticity in various instances, open to further study and testing.

The criterion of generalizability or transferability of the results is similar to external validity in the positivist approach. It concerns whether one manifestation of a phenomenon can be transferred to a second manifestation of the phenomenon (admitting implicitly that no two social contexts are identical) and whether the research results can be connected to wider settings, contexts, and domains, thus extending beyond the specific context studied (Hirschman, 1986; Spiggle, 1994). This dissertation focuses on one research context, so the generalizability of the findings to other contexts and/or other types of sectors or product categories can be speculative. The interpretive paradigm that I adopted opposes a generalized notion of universalism. Instead, the conceptualization of truth accommodates localisms and particularisms (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995). There need to be different theories of marketing and cultural production rather than a single or unified one. Marketing/cultural production processes may not be the same across contexts both as empirical reality and as theoretical possibility.

Regarding the generalizability of the findings obtained from the analysis of photographers’ image-making practices (for RQ2), this part makes generalizations on the basis of practice theoretically informed qualitative data, focusing on the patterns

105 Jönköping International Business School of determining structures (Halkier & Jensen, 2011). To achieve analytical generalization based on qualitative data, I made theorized claims about the patterns of categories and dynamics of the material (e.g., the typology of practices) (Kvale, 1996). The results from the specific and concrete data were made more general not because of population representativeness but because the results became valid for categories related to social scientific concepts (Halkier & Jensen, 2011). Thus, the results (i.e., the typology of practices) were abstracted from specific acts of photographers’ image production work and can reflect some typical ways of performing commercial photographic work. The results (i.e., either the typology of practices or each individual practice within the typology) are intelligible patterns that may be transferrable to other contexts. Obviously, as with much qualitative research, the findings are constrained in regard to generalizability at the level of this single research project. However, the study about photographers’ image-making practices affords an opportunity regarding the generalizability of the theoretical ideas (i.e., either the typology of practices or each individual practice) that have been revealed.

Dependability is equivalent to reliability in the positivist approach. This criterion refers to the dependability and consistency of the research instrument, the researcher. Unfortunately, this study did not have the luxury of using multiple researchers in a team and cross checking the interpretations constructed by them (Hirschman, 1986, p. 244).

To enhance the credibility of the interpretations, I performed a member-checking measure. As one key criterion for assessing an interpretive, humanistic type of research (Hirschman, 1986), credibility concerns whether the interpretations have “represented those multiple realities adequately … whether the reconstructions that have been arrived at via the inquiry are credible to the constructors of the original multiple realities” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 296). I sent pertinent parts (Chapter 5— Findings and Chapter 2—Research context) to four key informants in April 2019 to invite them to read them and provide feedback. This member-checking step helped to ensure the accuracy of relevant information and tested whether my interpretations matched the reading and interpretations of the informants. Their feedback was incorporated into the final version.

4.5 Consideration of ethics and copyright

During the research process, I paid attention to a few ethical and legal considerations. • Informed consent: For all the interviews, I adopted the principle of voluntary consent by informing the informants about the intention and content of my inquiries and obtained written informed consent from them to respect their freedom, right to know, and dignity (Neuman, 2006). • Privacy, anonymity, and confidentiality: I used nicknames for most informants to preserve their anonymity. There were a few exceptions. For well-known glass designers and the photographer John Selbing, I used their full names. Well-known designers in Glasriket are like public figures, as their names and images have been

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widely publicized in various marketing materials. John Selbing is a well-known photographer, whose status is similar to that of well-known artists. • Copyright of photographic images: I consulted the lawyer of my university regarding the copyright of the photographic images used in this dissertation. Given the academic and non-commercial nature of this dissertation and the condition that the images are applied, as illustrations, in conjunction with the text, I do not need approval from the owners of copyright according to the Swedish law “Upphovsrättslagen” (Chapter 2, 23 §).9 Despite this exemption, I sent written notices to organizations and publishers about the usage of their images in this dissertation. The names of the organizations, publishers, and photographers who created and own the copyright of the images are provided in this dissertation as acknowledgments.

9 Weblink to the law: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk- forfattningssamling/lag-1960729-om-upphovsratt-till-litterara-och_sfs-1960-729

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5 Findings

This present chapter contains the empirical findings of this dissertation, addressing the three RQs laid out in Chapter 1. Section 5.1 “Substantive construction of the authenticity of market offerings via craft production” addresses RQ1, Section 5.2 “Communicative construction of authenticity via photographers’ practices of image making” addresses RQ2, and Section 5.3 “Relationships between the two types of production” addresses RQ3.

5.1 Substantive construction of the authenticity of market offerings via craft production of glass objects

This section addresses Research Question #1 “How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via the craft production of glass objects?” Figure 4 provides an overview of the findings. Analyses hereinafter reveal the deliberate strategies and tactics used by producers (i.e., designers, craftsmen, managers) in the glass industry at Glasriket in constructing the authenticity of market offerings in five categories— technique, material, geographical, temporal, and original (see the five boxes on the left of Figure 4). Each category corresponds to a genre of authenticity, which also sheds light on the meaning of that genre or type of authenticity. For each category, three mechanisms of construction were identified and theorized (see the five boxes in the middle of Figure 4). The interpretation and analysis of each category capture the practices and discourses of the producers in their day-to-day actions and internal processes. The adjective “substantive” is used to characterize the construction work that is concrete, embedded in the material and physical production of glass products rather than merely marketing ploys. Within each category, paradoxes or ambiguities in constructing authenticity are also presented and discussed (see the five boxes on the right of Figure 4).

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Figure 4. Overview of findings addressing RQ1 in Section 5.1

5.1.1 Construction of technique authenticity To be “hand-made,” you need to make glass that could not be copied by machine. – A museum curator and speaker at the 2017 Nordic Utility Glass Conference Technique authenticity refers to the authenticity bestowed upon market offerings (products, the glasswork brands, the place of Glasriket as a tourist destination, etc.) through the craft way of making glass products, namely the handmade mode. People’s perception of craft or craftsmanship, as a cultural activity (Sennett, 2008), is usually related to the notion of “hand” – the cultural meanings of “handmade” derive from the praxis that brings objects into being. In a craft industry, “handmade” might be seen as a de facto requirement of its practice. Consumers often understand the craftsmanship in glass through the concept of the “handmade-ness” of the craft objects.

The two terms “handmade” and “machine-made” present the opposite ends of the spectrum regarding levels of technical manual skill. The comparisons between “hand” and “machine” have direct bearing on the origin and meaning of the notion of “handmade.” “Handmade” emphasizes the role of the hand in the making of craft objects. The objects are conditioned and shaped by human hand, mouth and body. The object comes into being in the hands of a master craftsman—a primary rationale for the object’s desirability and cost. Consumers are deeply invested in the idea that a glass object made by hand is qualitatively different from one made by machine. The handmade thing is one of a kind, distinguished from works of mechanical reproduction. The viewers will develop an awareness and appreciation of the skilled hands and the techniques employed.

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The “handmade” mode of glass manufacturing at Glasriket has adopted a workshop system based on a traditional respect for skill, cooperation and design (Sweet, 1998). The center of attention in a workshop of a glassworks is the blowing room with its furnaces and melt, where at each gathering hole there is a team of craftsmen known collectively as a “chair.” Glass is blown and shaped in teams, under division of labor, within one “chair” (Holmér, 2017). A “chair” consists of seven to eight members, including the gaffers (also called “master blowers”), gatherers, mold-holders, carriers-in, cutters, and engravers (Suzhou Museum, 2014). Each worker carries out his 10 particular duties and shifting among roles is out of the question (Holmér, 1998). Plate 1 (“Technique authenticity—a photograph explaining the chair system in handmade mode of glass production”) is a color photograph explaining the chair system in handmaking glass at Glasriket. The image appears in the book Swedish Glass Under Six Centuries (Nicklasson, 2007), which is an educational and historical publication for the general public consisting of chapters authored by curators of the Swedish Glass Museum. With the title “Workshop Constellation,” the photograph is a mixture of the genres of “showing the making” and documentary photography, as it captured the work in process at the Sandvik Glassworks in 1990. The accompanying captions, in Swedish, explain five different roles in a team of craftsmen (“a chair”) in a hot shop: master, gatherer, mold-holder, carrier-in, and cutter. Each role mentioned in the captions is numbered, corresponding to a worker in the image that is marked with a number.

At Glasriket, the so-called “handmade” production mode is realized through mouth- blowing, the central activity in the blowing room in the hot shop of a glassworks. This activity is reminiscent of the “throwing” method employed by potters in another craft sector. The manual craft production is enacted by glassblowers, who mouth-blow each piece. Central to the handmade mode of making glass, mouth-blowing is a form- emerging process, in which the blower must “dance” with the material, in continuous modulation, to achieve the becoming of things. A glass object comes into being according to the temperature of the glass material and the form is co-decided by the material and the glassblower contingent on the changes in the temperature. The glassblower has a series of skills or know-hows that inform his engagement with the material. Designer Torben’s quotation below reveals the tenets of the mouth-blowing of glass: For mouth-blown glass, it is really about man and material. The glassblower and the glass have to become one because they have to be in agreement on what to do. It (glass) has its character, it has a will of its own. A good glassblower knows what temperature the glass should be at. If the temperature is not right, then he cannot force the glass according to his idea. When he forces the glass,

10 “His” is used to refer to workers on the factory floor because the labor division in glassworks in Glasriket has been gendered. Workers working in a workshop have been purely male, and women have been limited to marginal roles of doing inspections and packaging.

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the glass will resist. The result will always be bad. (Glass designer Torben, November 17, 2017) Glass mouth-blowing is similar to the organic “making” of objects in another trade, namely basket weaving, as observed by Tim Ingold (2000, p. 340): “[T]he surface is where substance meets action, and the growth of natural things is immanent within the substance itself; a basket emerges in the practice of making; the surface of an artifact is the point where culture confronts nature.” In both scenarios, materials are not forced by machines to create objects according to some pre-drawn design blueprints, but through a contingent, adaptive collaboration between the craftsman and the material to let the object emerge.

Glassblowing is a skill demanding years of training and practice (Holmér, 1998). Glassblowing is a profession with traditions and is often the province of families who have practiced it for several generations and the older generations passed on knowledge and trade secrets to the younger generations (Holmér, 2002). “Much is the same in terms of the actual craft. The molten glass is still shaped free-hand with the help of essentially the same tools as those used back then: scissors, tongs, soaked wooden moulds,” states the chapter about the history of Kosta in the book Kosta Boda Art Hotel (Triberg, 2011, p. 17). Glassworks at Glasriket have been sticking to the more than one-hundred-year-old tradition of mouth-blowing glass. The craft mode of manufacturing has been a heritage cherished by multiple actors here. The glassworks know that craftsmanship is still the Swedish glass industry’s best competitive weapon, and “handmade” is a differentiator to be leveraged to compete against imports from low-wage countries. The idea of handmade lingers powerfully in the rhetoric and images circulated at and beyond Glasriket. The following sections describe what actually happens when a thing is made, and the “handmadeness” character is represented through the procedure, object, and tool.

5.1.1.1 Handmade technique represented through the procedure The production of glass was done in the factories, as something behind the scene. The visibility of the processes by which a product is made is significant. The “transparency of process” allows authenticity to be displayed through a Goffman- type backstage scene, through its “open characteristic” that allows outsiders a glimpse of the inner workings (MacCannell, 1976). Photographic images serve as an avenue for glassworks to bring the imagery of the process and technique of “handmaking” from the backstage to external audiences.

Plate 2 A⁠–⁠E (“Technique authenticity ‒ the sequence of making mouth-blown glass”) appear in the beginning pages of the 2016 product catalogue of Orrefors, illustrating the procedure involved in making mouth-blown drinking glass stemware. The glassworks brand Orrefors uses such images to claim ownership of certain techniques and procedures. Ten photographs, together with accompanying captions, describe ten steps, thereby constituting a syntagmatic sign as the photographs come together to form a syntax and a sequence. The accompanying verbal texts function as a “relay” to the photographic images, in the terminology of Barthes (1977, p. 41), as the words

112 5. Findings complement the images and elaborate their meanings. In the 10-step sequence, narrative connotations unfold in a temporal manner (Rose, 2016). Both the words and images are fragments of a more general syntagm, and the unity of the message is realized at a higher level ‒ the diegesis (Barthes, 1977).

Plate 3 (“Technique authenticity ‒ two pages showing the six steps in the making of handmade glass products at the Målerås”) contains two pages from the Glasriket magazine, detailing six key procedures in the making of handmade glass products at the Målerås glassworks, namely casting, blowing, engraving, sanding, blasting, and painting, with a craft person performing the activity in each role in a real factory setting. The images are accompanied with texts including the headline “From sketch to perfection.” The whole image implies a sequence, comprising different shots showing stages in the making of the product, thus the sign is syntagmatic.

These images showing craftsmen at work and the production process could be viewed as a type of performance (Deighton, 1992) for viewers and consumers. Marketing deals with not only the appearance of objects (products and their form, esthetics, packaging, etc.) but also the appearance of events. In these series of images, the events, which are the activities performed by real craftsmen in a naturalist setting, display the craft and the knowledge. The series of photographs offer viewers a visual experience of the making of things following a mouth-blown, handmade procedure, which enables the eyes to do the thinking about how a material object is made (Sennett, 2008, p. 95). The viewer can vicariously experience the making of an object. Through the performance of the work and labor, such images invoke a perception of the craftwork of creating value in a “culture of authenticity” (Taylor, 1991), and can even trigger the viewers to learn the craft of glass making.

5.1.1.2 Handmade technique represented through objects A product carries with it a past, and it is a cultural artifact that carries the ideology of its creators. As Geertz (1973) has taught us, glass objects can be viewed as a text. They are like documents or literature to be read. Plate 4 (“Technique authenticity— the Château series”) is a photograph in the product catalogue of Kosta Boda, depicting the functional wine glass series “Château,” designed by Bertil Vallien in 1981. Noted for designing art glass (e.g., sand-molded ships filled with mystery and dreamlike symbols), Bertil Vallien also designs items for everyday use. The series has been one of the glassworks’ top sellers. Belonging to the “still life” genre, the photograph foregrounds five glass wares standing upright on a surface including a wine glass, a champagne flute, a beer glass, and a tumbler. The products in this series were all mouth-blown. All the wares are “clear” glass items, which do not have any color. They have radiant and bright surfaces, reflecting their environment and, being transparent, letting in some objects from their environment, in a distorted way because of the twisted shapes within the texture in the bowl body of each of them. Below is a quotation from the designer that appears in the product catalogue and on company websites expressing his design philosophy tied to the “handmade” aspect:

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I had two ambitions when I designed Château … Firstly, I wanted to makde a glass that a machine couldn’t make, one you could see was handmade. The optics of the bowl and the slim stem testify to that. The designer Bertil Vallien’s statement assumes that the products are a witness to their making, with some material manifestation of the craft work bearing some traces of the production techniques and the glass material properties. To get some concrete insider information about what he means in the quotation, I talked with the designer, who shared two key tricks that differentiate this series visually from machine-pressed ones (designer Bertil Vallien, November 22, 2018): First, the stem is much thinner; second, a special optical effect was created based on the quality of glass, which has something to do with light – when a glassblower shaped the bubble, he used two molds sequentially so that a spiral shape would be rendered, leading to different thicknesses in the bowl body. The different thicknesses reflect or absorb the light in subtly different manners. When red wine is poured into a glass ware, this optical effect becomes even more apparent to users. Machine-pressing can hardly ever replicate such an optical effect. When it does, the resulting object is clumsier, thicker and heavier, not as refined as handmade ones. In addition, the stems of machine- pressed drinking glass wares are bigger. The special optical effect due to the varied thickness on the bowl body of each glassware is successfully captured in the photograph, as shown by the varied lights on and inside each glassware.

The optical effect is the trace left by certain handmade techniques and efforts, visible and palpable for a viewer to see and comprehend. The optical effect is manifested in both the form and the material, as a result of the production technique. Handicraft production is an intangible bundle of skills and leaves its tangible trace on and in material objects (Kendall, 2014). Plate 4 shows the “handmade” technique through hallmarks of the handmade objects and features typical of a certain mode of making.

Handmade objects stand opposite to mass-produced commodities made by machine, which lead to consumers’ disenchantment with objects. In modern societies, human technologies make it possible to infinitely manipulate material objects, thereby emptying them of their signifying substance (Heilbrunn, 2006). Machines have removed the process of making as a significant factor from the identity of objects, offering a different perspective for us to think about things being made. As illustrated by the analysis of Plate 4, craft techniques can render an object “authentic,” making it specialized, compared with “bulk” or mass commodities. The techniques can build features into an object that a machine cannot deliver. Craft techniques contend with the reality that some manual operations can be “copied” and reproduced by machine- based technologies.

5.1.1.3 Handmade technique indexed by tools At Glasriket, the way a craftsman blows the molten glass has remained the same. He shapes the molten glass with the help of tools: scissors, tongs, and soaked wooden molds (Triberg, 2011). Plate 5A is a black-and-white photograph taken in 1957 by John Selbing, the in-house photographer at Orrefors. The image shows a specific

114 5. Findings scene in the hot shop of the glassworks – a finished glass vase sits on an old wooden bench, where some metal tools (scissors, tongs) are hung. There are two types of signifiers in the image: the glass vase and the tools that were used in the procedure of mouth-blowing glass. The sign is indexical in that the signifiers connote a causal relationship between the tools and the vase, as the former played a role in the realization of the latter. This image implies that this is a spot where the object was handmade and the tools were used in the making. The composition of objects in this image was intentionally staged by the photographer to create such an association between these two types of signifiers, prompting the viewer to think about where the object comes from. Plate 5B is a contemporary color photograph, showing the tools in a similar way as implying the “making” of glass. It is the back cover of Glasriket magazine 2018.

In summary, the above sections have analyzed how the “handmadeness” hallmark is demonstrated through the procedure, object, and tool. The procedure, the collaborative work arrangements in the chair system, and the tools mark the true inheritors of the craft tradition. The continuity of the tradition of production is a way of differentiating. The performance of embodied labor and the presence of human hands and mouths in the production make the case that the resulting objects are the product of authentic artisanal labor. The glassworks establish the authenticity of the resulting product through the claims of integrity and genuineness of the “technique,” which is a way of guaranteeing the originality and authenticity of the object, while preventing mass duplication and standardization.

5.1.1.4 The paradox in the antithesis of handmade vs. machine-made “Craft” is an ambiguous term, and its use often refers to a binary; that is, “craft” is not “machine-made.” The hand represents man’s capacity for life, spontaneity, and self-development. “Machine” is understood to symbolize everything that is rigid, externally imposed, and deadening. The machine can do it faster and with better consistency and accuracy, but machine work is monotonous. According to purists, automation of any procedure represents a diminution of human contact with the craft object (Dudley, 2014, p. 119). The more operations a machine performs, the less “authentic” the work and the resulting object (e.g., glassware) will be. Given the corrosive “illegibility” of modern work as pointed out by Sennett (1999), craft work can be an avenue for reclaiming the more human qualities of labor lost to instrumental rationalization (Sennett, 2008).

The glass making at Glasriket, as a tradition of praxis, has its own dynamics and paradoxes. The cultural distinction between “handmade” and “machine-made” has become increasingly blurred. The machine took over the manufacturing at Glasriket a long time ago. The pressed glass method, a means of mass-producing, was introduced to Glasriket at the end of the 1830s (Nicklasson, 2007). This method produced a wide range of pressed wares, similar to the mass-produced glass wares sold at low prices at IKEA. The adoption of machines assisting with engraving and cutting started in the late 18th century in the region (Falk et al., 2011). Manually operated genuine engraved patterns were giving way more and more to sandblasting

115 Jönköping International Business School done by machine. For the untrained eye, it is difficult to tell the difference. Sandblasting can be done in a fraction of the time needed by an engraver to produce the same pattern, leading to less production time and lower prices (Falk et al., 2011).

American bottle-blowing machines were introduced to the Surte glassworks in the 1910s to mechanize the production. The transition from craft manufacturing to mechanized production started in glassworks such as Surte during the 1940s-1980s in making glass bottles and jars. Glassblowers were replaced by machine tenders, whose work was subject to a pace regulated by machines, as well as routine chores such as inspection and packaging (Holmér, 2017). The production was mechanized and automated. The mechanized approach required the machine tenders to have a certain level of occupational skills. The so-called “machine minder” tended to the machine that made the glass and did not shape or touch the product and material himself. The work mode was characterized by standardization of products, specialized machines, an assembly line, and monotonous physical activities demanding low skills, following the Fordist principles.

In the 1960s, facing cutthroat competition from cheap imports, the glassworks at Glasriket became more mechanized simply to survive (Suzhou Museum, 2014). The industry also made extensive use of automated production as well as manual manufacturing (Falk et al., 2011). Craftsmen even got help from industrial robots and mechanical tools. In the 1980s, the Orrefors glassworks adopted robots to handle the cutting of edges and bases of products. The robots worked day and night. Some of the staff saw the robots as a threat to their jobs when the first ones were installed. The robots were used to save the cutters the monotony and drudgery.

Plates 6A and 6B appear in the book Orrefors: A century of Swedish glassmaking (Holmér, 1998, pp. 217, 220). Both are black and white, giving a feel of documentary and archival photography. Plate 6A shows a cutting workshop with a row of machines at Orrefors in the 1930s, and Plate 6B shows an engraver working on a machine to engrave a glass object in the 1940s. Both images speak of the fact that some glass products are a result of a mixture of handcraft techniques and machine-based processing. There are hardly any completely “handmade” glass objects. These types of images showing machines hardly ever appear in marketing collaterals as glassworks would like to downplay them. They usually appear in historical, archival or educational publications and materials detailing the history of Glasriket.

Actors at Glasriket do not necessarily view the “machine” as something evil. The glassworks at Kosta Boda does not hide information about its move to outsource the manufacturing of some product lines to machine-based facilities in other countries and disclosed it in the captions in its exhibition at the Swedish Glass Museum: “Glass without borders … some of Kosta Boda’s series are produced in countries such as Turkey, Slovenia and Poland to reduce costs … Glass has always been a material without borders” (field notes). When commenting on the introduction of robots to the glassworks at Orrefors in the 1980s, the local newspaper Smålands Posten appreciated the merits of machines: “[T]he advantage of a robot is that it never gets

116 5. Findings tired, never takes a rest, never cuts itself, never takes sick leave and does not drink coffee” (Holmér, 2002, p. 73). The newspaper’s stance was echoed by glass designer Torben, as illustrated in the following quotations: Designer Torben: I am not afraid of machine-made glass. To me, it is much better than handmade ones. Yeah, well, I know that I shouldn’t say it, but I have experienced so much how man lets you down. The machine never lets you down. The machine does what you have arranged for it to do with the glass … I feel much more comfortable designing for a machine than I do when I’m designing for a man, because I cannot trust the man. I can trust the machine. Interviewer: But isn’t it true that sometimes the designers claim that they have some techniques in order to make sure that glass products look like handmade rather than machine-made? Designer Torben: Yeah, of course the machine cannot make this very intricate, intriguing glass. You see a lot of special decorations in the glass objects that a machine cannot do. But it doesn’t mean that it’s better quality … It’s not a given thing that handmade glass is better than machine-made glass. Very often it is just the other way around. (Glass designer Torben, November 17, 2017) There have been ongoing discussions and debates about the status of craftsmanship at Glasriket. The “handmade” imagery has connotations that are ambiguous and paradoxical. During the 2017 Nordic Utility Glass Conference held at Växjö in Sweden, I brought up the issue of “handmade vs. machine-made” with designers, curators and researchers for discussions. To my surprise, these industry insiders put forward the view that the technique of manufacturing (how it is produced) only makes sense when manufacturers decide to disclose, communicate, and discuss it. From the perspective of producers, sometimes it is better to use a machine (e.g. pressed glass) as a machine can ensure the accuracy of the shape and technical requirements envisioned by the designer. The industrialized manufacturing mode brings efficiency, and the salary of workers depends on the quantity of their delivered pieces in each time unit. They must deliver and do not have the luxury of doing it in a slow mode. Thus, purely handmade mode cannot generate accurate and abundant objects. From the perspective of consumers, it is a vague and tricky topic – an untrained eye will have difficulty in distinguishing what is handmade from what is machine-made, and a consumer may not be clear about what “handmade” entails.

Glass making is a time-consuming, skill-demanding and uncertain process, and handmade glass means higher prices due to the time spent on making it. The real craft production differs from the romanticized imagery of artisanal work or artistic creation that is laissez-faire with few boundaries in terms of time and cost. For handmade glass, time and efficiency are always important factors tied to the business bottom line. At Orrefors, a chair and his team (three other workers – gatherer, blower, stem- maker) making wine glass wares need to maintain a pace of finishing 40 glass objects per hour (Holmér, 1998). There is no space for delay, hesitation, experiments, or exploration. The work on the factory floor is ultimately subordinated to time counting – the outputs (quantity of products) delivered within a certain time unit, which is the

117 Jönköping International Business School indicator of efficiency and cost. For the Orrefors Intermezzo 11 wine glass wares mouth-blown at Kosta Boda in 2017, each workshop (a furnace and a chair) needed to produce around 600 glass wares per day, according to the production manager Peter (interview, November 17, 2017). This reality is in line with the logics of modern industrial production, which relentlessly pursue “rationalization” with an “economizing” (maximization, optimization, least cost) imperative (Bell, 1973, p. 67) in a “more for less” ethos.

On November 17, 2017, I stayed in a hot shop at the Kosta Boda glassworks to observe how the Intermezzo wine glass wares were mouth-blown and made. I saw the repetitive bodily actions of workers in each role (gatherer, blower, stem-maker, etc.) lasting for the whole day. Plate 7 (“The overview scene in the hot shop of Kosta Boda”) shows a chair and his team making mouth-blown Intermezzo wine glass wares. Each person performed a specific role under the “chair” in making the same item for three consecutive days and then shifted to another role as directed by the production manager Peter (interview, November 17, 2017). The autonomous, repetitive bodily actions performed by each worker look quite mechanic, dull and unexciting (field notes).

At Glasriket, it is believed that outsourcing to machine-based factories in foreign countries will make the glassworks lose their soul, bringing about the spiritual woes of disenchantment, alienation, and dehumanization. In the glass industry, machine pressing is a key approach in mechanizing the production. Machine-made glass wares possess automatic precision and mechanical exactness. Most of the commoditized glass products sold at IKEA or regular stores are machine-pressed. Machine-pressed glass is created when machines and technologies dictatorially master the process by shaping the material in whatever ways to deliver on some pre-designed blueprints. Materials are forced into things at the will of machines, technologies, and industrial systems. Designer and glassblower Torben provides his perspectives about the nature of machine-pressed glass, in implicit comparison with mouth-blown glass: The machine pressed glass does not take the condition of glass into consideration. When you press the glass, you are not working with the glass. You are working against the glass. The pressed glass is similar to the way they treat plastic or metal. It shows that human beings are ruthless (we have machines, no matter whether it is glass, plastic or metal, we just press it). We control everything exactly. We make a large quantity within a unit of time … When you force the glass into your idea, the glass will resist. The result will always be bad. (Glass designer Torben, November 17, 2017) Torben’s comment deplores human beings’ “ruthlessness” in using machines to press glass and the disrespectful treatment of the material during the process of production. The machines press and force glass ruthlessly and automatically into industrially

11 Orrefors and Kosta Boda belong to the same parent company, New Wave Group. The factory at Orrefors was closed in 2013, and its products are manufactured in the factory at Kosta Boda.

118 5. Findings designed forms, churning out large quantities of glass objects with standardized shapes and at low prices. Glass is handled without a respectful sensitivity to its attributes or temper, and the finished objects will silently demonstrate their hollowness and ugliness.

The above accounts demonstrate paradoxes in the politics of the technique of production for the construction of authenticity of marketing offerings at Glasriket: There is no clear answer to the antithesis between the techniques of “handmade” and “machine-made” in terms of how much needs to be done “by hand” to be counted as craft, which one is absolutely better, or why it matters for producers and consumers. There has been a continuum of production modes ranging from the purely mouth- blown, handmade traditional technique to outsourced manufacturing in machine- based factories in other countries. Glassworks often seek a middle ground between artisanal and industrial modes of production by twisting the idea of “handmade.” The glass series Atoll of Kosta Boda is such an example, in which artistic experiments in design are fused with innovating manufacturing methods to maintain the uniqueness of the object. Plate 8 (“Product series Atoll of Kosta Boda”) is a still life photograph showing two Atoll products (one in dark green and one in dark purple), and the image appears in a Kosta Boda product catalogue. Designed by Anna Ehrner in 1997, the series are both decorative and functional as the products can serve as candle holders while offering esthetic beauty for users as a domestic decoration. Similar in size, the two candle holders are bowl-shaped with thick bodies and round edges. With dark colors, they contain some irregular strands like moving waves within their bodies. Their surfaces are glossy, reflecting light. Due to the high quantity of production, Kosta Boda decided to shift the production mode from “manual” to “mechanical.” Anna Ehrner worked with glassblowers to experiment and develop a special technique of adding color powders to the molten clear glass in the tank furnaces to create a veiled effect so that each item acquires an individual appearance (Holmér, 2002). Playing a central role in such experiments and innovation, designer Anna Ehrner views this “trick” as a positive strategy as this method of production can “generate more employment and at the same time help populate my creative ideas from art glass” (designer Anna Ehrner, November 15, 2017). The Atoll glass candle holder series achieves singularity as each glass product is made unique. At the same time, this product line contributes steady revenues as one of Kosta Boda’s best-selling product lines.

5.1.2 Construction of material authenticity Glass is three-dimensional. You have to see. – A designer Glass, as a material, is inspiring because you know that it is made of fire and sand, resembles air and water, and the glassblower fills the bubble with his breath. – Orrefors’ photographer John Selbing. (in the catalogue for an exhibition in Orrefors Museum, 1988) Much of the peculiarity of glass must depend on its elusive beauty and its transience. If we could emulate this material, take away its brittleness, squeeze

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it to any form, shape it when it was cold, and thereby master it, we would never achieve the fascination that glass evokes – Orrefors’ in-house photographer John Selbing (J. Selbing, 1960, p. 9) Material authenticity refers to the authenticity bestowed on market offerings (products, glasswork brands, the place of Glasriket as a tourist destination, etc.) by virtue of the genuine material properties of glass. One of the key reasons for customers to buy glass products and for tourists to visit Glasriket is the conscious appreciation of, or fetishism for, the material of glass. Being a miraculous substance, glass differs from other materials in that its material attributes can arouse “awe” from its users. Glass has the capacity to amaze, enchant and intrigue people with magic and fantasy. For a drinking glass, a consumer can drink from it, look at it, hold it, and see through it. He or she can be enthralled by the ethereal beauty and sparkling splendor of a fine glass object. He or she can hold a glassware to the window light, look into the inside, see lights with colors generated by refraction, or look at the self- image on the mirror-like surface, admiring the many facets afforded by the material, physical, and optical properties of glass. In their interaction with glass wares as material artifacts, consumers are reminded of their materiality.

The salience of authenticity dwells upon the issue of the ingredients or materials of objects. In regard to material authenticity, the key questions to be asked are: Is an object genuinely and truly “glass”? How can we appreciate the material properties of glass? These questions imply that if a utensil made of glass feels or looks like plastic, it will be deemed inauthentic. The historical background of this scenario is the fact that industrialization has meant that almost anything can be made to look like anything else. For example, plastic can be shaped by machine to be made into any utensils or containers, which were originally made by wood, glass, pottery, and so on. However, sometimes consumers would still want an object to be made with its original, authentic material. For wine drinking, a glass goblet is supposed to be made of real glass rather than plastic or other materials. In Orvell's (1989) study of the changing attitudes towards furniture and the decorative arts in the US between 1880 and 1940, after industrialization consumers’ attention shifted to what objects were made of, and the fashion of veneers and pine-painted surfaces of furniture looking like fine wood or marble lost its appeal.

The material authenticity in this current study gravitates towards the issue of material or matter, from which glass objects are derived. The matter can be explained by the concept of “material properties.” In the book An Introduction to Glass, which is edited by Glafo, the Swedish Glass Research Institute, the term “properties of glass” is explained from a material science or chemistry perspective. It is dissected into a number of subproperties: viscosity, surface tension, thermal properties, density, optical properties, mechanical properties (surface, stress, scratch resistance), electronic properties, chemical resistance, and weathering (Johansson & Lang, 2005). Scholars in material culture, an academic field rooted in anthropology, offer alternative explanations about “material properties,” which refer to ascription of the quality of having material effects, meaning the cognitive and social impacts arising from human beings’ encounters with a material thing (Drazin, 2015b; Gell, 1998;

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Woodward, 2007). Material was historically an evasive topic of study for social sciences because materials were treated as being “unsocial” or raw stuff from nature (Drazin, 2015a). So, they are not seen as being cultural. Materials can be social phenomena when glass becomes tableware, paper becomes money, and wood becomes a table. According to Drazin (2015b), the word properties tends to imply that there is a sense of inevitability about the effects or uses of materials. For example, cotton must always be made into clothes, people expect to drink wine out of a glass goblet rather than a plastic one, and glass is used to conduct light into a building.

The construction of material authenticity at Glasriket consists of three approaches that are analyzed in the following sections: material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice, material authenticity constructed in the natural performance of craft making activities, and material authenticity constructed in knowledge generation and circulation.

5.1.2.1 Material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice Unlike precious stone or pearl substances, glass is a man-made material, transformed from a thing (i.e., sand) stemming from the natural world, shaped by human intentionality. Glass then becomes a cultural artifact itself, different than “mere things of nature” such as stone, wood, air, or the sun. For such natural objects, their physical constitutions are independent of human intentionality. The physicality of the glass material coexists with its valorization within human projects of making (Ingold, 2012). The material qualities of glass are rendered by the making in a metamorphosis process. Craftsmen fashion objects from the melted substance (i.e., the sand), which is then mouth-blown or poured into a mold to be cast into various geometric forms. Ole, a designer and university lecturer teaching glass design, offers a comprehensive perspective about how glass differs from other materials in terms of its making in the following quotation: When it comes to glass, both the making and the designing of glass are different than almost all other materials. And it’s because in the making process with this wonderful, floating hot glass, you can shape it over time when it’s cooling down. Then, you will end up with something hard, heavy and transparent. It looks magic because you don’t understand what it will be until it’s finished. When you work with glass, you have a three- dimensionality that you don’t have in other materials because of the transparency. You make a thing out of glass by actually making use of the glass properties like transparency, reflection, the heaviness of the glass, and possibly even the fragility of glass. (Ole, designer and university lecturer, December 5, 2017) Glassblowing, which is a craft practice, is more concerned with encountering with material rather than the form. The work is about “matterly engagement and matterly intimacy” (O’Connor, 2007, p. 74). The glassblower works not according to form, but the formative properties of the material, which is still bathed in heat (O’Connor, 2007, p. 75): “[H]aving the heat meant that I could blow glass—the heat in practice was my envisioned piece in form.” As for the formative nature of the material, two

121 Jönköping International Business School designers elaborate on the tenets from the perspective of a human worker dealing with it in the making: When you work with glass, you must listen to the material and let the material guide the practice. You must not force it, against it … you really have to work with the material and be true to the material … glass has to cool slowly down … So it’s all a question of timing and temperature … it’s resistant, hard, durable ... you are dealing with a person…It has its own character. (Designer Torben, November 17, 2017) Glass works by itself. It has a strong inner force and you can’t really decide over that material, because it’s hot, hot, hot and it’s fluid. Then, suddenly it gets hard. When you make ceramics, you can slowly make the shape you want and you see it for a long time. But glass is fast. Fast like hell, you know. You don’t have the time to think during its working. You have to do that before or to draw conclusions after, and then start again. You can’t change it in the middle of the process. (Designer Anna Ehrner, November 15, 2017) As a highly disobedient material, glass shows off its resistance in the making. In contrast, the machine-based mode of manufacturing quenches this nature of glass. Under the machine-pressed mode of production, the process is rationally directed towards realizing the form, which is an image already sketched out by a designer. The logic lacks a sensibility for the material properties of glass as well as the corresponding technique (rules and regulations or schemata) catering for the material. Machine-pressed glass objects will look like “cheap cut glass,” noticeably different than the handmade, mouth-blown ones.

The material properties of glass can be indexically cued by the molten glass in the process of making. Plates 9A, 9B and 9C show the melted glass pulp, in different stages of the manufacturing procedure. Plate 9A shows a pile of molten glass that was retrieved with a gathering rod from the furnace, Plate 9B shows that the pile of molten glass was cast and shaped in a wooden mold by a craftsman, and Plate 9C shows that a craftsman is hand-holding, through a heat insulation pad, a molten glass object, which emits hot steam due to the high temperature. In these three images, there are three key signifiers: the hand, the tools, and the pile of molten glass. The tools and the hand connote that the manufacturing mode is mouth-blowing, a form of handmaking, in contrast to the mode of machine-pressing. The pile of molten glass, in the color of flaming orange, reminds viewers that this is the liquid mode of glass 12 at a very high temperature. . All the signs are indexical suggesting causal relationships – the tools and hand are playing a critical role in making a finished product and the molten glass is a predecessor in a metamorphosis of the material on the way to its finished status.

12 High melting temperatures are required for glass, usually 2000 ºC for melting.

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Plate 10 (“Designer and glassblower Björn Friborg handling molten glass at The Glass Factory”) is partially a portrait and partially a documentary photograph showing the designer and glassblower Björn Friborg in action at The Glass Factory.13 Björn is holding a blowpipe whose end is a pile of molten glass in flaming orange, emitting smoke as a result of the high temperature. The molten glass was just gathered from the furnace behind him.

Plates 9 and 10 prompt a viewer to imagine the molten glass in the heat, just gathered from the furnace to be blown, shaped and transformed into its next form. The molten glass image has appeared widely in various marketing communication materials tied to Glasriket. It depicts the luminosity of the molten glass pulp, flaming orange and soft with heat, taken from the flames of the furnace. The molten glass pulp is in its transformation from the molten liquid into a bottle or drinking glassware, which is a finished object as the cool hard reflective form. The heat is felt in the eyes of the beholder. These images show the hot glass, signifying that the glass in the making is hot and is magic in alchemy. The imagery of “that orange luminous glow” (O’Connor, 2007, p. 76) indicates the formative properties of the material of glass, and the material properties of glass are indexed by the intermediate status of the material in a metamorphosis.

5.1.2.2 Material authenticity constructed in the performance of craft making activities The making of glass prompts consumers to experience the making, through either witnessing in person or even participating in the activity in such forms as a “factory tour” or “glassblowing class” as tourist experiences offered at Glasriket (Stine, former DMO manager, September 19, 2016). Consumers would always ask the “how come” question out of curiosity about the metamorphosis, in which something so mundane as sand can become a glittering and transparent glass object. The quotation below from a museum curator reflects the curiosity of a layman: The mystery has to do with the magic. No one can really understand how sand can become transparent. That’s the mystery. The mystery is how can it be that something can transcend from “not see through” to “see through.” (Eva, museum curator, December 5, 2017) Consumers would like to see glassblowing as a spectacular thing at Glasriket. Some of them repeat seeing it. “Watching the glowing melted glass being shaped is exciting” describes the text on the website of Visit Småland.14 Plate 11 (“Tourists

13 Located in the village of Boda, The Glass Factory (theglassfactory.se) is an experience-based, interactive glass museum, offering exhibitions, artist residence programs, hot shops for glassblowing, lectures, workshops, theater performances, international collaboration projects, etc. It is one of Scandinavia’s largest glass museums. 14 Glasriket belongs to the larger region of Småland in southern Sweden, so tourism offices of both destinations cross-promote each other. Weblink for the text: https://www.visitsmaland.se/en/article/641/glasriket/the-kingdom-of-crystal-a-hot-design- experience

123 Jönköping International Business School watching a craftsman blowing glass in a Hyttsill event”) is a color photograph posted on the tourism promotion websites of Visit Småland and Glasriket, showing amazed tourists gazing at how a craftsman processes glass besides the furnace, which is the heart of the practice of glass making. The craftsman is handling a molten glass object, which emits hot steam due to the high temperature. The visitors can feel the heat and can even smell the odor. This image belongs to the genre of press photography as it captured a live event with journalistic style showing a moment of truth about what it was like to be present. All of the people in the picture were spontaneous rather than posed. The tourists were looking at the craftsman and his actions rather than the camera. The craftsman’s back was facing the camera and the Swedish textual expression “Hyttsill i Kosta” was naturally shown on his back as part of his workwear T-shirt. This expression is a marketing effort by the glassworks Kosta Boda to brand this event as a tourist or experiential product. As a parasite message in the image, the expression “quickens” it with the connotation that this is the name of this event, a ritual and old tradition at Glasriket that dates back to the time when the glassworks acted as a focal point for the local community – an after-hours meeting place for workers, hunters from the surrounding forest and wandering tramps. Hyttsill is a Swedish word meaning “hot-shop herring” in English. In the evenings, visitors are invited to enjoy traditional Småland foods cooked in furnaces for making glass. The chef will roast salted herring in the cooling tube where finished glassware has been slowly cooled down earlier in the day. Visitors will enjoy musical entertainment and a glassblowing show delivered by master glassblowers, and get a chance to try to blow glass themselves. Today, the event is offered as a tourist product by the glassworks of Kosta Boda, Pukeberg, and Målerås. As an iconic sign, the image depicts a ritual event implying extraordinary experiences. The event is appreciated by the tourists or visitors, who revere the technique of handmaking glass at Glasriket. Here, the image represents a ritual that is to be consumed as an experience. Viewers of this image will recognize familiar patterns of social behaviors that conform to their collateral experience ‒ their priori experiences of watching performances or events in tourism or retailing. Also, they can imagine themselves being actors in the scene.

Similarly to the Hyttsill event, factory guided tours are another popular tourist offering at Glasriket. Through such tours, consumers can see how craftsmen blow glass in the hot shop, accompanied by a verbal explanation provided by a staff member from the glassworks. The craft work is performed so visitors are able to witness craft work taking place in situ as an embodied performative act. Such a natural performance turns what is happening “backstage” in the hot shop of a glassworks into the “front stage” for tourists if we use the terminologies of Goffman (1959). Such a performance is not strictly “staged” in the sense of normal tourism settings, but “organic” because the activities of craftsmen in the factory of a glassworks are not artificial or contrived pseudo events orchestrated with imitations or simulations as described in tourism literature (Cohen, 1988; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). Rather, the activities are true, normal work carried out by craftsmen in the hot shop of a glassworks. It is a matter of the voluntary initiative of a glassworks opening its door to expose its real manufacturing to external audiences. The craftsmen carry out their activities as usual, while tourists visit and witness what they do in a “live” factory.

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Trying out glassblowing is one of the most popular activities at Glasriket, in which visitors enjoy more haptic, tactile experiences. Visitors can make their own glass wares together with expert masters in the blowing room. The Glasriket website describes the experience of participants in this way: “[I]n the blowing room it is a syrupy hot mass that glows when it comes out of the glass furnace. You shape, heat and model the molten glass successively and see how it takes shape as a bowl.”15 In this case, consumers become a temporary participant in the process of making, and obtain embodied knowledge about the actual shaping of hot glass, feeling the heat, smelling the odor, and sensing the material properties of glass during its metamorphosis. By participating in the glassblowing activity rather than being a spectator, tourists experience sensations of pleasure, creativity, challenge, and accomplishment. An authentic experience is rendered as such an undertaking activates tourists’ existential state of being (Wang, 1999).

5.1.2.3 Material authenticity constructed through knowledge generation and circulation Rather than being concepts in material science or chemistry, physical and material properties of glass are sensual, esthetic and culturally influenced attributes, which can form knowledge about glass. Such knowledge, as material properties and virtues of the material of glass, is formed in the making rather than being something inherent to be found. The production side (members include designers, marketers, craftsmen, photographers) generates professional and popular knowledge developed around glass. The description of any material can be achieved only through observation and engagement with the process of making or the practices. To understand the material is to be able to communicate about the very practice of working with it. People who make glass (i.e., craftsmen and designers) have shared their experience of engaging with this resistant, highly challenging material. As an example of such knowledge, the following quotation is from the glass designer Ludvig Löfgren, who also blows glass. He reflects on his experience of interacting with the material of glass in the book Kosta Boda Art Hotel published by the New Wave Group16: I pour out the hot molten glass and shape it by hand. I never let anyone else do this part! When you work with glass you have to be both as tough as a lumberjack and explosive; you have to be able to think fast and act before the glass cools down. Glass is a living material that always surprises, and you only have a few minutes to work with it so you have to seize opportunities the moment you see them. (Triberg, 2011, p. 111) The understanding of the glass material becomes the cultural capital or knowledge circulated among multiple actors, including designers, craftsmen, photographers,

15 Weblink: http://www2.glasriket.se/en/to-do/468854/blow-your-own-crystal- bowl/showdetails?filter=c%3D3005 16 The New Wave Group is the parent company of Kosta Boda.

125 Jönköping International Business School museum curators, media, 17 and consumers. The knowledge deriving from the production of glass can have technical, social, mythological, esthetic, and evaluative components according to Appadurai (1986). The knowledge of the material properties of glass constitutes a language of glass. The language involves both the subjective sensory experience and the ascription of objective properties. The language of glass mainly focuses on two areas: 1) the metamorphosis, in which glass comes into being in man-made processes and practices, manifesting certain material properties such as its disobedience, the relationship between its status and temperature, and the formative nature; and 2) glass’s “material expressivity” (Drazin, 2015b, p. 15), whereby verbal discourses or visual representation can semanticize glass’s materiality as visual outer expressions. The material properties become the outer-directed appearances to be talked about or visually represented.

When it comes to outer-directed appearances, glass has a unique relation to light – glass, as cool hard forms, refracts, reflects and captures the light (O’Connor, 2007). Most types of glass let through light, which is one of the more obvious properties of glass (Johansson & Lang, 2005). A ray of light that reaches the surface of a glass object does not pass through it fully. The light ends up in three places ‒ part of it is reflected back off the surface, part of it is absorbed, and the rest is transmitted through the object (Johansson & Lang, 2005). On its reflective surface, glass can react to light and mirror objects surrounding it. Inside, glass is a transparent crystal medium, with some internal dimensions. Rays of light can pass through the glass medium. Due to its transparency, the inside of a glass object is void, made visible through the glass. As an example of discourses, for the exhibition held at Suzhou, China about Glasriket in 2014, the accompanying exhibition catalogue entitled “Light-Fire-Life” explains: “It (glass) is born in fire and always alive with light” (Suzhou Museum, 2014). Duncan of the Johansfors glass gallery explains the optical properties of glass in this following quotation: It’s a fascinating material because of the way in which it plays with light. It absorbs light, it transmits light, it distorts light. There are all sorts of things with light … You can make transparent plastic materials for instance, but this very clean and clear transparency that you have in glass is unique. (Duncan, owner of the Johansfors glass gallery, December 11, 2017) In addition to verbal discourses, a language of material properties of glass exists in the sensorial plane of sight when certain material properties are represented as being palpable in visual images, revealing the sculptural and three-dimensional quality of the glass. Plate 12 (“A glass bottle with shadow and lights”) is a black-and-white photograph taken by Orrefors’ in-house photographer John Selbing, featuring a glass vase. The technology of photography enables a higher sensitivity to light. Most of his

17 Media covering glass tied to this research context include: New Glass magazine (a global magazine bilingual in English and German, published in Germany), Glasriket magazine published by the DMO (Glasriket AB), Form magazine (Stockholm-based bimonthly publication covering architecture and design with a special focus on the Nordic region), and Designbase.se (the Swedish print magazine and online portal for the design industry).

126 5. Findings photographs use background lighting. But for this one, light goes through the object. Several threads of light move, like waves, in the air in the middle part of the photograph. The result is due to the rich optical qualities of luminosity and reflection of the glass object. The surface of the glass vase reflects light, giving it brilliance or luster. The shine of glass depends on how the surface reflects light – the smoother the surface, the stronger the shine. The reflection depends on the colorlessness and smoothness of the surface. Most glass is colorless and bright (Johansson & Lang, 2005). Plate 13 (“A piece of glass”) is another black-and-white still life photograph taken by Orrefors’ in-house photographer John Selbing. With strong and pinpointed studio light projected from behind the object, this simple glass piece is under a sharp spotlight, as something to be closely scrutinized by the viewer. Its edges on the left and right sides are shining, showing the texture and depth. The lines carved within the glass piece are projected on to a white surface in the bottom left of the image. The projected lines are of enlarged sizes, complying with relevant laws of light transmission via a lens. This image vividly shows the light transmission properties of glass.

5.1.2.4 Ambiguities and paradoxes in the construction of material authenticity In the construction of material authenticity, there exist ambiguities and paradoxes. When glassworks pursue scale and quantity and outsource to a machine-based mode of production in other countries, all the enchanting moments in the metamorphosis in the making process are effaced for both producers (i.e., craftsmen, designers) and consumers. The production mode will render the finished products “cheap flat glass with banal looks,” similar to commoditized glass products sold at IKEA. Consumers’ focus is directed at form and price rather than the fascination with the peculiarities associated with the materiality of glass. As a matter (substance or material), glass has its unique attributes that resist the logic of “form,” which can be easily achieved through machinery or technological molding. Glasriket will lose its identity and spirit of being faithful to the material, whose essence is central for differentiating, enchanting, and authenticating the market offerings. Plate 14 (“A webpage from Orrefors’ eCommerce site”) is an example showing numbness or indifference towards the material properties of glass. It was captured from the official website of the Orrefors glassworks, which also functions as its eCommerce site. The page lists a number of glass stemwares under the series Difference in an index structure, with each item shot in a plain, monochrome fashion against a pure white background. A viewer can click on the small image to see it in a larger size, but it is still in the same fashion. In this case, the marketer emphasizes the basic forms of objects, while information about the subtleties of the optical and material properties of glass is absent: transparency, reflection, luminosity of the surface, sculptural structure inside, and so on. The material source of an object is vague and ambiguous as an object can be mistakenly judged to be made from plastic. Each photograph looks like a monochromatic sketch, deprived of its material significance.

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5.1.3 Construction of geographic authenticity The items from Glasriket can tell me that “this is Swedish.” – A consumer When people mention or tell other people about the Kingdom of Crystal (“Glasriket” in Swedish), they will think of “Swedish.” – Stine Breum- Appelqvist, Former CEO of AB Glasriket When customers buy the glass products, they also buy “Sweden.” – A consumer Geographic authenticity refers to authenticity bestowed on market offerings (products, brands, tourist destinations, experiences, etc.) by a local place. It is a type of referential authenticity (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a), which means that the market offerings can be rendered authentic by referring to the locality and place that have already been perceived as real and authentic, without imitating or trivializing. This type of authenticity concerns the evaluation of provenance with questions about where a product is made, how, by whom, when, and under what conditions (Smith Maguire, 2018, p. 60). The social, historic and geographic milieux of Glasriket that are located in Sweden have shaped a specific rendition of location-based imagery associated with the products, glassworks brands and the region as a destination brand. Research in product images has demonstrated that the Westernness, Americanness, or exoticness attached to consumer brands is crucial for understanding their worldwide proliferation (e.g., Ger & Belk, 1996). Companies emphasize place-of- origin characteristics as an identifier and product differentiator (Campelo, 2017). Clear signals of origin, including place of production and symbols associated with certain locales, are embedded in marketing communication materials and product packages of glassworks at Glasriket. The glassworks evidently consider their locality as a key part of their “craft” identity, which includes the highly local peculiarities of people, accumulated skills, the production procedure as a tradition, and the ethos of holding genuine love for glass and staying true to the small-scale craft way of making things. There are three ways in which the geographic dimension is referenced: making, design and tourism experience, and the following sections will elaborate on them.

5.1.3.1 The geographic dimension concerning making The Småland region, where Glasriket is located, emits an imagery of the mystique comprising forests, darkness, flames, ovens, as well as the historical heritage in the craft manufacturing in villages. Invoking the imagery of the beautiful rural idyll, the “village” has become a romanticized location of craftwork as reflected by the tradition that a glassworks was named after a place, a norm in Scandinavia. So, the glassworks brands of Orrefors and Målerås were referentially named after the villages of Orrefors and Målerås, associating the company with one real, live place that caused the business to come into being. The name emphasizes its origins and sparks memory, and the presence of the village confers an authenticity.

Glasriket has become a particular locality with its geographic significance associated with “authentic” forms of production. Craft is expected by consumers to be produced

128 5. Findings locally (Waehning et al., 2018). Glassworks here have been sticking to the unique Swedish way of manufacturing on the factory floor – the tradition of handwork in small teams directed by a chair, which is characterized by cooperative work (Holmér, 1998). At Glasriket, the concept of “made in Sweden” or “made locally” represents a small, craft-based mode of manufacturing in contrast to the apparent placelessness of mass production-based products and brands. The products are rooted locally, with a place of origin that is specific, rather than merely manufactured. In the face of mergers and acquisitions and outsourced manufacturing to other countries, a few glassworks here have emphasized the importance of the authenticity of the place for making the products. Similarly to the luxury sector (Kapferer, 2012), the craft-based glass industry at Glasriket treasures the ideas of “made in” and “country of origin,” which invoke the imagery of a homeland or exoticness, a spirit of patriotism, and miracles occurring in a place loaded with unique natural resources and ambience, sophisticated human labor, and cultural heritage. The “made in” is where the soul of the glassworks and the region lies. Orrefors and Målerås put the “Made in Sweden” mark on the packages of their products. In 1977, when AB Målerås glassworks was acquired by Kosta Boda AB Mats Jonasson, the chief designer and owner of the former insisted on making all of the products designed by him at the facility in Målerås (Lundmark, 1997). Today, the 130-year-old 18 Målerås is one of the few glassworks that emphasize that all manufacturing must take place in the village of Målerås. Below is a quotation from Martin Robertsson, the CEO of Målerås, explaining the philosophy: Reporter: What does it mean for companies to keep production right here? Martin: At Målerås Glasbruk, we have left 100% of our production in Glasriket. We believe that proximity between production and product development is necessary to get the right creative energy. Our designers may be in the cabin and feel the heat from the ovens really. It’s cool to see their happiness in that environment, and how the products grow … what we capture with our work is something genuine, which cannot be done in industrial production. (A news article from Designbase.se) (Bergström, 2018a) Designer Ludvig Löfgren, who has been designing decorative objects for the Målerås glassworks since 2013, explains the importance of the proximity between designers and production based on his daily work experience: It’s essential that the glass is manufactured here in the Kingdom of Crystal. Our proximity is our strength. The idea is born, the object takes on form and is manufactured – and everything takes place here in Målerås. As a creator, I’m always close to the object. There is a major movement under way in society with people preferring to buy something genuine rather than something mass produced. We see this clearly in furniture and food, and for glass this has

18 The glassworks of Målerås was founded in 1890.

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become one of our success factors. (Designer Ludvig Löfgren, quote in Glasriket magazine 2015, p. 17) The small-scale, independent glassworks at Målerås can legitimately claim that it produces all of its products locally in the village bearing the same name, which is a hallmark of distinction in the craft sector. The meanings in the spatial dimension lie in craft villages as the place of making, the country of origin as expressed by the stamp “Made in Sweden,” and certain Swedish cultural icons. The locations have become a source of symbols, myths and culture, be it the village of Målerås or Orrefors, the region of Glasriket (Kingdom of Crystal), or the country of Sweden.

Plate 15 (“A print ad of Orrefors’ Intermezzo series”) promotes Orrefors’ Intermezzo series, which was designed by the famous Swedish glass designer Erika Lagerbielke in 1985. This series is noted for the ionic blue and enigmatic drop on the leg of the stemware, which looks like an exclamation mark in written texts. The series has undergone several rounds of upgrading, and is one of the most widely sold series under the Orrefors brand (10 million pieces sold) (www.orrefors.se). The series consists of a red and white wine glass, a dessert wine glass, a decanter, a glass for water, a champagne coupe, a sniper (aroma cup), and so on. The image only features three pieces. The products were placed on an antique table, on the corner of which is a pile of syrup, which is the melted glass. In the background, there is a furnace with its hot fire inside and a worker holding a stick carrying out a procedure in front of the furnace, showing the work in progress in the hot shop or factory of a glassworks.

There are three signifiers in Plate 15 – the products, the manufacturing setting, and the slogan and logo. The three products are acting as the foreground of the image. The denoted messages are that their surface is as shining as glass should be, and they contain red wine, champagne and water, respectively, as if they are ready to serve guests for a dinner. The connoted messages (the signified) are multiple. First, the glass and the drink signal a party or dinner, a festive occasion. The meal experience is staged with artifacts such as fine glass to celebrate, express who we are, and show hospitality and respect to our guests. By using these objects, a host tells guests that the meal and occasion are special and significant. Second, the mysterious blue drops on each of the three handmade glass objects are very recognizable, telling a story with the poetic language of the design. From a semiotic perspective, the blue drop is iconic (Mick, 1986) in that it resembles the exclamation mark in languages. It is also symbolic as it suggests the celebratory spirit of the special occasion where the objects are to be used.

The second signifier is the manufacturing setting, including the table, the syrup, the furnace, the worker, and the vague ambience. Apparently, the setting is not a modern photography studio, but an authentic factory. The connoted message (the signified), assisted by the tag line “Made in Sweden,” is that the products are made here at the factory in Sweden. A viewer of the photograph will be reminded of the linkage between the products and the setting as the products are a result of the furnace, the molten glass, the workers’ labor, and the whole process taking place here in a factory in the forest wood in Småland. This signification fits the concept of “the raw and the

130 5. Findings cooked” axis of Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Williamson, 1978). The sign is the image of manufacturing, a transformation process of “cooking,” where the raw material (the melted syrup as a result of heating sand) enters a complex system whereby it is differentiated culturally, resulting in the final result – the elegant, classy design objects. The product becomes a symbol once the raw material has been “cooked” because the craft work introduces the raw into a system of differentiation, giving it an order and cultural place, which enable the product to “mean.”

The third signifier refers to the logo and tag line. Orrefors, the name of the company and its brand, is also the name of the village where the glassworks started in Småland in 1898. The village is a place where a beautiful river flows into Lake Orrenas. The name of the glassworks, Orrefors, means “the Orre waterfall” (Anders Selbing, interview, November 28, 2017). The logo is a composite one consisting of the word “Orrefors,” a shield shape enveloping the text “Orrefors Sweden” and a goose. The goose is indexical in a semiotic sense as it is one type of animal living by Lake Orrenas, so there is an inherent relationship between the animal and the company. The connoted message (the signified) is that this brand and company are intrinsically Swedish, originated in Sweden and make products in Sweden rather than outsourcing to other countries. Linguistically, the spelling and pronunciation of the brand name Orrefors are Swedish. The text within the shield and the tag line explicitly emphasize the provenance of products ‒ Sweden. The “Made in Sweden” tag line is in a white color in contrast to the dark colors of other parts in the image and is in capitalized letters in English, accompanied by the Swedish version. As the anchorage of the whole image, the tag line is designed to connote the whole image to “quicken” it to the signified that Sweden is the spatial reference and the provenance of the making of these products.

Plate 16 (“Crystal Eye: Orrefors’ glass gearbox in Volvo car”) is one page in a product catalogue of Orrefors. Below the title “Crystal Eye,” there is a tag line “A crystal gearshift, exclusive for Volvo Cars and handmade by Orrefors in Sweden.” The two photographs within this image and accompanying texts explain the news that Orrefors’ handmade glass gearbox, including a crystal shift knob, was installed in Volvo Cars’ newly launched model XC90. Orrefors has been working with Volvo Cars since 2009 when the former designed and made a glass central console for the latter’s concept car the S60. The collaboration between the two brands is within the bigger context of Volvo’s “Made by Sweden” marketing campaign, which was rolled out in 2012 with TV ads in Sweden and other countries, endorsed by the Swedish football celebrity Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The black-and-white photograph on the top is a close-up shot, meticulously delineating the details of the shining and crystal-looking gearbox in the car. The color photograph at the bottom shows a male model sitting in the back seat, besides whom there are a drinking glass and a cup holder made of glass. The signifiers include the texts, the glass gearbox with the Orrefors logo on the shift knob, and the Volvo car interior setting. The texts serve as a parasite message that connotes the images to mean the signified – Orrefors is “Swedish” and shares a Scandinavian heritage synergetically with another Swedish national legend Volvo. This is a co-branding case, where two Swedish iconic brands work as an alliance and

131 Jönköping International Business School the presence of Volvo enhances the Swedish identity of Orrefors. The 90-year-old Volvo Cars is one of the iconic brands from Sweden, perceived by global audiences as being safe and durable with minimalist design. When it was sold by Ford Motor Company to China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010, there were worries about it losing its Swedish and Scandinavian root and identity. The new owner let the production and design remain in Gothenburg in Sweden and Ghent in Belgium, and Volvo’s “Made by Sweden” campaign since 2012 has communicated to global audiences to make the brand authentically “Swedish” again.

5.1.3.2 The geographic dimension concerning design Consumers across the world have been aware of the consumer culture and myths in the Nordic region (Østergaard et al., 2014). Designer furniture has successfully been marketed in global markets as “Nordic” since the 1950s, and Nordic TV dramas under the perceptual label “Nordic Cool” have reached wide global audiences. To narrow down to country level, the idea of “Swedishness” stands out due to its distinctiveness. One outstanding example is IKEA, the global giant of well-designed flat-packed furniture. It markets and presents itself as being “Swedish” through its idea of democratic design, Swedish myths and stereotypes represented by the colors of the company logo and the naming of products (Jones, 2016; Lindqvist, 2009). The notion of “Swedishness” has one key dimension, namely the Swedish design that evokes the imagery of “pure,” “clean simple lines,” and “lightness.” The Swedish design was shaped by the social democratic collaboration and ideology in Sweden, the way in which Swedes use design to structure the everyday world they live and move about in. In the twentieth century, Swedish design was shaped by politics (Murphy, 2015) as the idea of democracy advocated by the Swedish Social Democratic Party permeated into design and art objects (Jones, 2016). The design of furniture and household products was intended for social welfare programs and democratic socialist ideals, leading to “more beautiful everyday goods” for the home for all citizens.

Since the 1920s, Swedish design has gained a considerable global reputation for simple, well-designed and functional objects, as evidenced by the success of IKEA and Volvo (Jones, 2016). In 1925, at the Paris World Exhibition, glassworks from Glasriket achieved a major success as artists Simon Gate and Edward Hald designed glass wares under the brand of Orrefors that won praise. English critic P. Morton Shand coined the phrase “Swedish Grace” to describe the Orrefors display (Dawson, 2000). Since the First World War, the glassworks at Glasriket have been exporting products to overseas markets such as the USA, the UK and Australia. In the US, the name Orrefors became linked with the concept of Swedish modernism as its products penetrated the country’s retail markets (Ostergard, 1998). Orrefors’ participation in the Swedish pavilions at world’s fairs and traveling exhibitions of Swedish modern design in the US created a “Swedish” association in the minds of audiences.

At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, glass from Glasriket earned a good reputation and the term “Swedish Modern” was coined by an American critic (Dawson, 2000). It expresses a Swedish commitment to natural form, truth to materials and the obvious

132 5. Findings benefits that had resulted from an ever-increasing close relationship between art and industry. The Swedes had managed to combine ideas about functionalism and modernity whilst retaining a strong interest in tradition. The term reflected a major factor in Swedish design in the postwar period – design with a more humanistic esthetic.

During WWII, in Sweden, there was a fundamental desire to enhance the quality of everyday life through architecture and the industrial arts. After WWII, improved living standards in Sweden led to greater purchasing power and increasing demand for new, exclusive glass products. The Swedish glass industry at Glasriket started to boom. “Scandinavian Design” supplemented the 1930s’ “Swedish Modern” as a new trend representing functional, stylistically pure elegance. Foreign consumers encountered and purchased products from Orrefors as embracing the Swedish design and Swedish style, which means a graceful and elegant version of modernism (Sweet, 1998).

Plate 17 (“An ad about the ‘Bruk’ series of Kosta Boda”) appears in a point-of-sale advertisement and product catalogues of the Kosta Boda glassworks, featuring the series “Bruk,” a new colorful glass ware collection launched by Kosta Boda in 2016. The genre is product photography, very typical of images in product catalogues or advertisements, reminiscent of photographs in a product catalogue of the Swedish furniture brand IKEA, where furniture and house wares are aligned in a room setting to present an idealized way of “life” for consumers. Thus, it has an iconic resemblance to photographs of IKEA or other furniture and household product brands. There are three key signifiers in the image: the glass and ceramic wares on the table, the accessories and props (furniture, plant, human model, room setting), and the texts.

First, with components of carafes, bowls, plates, cups, tumblers, vases, candle holders, etc., the series are highly functional, serving multiple practical occasions in daily life: holding salads, helping with drinking water and juices, holding flowers as a vase, or holding a candle. Despite their practicality of being made “for you to use,” the glass objects have elegant forms and a light blue color as the designer strove to “just to make it more beautiful” to achieve the harmony between function and form (designer Anna Ehrner, November 15, 2017). As for the second signifier, the chairs and table are wooden, symbolizing an organic, green approach of processing a natural material for making furniture, a typical Swedish ethos. The design of the furniture demonstrates a Swedish or Nordic style, in harmony with the glass wares. The female model is a Swedish-looking Caucasian girl, whose shirt is dark red, in harmony with the color of the wall and floor (light warm gray). Different objects were brought together with a coherent style and harmonious mixture of hues to create a cosy, clean, and elegant domestic interior. Finally, as for the third signifier (the texts), the large- sized word “Bruk” in white serves as the headline, accompanied by a slogan below ‒ “Everyday elegance. Designed in Sweden.” The Swedish word “Bruk” is a pun, providing not only the label of the product series, but also an additional signified, the Swedishness. “Bruk” stems from the Swedish word “att bruka” (“to use”) and also means “glass factory,” which is “a building in which you have hot glass” (designer

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Anna Ehrner, interview, November 15, 2017). And, in Swedish, “Bruk” refers only to a glass factory rather than factories in other sectors. Therefore, Kosta Boda is a “glasbruk” (glass factory), located in the village of Kosta in Småland, surrounded by black lakes, deep forests and beautiful nature. The texts constitute a parasite message designed to connote the image to point to the core signified meaning.

A gestalt reading of all the signifiers in Plate 17 yield the core signified – a representation of the Swedish way of life (Naylor, 1998) in a contemporary home, which is a furnished ideal home that is practical, accessible, esthetically beautiful, and socially responsible (Dawson, 2000). This is on the connotation level where I interpret the signs in terms of the wider realms of social ideology – the general beliefs, conceptual frameworks and value systems of a society (Hall, 1997). These artifacts are made for the viewers to use on an everyday basis. The design style of Bruk mirrors the broader category of Swedish furniture and household goods, which convey the typical Swedish ideology of living a life in a contemporary home. Design and the visual arts could be influenced by contemporary social issues and needs. In his ethnographic study of Swedish design, Murphy (2015) elucidates the consonance between the form qualities (straight lines, clear angles, simple curves, p. 44) and the sociopolitical values (functional, ethical, accessible, democratic, and egalitarian, p. 206) behind Swedish design. According to Murphy (2015), the svensk (“Swedish” in English) design is fundamentally influenced by the social democratic ideology in Sweden, which advocates the “good life” of the individual, entitled to security, beauty, and care. Since the late nineteenth century, Swedish politicians and social planners have viewed design as a means for advocating social changes and pushing for a more egalitarian society (Dawson, 2000). After WWII, Sweden embraced a fundamental desire to enhance the quality of everyday life through architecture and the industrial arts, offering inexpensive social housing and well-designed mass products by the industry.

Locality can be a source of inspiration for designers and can be projected on to glass products. The chief designer Mats Jonasson of the Målerås glassworks is well-known for his glass reliefs featuring animals and nature, which draw inspiration from the deep forest in Målerås and Småland. “For Mats Jonasson, the landscape around Målerås has had great impact on his design,” an article in the Glasriket magazine describes. Mats Jonasson is quoted in this article as saying “[t]here is something mystical over the landscape and a lot of inspiration comes to me when I am out hiking in the forest” (Glasriket magazine 2016, p. 29). Plate 18 (“The ‘Nordic Icons’ series of decorative glass of Målerås”) is an example of how glass objects were designed and made drawing on Swedish national cultural icons. The image appears in product catalogues and on the website of the glassworks of Målerås, which is well-known for handmade ornamental glass objects that depict motifs in history, cultural myths, animals in wildlife, plants, and flowers. The items are cast crystal sculptures with the techniques of hand painting and sandblasting, featuring the motif of a Dalecarlian horse. The Dalecarlian horse is also called a “Dalarna horse” or “Dala horse,” and is one of the most famous traditional Swedish folk art forms. The word “Dalecarlian” refers to the language/dialect spoken in the Swedish province of Dalarna, the place

134 5. Findings where these red carved horses originated back as early as the sixteenth century. The Dalecarlian wooden horses are hand-carved from pine wood and painted in a kurbits style. In the old days, the Dalecarlian horse was mostly used as a toy for children; in modern times it has become a symbol of Dalarna, as well as of Sweden in general. On top of the whole page is a large photograph illustrating a Dalecarlian horse crystal piece in the original red color, sitting on grass outdoors. With the sandblast texture, the irregular edges of this piece reflect light, a typical optical effect of glass. Below this large item are eight small images showing varieties of the Dalecarlian horse motif as well as one showing a distorted Swedish national flag and one showing a tree. The blue color of the Dalecarlian horse in the small images reminds viewers of the blue color on the Swedish national flag. Overall, the image represents a product series that is a reproduction of a Swedish cultural icon through a new material (glass). If a viewer has collateral experience and knowledge about the Swedish flag and the Dalecarlian horse, s/he would form the interpretant of the iconic relationship between these decorative glass objects and Swedish national icons and cultural heritage. The image is the carrier of a range of potential symbolic interpretations.

5.1.3.3 The geographic dimension concerning tourist experience In addition to products, the region of Glasriket itself has become a destination for tourists and visitors seeking authentic experiences. The region has been publicized to both locals and tourists as a “living” craft producing place, dotted by “the villages” where glassworks with more than one hundred years of history are still alive operating with craft production, to be witnessed and experienced by visitors. Closed glassworks were remodeled into tourism places or archives of resources, with new meanings resting on buildings, deserted furnaces and machines. The real operating glassworks have become tourist sites, where visitors can experience the authentic production environments and craft persons’ live performances are demonstrated. “Come into the blowing room and see the work!” is an exhortation in an article in Glasriket magazine’s 2017 issue inducing tourists to undertake some activities in the destination. With its strong connection to the local and real, this destination draws credibility from the preserved legacy of factories and locally situated craft making. The place can claim legitimacy and assert the distinctively real, local and original, in contrast to other consumption spaces that are exceedingly commercialized, artificially staged, or built from scratch such as Disneyland (Cohen, 1988; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006).

Plates 19A and 19 B (“The vintage roof and wall of the Kosta glassworks”) have been placed on websites and in marketing materials promoting the region as a tourist destination. Plate 19A shows the scene of the building of the factory of Kosta, on which there are the word “Kosta” and the number “1742.” Plate 19B is the back cover page of a product catalogue of Orrefors, from which we can see the media context in which Plate 19A is situated. Plate 19A is a still life photograph as a mixture of the genres of architecture and documentary photography. With “nonpeople” subjects, the photograph captures the exteriors of the building of the factory of Kosta ‒ the wall with worn-out red bricks and the top roof under the blue sky. Founded in 1742, Kosta is Sweden’s oldest glassworks that is still operating. It was merged with other

135 Jönköping International Business School glassworks to become Kosta Boda in 1976 (“kostaboda.se,” 2018). The brand Kosta Boda celebrated its 275-year anniversary in 2017. For the first sign in Plate 19A, the signifier includes the word “Kosta” and the number “1742,” which are the information pointers anchoring the whole picture. The word and the number are linguistic in nature, connoting the spatial and genealogical rooting of the company. The word “Kosta” derived from the names of the two Swedish founders, Anders Koskull and Georg Bogislaus Staël von Holstein, who were two of the Swedish King Karl XII’s generals. The word “Kosta” was formed as the combination of the first two syllables of the surnames of these two persons, who founded the glassworks. Kosta later became the name of the village, in the heart of the dense forests in the Swedish province of Småland. It is the place where the glassworks has been situated. In the vintage-styled font, classic and nostalgic, the number “1742” speaks of the long history of the glassworks. Therefore, the word (the founders) and the number (the year of founding) connote the image to “quicken” it with the signifieds – a taste of “Swedishness” and “a proud long history.” For the second sign in Plate 19A, the signifier, the wall with red bricks with a motley texture, connotes the signifieds of “authenticity” and “vintage.” This building still exists today and tourists can see it in person. Craft production is still being carried out behind the wall inside the building. The milieu has been well preserved. The photograph, originally shot in a style of being historical and archival, is repurposed or recontextualized in marketing materials, offering photographic evidence and proof of the claims of “authenticity,” encapsulating the whole scene with a sense of truth, timelessness and vintage. Plate 19A reminds viewers of the craft work conducted inside the building for 278 years.19 Viewers can imagine “being there,” with spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority due to the nature of photography (Barthes, 1977, p. 44).

The analyses above illustrate instances of geographic authenticity, which embeds the market offerings of Glasriket in a particular locality that functions as a spatial referent concerning production, design, and tourist experience. The “Made in Sweden” claim functions as a “stamp of approval,” providing a kind of certification or validation drawing credibility from the currency of national identity, myths, and culture. The locality or place renders the products and brands an authentic Swedish offering. The association with the country of Sweden creates a product-place image for products and brands from Glasriket. The contextualized product-place image is locally instantiated, and communicated to domestic and foreign audiences. Due to this image, the origin of the market offerings testifies to specific values or qualities (similar examples of such expressions include fashion from France and watches from Switzerland).

It is interesting to observe that the referential relationship between country origin and Glasriket’s offerings is reciprocal. On the one hand, glassworks and products frequently appeal to geographic authenticity by referencing Sweden as the country of origin in marketing communications. On the other hand, brands and products from

19 The number 278 was calculated from the time when Kosta was founded in 1742 to the time when this dissertation was finalized in 2020.

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Glasriket give back to the home country by being cultural symbols of Sweden. Glasriket glass products are “must have” items for many kings and are the default ceremonial gifts for the Swedish government as a type of “national gift” when officials go abroad. For example, in 1927, a large ceremonial Orrefors jar (named the “Canberra Cup”) was presented as an official gift from the Swedish Chamber of Commerce to the Australian government to celebrate the opening of the national Parliament House in Canberra and enhance diplomatic and trade relationships between these two countries (Sweet, 1998). Glass has often been used to market Sweden internationally, and glass making is often regarded as a typically Swedish phenomenon (Nicklasson, 2007, p. 60). The glassworks have gained their own place in the Swedish soul (Triberg, 2011), being woven into the nation’s culture.

5.1.3.4 The paradox in the construction of geographic authenticity The paradox of the geographic authenticity of Glasriket mainly lies in its struggle with production delocalization – when an economic crisis arose as an environmental trigger, rationalized measures were taken: to close or merge glassworks in Glasriket and outsource manufacturing to machine-based factories in other countries for cost optimization and the practical exigencies of economic survival. The locality was desensitized as glassworks adopting such measures would downplay the provenance of making and emphasize design (the form) by changing the unique cachet of “Made in Sweden” to “Design in Sweden” or even avoiding communicating the provenance. As an example, on an exhibition board in the area about Kosta Boda in the Swedish Glass Museum, a paragraph of texts admits that “some of Kosta Boda’s series are produced in countries such as Turkey, Slovenia and Poland, to reduce costs.” The headline for this paragraph tries to alleviate the negative effect by using the slogan “Glass without borders – designed in Sweden. Made in Turkey” (field notes). The cachet of being “made in…” has both tangible (the production technique and its trace on the product, perceived skill) and intangible (perceived distinctiveness) added values as it builds uniqueness, mystery, magic, and noncomparability (Kapferer, 2012). The inauthentic practice of outsourcing production to other countries follows the rationalizing trajectories of modernity, and is hostile to the world of craft production. The authenticity of market offerings would be undermined, resulting in disenchanting effects on products, brands, artisanal labor, and the soul of the region. Another outcome of production delocalization is that dwellers’ lives and work were impacted as craftspeople lost their jobs and residents moved out of the region. The total number of glassworks has reduced by two thirds, and the region has changed from thriving rural communities to depopulated countryside (Andersson, 2017).

5.1.4 Construction of temporal authenticity Temporary authenticity refers to authenticity bestowed on market offerings (products, brands, tourist destinations, experiences, etc.) at Glasriket by history and heritage. The construction of authenticity reflects the treasuring of rootedness and nostalgic values by the craft industries. As legitimizing and identity-creation effects, the construction of authenticity gives the Glasriket world of glass a kind of historicity. As noted by Spooner (1988), we can differentiate according to values we realized in

137 Jönköping International Business School the past. “The past has substantive and symbolic relevance for the present and prospective future” (Balmer & Burghausen, 2019, p. 220). Past-related resources have relevance for contemporary marketplaces, where consumers yearn for the nostalgic, the retro, and the historical (Balmer & Burghausen, 2019; Brown et al., 2003). As a tourist destination, Glasriket has been repurposing its heritage in craft production. In tourism literature, authenticity concerns culture and heritage, and the representation of the past (Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Wang, 1999). The amenity of heritage has proven itself to be a lure for tourists in their quest to seek out authentic tourist experiences.

History, heritage and traditions, with temporal implications, are used by actors at Glasriket as a way of invoking the myth of the craft and as a cultural marker of legitimacy and authenticity (Peñaloza, 2000). The historical legacy of this region provides a rich repertoire of cultural meanings that resonate with consumers. The references to the past exist in object production, discourses and visual images in marketing materials, events and tourist experiences: the traditional craft mode of making glass, rituals of celebrating historically significant dates (e.g., the 275-year anniversary of Kosta Boda in 2017), or reference to the past with a retro spin in the marketing materials of the tourist destination. Glassworks and the DMO use history and culture as referents (Beverland, 2005b), and the linking to the past is realized through referencing three types of past-related concepts: 1) the heritage of the craft technique; 2) company history; and 3) national heritage and cultural icons.

5.1.4.1 Referencing the heritage of the craft technique Glassblowing has been carried out in Glasriket since 1742, and the profession and skills were often inherited from father to son within the so-called “glassblower families” (Nicklasson, 2007). The craft of making glass has become a historically interpreted tradition, something to be enshrined as part of the region’s historic patrimony and redefined as genuine, living cultural forms. The past can establish or stabilize cultural traditions, legitimate institutions, and socialize people in particular contexts (Hobsbawm, 1983, p. 9).

The craft has become a cultural tradition of cooperative hand work in small teams (Duncan, owner of the Johansfors glass gallery, December 11, 2017). Knowledge of the production technique lives on in the memories of local people, and the tales and legacy of the craft technique have been recounted tirelessly in textual materials and visual images in marketing collaterals, archives, exhibitions in museums, special books about this region, and community members’ discourses. The following quotations illustrate how glassworks and the DMO draw authentic assets from the past with narratives about origins and the proud long history of craft making of glass. Swedish glass is a success story that started in the deep forests of Småland hundreds of years ago. For centuries skillful craftsmen have turned sand, soda and chalk to sparkling glass in the heat of the furnaces. (Glasriket magazine 2016, p.3, emphasis by this author)

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The glowing furnaces at Målerås have been burning for centuries. (Glasriket magazine 2017, p. 11, emphasis by this author) Skrufs Glasbruk – Timeless classics (headline). Text: At our glassworks all the glass is handmade down to the smallest detail. We combine tradition and new thinking with high quality and a high artistic knowledge. In other words, a genuine handicraft from Småland. (An ad about the glassworks Skruf in Glasriket magazine 2018, p. 28, emphasis by this author) In the above quotations, the words “timeless,” “centuries,” “tradition,” “classics,” “handicraft,” and “genuine” were used to emphasize the historicity and authenticity of the craft of making glass. References to the past or genealogy lead to cultural authority in legitimizing current commercial activities and offerings, giving meanings to the current brands, companies, products, experiences, and places. The following quotation by the owner of the 200-year-old Reijmyre glassworks explains why values that were realized in the past still have salience for today’s marketplace: I think the pendulum has swung back and there is more value for the Swedish handicrafts. You want more good things in the home that have a history and that are not mass-produced in a factory abroad. Reijmyre has a timeless value that we are extremely proud of, want to cherish and struggle with. (Quote from a magazine article by Ulf Rosén, owner of Reijmyre glassworks (Wachtmeister, 2017, emphasis by this author)) Another key message in the discourses about the craft technique of glass making is its continuity. “Today, glass is made in more or less the same way as it was in the late nineteenth century – it has remained very much a craft,” states one paragraph in the chapter “The Kingdom of Crystal – a modern phenomenon with its roots in the past” in the book entitled Svenskt glas under sex sekler (“Swedish glass under six centuries” in English) (Nicklasson, 2007). The paragraph goes on to introduce the “chair” system, which is the hallmark of the craft technique in making glass at Glasriket that has been carried out up to today. Age or the continuity of the tradition of production is a way of differentiating (Spooner, 1988). For such discourses, the implicit message is that the longevity of the production technique is a testimony of its legitimacy and raison d’être. The way glass is made according to traditions implies that the production is genuine, unadulterated, and honest (true to itself).

5.1.4.2 Referencing company history The referent of “company history” has biographic specificity. In their marketing materials, glassworks underscore the authenticity of products by referring to the date of founding or a long history. “The beginning of what was later to become the Kingdom of Crystal was the founding of Kosta Boda in 1742” (Glasriket magazine 2016, p. 5) is an example of narrating the beginning of Glasriket. On the website of each major glassworks, there are texts and images introducing the history of the company. On their product packages, there is the “Since XX (number of year)” tag line to indicate their longevity. During the period when I carried out this research, the Kosta Boda glassworks celebrated its 275-year anniversary, and the glassworks brand

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Målerås celebrated its 127-year anniversary. Both glassworks organized celebrations, events, and exhibitions to commemorate their establishment. The circumstances of the inception of a company foundationally shape its identity for now and in the future. Heritage is central to being true to the self. This centrality leads many companies to honor their heritage.

Plate 20A (“Black-and-white group portrait of workers at Kosta glassworks in 1900”) and Plate 20B (“Color group portrait of workers at Kosta Boda glassworks in 2017”) are two photographs of group portraits of people, as a celebration presentation of the Kosta Boda glassworks’ 275-year anniversary. They are placed in a product catalogue of the glassworks published in 2017. Plate 20A is a black-and-white photograph, accompanied by the title “Decades of Swedish craftsmanship” and three paragraphs of texts (English and Swedish in parallel) explaining its root of being founded in 1742 in the Småland forest in Sweden and its continuity with craftsmanship since then. Plate 20B is a color photograph, accompanied by the title “Celebrate!” and three paragraphs of texts (English and Swedish in parallel) celebrating the glassworks’ 275- year anniversary with the spirit of festivity and fun. Both images draw upon several distinctive visual genres, including group portraiture and documentary photography. Both portraits were taken “on location,” which means the factory floor, where the people stood against the natural work environment. The documentary genre implies that photographs were taken to create a valuable, visual record. The group theme recurs in many contemporary advertisements, as a representational convention. The group portrait genre can be genealogically traced back to the painting type in the golden era of Dutch art, when Dutch painters portrayed groups of men as members of guilds, corporate boards, or sports teams (Schroeder, 2006).

I now analyze these two images by comparing and contrasting them. First, in terms of similarities, both Plate 20A and Plate 20B are photographic group portraits about staff from the same glassworks. People are the subject of the pictures. They knew each other as coworkers, and the group existed prior to the shooting. This is a different situation from group portraits in contemporary advertisements, in which models, who did not necessarily know each other, posed for shooting, such as in the Calvin Klein CK One ads analyzed by Schroeder (2006). Both Plate 20A and Plate 20B convey meanings about “collectiveness.” On the one hand, “collectiveness” is related to the craft nature of their work of glass making, which is a type of cooperative activity involving a team with people commanding different skills. On the other hand, “collectiveness” is related to their group identity as coworkers who belong to the same glassworks. Their work and the production constitute the membership and the common identity.

Second, if we look at the differences between these two images, one is old and nostalgic, and the other is new and celebratory. The black-and-white photograph was taken in 1900, and is unclear, nostalgic, and antique-looking, in the style of archival photography. People’s faces are vague. Some workers were sitting, some were facing the opposite direction to the camera, and some were holding tools (blow pipes) in their hands. They were probably not natural or ready to take the photograph given

140 5. Findings that photography was not a popular technology and social phenomenon in 1900. The color photograph was taken in 2017 and shows people’s seeming spontaneity. When being photographed, the group of workers had a self-awareness about the presence of the camera and presented poses to the camera. Some of them smiled. They appearred happy and proud. Assisted by the title and texts, the color image reveals that people became part of the company’s celebration of its 275-year anniversary. The moment of portrait-taking was also a ceremony for celebration. Placed in the same product catalogue only one page apart, these two images constitute a diachronic hint in a semiotic sense (Mick, 1986), which places them in a historical dimension for revealing changes as well as continuities: The past is linked to and contrasted with the present.

5.1.4.3 Referencing national heritage Glasriket evokes authenticity by drawing on legitimating sources associated with Swedish national heritage and cultural icons such as the Swedish Royal Family and the Nobel Prize. With specific temporal reference points and a vibrant wealth of market meanings, these Swedish national cultural icons are appropriated and valorized by glassworks and the DMO as a means of ensuring authenticity. This approach belongs to referential authenticity (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a), in which market offerings at Glasriket can be rendered authentic by referring to these Swedish national cultural icons that are truly “Swedish” in spirit and have already been perceived as credible and real. Below are three examples illustrating how the legacy of the Swedish national identity is referenced by glassworks and the DMO to construct authenticity for market offerings.

Plate 21 (“The Royal Couple of the Swedish monarchy”) shows the scene in which the royal couple of the Swedish monarchy (King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia) were visiting the Kosta village in a festival spirit to celebrate the 275th anniversary of the Kosta Boda glassworks on June 6, 2017. In the press photograph genre, this image and several others showing activities on the same occasion appeared in multiple media outlets and the official website of Kosta Boda. The structure of the photograph is in communication with adjacent text (news title, caption, story) and the two structures are cooperative (Barthes, 1977). In this photograph, the King and Queen are walking along a boulevard on a sunny early-summer’s day, greeted by citizens holding small Swedish national flags. In the background, there are two large Swedish national flags hanging on two poles. There are three key signifiers in this image: the royal couple, the national flags, and the backdrop environment of the village of Kosta.

The royal couple, as part of the Royal Family, can be seen as human expressions of the Swedish Crown, which has three core values, namely a symbol of Sweden, togetherness and identity, according to a study about the Swedish monarchy and crown as brands conducted by Balmer, Greyser and Urde (2006). The “symbol of Sweden (logos)” summarizes the Crown’s role and function, the “togetherness (ethos)” reflects the relationship between the Crown and the citizens of Sweden, and the “identity (pathos)” captures the public’s sense of belonging to the nation, with its shared history, culture and traditions. Thus, the signifier of the royal couple connotes

141 Jönköping International Business School all these core values and related meanings. Second, the national flags signify the Swedish national identity. Third, the environment in the background connotes the place of Kosta and the brand of Kosta Boda, with proximity to the facility and craft of making glass since 1742. All three signs form a coherent whole, delivering the concept of the “Swedishness” of Kosta Boda, which is itself a heritage brand and a part of the Swedish heritage, as further endorsed by the Royal Family. As a follow- up, Plate 22 (“An act of ‘crowning’ by the Swedish King”) shows a subsequent activity on the same day, an act of “crowning” – in the process in which a work of art, Kungabåten (“The Royal Boat” in English), was cast on site, and the King placed a glass crown in the hot and floating glass object, which was being cast. The King was assisted by Bertil Vallien, Kosta Boda's world-renowned designer (the man next to him).

Plate 23 (“A page featuring the Nobel Prize stemware series of Orrefors”) is one page on a product catalogue of Orrefors, featuring the official Nobel Prize stemware series, designed by Gunnar Cyrén to mark the 90th anniversary of the Nobel Prize Banquet in 1991. The Nobel Prize glass series consists of different wares for champagne, martini, wine and beer, a jug, and a decanter. Orrefors is an official supplier to the Nobel Foundation, and this series has served Nobel Laureates, the Royal Family, and guests of the Nobel Prize ritual event, which takes place in Stockholm City Hall in December each year. The image shows how Orrefors draws upon Sweden’s cultural heritage of the Nobel Prize brand. Offering sources of meanings for brands and products, cultural heritage has been described as “a composite of the history and coherence and continuity of defining characteristics” of a culture, an object, a people, or a nation (Hakala, Lätti, & Sandberg, 2011, p. 450).

There are three signifiers in Plate 23 – the products, the name of the series, and the Nobel medal. The first signifier, the glass wares, was put in a table setting, amongst knives, forks, spoons, wine and some foods. The scene signifies the very Banquet of the Nobel Prize, a premium event covered by the media and imagined by people. The glass wares, as the utensils used by attendees of this event to actualize their once-in- a-lifetime experience, obtain their premium status associated with the Nobel event and the Nobel brand, which is a Swedish cultural icon and nonprofit brand. If regular consumers buy and use the glass wares, they can enjoy, vicariously, some of the values and meanings associated with the Nobel brand. The wine glass wares have golden stems, a similar color to that of the medal. An iconic resemblance between the product series and the Nobel prize brand was established by the purposive design as they share the same key color of gold. Pictorially, the gold color becomes the bridge that transfers the signified (values and meanings afforded by the Nobel brand) between signifiers (the glass products and the Nobel Prize brand). The second signifier, the name of the series, Nobel, is a Swedish last name and also a brand name licensed to Orrefors by the Nobel Foundation. It connotes abundant cultural meanings supplied by the licensor, which Orrefors would otherwise not possess. The cultural meanings are transferred from the Nobel Foundation to this product series: the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, the gold premium standard, the Royal Family of Sweden, the symbol of scientific or literary achievement, and various depictions in

142 5. Findings novels, movies and media coverage. The third signifier, the Nobel medal, is golden in color with the head image of Mr. Alfred Nobel. It connotes the message that this product series is authorized and endorsed by the Nobel Foundation, which has a slew of sponsors, partners and licensees.

In summary, as regards the construction of temporal authenticity, organizations in Glasriket evoke authenticity by referring to the past – production technique, company history and Swedish national cultural heritage – to convey an aura of the tradition. The elements of craft technique as a tradition, company history and Swedish national cultural icons provide meaningful references and rich market meanings, which are hard to imitate. Paying tribute to the past makes present offerings come off as more real and differentiated.

5.1.4.4 The paradox in the construction of temporal authenticity The paradox of “temporal authenticity” lies in the dialectic relationship between “looking backwards” and “looking forward.” On the one hand, the continuity and longevity of craft techniques rather than changes are the hallmarks of the craft ideal and ethos. On the other hand, only referring to the past and heritage runs the risk of rendering Glasriket outmoded and irrelevant. In recent years, glass has no longer been a consumption priority in the same way as clothing or technology gadgets for young consumers. A large proportion of the repeat shoppers and visitors to Glasriket comprises middle-aged and elderly consumers (interviews). When discussing the temporal factor in authenticity, Peterson (1997) argues that authenticity does not have to always refer to some clear standard or essential element from the past. Rather, authenticity is a reconstruction of various aspects of the past, elements continuously selected and crafted to meet the need of the present. So, there is no absolute “past” and the “past” can be renewed to be trendy. Craft practice is not meant to be simply a repetition of the past, but subject to revitalization. Craft is supposed to be in a constant process of reinnovation and reinvigoration, concerning the present and future rather than merely the past (Peach, 2013). Glass is not doomed to be a traditional material but is something that can be modern as it can be made into fiber optics, smartphones, and modernist architecture. The Glasriket region has been undergoing transformations and seeking renewals with initiatives to develop new, innovative products and new experiences. Organizations in Glasriket have explored new usage of glass in other sectors. Plate 24 (“Two pages showing various new applications of glass in other sectors”) comprises two pages from the 2017 Glasriket magazine demonstrating various new applications of glass: glass roof tiles for home heating, electronic gadgets, glass facades in a shopping center, and glass in an automobile. The Swedish Glass Research Institute located in the city of Växjö has developed smart, connected and interactive glass products, one of which was applied in the Smart Housing Småland Project that built intelligent and sustainable housing. The Glass Factory, which is an experience-based interactive glass museum, has been a hub for glass innovation, where glassblowers, artists and researchers work together to develop high-tech products such as interactive smart glass applied in medical devices and glass roof tiles as solar panels that provide domestic heating (Glasriket

143 Jönköping International Business School magazine 2019, p. 39). It also hosts the project Glass Tech Hack20 to explore new technologies, crafts, materials and applications. Such initiatives have brought a freshness and vitality to Glasriket, and we can see the juxtaposition of the past alongside the new, and the nostalgic alongside the innovative.

5.1.5 Construction of original authenticity Original authenticity refers to the situation where market offerings gain singularity, rarity, or newness, are unique among their kind, never seen before, distinguished by genius, or not copies or imitations (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a; Williams, 2014). In Peterson’s study of country music, “originality” was said to be necessary for “authenticity” and a performer is considered to have “originality,” that is, a “creative voice,” if he or she is judged to have an interpretation that makes the presentation distinctive and clearly recognizable (Peterson, 1997, pp. 3-4, 209-211). In our current era of global homogenizing, the distinctive social and cultural characteristics of places, products, and brands are obscured. Our contemporary societies are mainly concerned with the functions of reproduction, exchange, exhibition and transaction (Heilbrunn, 2018). Products are characterized by interchangeability and uniformity. As a response, the glassworks at Glasriket constantly work to achieve the originality and singularity of products, brands and experiences to distinguish them from the sameness of mass production.

At Glasriket, authenticity is mainly achieved through the marshaling of art that is a kind of legitimation. A work of art suggests cultural authority (Frayling, 1992), lending creativity, novelty, authenticity and singularity to products, brands, experiences, and places. Art can create uniqueness in a way that mass production fails to when an artistic object is unique, different than the imitated. At the end of the nineteenth century, the glassworks at Glasriket started to invite artists and designers to work alongside the craftsmen in the factories. Since the early twentieth century, Glasriket has invited and encouraged artists to participate in the glass making (field notes of the exhibition at The Glass Factory) (more details can be found in Section 2.4.4 “The art dimension in the region”). Artists and designers have been creating new ranges of products that are more innovative and distinctive to counter cheap imports of machine-made glass products. The focus of designers is to “find that little extra thing that made it difficult to copy the Swedish tableware” (field notes of exhibition at The Glass Factory).

As for the mechanisms of constructing original authenticity for marketing offerings, there are three approaches deployed at Glasriket:1) to reference the designer artist as the human creator with aura; 2) to provide artistically oriented objects with aura; and 3) to deliver the uniqueness of products rendered by the handmade mode of

20 Glass Tech Hack is a project running in 2018-2020, focusing on the development of interdisciplinary collaborations between glass practitioners and researchers in science and technologies at The Glass Factory. Weblink: https://www.theglassfactory.se/english/projects/projekt/2019-03-05-glass-tech-hack.html.

144 5. Findings production (“Each handmade piece is original”). All these mechanisms work to make the glass objects more scarce and original to forestall the simulacra. The three mechanisms will be analyzed hereinafter.

5.1.5.1 The designer artist as the human creator with aura The authenticity of market offerings at Glasriket derives from the human creators of glass objects—the designers. This concerns a product’s biographic specificity—who is involved in the craft making of it. The authenticity of a glass product has references to an identifiable designer, who can create original and singular works because of his or her artistic genius (Heilbrunn, 1998). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, glassworks have been capitalizing on the ingenuity of the artistic talent of glass designers, who offer an esthetic vision, creating the singular and original.

A tradition of glass designers at Glasriket is working on art glass in addition to their design work for mass production. They often continue their career along two intermingled paths: glass stemware and art glass. The former addresses function and the latter esthetics. Juggling between design and art, they assume the dual roles of designer and artist. Glass designers work in the extra roles of artists, painters, graphic artists and sculptors. With artistic and esthetic awareness, they experiment with glass to explore its full potential and do the symbolic work that makes products “meaningful.” Designers often think about how to make glass objects art. As for the differences between these two roles of designer and artist, Hara (2015) writes that art is the expression of individual ideas for society, while design derives from society rather than being individual expression as it is a process of discovering a problem faced by many people and then solving it. These two roles can stimulate each other, as explained by glass designer and artist Bertil Vallien in the following quotation: As an artist I am responsible only to myself. Deriving from my own thoughts, feelings and conventions I want my work to convey stories and dreams, sometimes simply to show the expressions the glass mirrors for me. Designing is a more extensive job in which you work for the sake of production. It ensures employment for others – the gifted glass workers. And it produces money as well so that the glassworks can survive. Art is mostly the more satisfying for me, but alternating between the two jobs teaches me a great deal. (Holmér, 2002, p. 68) Designers at Glasriket first become famous because of their art works, and then they design mass-produced functional glass wares associated with their names and imagery. Designers are seldom recognized for designing functional glass wares. Instead, they are recognized for their achievements in art glass, and their exhibitions of art works. “It is mainly art glass that receives the most publicity” (Holmér, 2002, p. 68). “You are seldom recognized for designing functional glassware. People always ask me when I will do my next exhibition,” said designer Anna Ehrner (Triberg, 2011, p. 89). This mode of juggling and leveraging between art and commodity is similar to that in the fashion system, where a designer does fashion shows with cutting-edge new design items consumers mostly have no access to. Then, the designer will have more down-to-earth mass-produced items for consumers to

145 Jönköping International Business School buy. Consumers buy the clothes because of the designer name associated with a product (designer Ludvig Löfgren, interview, July 17, 2017).

The artistic inclination of Glasriket has been nourished by the studio glass movement that started in the 1960s, boomed in the 1980s, and still exists today. 21 In this movement, an artist sets up his or her own studio glass workshop as an independent enterprise, in which he or she blows glass. The artist is also the maker responsible for the entire process, from the initial concept to the end object, with each piece being unique (field notes of the exhibition at the Swedish Glass Museum). These artists use glass as a medium to fulfill their personal artistic expression and experimentation, which is a way of countering the standardization ethos in mass production. Such artistic activities have generated a constant flow of product ideas and new techniques, and have extended the boundaries of what is possible. Many ideas of the studio glass movement were incorporated into the manufacturing of glassworks (Dawson, 2000).

Over the years, numerous designer artists, in one way or another, have contributed their artistic and creative touch to products of the glassworks at Glasriket, leading to an artistic edge in the glass industry. As a result, art glass sprang up and flourished besides the more utility-based, everyday glass wares. The artistic output of these designer artists includes one-off glass artifacts or products with limited editions. The glass designers’ works have been represented in many museums around the world, drawing the public’s interest to glass through exhibitions. The Kosta Boda-affiliated designer Bertil Vallien, who designed the Château series of wine glasses (see Plate 4), is such an example as his works have been classified as art and sculpture. As an internationally renowned glass artist, Bertil has won numerous design and art awards, and his art glass works are widely exhibited in prestigious museums around the world, bought and collected. He has also delivered a large number of public decoration projects, including glass installations in locations such as the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC, USA. In 2018, Bertil’s landmark art object, Passage, which is a sandcast glass boat worth “one million dollars,” was installed at the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan in the US.22

For most commodities in contemporary market systems, designers usually remain anonymous. At Glasriket, the glassworks encourage and promote designers as personal brands and ambassadors of glassworks. The designer artists at Glasriket become craft celebrities. The designers work as artists underscoring their links to the world of art and to an esthetic vision. Their artistic accomplishments and potentials have earned them the title of artist, rather than mere designers. A designer artist can be a brand, similar to artists with celebrity status such as Andy Warhol, the American artist, director, and producer well-known for his pop art (see Schroeder, 2005). The designer artists are brand-named as they themselves constitute a brand each.

21 Today’s art glass studios include: MickeJohans Konstglas, Transjö Hytta, and Carlos R. Pebaqué Design, as well as some artists in residency at The Glass Factory. 22 Press release: https://news.cision.com/kosta-boda/r/passage--has-arrived-at-its-home- port-,c2523012

146 5. Findings

Designers are foregrounded in the constellation of marketing communications of glassworks. Their names, images, quotes, and signatures appear in ads and product catalogues, as well as on product packages, websites, and posters on retail shelves.

The designer artists emit an aura of charisma as they are unique and radically different, which are the auratic qualities described by Benjamin (1969). Such auratic qualities contain singularity as the designer artists have genius, always creating new things and seeking novelty (Dion & Arnould, 2011). The artistic edge of the designer accrues to the product and the brands of a company. Pierre Bourdieu provides his reflection on the role of the artist/designer through the example of haute couture in the world of fashion. He points out the magic of the designer label as “a magical, alchemical act, since the social nature and value of the object are changed without any change in its physical or its chemical nature” (Bourdieu, 1993a, p. 147). A product owes its value to the social value of the designer or artist, manifested by the signature, which is the designer label and the “collective belief in the value of the producer and his product” (ibid.). In a similar vein, McCracken (1986) points out that the artist creates values so that he or she can enjoy the godlike power or a cult of personality. This is what Walter Benjamin called “the fetish of the name of the master” (Bourdieu, 1993a, p. 148). The American pop artist Andy Warhol is an example – a can of Campbell’s soup worth 15 cents can be sold for six dollars because he signed it.

At Glasriket, some glass connoisseurs establish relationships with their favored designers, in a sort of designer cult. During the 2017 Formex, the Nordic region’s largest trade show for interior design, Erika Lagerbielke, the designer of the well- known stemware series Intermezzo, Difference, Merlot and Divine for Orrefors, arrived at the Orrefors exhibition booth to meet and chat with customers and fans (field notes). Consumers are used to linking a product with its designer. Sometimes the designer, as a brand, becomes an even more salient differentiator than the company brand, as illustrated by the comment of one consumer: “I do not stick to any brand…I depend on the artist and the design” (consumer Nina, interview, September 21, 2016).

The designer artists serve as originators and creators, and their artistic edge is a way of guaranteeing the originality and authenticity of the products, while preventing standardization in mass duplication. Artists can design glass product models that cannot be copied by machine. The designer artist thus becomes a source of legitimacy (Dion & Arnould, 2011), used as the public image of a glassworks that establishes an authentic connection between the creator and the resulting product. As key creators of products, the designer artists are used as creative representatives by glassworks to articulate authenticity and add credibility to the products and company brands. Glassworks adopt two main approaches in constructing original authenticity of marketing offerings by referencing designer artists: designer signature as authentication and the visual representation of designers as human figures.

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As the first approach to constructing original authenticity through referencing designer artists, the signature of a designer on the finished glass object has been deployed as an apparatus of verification and confirmation that a product is authentic and original (not fake or copy). For art glass or glass objects in limited editions, each object is given an identity as they were signed by both the artist and the craftsmen (Holmér, 2011, p. 222). For the Målerås glassworks, each glass object in a limited edition has the signature (initials of first letter of first name and last name) of the designer on the bottom, plus a paper certificate with the handwritten signature of that designer (interview with Martin, CEO of Målerås, November 26, 2019). In addition, for all products at Målerås, each item has a unique article number. The following quotation from designer artist Tillie Burden illuminates the values and meanings of a designer signature on a finished object: It’s an authentification. For me it becomes very significant in that it’s the final thing. So for me it’s a symbol that this work is finished, and I will sign that and it’s done. So it’s a wrapping up. Because for some works, you can just keep working on. So it’s a way to say to myself “no, it’s finished, it’s good enough.” And it’s something that the customers look for. Because they want to buy stuff that they love … they also want to have the reassurance that it’s been authenticated by the artist, that this is the real object. (Designer artist Tillie Burden, November 15, 2017) The second approach of glassworks in constructing original authenticity by referencing designer artists is to publicize and display photographic images portraying designer artists in marketing communications. The ingenuity of designer artists is to be exemplified by glassworks. In addition to their commitment to the marketing of glass products, glassworks also promote individual designer artists. In the factory stores of Orrfeors, Kosta Boda, Målerås, Skruf, etc. that I visited, a card showing a photographic image and some text about a designer was placed alongside the corresponding products (see Plate 25 “A card showing a photographic image and texts about a designer”). Plate 26 (“Posters of large-sized black-and-white photographic portraits of designers”) shows the inside of the factory store of Orrefors, where posters of large-sized black-and-white photographic portraits of designers were hung from the ceiling. The reference to designers is an “index” effect in a semiotic sense. Peirce (1998) coined the term “index” to refer to cues that are considered to have a factual and spatiotemporal link with something else. Here, indexicality is a mode of signification as the image of a designer artist is indexed to the products designed by him or her and there is a causal connection between the designer and a product. Similar to arts-based advertising (Margolin, 1992), products are marketed with reference to images about arts and artists. The photographic images provide source credibility as the source is a real human being.

The photographic portraits of designer artists become signifiers in the sign system at Glasriket, and the signifieds are that they are the creators of products that are unique, original and authentic, and a designer’s product is one of a kind and distinguished from faceless outputs of mass production. Both glassworks and consumers recognize and appreciate the unique role of the designer, who can be celebrated as a symbol of

148 5. Findings certain cultural values. The following parts are analyses of photographic images of two glass designers at Glasriket, and the images belong to the photographic genre of portraits. The designer, as an artist, is the subject of a portrait photograph.

Plate 27 (“Portrait photograph of designer artist Mats Jonasson”) is a black-and-white portrait photograph, with a grainy feel, of designer artist Mats Jonasson from the glassworks Målerås. This image appears in multiple outlets: product brochures, company website, and retail stores. Mats Jonasson was born in Målerås and had been trained there to become an engraver and designer. He is one of Sweden’s most internationally known glass designers. His works were exhibited in the National Museum in Stockholm. In 1981, Mats Jonasson, together with the workers and the villagers in Målerås, bought the Målerås glassworks in an effort to counter potential acquisitions from larger groups or outsiders to protect the glassworks from losing its unique craft way of making glass. Thus, Målerås became an independent glassworks, owned by employees and villagers after 15 years of continual purchases, mergers and bankruptcies (Lundmark, 1997). Since the 1980s, Målerås has been expanding and performing well thanks to this visionary act. Mats’ pig-headed battle helped save jobs there. In 1992 at Stockholm, he received the Royal Patriotic Society’s gold medal for “beneficial deeds in Swedish industry” because the financially successful glassworks had acted as a wage-earner for employees and the local community (Lundmark, 1997).

The production of glass reliefs, which has become a characteristic of Målerås, has turned into a profitable business. Mats Jonasson’s animal relief decorative crystal items are sold across the world in outlets ranging from shops in Dubai to luxury cruises on the Caribbean seas to airports to mail orders in the US. His Wildlife series has become a Målerås classic and has always been very popular. Some Målerås products were marketed in his own name. For example, some retail stores and products use the name “Mats Jonasson Målerås,” which shows the close association between this person and the glassworks.

Plate 27 is a close-up portrait of designer artist Mats Jonasson, who is concentrating on working on an object with his hands. His face and complexion are vividly captured by the photographic portrait, which captures and conveys certain qualities of this person. The face, hands and mood represent the spirit of seriousness, concentration, problem-solving, and craftsmanship. The effigy of the designer artist Mats Jonasson establishes a personal link between him and viewers and his customers. He is the mind behind many of the world-famous Wildlife relief glass items. He emits the aura originating from his artistic glass pieces, with limited editions appreciated and collected by consumers. In the photographic portrait, he becomes the frontman for the whole operation of Målerås. He is the “Robin Hood” of Målerås and the Kingdom of Crystal as hailed by Lundmark (1997) in a biographical book about him as he saved Målerås at critical crossroads in the past and he has been the guardian of the approach and ethos of handmaking there. He is calm and low key, mostly working at Målerås hidden in the forest in southern Sweden, where he gets inspiration from nature as expressed by his handwritten quote within the image – “our forests have captured the

149 Jönköping International Business School hearts and minds of people since time immemorial” (the original text on the image is in Swedish). He is the icon, the ambassador, and the incarnation of the Målerås glassworks and brand.

Plate 28 (“Portrait photograph of designer artist Åsa Jungnelius”) is a color photograph featuring the glass designer and artist Åsa Jungnelius, together with an article, on two pages of the Glasriket magazine 2017. I include the article because the written text serves as the anchorage of the image (Barthes, 1972). Including accompanying text is a common practice in analyzing images as the textual and the visual are often complementary to each other (Rose, 2016). Entitled “From city dweller to forest lover,” the article explains how she explores the forests of Småland as an inspiration for her works of art glass. Åsa Jungnelius is one of Sweden's best- known glass artists. Born and educated in Stockholm, Åsa was trained and gained an MFA degree in Ceramics and Glass at the Konstfack 23 in Stockholm. In 2007, she moved to Småland to collaborate with the Kosta Boda glassworks, leading to a number of commercially successful series of art glass items, such as makeup lipsticks, high-heel shoes, nail polish, and diamonds, which are bought by consumers as decorative glass to put on ornamental shelves in their homes. As exaggerated, remade variations of daily objects, these products have the striking effect of seeing usually small everyday objects in enlarged, polished variations. In addition, she was involved in a wide range of artistic endeavors, including the customized interior at the National Museum of Sweden and a public artwork, The Seashell, for the Stockholm Metro.

In Plate 28, the forest scene and the designer are the two building blocks. The human figure is the signifier in the foreground while the forest scene is the signifier in the background. In terms of composition, the forest scene spreads out to be the full background for both pages. On the left-hand page, Åsa is backdropped by some red and yellow light that signals the dawn. In contrast, the surrounding portions of the image are dark. We can see trees, grass and a dog near her. The scene connotes an atmosphere of mystique and the morning freshness in the forests of Småland or the Kingdom of Crystal, which has fir and pine trees, glittering lakes and streams, and glass factory villages. The scene, as a signifier, is related to its referent – the glassworks and manufacturing facilities hidden in the forest. It implies the place where Åsa creates her works and glass products are designed and made. Dressed in a black jacket, pants and coat, Åsa, the other signifier, has a special bodily posture, standing upright looking forward. With the typical short hair that is consistent in all of her photographic portraits, she poses in a rebellious spirit, full of courage and reflections about her artistic pursuits. She is a new-generation type of designer in Glasriket, challenging current trends and designing works focusing on the subjects of gender, consumption, identity, taste, and esthetics. As a glass alchemist famous for her suggestive artistry, she designs objects by reworking on stereotype-charged objects, which provoke reactions from users and viewers.

23 Konstfack is a Swedish word, and its English equivalent is “The University of Arts, Crafts and Design,” a university college for higher education in the areas of art, crafts and design in Stockholm, Sweden.

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5.1.5.2 Artistically oriented glass objects with aura At Glasriket, the mainstay of the products manufactured is household glass wares for people’s daily life. There are two contrasting forms of household utility glass vis-à- vis art glass, namely the functional and the artistic. The utility glass wares are for everyday use, being functional, instrumental and unglamorous, while the art glass items are expressive and esthetic. Unlike regular glass products with a strong functional orientation, art glass objects have a substantial dimension of the beautiful, signaling the artistic aura or status of designer artists and prompting viewers to contemplate the beauty and ideas embedded in objects. With geometric shapes and patterns, art glass objects are in the forms of sculpture or ornamental pieces, meant for ostentatious display, collection, and esthetic contemplation.

With various ornamental motifs and new forms, art glass objects themselves are already very communicative, expressing their designers’ intents of visual sign concepts or ideas. As a marriage of form and meaning, art glass objects are driven by the designer artists’ visions and creative ideas. The designer artist conceptualizes an object as an idea concept, with the intention to mean and signify. Goodman (1968) explains that art has symbolic purpose as art is essentially semiotic, signifying meaning. The object becomes a bearer of meaning as a signifying sign, communicating something to the beholder – an idea, feeling, expression, or emotion. The object offers a vision, inviting the beholder to view the world differently in an esthetic experience. Consumers desire the products and experiences at Glasriket for nonutilitarian reasons such as esthetic appreciation. Consumers will appreciate the beauty of artistic glass objects through their esthetic experience. Consider the following statement of a consumer and glass connoisseur, who regularly visits factory stores in the region to buy items as collections and gifts for special occasions such as Christmas and birthdays: As for art glass items, I buy them for decoration purposes. I know it is art. Each item is not exactly the same. Hard to replace one with the same one. Maybe it is expensive, so I need to take more care and cherish them. When I use expensive glass, guests will feel important. They are different than mass-produced. (Consumer Nina, September 21, 2016) Her comment implies the ability of art glass to singularize and decommoditize the products as well as the ability to communicate meanings for her consumption experience. The products she bought are esthetic first and foremost, while being functional at the same time. Next, three photographic images about art glass objects will be analyzed. The images belong to the “still life” genre, which is often referred to as “product shots” by advertising photographers. The term “still life” was originally coined to describe paintings of inanimate objects in fine art.

Plate 29 (“The Make Up series designed by Åsa Jungnelius”) appears in a product catalogue of Kosta Boda, illustrating the Make Up series designed by Åsa Jungnelius. Since 2007, the well-known Swedish glass designer and artist has collaborated with Kosta Boda, which produces and sells this series as decorative glass items to be bought by consumers as gifts or ornaments for home decoration. This series consists

151 Jönköping International Business School of glass sculptures of Nail Polish Bottle, Lip Stick, Hot Lip, and Stiletto Heel Shoe. Åsa Jungnelius used the material of glass to express her artistic discourses, dealing with questions about fashion, unhealthy consumption, shopping, and the construction of gender roles. Expressing stereotype-charged symbols, these glass objects, not utilitarian in principle, have larger-than-actual sizes, exaggerated colors, and a glittering surface texture bestowed by the qualities of glass. With some shock value and as things to fascinate, the Make Up series is rife with symbolic meanings tied to feminine accessories and is characterized by a feminist ideology. Women create their identity through shopping and consumption. The Stiletto Heel Shoe represents the fetishism for shoes by women, who take shoes as a symbol of power (Triberg, 2011, p. 124). The Lip Stick, which is an oversized glass sculpture, expresses the power of women, who will find comfort at makeup counters. Make-up becomes an important practice through which they paint and construct their chosen identities. These objects become a form of fetish for women, and they symbolize that women themselves sometimes end up as objects (Triberg, 2011, p. 124).

Åsa Jungnelius elevated these daily objects from the purely decorative to more meaningful objects for contemplation. She played with stereotyped, everyday feminine objects, employed as forms and symbolic devices, to remake them into artistic objects, in a similar vein to the artistic gesture of the French artist Marcel Duchamp, who turned manufactured objects such as a bicycle, a urinal and a dustbin into works of art (Heilbrunn, 2018). And Åsa’s works of art are mechanically reproduced by Kosta Boda as commodities, to be purchased, gifted, collected and displayed by consumers in their everyday life as esthetic enjoyment or something good to think about. Thus, the borderline between design, art and commodity is blurred (Woodward, 2017).

Plate 30 (“Beige and amber being bags of Tillie Burden”) features two barn bags as objects. The items were designed and made in 2010 by glass artist Tillie Burdon, who is a native of Australia staying at The Glass Factory 24 as an artist in residency. The image appears on the artist’s personal website and in exhibition brochures. The two objects are in brown colors. Both were made through mouth-blowing, followed by surface treatments of sandblasting of one and wheel-polishing of the other, giving the works their soft fabric look. At first glance, a viewer will recognize them as barn bags. But they are glass sculptures. They are humorously styled, imitating relaxed gestural movements. Tillie Burdon’s two objects are an example of recontextualizations of objects and materials in artistic experiments and expressions. She attempts to discover new ways of expressing the material of glass, as indicated in this following quotation:

24 Located in the village of Boda in Glasriket, The Glass Factory (http://theglassfactory.se) is an experience-based, interactive glass museum with historical glass collections from Boda, Kosta and Åfors glassworks. It has a residency program for glass designers and artists to experiment with glass as a material and to discover new means of expression in the hot shops.

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Inspired by the fluidity and softness of the glass in its molten state, I wanted to highlight these qualities. Removing the transparency and shininess allows the viewer to contemplate other characteristics of glass. (Glass designer artist Tillie Burdon, November 26, 2018) Tillie explored the camouflage ability of materials by making objects look like another material. Here are intentions of Tillie Burdon’s transfer of materials (one material substituting another material): In terms of form and appearance, these two pieces mimick an object typically made by another material – gunny. Glass does not need to stand for itself but can represent another material (gunny). The form and visual appearance of the glass material are more important than their functional properties. The barn bag is reframed to become a visual element in a work of fine art. Its meanings and humor will be comprehended by the viewer’s mind’s eye as the viewer recognizes the temporary shifting of materials for the form, and the glass material can never be made into a barn bag to fulfill its typical function. The viewer will realize that these objects are made with glass for an optical experience rather than for the function of a real barn bag. These two pieces offer an analogy or optical substitute based on the viewer’s memories of actual experiences with the real object. As art objects, they exist in the realm of optical space as pseudo objects.

Plate 31 (“The ‘Still Life’ decorative/art series”) appears in a product catalogue of Kosta Boda, illustrating the “Still Life” decorative/art series designed by glass designer Ludvig Löfgren. In his designs, Ludvig usually taps into history and popular culture such as rock and roll and tattoing. This series consists of skull sculpture items in clear and colored opaque glass. Besides decoration, they are in a form offering the utility of being used as a candlestick holder. As one of the most powerful symbols throughout human history, the skull has been a pervasive and powerful symbol in various cultures. The Celtic culture viewed the head or skull as the seat of power, treating the skull as the house of the soul. Various forms in the realms of contemporary arts and creative industries celebrate the skull and use it as a regular motif in tattoing, fashion, jewelry and sculpture. The British artist Damien Hirst’s artwork “For the Love of God,” an eighteenth century human skull encrusted with 8601 diamonds, was sold for £38 million, generating buzzwords in the media. As a ghostly figure, the skull is a symbol connoting human death (our mortality), the celebration of life, time, a gateway, transformation, power, and so on. As for the “Still Life” series, the designer Ludvig Löfgren gained inspiration from the seventeenth century Dutch artists, who often used skulls in their still life paintings (Triberg, 2011). When asked about his own interpretation of the symbolic meanings of this series, Ludvig said: “[I]t is about Dutch, light of life. You have to take care, behave. Your life is short. Do the best with your life” (designer Ludvig Löfgren, interview, July 18, 2017).

To sum up, the three photographic images (Plates 29-31) analyzed above are about artistically oriented works and decorative glass objects, which are carriers of artistic expressions. The analyzed art glass objects in the images can destandardize, innovate, and surprise consumers with new shapes and forms. Artistic expressions were instilled into the objects to create an esthetically enjoyable experience. With

153 Jönköping International Business School configured visual properties, these art glass objects are the bearers of the designer artists’ intention to signify and communicate something. The objects and related brands are provided with a halo of artistic creativity, which lends singularity and differentiation while resisting imitation. The three designer artists used glass as an artistic and expressive medium, and toyed with various ideas to create objects that are unique and precious. The three glass designer artists experimented with colors and geometric patterns, which belong to the realm of form. Form is one of the vehicles by which meanings can be inscribed into objects according to Appadurai (1986).25 The forms will render original authenticity, which can arouse consumers’ sense of discovery (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a). Such forms fall into a category outside that of banal mass production (Baudrillard, 1968). The analyzed artistic objects “possess an aura of authenticity which surrounded the original – nonmechanically reproducible – work, endowing it with qualities of uniqueness, distance and otherness” (Heilbrunn, 1998, p. 189). These art glass objects are “auratic objects” due to the creative and artistic work of their creators – the designer artists. Art can endow a glass object with auratic qualities, signifying that it is original, exceptional, unique, and hard to imitate. Aura is a sort of halo that infuses the work of art with a kind of immaterial atmosphere that provides the object with a character of originality (Benjamin, 1969). The glassworks at Glasriket create and maintain such auras, which emit from original works of art (Benjamin, 1969; Brown et al., 2003; Heilbrunn, 1998) as well as their creators, leading to the formation of authenticity of various market offerings in the region.

5.1.5.3 Each handmade piece is original The 1949 issue of Orrefors Review, a customer newsletter produced by the Orrefors glassworks, tells a story: A housewife, Mrs. Smith, finished organizing a party and sat down at her kitchen table to appreciate the fine, expensive glass wares she had just purchased. Two goblets of the same type stood close to each other. Suddenly she realized that they were not of the same height. The difference was very small and would have been unnoticeable. She thought this was a flaw of the products and went to the store to return them. The salesperson was prepared and explained to her that handmade glass wares of the same type were not exactly identical and the difference was a proof of “handmade-ness.” Mrs. Smith was persuaded and canceled the idea of returning the products.

This story raises the issue that there are little imperfections or inaccuracies in every handmade glass object. In my interview with Kosta Boda’s production manager Peter, who was in charge of the manufacturing of the Intermezzo series of wine glass wares of the Orrefors brand, he explained the nuanced differences among products of the same model. The Intermezzo series of wine glass goblets have a blue drop in an air bubble in the leg.

25 The other two vehicles are uses and trajectories of objects (Appadurai, 1986).

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Peter: The shapes are almost the same on each item because you blow them in a mold. They have the same height and the same cut. But the thickness of each glassware could be different. And the color of the blue drop in the bubble could be different. In the same model, there are little variances among the products. Interviewer: Why the differences? Peter: For machine-made glass, you might have a thousand pieces, all of which look absolutely identical. Purely handmade mode cannot generate accurate objects. If a stemware is mouth-blown, they will make some errors. That’s what makes it “handmade” because you see that it will be different from all the others, so each one is individual. (Kosta Boda’s production manager Peter, November 17, 2017) Each glass goblet was mouth-blown and made by hand. It is impossible for the human hands, mouth and eyes to work with mechanical exactness. The human element was demonstrated in the production, manifested by the variations. Therefore, glass products of the same model lack mechanical exactness and uniformity (Orrefors Review, 1949, p. 7). They are not exactly alike. For example, there must be small variations in height, width, or thickness, and such differences could be unnoticeable or may only be detected through very close inspection. However, such variations prove that the products are handmade. The charm of handmade items depends on the small variations. Machine-made wares have automated precision and uniformity, but the objects lack individuality. Compared with machine-pressed glass products, each handmade glassware is like a small original work of art, having its own character and charm. No two objects are alike. Finally, a sentence from the Orrefors newsletter can best summarize the tenet of this third mechanism of achieving original authenticity for glass products: “[T]he variations among products are the hallmark of handicraft as each piece is original, not a machine-made copy” (Orrefors Review, 1949, p. 6).

5.1.5.4 Two paradoxes in the construction of original authenticity: Art vs. functional, originality vs. reproduction

5.1.5.4.1 The paradox of art vs. functional, art vs. commerce Polarities exist in the construction of original authenticity at Glasriket ‒ art vs. commerce and esthetic vs. functional, which are typical binaries in the creative or cultural industries. Instead of irreconcilable conflicts, we can see the coexistence of both sides: designers work as artists; art is mixed with business; glass objects can be beautiful in addition to being functional; and manufactured objects can be artistic.

At Glasriket, utility glass and art glass have been developed side by side. Some objects straddle both sides of the line between “functional” and “esthetic.” Functionality and art do not have to be contested. The glass objects are not only objects of esthetic contemplation, but also for commercial reproduction for profit. In contrast to the norm that art objects are not functional, designers at glassworks design artistic glass wares for everyday use. The designers at Glasriket hold the ideology that good design can be mass-produced and purchased at an affordable price

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(Dawson, 2000). At Glasriket, art is meant for mass production. “It is mainly art glass that receives the most publicity, but it is mass-produced goods that people generally buy and form the basis of the whole glass trade” (Holmér, 2002, p. 68). The artists work as designers to design products that can be made in large quantities, guarantee work for craftsmen, and generate profits. The product series “Line” is a positive example of how art can reconcile with mass production and market logics. “Line,” one of Glasriket’s best-selling glass series, was designed by Anna Ehrner of Kosta Boda in the 1980s, and consists of wine glasses, beer glasses, and champagne glasses. For this series of functional glass wares, Anna Ehrner got the core design idea of “adding a serpentine” from doing art glass – “she was experimenting with art glass and wanted to have a ‘path’ along which sandblasted animal figures would walk. This path became a thin line that ran along the glass like liquid” (Triberg, 2011, p. 88). This series, with this special technique, helped to save the business of Kosta Boda at a time when mouth-blown glass was facing stiff competition from machine-made glass that was sold at much lower prices. Anna Ehrner was aware of the practical mission of artists: “[T]he designers at Kosta Boda have a lot of freedom. But at the same time, I am aware that what I create needs to sell … I consider it a challenge to make something that is both beautiful and practical” (Triberg, 2011, pp. 88, 89).

The two roles of “designer” and “artist” have been reconciled and bridged. It is not about doing art for its own sake. Designers at Glasriket are in a different situation than the lifeworld of normal artists, who are in a mode of solitary exploration. The designers always consider the possibility of commercial production, in addition to the merits of artistic creativity. Designers treat the mission of “designing products that could ensure continued employment” as a responsibility (Holmér, 2002, p. 69) to be fulfilled in parallel with artistic exploration. Erik Rosen, managing director of Åfors glassworks, shared his philosophy of management: “[A]llowing them (designers) the freedom to experiment was intended to enable them to generate commercial products from art glass” (Holmér, 2002, p. 64). What concerns the designer artists at Glasriket is how art can generate business and profits. They strive to design best-selling items, which can be sold in many pieces. Many designers at Glasriket understand the possibility of achieving the natural harmony between the “functional” and the “artistic.” Glass artist and designer Tillie Burden’s perspective below is a representative argument: Well, I think glass has many roles. I mean, it has a very functional role. You know, everything from the window glass to the drinking glass, but what I’m interested in, of course, in the artistic role. And I think it’s interesting that glass can bridge that gap in that it is a material we encounter so much on a very functional basis, in a practical sense, that it, kind of, gives something else that also can be elevated to an artistic level. (Glass designer Tillie Burden, November 15, 2017) Art is not a separate sphere as it can create business and profits, which in turn provide funding for more artistic exploration. It is not the scenario that pure works of art deny the commodity logic and market forces. It is the unification of art and industry to improve the quality of life via improving standards of design (Dawson, 2000). The

156 5. Findings boundaries between art and commerce are blurred. Glassworks have found the fine line between the two polars. Artistic activities are juxtaposed with the instrumentality of business imperatives addressing the mass market (Beverland & Luxton, 2005). We see the esthetic flows between culture and commerce (Schroeder, 2005). Art renounces its own autonomy and takes its place in cultural commodities. The boundaries between art and everyday life (functional) have collapsed, and the paradox of esthetic and functional properties of objects has been reconciled. Such a reconciliation between art and business at Glasriket resonates against the notion of Horkheimer and Adorno (2002) that art’s freedom is bound up with the premise of a commodity economy.

The reconciliation of this paradox of art vs. functional and art vs. business can be explained by Becker's (2008) thesis about the art world: Artists are not solitary geniuses, but are part of the collaboration with other actors within a certain cultural industry. All of the actors at Glasriket share some conventions and goals. It is not about the innate imagination of single artists, but more the consensus and collective goals – to sell more objects to make profits to sustain the glass industry. There is no intrinsic worth in any artistic object independently of a socially agreed value of it – that it must lead to reproduction and business. Artists show an allegiance to market rationality (the profit imperative), while profit does not always come at the expense of creativity and singularity.

5.1.5.4.2 The paradox of originality vs. reproduction In the construction of original authenticity at Glasriket, there is another paradox – originality vs. reproduction. This paradox lies in the fact that glassworks try to render their products original, while at the same time reproducing them in large quantities. Glass objects end up being both original and reproducible. According to Heilbrunn (1998), authenticity originally supposes unicity and the impossibility of any duplication. Therefore, we have to ask this question: How can the “reproducible originals” exist so well at Glasriket?

The advancements of science and technologies in modern societies have eliminated most technical barriers to the production of objects in large quantities. We are currently in an age of reproducibility, where industrialization enables the identical reproduction of any object. It is assumed that the reproduction of art objects leads to the loss of authenticity, uniqueness and distinctiveness, thereby reducing their ability to surprise, fascinate and illuminate (Heilbrunn, 1998, p. 187). The object can lose the status of originality and of unicity in contemporary society. In his chapter “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” Walter Benjamin (1969) points out that art and cultural products (e.g., films, music, painting, and photographs) will lose their aura given the increasingly mechanized reproduction of them. Such art or cultural objects will lose part of their original meaning and authenticity due to their ever-increasing reproduction and diffusion. What his argument adeptly addresses is the issue of the authentic work of art (e.g., a painting by Picasso) in comparison with its forgery. Walter Benjamin’s thesis is helpful in that it draws people’s attention to the distinction between the original and its duplications, but his thought is more about

157 Jönköping International Business School a black-or-white scenario, too enclosed to explain more contemporary phenomena with diversified scenarios of object reproduction.

Glass products at Glasriket are also cultural products as the glass products offer symbolic values and convey cultural meanings. When it comes to the originality of market offerings at Glasriket, as analyzed earlier in this section (Section 5.1.5. “Construction of original authenticity”), a glass object gains original authenticity as a result of the aura stemming from its designer’s artistic creativity, as well as the handmade production technique rendering individuality to each object.

In terms of the degree of reproduction of objects, a continuum exists (see Figure 5). First, the most indisputable situation for achieving authenticity is when a designer artist produces a stand-alone art object (or a distinctive “one-off”; see the left pole in Figure 5). Such art works are not meant to be reproduced. This object is auratic as it does not resemble or imitate anything but itself according to Benjamin (1969). Second, at the opposite pole of the continuum is unlimited reproduction of objects in the current object-saturated culture (see the right pole in Figure 5). The glassworks at Glasriket falls into this situation due to its commercial orientation. Glassworks produce many copies of an originally designed prototype. An object is designed for reproducibility in the first place to generate revenues to sustain a business. Thus, an original design and its replicas coexist. A copy of an original work has its value and the production of it is a legitimate practice. Being reproducible entities and manufactured objects, glass objects are mass-produced and branded products, widely purchased, appreciated and collected. Glass products are sold in vast quantities and circulated in the commodity culture. However, during this process, glassworks and producers have an arsenal of measures to regain the attributes of being singular and one of a kind for glass objects that are made in many copies. In the reproduction process, individuality and originality can still be achieved (please refer to the three mechanisms of achieving original authenticity analyzed in this same Section 5.1.5. “Construction of original authenticity”). Thirdly, at Glasriket, there is a mechanism of striking a middle ground between the two poles in the continuum – the limited edition (see the middle point in Figure 5). Sometimes, a glassworks offers a “limited edition” of a product line. For example, in the 1980s, designer artist Bertil Vallien, who worked at Åfors glassworks, introduced the “Artist Collection” concept, where the items were made with several copies in small batches, but then the artist gave his touch to each individual item.26 According to Appadurai (1986), limited production can make commodities seem rare. The “limited edition” is a common product strategy in the luxury sector (Kapferer & Bastien, 2008) and the craft sector as a way of fostering exclusivity and scarcity. A “limited edition” is a measure of preventing unlimited mass production and alleviating the negative effect of mechanical reproduction. At the same time, this strategy pushes for constant creation of new ideas from a designer or brand. In summary, in the latter two scenarios (limited edition and unlimited reproduction) in the continuum, originality goes along with reproducibility.

26 Source: https://www.artglassvista.se/konstnar/bertil-vallien

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Reproduced and copied objects can still have an artistic aura, individuality, and distinctiveness. Glass products are both alike and differentiated. Uniqueness and objects produced in large numbers can coexist. Therefore, it is not easy to draw a clear line between originality and reproduction.

Figure 5. The continuum of the degree of reproduction of objects

5.1.6 Summary In this section (5.1), I have answered RQ1 (“How is authenticity of market offerings constructed via the craft production of objects?”) by analyzing the substantive construction of authenticity of market offerings via craft production at Glasriket, where producers render authenticity on marketing offerings through various practices of making objects. There are five categories of authenticity constructed by producers, namely technique, material, geographical, temporal and original, which form an amalgam of meanings about authenticity. Put another way, authenticity manifests its presence at Glasriket in five forms. For each category, I have offered the definition, uncovered the construction mechanisms, and discussed embedded paradoxes or ambiguities. Though the five categories overlap to various degrees, they each manufacture authenticity differently. The five categories of authenticity are also the semantic content of the meanings of authenticity. Table 3 summarizes the key findings for each category in the three areas of definition, construction mechanisms, and paradoxes/ambiguities (see different columns).

In these five categories of authenticity, producers deploy various authenticating strategies (see contents in the column “construction mechanisms” in Table 3) in the physical, material realm. They work to increase the scarcity of the objects produced, and highlight the objects’ distinct qualities despite the obvious commodification nature of the production. Authenticity is constructed in these five genres, in which particular properties are recurrently framed as legitimate points of attachment for market offerings. Consumers can use these properties as indexical or iconic cues (Grayson & Martinec, 2004) for evaluating various market offerings (products, brands, experiences, place, etc.) as being authentic and desirable. It is the holistic organization of these five dimensions that is unique to craft production.

As for the paradoxes or ambiguities in each category (see contents in the right-hand column in Table 3), there are unresolved dilemmas as well as situations of harmony (for example, the paradox of art vs. functional for the genre of “original authenticity”). Paradoxes are not inevitable. To be commercially savvy and fit is not to forsake authenticity.

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Table 3. Summary of substantive construction of authenticity of market offerings via craft production Genre of Definition Construction Paradoxes or authenticity mechanisms ambiguities Technique Authenticity • Represented by the • There is no clear authenticity bestowed on procedure answer to the market offerings • Represented by the antithesis of because of the craft objects handmade vs. way of making • Indexed by tools machine-made glass products, techniques; namely the glassworks often handmade mode. seek a middle ground; the idea of “handmade” can be twisted.

Material Authenticity • Constructed in the • Machine-based authenticity bestowed on craft making mode of production market offerings by practice will obscure the virtue of the • Constructed in the material properties genuine material performance of craft of glass. properties of glass. making activities • Numbness or • Constructed through indifference towards knowledge the material generation and properties of glass; circulation the material source of an object is vague and ambiguous.

Geographical Authenticity • The spatial • The region’s authenticity bestowed on dimension struggle with market offerings by concerning making production the place or • The spatial delocalization as provenance. dimension rationalized concerning design measures were taken • The spatial to outsource dimension manufacturing to concerning tourist machine-based experience factories in other countries. The region can lose some distinctive qualities as a place.

Temporal Authenticity • To reference the • The dialectic authenticity bestowed on heritage of the craft between “looking market offerings by technique backwards” and history and • To reference “looking forward”; heritage. company history the juxtaposition of

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• To reference the past vs. the new, national heritage and the nostalgic vs. the innovative new.

Original The situation where • The designer artist • The paradox of art authenticity market offerings as the human vs. functional (or art gain originality, creator with aura vs. commerce) is being one of a • Artistically oriented reconciled. kind, never seen glass objects with • The paradox of before, or are not aura originality vs. copies or • Each handmade reproduction. imitations. piece is original

5.2 Communicative construction of the authenticity of market offerings via photographers’ image making practices

This section addresses Research Question 2, “How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing photographic images representing craft production?” This section uncovers and analyzes commercial photographers’ image production practices in establishing the authenticity of market offerings (objects, events, images, experiences, brand, places, etc.) at Glasriket. The previous section (5.1) analyzes the actual, physical production of glass objects. This section is about how craft production is visually represented so that various outputs of the craft are rendered authentic. Authenticity is a discursive construct (Frosh, 2001), and only through some communications such as visual representation can it be animated. The photographic images are a type of marketing text and photographers’ production practices are part of the marketing communication operation of glassworks, museums and the DMO at Glasriket.

With a “practice” theoretical approach (Magaudda, 2011; Nicolini, 2012; Reckwitz, 2002b; Skålén & Hackley, 2011; Svensson, 2007), this section conceptualizes and analyzes the work of commercial photographers in producing photographic images as a complex of practices. Photographic image making is a form of practical human activity and of doing something in the real world. Such work will be dimensionalized with a conceptual language that captures the significant properties of practices. A practice-based analytical language is interwoven with a semiotic perspective (Nöth, 1990; Peirce, 1998; Saussure, 1915), which can provide a logic of discovery (Mick, 1986). By reading selected images, I can infer the intention and purposes of their creators. In addition, concepts and terminologies from semiotics can help uncover the internal structure of an image, how signifiers are attached to signifieds, as well as the relationship between an image (sign) and the object it captures (referent).

Photographers’ practices can also be viewed as authenticating strategies. The authenticity of market offerings does not come naturally, but rather as a conscious act

161 Jönköping International Business School on the part of promoters like commercial photographers. The authenticity rendered by the craft production (see the previous Section 5.1) is mediated by the photographic images. Photographers project the authenticity of market offerings onto the images, and their authenticating acts chart their creation of the images.

Figure 6 provides a roadmap of findings addressing RQ2, indicating the flow and structure of the following parts. I will first explain the backgrounds of commercial photographers’ work – their role as practice carriers (see box #1 in Figure 6) and their image creation process (see box #2 in Figure 6), followed by findings about the three elements within the circuit of practice – doings, objects and meanings (see box #3 in Figure 6). Then, I will analyze the six representational practices of photographers, theorized as authenticating acts within a typology: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing (see box #4 in Figure 6). Finally, three types of paradoxes in constructing authenticity in photographers’ image-making practices will be discussed (see box #5 in Figure 6).

Figure 6. Roadmap of findings addressing RQ2 in Section 5.2

5.2.1 Commercial photographers as practice carriers The commercial photographers serving Glasriket work as intermediaries who frame selected anchors as legitimate points of attachment for others’ evaluations of authenticity and craft (Smith Maguire, 2018). The photographers are “a source of

162 5. Findings emission” in the language of Barthes (1977). They conceive and shoot the photographic images, using certain techniques, choosing, composing, and post- producing photographs. Photographers inevitably impose their own preferences on their product merely by choosing where they point their camera and how they shoot it. They frame the goods and objects, through certain tools, devices, protocols and techniques, to affect the framing. They do the translation from one sense to another. Photographers can create magic, animating inanimate objects. That’s why the craft of photograph making is considered an imaginative alchemy and photographers are seen as alchemists. Their work process is optical-chemical or electronic, but at the same time sociological and cultural.

Commercial photographers serving Glasriket are quite low key and do not interface with individual consumers/tourists, working behind the scene. The trade of commercial photography is largely “invisible” to the bulk of consumers who ultimately encounter its products. Unlike designers, photographers’ names rarely appear on marketing materials, even though their works are pervasive. In purely marketing texts, the images are seldom attributed to their makers. Photographers are anonymous professionals, being inarticulate in public. Commercial photography is one of the least codified cultural fields in terms of its actors, practices, rules, and external relationships with adjacent fields such as marketing, design, art, museum, glass making, journalism, and tourism.

Unlike other professional fields such as medicine or law, where professional status must be earned by obtaining a license and acquiring specialized knowledge and skills, the occupation of commercial photographers is loose. There is no trade regulation or licensing system. Formal training is not necessary for a career in commercial photography. Almost none of the photographers I interviewed had had formal training in an art or photography department of a school or college. They might have taken sporadic courses in art and design schools. They chose to do so because of their passion and curiosity for the work. They make a living by just doing it and honing their skills through practicing.

The photographers I interviewed work in three major modes: advertising photography, news photography, and art photography. This approach to classification is similar to that of Rosenblum (1978a) in her study of the sociology of photographers. The logic of the classification reflects both the ways of working and the characteristics of the resulting works. The division is relative as there is blurring of lines among the three modes. Works in one mode might have strong overtones of the others, or a photographer may be able to handle more than one type.

Commercial photography straddles both the domain of marketing and cultural production. Working together with other agents at Glasriket, photographers are culture producers and marketers. As cultural workers, the photographers are a node in the chain of commercially produced culture in the commercial domain, engaged in the pursuit of economic and symbolic goals.

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First, commercial photographers are part of the commercial sphere. Commercial photography is not a formalized industry or sector per se, but a group of people in an occupation or a parasite trade under the tutelage of advertising and marketing. They produce images for marketing and advertising, and their outputs are destined for the publicity organs of the glass industry. They are in a node of the marketing chain to help with the commodification of objects that will be distributed and sold to the population of consumers. They are implicated in the day-to-day practices of representing brands and products and shaping consumers’ experiences. They are members of media agents (e.g., television producers, writers and programmers), labeled as “hucksters of the symbol” by Sahlins (1976). Commercial photography is a service occupation. As marginal cultural producers, commercial photographers are dispersed in different organizations or just work as individual freelancers or self- employed. Freelancing or self-employed photographers usually have their own studios. They are located within a market milieu and must depend on various photographic and extra-photographic skills for economic survival. Their merchant role becomes salient in a market system. The fee-for-service system induces them to organize their daily activities and behavior around selling and delivering those skills.

In addition, commercial photography has a cultural dimension. Photographers are what Hesmondhalgh (2013, p. 26) calls “symbolic creators” as they produce symbols and “social meanings” by bestowing meanings, through marketing images, on products. Photographers treasure and manage creativity, especially when they do art photography or manipulate symbols for the purpose of esthetic appreciation. Their outputs, photographic images, are cultural goods as the images are deliberately inscribed with particular meanings and associations to generate desires from consumers (du Gay, 1997, p. 5). From the perspective of the “circuit of culture” in cultural studies (du Gay et al., 2013), commercial photographers function as a niche leg in the cultural production circuit, which consists of production, distribution, circulation and consumption of images. Their work is a cultural process (like cooking, dressing, or kinship systems), which is a way of organizing and making sense of our cultural and social worlds.

Commercial photographers are a kind of cultural intermediary as they mediate between producers (production) and consumers (consumption) (Negus, 2002). Standing in a mediating position in the generation of meanings around things, they have a role in the reproduction of cultural meaning and cultural capital. The craftsmen and designers in glassworks make the things ‒ the physical glass objects. Photographers, together with marketers, work to give meanings to glass as a material, glass objects, and craft production behind the scene. As a type of agent, photographers gather up cultural meaning and effect its transfer to consumer products (McCracken, 1986), to be appropriated by consumers. Their trade is tasked with transmitting the values and ideological perspectives of brands and products tacitly via photographic images. They produce symbolic added value by creating and disseminating visual images to facilitate the trafficking of commodities in the marketplace. They perform what Appadurai (1986, p. 54) calls the “traffic in criteria” about goods in ways that frame taste or the “appropriateness” of certain goods and brands. The images in

164 5. Findings marketing materials organize commodity candidacy that relies on “criteria (symbolic, classificatory and moral) that define the exchangeability of things in any particular social and historical context” (Appadurai, 1986, p. 14). When choosing and using glass products, a key concern for consumers is the visual and esthetic aspects – how the glassware looks, and whether it can make their homes and lives beautiful. Photographers and their output function as a guidance for the esthetics and tastes of consumers.

Photographers can be viewed as practitioners, one of the three elements within the theory of practice proposed by Whittington (2006) (the other two are praxis and practices). Practitioners are the actors who perform an activity and carry its practices (ibid.). They are individuals who draw upon practices to act and are interrelated with the other two elements (praxis and practices). They obtain agency through their use of practices ‒ ways of behaving, thinking, knowing, acting, and emoting, etc. ‒ in order to act within and influence their society (Reckwitz, 2002b). They carry out the work of shooting, capturing objects, encoding signs and meanings, and creating images through who they are, how they act and what practices they draw upon in that action. A photographer, as a bodily and mental agent, acts as the “carrier” of the practice of image making. He or she is not only a carrier of patterns of bodily behavior, but also of certain routinized ways of understanding, knowing how and desiring (Reckwitz, 2002b). Specific practice configurations produce stable ways of “being in the world” (Heidegger, 1962), or in the case of this study, of being a commercial photographer. Individual photographers are “carriers” of certain practices. A practice approach attends less to individual choices and activities and more to the collective development of modes of conduct in their work life. The analytical focus shifts from the insatiable wants of the human animal to the instituted conventions of a collective culture, from personal expression to social competence, from mildly constrained choice to disciplined participation (Warde, 2005, p. 146). Practice theory has less emphasis on “individuals,” decentering the subject to make the individual evaporate.

5.2.2 Commercial photographers’ image creation process This section maps out the process whereby commercial photographers create photographic images, which is a component in the marketing process. To do that, there are two aspects to be addressed: parties involved in this process and the process itself. Figure 7 illustrates the engaged parties. On the left is the client side (glassworks), which includes four types of pertinent actors: designers, craftsmen, marketing staff, and in-house photographers. The most important actor is the marketing staff, who own, manage and control budgets, projects and resources. They decide which vendors to commission. Few glassworks have in-house photographers today and it is a trend that glassworks outsource the work to external vendors. The reason for me to include designers and craftsmen here is that they might play a role in the shaping of the photographic image making. To get a better understanding about the ideas and production process behind an object, a photographer might need to talk with its designer and the workers who make it. Moving to the right in Figure 7, we

165 Jönköping International Business School see three types of actors from the vendor side: ad/production agency, external photographer, and an external photographer’s collaborators. An ad or production agency is hired by a glassworks to manage the graphic design, creatives and production of a campaign or marketing collaterals. It acts as a mediator between a glassworks and an external photographer, who is either a freelancer or self-employed. An external photographer’s collaborators are the subcontractors of the photographer as they supply services in terms of makeup, hairstyling, models, props, and so on.

Figure 7. Parties involved in photographic image creation

Figure 8 illustrates the process of image making of photographers for campaign-based projects, which account for the majority of photographic projects in the research context. Similarly to regular advertising agency-client relationships (Keegan et al., 2017), as the starting point, the marketing department of a glassworks will send a creative brief to an external or in-house photographer. As a typical communicative tool in the advertising and marketing sectors, the “creative brief” details requirements about what subject the photographs will cover and how they should fit into a marketing campaign or publication context. The creative brief has various degrees of sophistication, ranging from a very detailed version to a one- to two-page document to something delivered verbally via phone calls. As an example, a concise brief could be something like “we have these four new products, and we are thinking of doing some marketing materials with a summer feeling.” Glassworks rarely provide market research data as they are small businesses without the resources to conduct such projects.

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Figure 8. Commercial photographers’ image creation process

Sometimes, if an assignment is expensive, the client will provide a quick sketch to the photographer to show how the product should look and in what environment. In addition, the photographer will be provided with a layout by the art director of the ad agency. The photographer must conform to the layout drawn by the art director, translate the art director’s layout into a photograph, and make photographs according to the layout. Photographer Nils-Olof shares one example: “[T]he ad agency creating an ad or catalogue usually has an idea about the copy. They would say to me ‘you have to shoot photos that go into this catalogue … our work has to fit into the whole marketing and selling process” (interview, March 22, 2018).

Like typical advertising agency-client relationships, photographers will communicate with their clients through emails or phone calls in multiple rounds of information soliciting, intention clarifying, prototype testing, and decision confirming. The photographer will get sample products, study the creative brief, and contemplate the products to figure out how to shoot them. He or she will conceive the shooting ideas, hand-draw the ideas in sketches or shoot some trial photographs to be sent to the client (the marketing manager or art director at the ad agency). The client will review the sketches or trial photographs, provide feedback for revision, or approve the proposal. Then, the photographer will shoot the photographs. Finally, the client will select photographs, and the ad/production agency will edit the selected photographs, handle the graphic design and print the marketing materials. Figure 8 illustrates the process detailed here. If the client does not approve the result, the photographer will have to redo it. In this process of campaign-based projects, some photographers only interface with the marketing department and/or its ad agencies, and do not talk to the makers – designers and craftsmen. But sometimes, photographers talk with designers to get technical, pinpointed suggestions from them about what is to be highlighted

167 Jönköping International Business School and how to shoot the designer’s object. Most of the photographers I interviewed seldom go to the factory to observe how the product is made.

Distribution will be managed by the client, which will ensure that the images, as part of the marketing texts, are circulated as widely as possible through multiple channels: retail stores (including factory stories), ads placed in media, product catalogues, product packages, tourism sites, museums, company websites and social media accounts, eCommerce sites, and so on. These distribution channels are owned or rented by the client. A photographer does not have to worry about the distribution, which is guaranteed as a client will always work to maximize the exposure of its marketing messages. If works of commercial photographers enter the apparatus of the art world (i.e., galleries, museums and published collections in book format, collectors, critics) (Becker, 2008), then relevant parties (e.g., critics, book publishers, museums and galleries) will invite, collect and exhibit their works in the art world, rather than the corporate marketing vehicles. This means different distribution channels and audiences.

Similarly to the operation of the advertising industry (Hirschman, 1989; Keegan et al., 2017; West & Paliwoda, 1996), commercial photographers’ image creation process is situated in socially organized settings, with division of labor among photographers, clients, ad agencies, etc. Clients function like patrons (Turow, 1984), providing the funding and strategic direction for the creation of photographic images to be placed in various marketing materials. The owner of the production and distribution is the client. Photographers rely on the budget of clients. Within institutional creative and management processes, the relationship between the photographer and the client is complex. They are in a contractual relationship, where a healthy relationship demands reciprocal trust and rapport.

5.2.3 The circuit of practice Figure 9 illustrates the circuit of practice or the triangular structure of practices expressed in the nexus of objects-doings-meanings (Magaudda, 2011). The subsequent sections will explain the situations of the three elements of object, doing and meaning within the circuit. Within the circuit, which element is the starting point? For photographers, do they have a purpose (meaning) first and then create the image to represent an object? Not necessarily. Actually, photographers can start from any of the three elements – the meaning, the objects, or the doings. For example, the scenario exists where doing starts first, and the idea becomes apparent to a photographer only while working on the equipment, altering the light or changing the position of an object. This situation is echoed by the American philosopher John Dewey in his book Art as Experience, in which he proposes that the idea of a work of art often emerges in the making of it. Dewey elucidates these moments (Dewey, 1934, p. 65): The act of expression that constitutes a work of art is a construction in time, not an instantaneous emission … It means that the expression of self in and through a medium, constituting a work of art, is itself a prolonged interaction of

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something issuing from the self with objective conditions, a process in which both of them acquire a form and order which they did not at first possess … the quality of a work of art is sui generis because the manner in which general material is rendered transforms it into a substance that is fresh and vital.

Figure 9. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice”

5.2.3.1 Doing The circuit of practice can start from the Doing (see the part within the dotted line circle in Figure 10), which includes behavioral, cognitive, procedural, and physical resources through which photographers interact with multiple actors to socially accomplish collective activity. Faced with a glass object, photographers often do not have a clear purpose or idea of how to photograph it, and the only solution is to start doing it. The “doing” includes photographers’ activities in two areas: 1) object- focused activities dealing with the material objects; 2) relation-focused moments interacting with clients and other actors, managing the business. The former type of activities is characterized by solitary moments that are individualistic-oriented and technical, and the latter is collectivistic-oriented and socially organized. A photographer iterates between these two aspects, undergoing chains of actions and reactions (Schatzki, 2005) as bodily and mental activities: seeing, drawing/sketching, thinking, reflecting, light setting, camera setting, trying, shooting, editing, printing, cropping, reshooting, communicating with the art director and the client, and so on.

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Figure 10. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (doing)

5.2.3.2 Objects The circuit of practice can start from the Objects (see the part within the dotted line circle in Figure 11), which Doings are performed on and within the authenticating practices of commercial photographers. “Object” is used by practice researchers interchangeably with the label of “artifact” or “thing.” There are three different types of objects in this research project, with each one playing distinctive roles in a practice: 1) type 1 object refers to the target object to be photographed and it can be a glass product, a factory, a designer, or an event; 2) type 2 object refers to the tools and equipment used by photographers, including cameras, lenses, light fixtures, digital post-processing devices, film development equipment and materials, and so on; and 3) type 3 object refers to the resulting photographic image, which can be paper-based or in digital form.

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Figure 11. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (objects)

Type 1 objects are equivalent to the element of “object” or “referent” in the triangle of the signifying process (object/referent-sign-interpretant) in Peirce's (1985) semiotic writings.27 Photographers comprehend objects (type 1) in order to construe their meanings for viewers and consumers. Type 2 objects are the means supporting and facilitating the material processes of image production, shaping the relation of the image to the object it depicts. They are subject to photographers’ active selection and deployment, implying photographers’ technical preferences, technical finesse, budgetary concerns, and clients’ requirements. Type 3 objects are equivalent to the element of “sign” in the triangle of the signifying process (object/referent-sign- interpretant) in Peirce's (1985) semiotic writings. As output of photographers’ work, the photographic image (object type 3) is the two-dimensional plane depicting some objects translated from a three-dimensional world. The object (type 1) is represented in the image (object type 3) through the encoding of messages. In this research project, photographic images cover a spectrum ranging from advertising photographs to news photographs to fine art photography.

While carrying out his/her practice of shooting a photograph, a photographer has to handle these three types of objects simultaneously. A scene is to be staged and performed in the material reality, consisting of objects (types 1 and 2), present before the camera, for the emergence of object type 3 (image). Photographers’ activities revolve around the three types of objects, which are focal objectives as well as resources. It is in the interaction and relations between photographers and material objects that the cultural text, the image, is created and rendered. I look at how photographers handle and relate to the objects in the image creation process. In

27 See Figure 3 and its explanation in Chapter 4 and explanations of semiotics in Section 1.7 of Chapter 1.

171 Jönköping International Business School terms of human-object relations, the human subject (photographer) is producing things (type 3 object – the resulting image) while consuming things (type 2 object – tools and equipment) and handling things (type 1 object – object to be photographed).

5.2.3.3 Meaning as the teleoaffective structure The circuit of practice can start from the Meaning (see the part within the dotted line circle in Figure 12), which I equate to the “teleoaffective structure” in the language of practice theory. A photographer has a clear intentionality or the notion of “oughtness” that channels and shapes his or her practices, reflected in the question “What do I do all these for?” The overall intentionality is to render authenticity to market offerings, consisting of five scenarios characterized by five different kinds of ends or purposes: to reproduce, to document, to participate, to estheticize, and to index. These five scenarios of intentionality lead to a typology of practices, which consists of five types of practices labeled after the five purposes. The three elements of doing, objects, and meanings are configured to form the typology of practices of commercial photographers in a social-material context. The following section will detail the five types of practices.

Figure 12. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (meaning)

5.2.4 A typology of photographers’ image making practices for constructing authenticity For the five types of practices within a typology of commercial photographers’ authenticating acts of producing images, the logic of the classification is driven by the teleoaffective structure (or meaning) that shapes and differentiates practices. Analyzed using the framework of the circuit of practice (see the part within the dotted line circle in Figure 13), each of the five practices is characterized by a distinctive meaning or purpose in the teleoaffective property (“What do I do all these for?”) that

172 5. Findings photographers aim to accomplish through performing activities (doings) and interactions with objects (types 1, 2 and 3).

Figure 13. Photographers’ practices of producing images, framed as “Circuit of Practice” (the typology)

5.2.4.1 Practice of reproducing It is a challenge to show that it is really “glass.” ‒ A photographer Glass is not an easy thing to photograph. It is really difficult to do it properly. – Duncan, owner of the Johansfors glass gallery The practice of reproducing is driven by photographers’ intention to deliver an accurate depiction or visual replica of objective reality as an indication of the teleoaffective property. The meaning element (also teleoaffective property) within the circuit of practice refers to a photographer’s purpose of achieving faithful reproduction of the object (target to be photographed, object type 1) in another language (the resulting image, object type 3), or to capture the “real.” This practice concerns the accuracy in the visual representation, and the resulting image (object type 3) must stay true to the object that is being photographed (object type 1).

Photography is the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction according to Benjamin (1969). Photography was considered to be something that reproduced reality (Mirzoeff, 1999) as it has the capacity to represent the world. As part of the marketing materials, photographic images, a result of the mechanical reproduction of objects in reality (Benjamin, 1969), have the mission of offering evidence and truth about products and other objects for the viewers. Consumers need the image as a proxy that brings the object closer spatially. They are aware of the fact that the object (type 1, to be photographed) cannot always be present. The image is not the reality, but the denoted message or the perfect analogon without a code in the language of

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Barthes (1977). What is important is the photograph’s exhibition value – it can be an accurate replica of the original object. The resulting image (object type 3) should be an accurate mirroring of reality (object type 1), and the verisimilitude or pictorial accuracy depends on the similarities between object type 1 and object type 3, achieved through a photographer’s skillful deployment of object type 2 (i.e., camera, lighting) that functions as the enabler and tool. For photographers, glass poses the challenge of how to represent an object that looks typical of this class of material. In other words, photographers need to figure out how to construct the “glassness” of a glass product in a photographic image. The word “glassness” means that such an image should express faithfully the material properties of glass to give viewers a strong sense of the reality of the material, so that a glass product in an image looks like “real” glass rather than plastic.

A photographer can start from any of the three elements of the circuit – doings, objects, or meaning. At the beginning, he might face the object (type 1) without knowing what to do about it. Then, he develops an understanding of what to capture by evaluating visual sensorial properties of the object (type 1): material properties, forms, shapes, contours, reflections, highlights, shadows, texture, surface, transparency, opacity, and so on, all of which are iconically pertinent features and “all of them have to be combined into a single image, which can do justice to the object,” said photographer Nils-Olof (interview, March 22, 2018). Glass designer Torben works a lot with photographers who photographed his designed objects, and he offers his perspectives about what is to be reproduced: Designer Torben: Photographs need to express in a better and more concise way what the glass piece looks like. The photographer’s mission is to give a good description of the glass product. Interviewer: What does the word “description” mean? Designer Torben: It means I want to see the shape, thickness of glass, to see how the glass looks nothing but the glass. If it is clear glass (colorless glass), you cannot see it. But what you see is the room reflected in the glass and you see the light being transferred through it. That’s what you see. What you see is the surroundings. The reflected stuff on its surface is what makes it visible … you build the marketing around that fascination about the material. The images of glass should not be similar to those selling underwear. Glass is a special thing. That is what you have to play with. (Designer Torben, June 8, 2018) Designer Torben points out that photographers should be sensitive to the material, optical, and graphic properties of a glass object. Most photographs reproducing a glass object are working in the genre of “still life” or “product shot,” focusing on the sole glass object (type 1) as the hero. Images of Plates 4, 12, 13, and 29-31 analyzed earlier in this chapter belong to this type. Torben prefers a glass object to be shot in a clean photograph without fancy backgrounds or other objects to disturb it. Designer Torben: You don’t need the funny background or things like that. They shouldn’t use props in a confusing picture … It should show the product. The

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photo raises the interest in this product. They might say “it is boring.” But it is the best way of describing glass products if you want to describe the shape. (Designer Torben, 20180608) Another aspect of a photograph being faithful to the original object is the notion of “naturalness” – a photograph should seem self-evident and natural. Consumers and viewers inherit a cultural tendency rooted in Western realism to see through the photograph (object type 3) to what is photographed (object type 1) (Barrett, 2005). Photographic “naturalness” means that an image does not look manipulated or artificial, it is realistic-looking, and it looks as if the image was made by an objective, impartial recording machine. Such an illusion held by the viewer is that the scene is there, captured mechanically, and the mechanical is valued as a guarantee of objectivity (Barthes, 1977). The object in the image needs to appear natural even though lighting was arranged and the shooting took place in a highly contrived setting in a studio. The quotation below of photographer Nils-Olof implies some principles of making the image natural: You need to show what the product looks like (not using strange angles). If you use the wide-angle lens on a product, it will be deformed. Viewers will not understand what it looks like in real life. (Photographer Nils-Olof, March 22, 2018) Nils-Olof’s statements touch upon the concept of photographic iconicity as argued by Nöth (1990, p. 460) that geometrical invariance is an essential feature of photographic iconicity, and such invariance is optical evidence of iconicity. The photograph is an icon of the reality it depicts, exactly like the object the image represents. Such attributes will give the viewer the proper physical anchoring of his/her perception of an object during the reading.

How does a photographer reproduce an object (type 1) by encoding the iconic message? He or she works to find solutions for how to capture the tenets of a target object by using type 2 objects (lighting, background, camera exposure time, etc.). The camera (object type 2) has the ability to capture exactly whatever is in front of the lens and render it in sharp detail. However, the operation is not a simple mechanical recording of the reality, but the intended actions of the photographer with the assistance of tools (type 2 objects). S/he would use close-ups as the framing. S/he would use meticulously controlled artificial light (object type 2). Consider the following quotation from photographer Lars: The graphic quality can only be shown with a black background and with the right lighting on the object. I use the light to show the glass material (e.g., the light on the surface, the reflection, transparency). To highlight the inside of a vase, you need to use light to show that light comes through, or you need to show the contour. I use light to show the architectural nature of glass, which is sculptural … to show the feeling of glass as a material. (Photographer Lars, March 19, 2018)

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Photographer Lars pointed out the artificiality of photographing an object: “[F]or product photography, everything is staged. A viewer would feel it is natural light in the studio even though it is artificial” (photographer Lars, interview, March 19, 2018). In addition, photographic reproduction can bring out aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens. Photographer Jörgen shared such an example: Sometimes, some people say “this photo looks nicer than the object.” I have one example of photos about small engraving on a glass product. We cannot actually see it in reality. I used lighting and a special angle of the lens to capture it. Then, they said “wow, it is so beautiful. We didn’t know that.” What wonderful photos, showing something you cannot see otherwise. (Photographer Jörgen, October 3, 2018) The practice of pictorial reproduction sometimes involves knowledge from peripheral people such as designers and craftsmen when it comes to what to highlight. Therefore, the practice of reproducing is not only object-focused and autotelic, but also relational. Photographer Jörgen, who works for the Swedish Glass Museum as an in- house photographer, shared such experiences: Interviewer: You have done a lot of “still life” photographs about one object in a studio. Did the museum people make a lot of requests about how to shoot them? Photographer Jörgen: Very often, I get orders from curators. They want something specific about a specific part in an object to show, and I just need to figure out how to do it. It is not important about whether it is light background or dark background, what color it becomes. The request was “we want to see the engraving as good as possible.” And the rest is left to me – to do what I can. There is specific order in one way, but in another way I need to solve it. Interviewer: When the person knew what she wanted and said “please highlight the engraving,” in that case, how did you fulfill the request? Photographer Jörgen: You mean techniques? Experimenting with lights, juggling around with … Usually started with dark background to see the things (white) in detail. That’s the first choice. Then, I changed the light background. There are different kinds of lighting to make them black instead even though they look white. When you have the light on them, they look dark. So, different choices there. But it is impossible to know exactly how to do it. You have to experiment. (Photographer Jörgen, October 3, 2018) To sum up, the practice of reproducing concerns authentic reproduction in visual images, leading to the verisimilitude of representation. The resulting images are iconic signs of authenticity according to the Peirceian model of semiotics (Nöth, 1990), lending a more authentic experience to viewers. For glass products, photographers need to conquer the challenge of how to visually express the innate qualities of this special material and objects made of it in order to authenticate the vivid and detailed sense of the material. Photographers work to render an image

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(object type 3) and the object it captures (object type 1) referentially authentic, being a verisimilitude of the reality. Unlike visual rhetoric or special effects that are popular in advertising image creation (Phillips & McQuarrie, 2004; Scott, 1994a), the resulting images (object type 3) generated by this practice are usually not fictive or illusive reality.

5.2.4.2 Practice of documenting The practice of documenting is driven by photographers’ intention “to show the making” as an indication of the teleoaffective property. The circuit of practice starts from the meaning element (also teleoaffective property), which contains the preset clear purpose of photographers to record “how it is made” (the manufacturing method) as a kind of testimony about the craft and an instruction about the knowledge of the craft for consumers. The objects to be photographed (object type 1) are not single, inanimate objects sitting in a studio. Rather, they are a mixture of both human and inhuman items: the activities, procedures, people (glassblowers and designers), events, and the environment (tools, ambience) in a glassworks setting. The nature of the objects to be photographed in the practice of documenting entails a different approach for photographers (doings), which will be detailed in the following paragraphs.

The practice of documenting is characterized by the style of the resulting photographic images (object type 3), which are different than studio still lifes and belong to the genre of “showing the making” (A.-S. Lehmann, 2012), which depicts what actually happens when craft objects are being made. Such a genre offers the advantage that “images can capture the complexity and simultaneity of making where words fail to do so” (ibid., p. 12). The images look evidentiary and factual as they capture frozen scenes and activities in time and carry some references to the reality. The images (object type 3) have the indexical specificity of a photographic sign as it was caused by the objects to be photographed (object type 1). The major subject theme revolves around the events and activities in handicraft manufacturing. Photography itself has a documentary ability that allows it to objectively reproduce social reality (Grundberg, 2002, p. 42). In the interpretation of Barthes, photography “always carries its referent with itself” since it is “an emanation of past reality” (Barthes, 1981, pp. 5, 88). Images analyzed earlier in this chapter belong to this type ‒ Plates 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 21, and 22, capturing such objects (type 1) as dynamic happenings in the factory: the procedure, craftsmen, tools, hot molten glass, and so on. As an example of documentary photographic images, Plate 11 captures the very moment of an authentic experience of tourists amazed at the craft of glassblowing at a Hyttsill event. In addition to the experiential and tourist offerings, glassworks, museums, and the DMO rely on the photographic images as an important marketing communication medium to allow consumers to vicariously experience the behind- the-scenes making of things as if they can witness it. Consider the following quotation from curator Gunnel of the Swedish Glass Museum: Most of the published photos are about the object. It is necessary to have more photos about the blowing, the hot glass, and the glassblowers in action. Because

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it is handmade and handicraft. Most people don’t understand how complicated the process is. It is important for consumers to see that the glass is actually handmade. Then, pictures are important to show it and explain why our handicraft products deserve higher prices. (Museum curator Gunnel, June 7, 2018) As suggested by Gunnel, the documentary photographs can arouse consumers’ interests and appreciation of the craftsmanship, and the sense of realism (“having been there”) enhances consumers’ perception of the authenticity of offerings from the glassworks. In addition, with instructional and educational flavors, the images reveal aspects less known to consumers, enabling them to learn about the craft making process and procedure. All of these motives of marketers are also the purposes of photographers, serving as the teleoaffective properties guiding what they do.

As stated earlier, documentary photography is not only a matter of the subject, but also a matter of the approach (the doings of photographers). Marketers may have an active role in initiating and planning such a practice and they delegate the image creation work to photographers. But it also happens that photographers go to glassworks to stay there to do documentary photography driven by personal passion and obsession, without any commercial commission. Hans Runesson is such a photographer. He likes the life at glassworks and often goes to the The Glass Factory at Boda to hang out with glassblowers and designers while taking photographs. On October 3, 2018, I met Hans in his studio, which is located in his house. He is a 70- year-old Swedish man, who has lived in the city of Växjö 28 for many years. He is a self-made photographer without any training in photography. In the 1950s, he started working as a freelancing press photographer by reporting local events for Swedish national newspapers. With this experience, his works have a strong journalistic flavor, and are good at capturing live activities. He also does product photography for clients. He has been deeply engaged in the city of Växjö and Glasriket through shooting photographs at different glassworks and the local communities.

Documentary photographers live with their subjects, immersing themselves in their environment, sharing experiences, and taking pictures with the full trust of the subjects. A photographer takes photographs as an invisible observer and as a participant in events. The photographer wants to be inconspicuous and merge with the people in the setting. S/he will simplify the camera kit, which s/he carries in a bag that is not too obviously photographic. Autofocus is also helpful on occasions, especially if s/he must grab pictures without looking through the viewfinder (for example, over people’s heads). For Hans, the shooting site is usually The Glass Factory at Boda, which has hot shops with furnaces, where glassblowers and designers work together to develop new objects. He stays to capture the social life and working activities there. In the quotation below, Hans explains the technical part as well as his attitude in the strategy of doing documentary photography:

28 Växjö is a city that is part of Glasriket and is where the Swedish Glass Museum is located.

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I used a digital camera … got the light in the camera, so no need to have a flashlight … just the natural light in the room. Less disturbance of the people … I cannot afford to be in their way. I had to see what they were doing, but I could not step in to hinder the procedure. (Photographer Hans Runesson, October 3, 2018) Once s/he has got full access to the setting, a documentary photographer needs to commit to a long period of time in the environment to encounter the happenings. Hans goes to The Glass Factory at Boda on weekends (Saturday or Sunday). Interviewer: At Boda, how long did you stay there each time? Photographer Hans: I left home at 7:00am and came back at 10:00pm. I was with them all the time during the day. In the morning, I programmed myself (adjusted my brain to get mentally prepared for it). (Photographer Hans Runesson, October 3, 2018) To “show the craftsmanship within glass” (in Hans’s own words during his interview) through his photographs, Hans has lived with the human “objects” (object type 1) in the hot shop, immersing himself in their culture and sharing their experiences. Consider the following quotation from Hans: Photographer Hans: Over the years, I have built relationships with all those glassworks … good reputation among designers and glassblowers. When I work, I am a part of a piece of glass. Interviewer: “I am a part of a piece of glass” – what does that mean? Photographer Hans: I was part of the setting with glassblowers. I am acquainted with those circumstances. I am part of the team. I have known how to take photos of glass for many years. I can delve into a project very easily. We have to like each other if we work together … My respect for their work and their respect for my work. I feel welcomed. I am part of the team and part of the glass. I know what they produce. I know what to do. (Photographer Hans Runesson, October 3, 2018) The quotations above from Hans indicate the social and relational dimension of the practice of documenting in addition to its object-focused character. Over the years, Hans has commanded deep knowledge about glassblowing, design, and the material. When he took photographs, he remained open-minded by taking a lot of pictures, which could be edited down later. During my visit, Hans showed me many photographs shot on different days at Boda, saved on hard drives. For each day he stayed, he took many pictures, which looked like activities in different sequences. Such photographs had not been sold or commissioned by any client. He just took them on the spot thinking that an activity/scene was worth capturing. Taking documentary photographs is an ephemeral activity with a taste of “live.” The photographer needs to capture the moment, which is not staged or manipulated. Hans stresses the importance of capturing that special moment in his doing in the following quotations:

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Photographer Hans: A designer was in the hot shop, sitting down close to the glassblower. She looked at the object. And suddenly, she said “yes, there it is.” I captured that moment. That is THE picture – the one I took at The Glass Factory at Boda where a female designer was with a male blower. This is what documentary photography is all about. More about capturing, not about staging. Suddenly, you have a beautiful picture because of the situation, which cannot be predicted. Photographer Hans: Every time when I returned from a glassworks, there were different pictures. Every situation was unique. It is like a football game – you never know when they will score a goal. Photo-taking is the same thing as blowing glass – you don’t know what is exactly going to happen, but suddenly it does. You start by working, and then suddenly “there it is, there is the picture!” (Photographer Hans Runesson, October 3, 2018) With a factual or evidentiary function, the practice of documenting illuminates the connection among images, presence and authenticity. Compared with the contrived manner of creating mainstream advertising images (Phillips & McQuarrie, 2004; Scott, 1994a), photographers in this practice carry out their work in a manner of doing journalism photography (“capturing the moment”). The resulting images (object type 3) give consumers the opportunity to witness a “performance of making,” which locates the origin of finished products on a factory floor. The images serve as indexical cues for viewers giving them a strong sense of the reality of craft production (Plates 1, 2, 11). In addition, the genre of documentary photography has archival dimensions (Sekula, 1981). Cultural heritage, historical events, and the provenance of making (Plates 19-22) were documented through indexical signs to establish spatial and temporal ties between products and their provenance. For example, Plate 19 documents the existence of the Kosta glassworks at a specific time in history. In the minds of consumers, authenticity is associated with evidence and truth. In the spirit of “seeing is believing,” the resulting photographic images serve as a source of evidence for viewers and offer them a sense of immediacy, helping establish the authenticity of products, glassworks brands, and places.

5.2.4.3 Practice of participating The practice of participating is driven by photographers’ intention “to engage with the making of glass for making better images” as an indication of the teleoaffective property. The meaning element (i.e., teleoaffective property) within the circuit of practice refers to a photographer’s purpose of involving and contributing to the glass industry. Photographers perform a kind of peripheral participation in the glass industry by contributing to its marketing effort. They are associated with the glassworks and the subculture of glass. Some of them have developed feelings of sharedness and community towards glassworks and the region of Glasriket, belonging to the community and serving the same cause, fitting the notion of a “community of practice” (Nicolini, 2012; Wenger, 1998). In terms of purposiveness and endeavors, some photographers have a genuine appreciation of glass and are appreciative of the craft work behind the finished glass objects. When they create photographs for the

180 5. Findings objects (type 1), they aim to do justice to the object. Consider the following quotation from photographer Jörgen: (I have) the admiration for the work that you can see somebody has put 600 hours into grinding this thing, turning it into something fantastic. As a photographer, I want to give it credit, and show it with its best possibility. (Photographer Jörgen, October 3, 2018) Becker (2008) and other sociologists have long maintained that the production of art is a collective process. Photographic image making is a collaborative process as photographers are situated in a processual chain in the glass industry: First, craftsmen (e.g., engravers, blowers) work according to the designs of designers and realize them within the physical glass pieces; second, photographers work from finished glass pieces and interpret or represent them in images. Photograher John Selbing summarized it in one sentence: “I’m part of all factors conducted by the (glass) industry as a whole” (Selbing, 1995, p.4). Photographers’ production practice is performed in a social network, in which they and the glass industry are in a symbiotic relationship, which connects marketers and manufacturing, or between the production of marketing texts and the production of physical products. The former (production of marketing texts) aims to visualize materials and techniques (working methods). The former borrows from and is influenced by the latter. As the starting point, clients (marketing managers) steer photographers to produce images in certain directions by giving out the creative brief. But it is not enough to rely on just the creative brief from the marketing people. Some photographers go the extra mile by interacting with people more upstream to experience the creation of glass. Glass designer Torben’s quotation below explains the need: If marketing people could be glass people also, they could do better glass marketing. It is not good for a glass photographer to be alone. He has to be with glass people who really make and know glass. Glass people are burning for glass. You can only be a good glass photographer if you go into it. You have to deal with glass to photograph it. (Designer Torben, June 8, 2018) John Selbing is such an example. He absorbed and was absorbed into the practice of glass making. He had been a quasi-practitioner in glass making. He started as an assistant in the drawing office of Orrefors, supporting glass designers by drawing sketches. The drawing and painting helped him develop some kind of graphic view of objects (i.e., a better sense about form and lines, how to see the results of engravings and designs) (Anders, son of John Selbing, interview, November 28, 2017). He did some design of glass during the 1940s, and this experience made him aware of how a three-dimensional reality can be translated into a two-dimensional image. The factory floor was a source of inspiration for John Selbing, who was always fascinated by the life in the glassworks. John expressed his fascination and emotion in the following quotation in an article written by him in the trade publication Nordic Journal for Photography: To enter a glassworks, to experience the scent of sweat and burnt wooden molds, the specific atmosphere and the close contact with handicraft … is an

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overwhelming experience. The material becomes beautiful because it has only been touched by creative hands. (J. Selbing, 1957) John Selbing understood deeply the conditions under which glass is created to be beautiful. Consider the following quotation: It is the prevailing conditions during creation that make it beautiful. Catching the beauty of glass is like catching a butterfly. To understand this, you have to experience its creation. This interesting event occurs in the glassworks, where the glowing glass depends so much on what momentarily happens that it can be considered as difficult to handle and unpredictable. From this unpredictable material the designer artist in cooperation with a team of workers, one master glassblower and five glassworkers using tools that never changed during two thousand years transform their intentions in practice. (J. Selbing, 1960, p. 9) Living with the designers and craftsmen, John Selbing was part of the daily life of the factory, where glass is a product of teamwork. He knew all the designers and their personalities. In the factory of Orrefors, he met various people, including designers who had studied at the Arts Academy in Stockholm and someone who had studied in France with Matisse. He witnessed topics concerning international trends and markets (Fredrikson et al., 2018). The comradeship between him and the staff in the hot shop provided him with a different dimension and conferred on him the cultural capital and knowledge of glass that paved the way for his practice of shooting photographs of glass objects. When reflecting on his career, John Selbing stated: “[P]eople generally claim that genius is innate. I both believe and don’t believe that” (Fredrikson et al., 2018, p. 54). He shared his perspective in a trade publication about the relationship between a commercial photographer and the client industry: The industrial photographer must learn to understand that he is part of the industry he serves, and that all artistic ambition, after all, has to be incorporated in the whole entity. He has to understand the designer and his work and with technical knowledge and not least an ability to enter into his task. (J. Selbing, 1960, p. 9) As a photographer, John Selbing participated in the process of the upstream – the manufacturing of the physical glass objects. His situation was extreme due to the fact that he worked for Orrefors for four decades as a dedicated in-house photographer and he had the opportunity to beome engaged with work on the factory floor. As a polar type or extreme exemplar, John Selbing’s practice of participating is revelatory and allows for the observation of outstanding patterns in the data (Eisenhardt, 1989). It is possible that other contemporary photographers demonstrate some of the elements in his practice of participating to various degrees.

Photographers can uncover the intentions behind an object from its designer or the craftsmen who made it. On the other hand, a designer might be interested in how his or her products will be photographed or might brief the photographer on what is to be highlighted. The following quotation from photographer Nils-Olof shows an instance when a glass designer wanted specifics from him:

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She wants them (glass wares) to be attractive. The shape is important. If she uses some special techniques on her design, I need to highlight those techniques of her design and certain details to be shown. Then, I take it to a location. (Photographer Nils-Olof, March 22, 2018) When asked how to approach a new assignment of shooting products, photographer Jonas explains his interaction with designers: I have to consider that these are design products. I have to read and understand the design in some way to make the picture. I think about the design, what it means, and the purpose of the object. I have to like the design. Also, I talk with the designer, make a visit to the designer’s studio … I try to grow the relationship. I know the people who design it very well. Sometimes I saw a product, I really didn’t understand it, then I made a visit to the studio of the designer. Then, everything falls in place. Everything is super clear. (Photographer Jonas, March 23, 2018) Jonas also interacts with craftsmen who make the products: I talk to the people who make them a lot. They know me very well. They let me try to make glass sometimes. I can feel the heat, and get a lot of perspectives (of craftsmanship) there. Really great relationship with these people. (Photographer Jonas, March 23, 2018) Photographer Hans has built relationships with glassblowers and designers in all those glassworks. He hangs out at the The Glass Factory at Boda for a whole day with designers and blowers, capturing their actions in a live mode. He is part of the team as represented by his claim “when I work, I am a part of a piece of glass” (interview, October 23, 2018). In my interview with him, he was well versed in the vocabulary of glass and glass making.

From the interactions with designers and craftsmen in the hot shop, photographers obtain relevant vocabulary and knowledge: cultural traditions in the making (craft, skills, procedure, design, material), information about a glassworks (e.g., brand, heritage), use of products (how to use, cultural categories), esthetics and lifestyles involved in the consumption of glass products, and so on. The knowledge serves as the cultural capital, the signifieds, or various codes (conceptual codes, conceptual maps, referent world) (Hall, 1997) for photographers in carrying out their image creation practices. The praxis of knowledge obtaining involves social relationships, specifically photographers’ relationships with marketers, as well as the manufacturing process in the glassworks. Photographers and the upstream have shared vocabulary and know-how about glass. The knowledge is embodied in the objects to be photographed (glass product, material, people, procedure, events, factory ambience, etc.), which belong to type 1 objects in the circuit of practice. The type 1 objects are also the objects of knowledge (Reckwitz, 2002b), and the command of the knowledge is achieved through photographers’ doings ‒ engagement in and interaction with the manufacturing people in glassworks.

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There exists some reciprocity between photographers and their shooting subjects on the factory floor. Photographers shoot photographs to do justice to the objects made in the hot shop, and people in the hot shop offer some “performance” to do justice to the shooting. Sometimes the marketing department of a glassworks sends a photographer to the hot shop to take photographs for marketing use (for example, to be placed in a product catalogue). I interviewed designers Bertil Vallien and Tillie Burden to see how they responded to such a situation. Both of them were aware of many such instances, and both consciously collaborated with the photographing, as evidenced by the following quotations: Interviewer: When a photographer was there shooting the hot shop including you, did you just do what you normally do? Bertil Vallien: Not really. / Tillie Burden: Yes, I just did what I would normally do, perhaps I did some actions slower so the camera could catch the shot, as so much is very fast in the hot shop. Interviewer: Did you try to perform a little bit in front of the camera? Bertil Vallien: I tried to look serious and important, haha! / Tillie Burden: No, I didn’t try to perform in front of the camera, but I know people who do. (Designers Bertil Vallien and Tillie Burden, February 22, 2019) Photographers’ practice of participating includes their identity perception and ideological stance. Instead of being purely independent expression, the image creation and production process is derivative of client ideology. As expressed by Hirschman (1989, p. 43) in her study of advertising agencies, “advertising may serve to communicate the worldview of the clients who patronize its production.” A photographer’s outputs represent the client’s interests and ideology as s/he adopts the ideological posture of the client institution. In this current study, photographers like John Selbing and Hans Runesson worked and lived at Glasriket, considering themselves as long-standing insiders and community members of the region with patriotic spirits. They are the conscious and active participants in the cause of the region. They “lived” the ideologies and discourses. They went the extra mile by going beyond just fulfilling marketing assignments, living and communicating the life in the hot shop through their outputs, which are the resulting images as object type 3 in the circuit of practice. The sense of community and shared culture and ideology play a significant role in shaping and perpetuating the ideological and mythical representation of the imagery of the region of Glasriket. One of the informants, Anders Selbing, son of John Selbing, is a retired professor of medicine from Linköping University (Sweden). He serves as a member of the board of The Orrefors Archives and Glass Collections (“Föreningen Glasrikets Skatter” in Swedish), contributing to the preservation and revival of the heritage of Orrefors. He provides tremendous support to my research by opening the door to the John Selbing family archives, which are located in the basement of his house. His mother, Carola Selbing, published a book Behind the camera and the glass facade: Memories from Orrefors glass mills told by John Selbing (C. Selbing, 1995) to commemorate her husband. In the Selbings and other families at Glasriket, generations of family members treat

184 5. Findings themselves as stakeholders and members of the community of the region, doing various work in central or peripheral capacities to champion the heritage and ideology of the region.

As close collaborators and community members, photographers participate in glass making rather than being merely observers or promoters of it. Photographers’ participation in glass making is conducive to the construction of authentic market offerings (products, brands, experience, place, etc.), as well as the formation of their own existential authenticity. Existential authenticity is activity-based and is a state of mind and a mode of being (Wang, 1999). Photographers’ existential authenticity is intersubjectively felt as they develop their authentic selves through engaging in the activities in glassworks and share the same love and passion as craftsmen and designers, who are passionate about, and intrinsically motivated by, glass and glass making.

5.2.4.4 Practice of estheticizing It is within esthetic markets that authenticity is most valued (Baugh, 1988; Fine, 2003; Goulding & Derbaix, 2019). Esthetics generally concerns the nature of art, beauty, esthetic experience and the criteria for esthetic judgment (Wolff, 1983). Esthetics suggests specialized references to art, visual appearance, and human subjective experience, in implicit contrast to practical or functional considerations. The practice of estheticizing is driven by photographers’ intention “to create beautiful images by borrowing from arts” as an indication of the teleoaffective property. The meaning element (i.e., teleoaffective property) within the circuit of practice refers to a photographer’s purpose of creating art-like images, fulfilling their authentic selves as artists, and resorting to art for the nourishment of the mind for doing commercial work. There are different scenarios of photographers’ estheticizing practice: taking pictures of esthetic objects, incorporating art in a commercial piece, and learning art for the nourishment of creative edges.

At Glasriket, the objects and accompanying images are widely reproduced and distributed in the marketplace. To counter the standardization and banality of images and objects, photographers seek to estheticize their shooting target (object type 1) as well as their output (the images, object type 3). They explore the esthetic possibilities of glorifying the originality and individuality of the craft of glass making, glass objects (i.e., artistic pieces) and human objects (i.e., designer artists). Both the object to be photographed (object type 1) and the resulting image (object type 3) can become objects of beauty, which yield up esthetic pleasures to their viewers and users.

Photographers take photographs of esthetic objects, which can be artistic or decorative glass items (Plates 29-31) or designer artists (Plates 27-28). Artistic or decorative glass items have an esthetic dimension as their primary purpose. They are essentially semiotic, signifying some meaning. Photographers capture them iconically to relay their meanings. For designer artists, photographic images bring them to the fore iconically or through special visual devices (e.g., black-and-white portraits). The human portraits are juxtaposed with their designed objects to lend

185 Jönköping International Business School legitimation, authenticity and singularity to the objects. The photography of art glass pieces and artists can promulgate art-related information, thereby forming the artistic dimension of the Glasriket region.

In addition to being mechanical copy of reality and content for marketing communications, photographs about glass products can be a special art form. Photography has similarities with painting as evidenced by people’s comments that a photograph looks “painterly.” Historically, in the infant stage of development of the technology of photography, photographers borrowed from some “painterly” norms of much older European traditions of painting (Schroeder, 2002). Photographers serving glassworks at Glasriket draw upon high culture (e.g., the art movements of Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Russian Suprematism) to get inspiration and borrow from some “painterly” norms in composition, styling, and rendering. In doing so, they “abstract” a product image into a work of art, and images of glass products are transposed to another form and style. When presented with Plate 17 (“The Bruk” advertisement of Kosta Boda) in an interview, designer Torben commented: “[W]hen I look at it, I see old Dutch painters’ work. It is like a painting. It also tells a story that has got little to do with glass. Glass is just a prop in it” (interview, June 8, 2018).

Plate 32 illustrates how a photograph featuring a glass product looks like an art work. The left part was taken by John Selbing, the in-house photographer of Orrefors. The right part is a piece of work by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde Suprematist movement. We can see that John Selbing borrowed from Malevich when composing his photograph in Malevich’s Suprematist composition style, which is characterized by pure geometric forms and their relationships with one another, set against minimal backgrounds. This spatial organization in the left image was a significant choice made by the photographer John Selbing and a motivated sign. To analyze such photographs, we need to put them into a historical and a stylistic context. This is an example of photographers being influenced by other artists’ work (Barrett, 2005), or “art imitates art” as expressed by Malraux (Bourdieu, 1993a, p. 140). A photographic image of glass objects can be in a style that imitates that of artistic works of a period. More than mechanical copying of reality, glass photography can be a special art form within photography.

John Selbing’s photographic works were associated with contemporary artistic directions. He was inspired by Pieter Cornelis “Piet” Mondriaan, the Dutch painter, and Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, the pioneer of geometric abstract art. John Selbing himself treated photography as “a very special art form within photography” (Carlsson, 1939). He mostly used a film format of 12*16.5 cm and his works are mostly black-and-white photographs.

For art-like effect, many photographers prefer black-and-white images, which are felt to be more tactful (having or showing tact) and more decorous than color. The use of black-and-white film helps make a photographic image gritty and classic (examples: Plates 27, 32 and 33), in contrast to many color images in advertising. The effect

186 5. Findings signals fine art status – most art photographs are black and white. Black and white signifies a step toward signness, that is, it makes the photograph look more like a photograph than a brilliant color image (Triggs, 1995).

Photographers can break the persistent myth that the camera simply records whatever is in front of it. Executed in a contrived setting (e.g., with special lighting and post- production technologies) in a studio, photographers can utilize a gamut of pictorial strategies and visual techniques to explore more possibilities and achieve originality: montage (cuttings), repetition, form, a bricolage of preexisting signs, or special tonality rather than naturalism to shape the images. Plate 33 was created by Orrefors’ in-house photographer John Selbing and is a black-and-white still life photograph as the playful presentation of a set of wine glass wares. This image is an example of depicting ordinary glass objects in a photograph with creative endeavors and a spirit of experimenting. The background is white and clean. The photographer used the visual techniques of repetition, trick effects, posing of object, and montage in post- production to create a striking spatial organization of the objects. There are nine stem wares in the upper portion of the image. They are the same products but were posed like a queue led by a single one. They were placed at different distances from the camera, so they look different sizes in the image. The nine upside-down stem wares were added by artificial editing during post-production, and they look like a mirror of the other nine stem wares standing upright, but in another direction. The denoted message is this playful composition of two groups of wine glass wares with one group being the inverted reflection of the other. Given the composition of the objects, the connotation somehow emerges from the denoted message – these stem wares stand like an army troop. They are in a queue. They are a set of things, not solo objects. They are the same, but they can be sorted in different ways to be more interesting. They are not just a product. They can be made into a picture full of fun and playfulness. It implies to the viewer the metaphor that a wine glass is not meant to be solo; if they want to buy one, they need to buy a set. Plate 33 is reminiscent of the American pop artist Andy Warhol’s art work “Campbell’s Soup Cans” in terms of the technique – the remaking of recognizable, mundane consumption objects that were organized in repetition (Schroeder, 1997). Warhol’s work consists of 32 canvases of painting with each featuring a Campbell’s Soup can. In Plate 33, the individual drinking glass stemware is ordinary. The photographer grouped them arbitrarily to create a special organization of the objects (type 1) yielding esthetic pleasure through the resulting image (object type 3). He constructed an esthetically novel image by reworking the glass stem wares that were otherwise banal and commodity-looking. The photographer made the image artistic as a means to call attention to the product. This way of estheticizing has some postmodern character as it is not about reproducing reality, but using visual devices to pursue the spectacular. The resulting images tend to be anti-realistic, not pursuing the veracity of truth claim.

Photographers are open to improvisation and creativity, doing the “breaking” and “shifting” of routines or conventions as if there were no standard solutions. They play with stylization to create peculiar forms, styles, and genres. The praxis can be an artful and improvisatory performance. Such approaches (re)create fresh and

187 Jönköping International Business School extraordinary images and meanings based on the same object to make the object more marketable. It can attribute extra meaning and value to the object. The image itself offers viewers a visual pleasure in its own right. Photography critic Jonas points out the occasion when photographers go the extra mile by inventing: “[E]ven the designers cannot envision the possibility offered by photography. If done well, photography can extend beyond the design in representing the glass. There are possibilities there” (photography critic Jonas, interview, January 25, 2018).

Though the photographic profession is a business and a type of commercial cultural production, photographers serving Glasriket are creative workers and sometimes they escalate their creative outputs up to art works, which have artistic value in their own right. In this case, their photographic images receive recognition not just because of what they illustrate. They can be valuable objects in their own right, to be consecrated as works of art, and enter the art apparatuses (Becker, 2008): exhibitions in art galleries and museums, collectable items in albums and books, reviews by curators and historians, and so on. Taking John Selbing as an example, some of his photographs became works for exhibition, which is an apparatus as part of the institutional development of arts. His photographic works have been included in international and Swedish photography books, and exhibitions in museums. His works appeared for the first time in an exhibition that took place at the Liljevalchs gallery in Stockholm in 1934. The exhibition included contributors from 30 countries. In his review of the exhibition in the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, the art critic Gotthard Johnsson mentioned Selbing’s works by saying “the large images from Orrefors produced in their own studio… are among the finest works in the exhibition” (Fredrikson et al., 2018, p. 58). John Selbing received a silver medal at the Glass Triennial in Milan in 1957 and his photographic works were exhibited at the National Museum in Stockholm, the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, the Orrefors Museum, and the Vandalorum Museum. The photographic works of John Selbing were published in 2018 as a collection in a book entitled John Selbing: The Unintentional Photographer (Fredrikson et al., 2018).

Like John Selbing, other photographers serving Glasriket also have the intention of cultivating artistic photography and of practicing it as an artist. “I also do art photos. I get inspiration from old paintings ‒ the 1700s, books with old art ‒ about how to build a setting,” said photographer Nils-Olof (interview, March 22, 2018). To compensate for the boredom in their ordinary work and shore up their artistic authenticity, photographers consciously tap into art. Photographer Lars said: “I get inspiration by looking at how others did it. Sometimes I look at art books, go to art galleries, museums, and libraries” (interview, March 19, 2018). Below is a dialogue between the photographer Jonas and me: Photographer Jonas: I try to do art photography for my own creativity, my own dream. To push in that dimension. I always want to do that. I look at a lot of art and get inspiration. Interviewer: What kinds of art?

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Photographer Jonas: Abstract paintings, sculpture (old, marble, Asian), old objects, documentary, photography of old styles. (Photographer Jonas, March 23, 2018) Almost all of the interviewed photographers do “art” photography in addition to their commercial assignments. They do it as a kind of “fleeing away from business” mentality. Photographer Lars said: “[W]hen I do art work for exhibition, I only use my own creativity for pictures. I don’t think so much about how it will be received” (interview, March 19, 2018). Through this type of artistic enterprise, photographers fulfill self-expression and artistic ideal in an autotelic mode. They do so to nurture creativity ‒ the uncompromising personal productive capacities of the individual artist. Photographers construct themselves as artists rather than technicians or businessmen. They achieve existential authenticity by being “true” to their own individual “genius” (Frosh, 2001, p. 542), and they are freer, more innocent, more spontaneous, purer and truer to themselves than usual (Wang, 1999, p. 360). Beverland (2005b) demonstrates how firms can establish their authenticity by committing to values above commercial interests. In a similar vein, photographers’ artistic pursuit can be an intrinsic motivation rather than any instrumental goal so that their authentic selves can be fulfilled.

As a by-product effect, engagement with art can nourish photographers’ creative edges, which can be fed back into their commercial work ultimately. “It helps me to see things from different lenses … I can add a lot of my art work thinking to commercial images,” said photographer Nils-Olof (interview, March 22, 2018). In his reflections, John Selbing pointed out the relationship between art and commercial work: “[P]hotographers’ own feeling and artistic eye determines the result” (J. Selbing, 1952); “to devote myself to this lovely material with its great possibilities, not only as a photographer but during the later years also as an artist, further enriched my photographical possibilities” (J. Selbing, 1957).

In summary, when fulfilling their commercial imperative of helping sell products, commercial photographers serving Glasriket sometimes produce images with artistic ambition and flair, estheticizing the products, images, and experiences for consumers and countering the banality of visuals in marketing and consumer culture. Art is infused into marketing images (object type 3) to give greater value to their referent objects (object type 1). Photographic images are not only advertisements and promotional materials for the glass industry, but also have value in their own right as a form of artistic expression. Both the photographed objects (object type 1) and the resulting images (object type 3) can be beautiful objects. What is promoted is not just the product, but an aura of “art.” Art is a kind of legitimation as a work of art suggests cultural authority (Frayling, 1992). Works of art can confer value on goods (Margolin, 1992), and the effort of doing glass photography as art can make references to an avant-garde creative ethos, legitimate the products with cultural significance, and bridge craft that is supposedly industrial “low” culture to art. Consumers sometimes enjoy watching such images not because of the products advertised, but because such visual signs can be a spectacle and a fascination bringing pleasure to them. Photographers’ estheticizing practice creates the esthetic dimension

189 Jönköping International Business School of market offerings at Glasriket, signifying creativity, novelty, singularity, and authenticity.

5.2.4.5 Practice of indexing The practice of indexing is driven by photographers’ intention to establish a link between an object in an image (object type 1) and its referent (object type 1). Such a relationship between these two objects is indexical in a semiotic sense as they have some causal effect or connection (Mick, 1986). The meaning element (i.e., teleoaffective property) within the circuit of practice refers to a photographer’s purpose of establishing and highlighting the causal link of the two objects when the image refers back to objects in craft production in the factories.

There is some intrinsic relationship between index and authenticity (Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Thomsen & Vester, 2016) as the former can demonstrate a factual or spatiotemporal link between a sign and the real thing. Peirce (1998) coined the term “index” to refer to cues that are considered to have a factual and spatiotemporal link with something else. For example, the wine drinking glasswares of the Château series (Plate 4, analyzed earlier in Section 5.1 in this same chapter) bear the signs of some unique craft techniques and procedures (thin leg, uneven texture on the surface of the glass body reflecting light) that cannot appear in machine-made, mass-produced glass products.

Photography is a referential medium as it links the signs with their social life. With the practice of indexing, photographers build referential authenticity, which is backed up by a referent system (Goldman & Papson, 2000, p. 91). A “referent system” refers to the characteristics and affective values associated with an already structured area of social experience and the visible object within it. As Judith Williamson has observed, in modern advertisements “two systems of meaning are always involved: the referent system and the product’s system” (Williamson, 1978, p. 43). The values in the objects in a referent system can be metaphorically transferred into the “product system” in images and marketing communications. Referent systems have high potential sign value, as a repertoire of meaning systems.

In this current study, the referent system to be tapped into by photographers is the manufacturing operation in the backstage in the hot shops of glassworks, which have “sacred” status possessing values in the eyes the target audience. Commodities are indexical signs as they are the outcome of their makers and the making in a causal relationship (Mick, 1986). The photographed scenes and objects in the glassworks are an authentic depiction of the craft making in the backstage. Such a referent system serves as the sphere of cultural meanings, which include the craft production mode, the chair system as a handmade technique, the artists as creators, and the spatial and temporal signs as evidence of provenance and heritage. Such an ensemble of signs in the referent system are knowledges that existed prior to the creation of photographic images (as “anterior knowledge”), and they were brought into the photographic images to create the referentiality. Such a referent system (the hot shops in glassworks) reminds us of Goffman's (1959) concepts of “back stage” and “front

190 5. Findings stage” in the metaphor that the world is a stage for people’s performances. While the “front” is a social place where “hosting” occurs, the “back” is a space designed for the preparation for the construction of the performance. The hot shop is where the handicraft glass production was conducted. Objects (i.e., tools, procedures, people) in the backstage were photographed to be exhibited as signs with value for viewers (see Plates 1-3, 5). The setting is like Goffman’s kitchen and factory. The glassworks are also a tourist destination with their offerings of retailing and a factory tour. So their visual representation will arouse the interest of viewers in visiting or shopping there.

For photographers’ practice of indexing, there are a number of ways of doing it: 1) to index the molten glass in the metamorphosis of material to show the causal relationship between a finished object and the glass material (Plates 9A, B, C, and Plate 10); 2) to index elements in craft production (technique, objects, tools) to establish the causal relationship between a finished object and the craft making (Plates 3, 5A and 15); 3) to imply the causal relationship between creators and the finished object (Plates 27 and 28); and 4) to index historical events and places to establish spatial and temporal ties between products and their referents (historical time points and places) (Plates 19-23). Photographers’ practice of indexing generates images for consumers to derive a sense of authenticity, substantively linking products to signs depicting the manufacturing scenes, designers, origin, history, territory, and so on. These “components” exist in social realities and are selected by photographers to act as signifiers. Such imagery might be salient to consumers as it allows them to see “behind the scenes” of the producer (Narsey & Russell, 2013) and offers knowledge about the craft (A.-S. Lehmann, 2012). The core logic for photographers is to conjoin products and the production world in images, enhancing viewers’ perception of the authenticity of market offerings from the glassworks through indexical linkage to the referents that serve as the “proof.” In terms of style, some photographs have a documentary style (Plate 19, Plate 20A, Plates 21-22) and some are product shots as a result of staged shooting (Plates 15 and 23).

The indexical relationship can be realized in two scenarios: the indexical relationship between a product and its referents within the same image, and the indexical relationship between objects in an image and other objects external to the image. • Scenario 1: to place a product together with its referents (i.e., objects in manufacturing) within the same image to establish the causal relationship between the two. Here, objects in the factory are the props and are conjoined with the glass product to form an indexical sign. The objects (i.e., people, tools, ambience) in the factory are inducers of meanings about the making and the craft. Products are the outcome of their makers and the making in a causal relationship. Through the arrangement conceived by the photographers, these two types of objects (type 1) are combined in a pictorial composition, and then the connotation somehow “emerges” from all these signifying units – that the product is made here, a place proud of its authenticity. Plate 5A and Plate 15 are the examples. Photographers exploit the indexical nature of photography as a strategy, implying the causal relationship between the “handmade” production and the finished product. An

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image with an indexical sign has a factual or real connection with the past and with the making demonstrated. • Scenario 2: to establish the indexical relationship between objects in an image and objects external to the image. Plates 2, 3, 5, 19, 27 and 28 belong to this scenario. They intend to signify how an object is manufactured, tracing glass products to their prior root. The signs are indexical of the making of glass ‒ artisans’ production techniques and the content of their crafts, and designers as the creators. The indices could be the techniques (Plates 2 and 3), building (Plate 19), tools (Plate 5), or people (Plates 27 and 28). The signs have their referents in external reality, which is the operation in the factory of a glassworks. For Plates 27 and 28, the images are just about one designer. If we think of the media contexts in which such photographic portraits are placed (i.e., retail stores, product packages, eCommerce websites, product catalogues, etc.), we can infer that such a retailing or marketing ambience prompts viewers to link a product with its designer. Thus, the image of a designer artist is indexed to the products designed by him or her and there is a causal connection between these two objects.

Both scenarios are the result of the purposive planning and shooting of a photographer, who works with the client and the art director in an ad agency. All the parties are aware of the media contexts in which a photograph will appear, and especially the kind of indexical relationship that is to be established for a viewer. The quotation below of a photographer explains such a situation: I have a creative briefing about how a product is supposed to be shown. I worked with ad agencies, which usually decided the layout of a catalogue. Big firms are concerned with whether a photo fits into an ad or a publication. The ad agency has the assignment with the layout, specifying the background. I need to consider the composition – how a photo is combined with other elements on a page. (Photographer Nils-Olof, March 22, 2018) The practice of indexing that establishes the link between an object and its referents has the potential of communicating messages about authenticity. Authenticity is linked with characteristics of a product as well as its making and creators. The photographic images produced in this way can invoke the craft-based manufacturing scene as a credible endorser of the products, thereby promoting the products and the glassworks as being authentic.

5.2.5 Paradoxes in authenticity construction in photographers’ image- making practices The dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity exists within image production practices of commercial photographers, which are not monolithic and unconflicted. The market offerings are visually construed in the images as authentic, while the photographic production work helps the marketing and sales organ to sell more products. The paradoxes are evident in three scenarios of contestation, which will be discussed next: 1) the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values; 2) the paradox in the notion of reproduction; and 3) the paradox between

192 5. Findings realism and arbitrariness in photographic image production. These paradoxes reflect the overall dialectic between the loss of authenticity due to commoditization and efforts at singularizing and differentiating. Constant contestations coexist with dissolutions of dichotomies, where photographers rely on dual-faceted logics. The reality is not a simplistic authentic/inauthentic dichotomy, implying the complexity in the construction of authenticity and cultural production.

5.2.5.1 The paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values The commercial photographers examined in this current study face a set of dichotomies expressed in paradoxical relationships: nonmarket values vs. rational or utility-maximizing logics, art vs. money, creativity vs. commerce, artisanal ethos vs. commercial ethos, and morality vs. instrumentality. These dichotomies exemplify the grand dialectic between the inauthentic industrialized approach to cultural production and the authentic artistic approach to cultural production to counter the forces of rationalization and commercialization. Metaphorically, the two poles in these dichotomies can be viewed as the profane vs. the sacred (Belk, Wallendorf, & Sherry, 1989).

The commercial photography work analyzed in this current study belongs to mass culture or commodity nature, which is deemed inauthentic. The photographic images are viewed as “commodity signs,” which are tasked with selling and promoting other objects (products) (Goldman & Papson, 2000, p. 81). The images are created as desire-inducing symbols (Arnould & Thompson, 2005), depicting and communicating market-made commodities. The images about commodities become a marketable commodity, mass-produced and distributed through the marketing institution and market system.

Commercial photographers are part of the “selling” or “marketing” organ of the glass industry. Embedded in a structure of collaborative actors in the marketing chain, they are shaped by commercial institutions and concerns. Most of them work as freelancers or self-employed, subject to contractual agency-client relationships. They rely on clients to commission them for continuous assignments. Propelled by a basic economic logic of selling more products, they face commercial imperatives: revenue and profit, efficiency, and marketing effectiveness. The economic instrumentality and rational imperatives lead to disenchantment and inauthenticity (Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Weber, 1978).

The inauthenticity intrinsic to marketing exists due to the dominant rational order of business and market logics. It is an industrial system, governed by instrumental rationality rather than the genuine creative impulse of the artists. From the perspective of culture critics Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), modern corporations in the capitalism system are driven by commercial imperatives, standardization, and mass production, being faceless and bureaucratic. Their ethos represents the polar opposite of the authentic, which is represented by the distinctive cultural and artistic expression. The advertising and marketing materials in the marketplace are deplored

193 Jönköping International Business School for their ubiquity, numbing conventionality, and stereotypical sameness (Frosh, 2001).

Photographers’ image-making practices manifest an “inauthentic” nature in certain ways. Some commercial photographers do their work with the “assembly line” approach, which was described by Anders Selbing, son of John Selbing, in this way: “It’s like an industry. You have a photographer, the product comes in, he takes the photos, and then the next product comes in. The photographer puts them in the same box. You have a light box that is made to take photos of all kinds of objects …not glass, but whatever (photo taking is not glass-specific)” (Anders Selbing, interview, November 28, 2017). The “assembly line” mode of image production is based on standardization of production and templates, where photographers habitually use conventions and templates, standard procedures, and techniques generating predictable output. Photographers working in this “assembly line” mode tend to end up being uninspired “technicians” and autonomous practitioners, who turn out a mass of images.

Photographers have to do the image production in a short time due to budget constraints. The short length of time given by clients does not allow lengthy acquaintance with the shooting object. Photographers have limited, intense periods to get the shooting done as rapidly as possible so that they do not run out of budget. In developed economies, current economics do not favor long-term job tenure and freelancing has become a popular work mode for photographers. 29 Most of the photographers I interviewed work as freelancers or are self-employed. Freelancers tend to deliver their work in a hurried manner as they have limited time and they can’t really go beyond the task. Unlike John Selbing, who worked for Orrefors for four decades as an-inhouse photographer, freelancing photographers may lack attachment to the client company with their short-term contracts. Photography critic Jonas points out that “they don’t get that deep contact with designers” (interview, January 25, 2018).

As a result of the “assembly line” approach, “some product catalogs turn out to be mechanical, without elegance or appeal. They (the glass products) are flat, without cubic sense or any depth” (Anders Selbing, interview, November 28, 2017). The resulting images circulated in marketing communications become so similar that they generally fail to have the humanizing or singular effect, degenerating into inauthenticity. Photography critic Jonas pointed out the characteristics of such output: The photos are getting to be more “mainstream.” It is very rare to see photos with personalities in those marketing materials. Everything is becoming more “mainstream” or homogeneous. From the same pack. Very predictable. Very

29 Photographers are one of the occupations that have become part of the rising gig economy, characterized by freelancing, short-term assignments or a self-employment option (Hussenot, 2017; Torpey & Hogan, 2016).

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hard to see the differences between IKEA and another brand. When you look at the ads from every furniture company in the magazines, if you hide the logos, even they themselves cannot tell the difference. (Photography critic Jonas, January 25, 2018) In contrast to the “assembly line” mode, some photographers work in an artisanal or artistic mode due to different personal dedication and aspirations as well as social, economic and institutional incentives. Photographers sometimes work in a variety of ways to counter the commercial forces to seek and construct authenticity for marketing offerings and for themselves as creative workers. They reject the commonplace by working out ways of differentiating and authenticating. They turn the seemingly commonplace into the singularized, differentiated and auratic.

In face of instrumentalities, some photographers have the moral imperative of promoting the craft ideal at Glasriket (see “the practice of participating” in this chapter). They have the ideological position of appreciating and sympathizing with the craftsmanship in making glass. Their produced images project the kind of authentic presence and visibility of craft production.

Amongst contrived and commercialized texts driven by the market logics, some photographers have genuine moments of humanity, which include authentic human spontaneity and creativity. As detailed in the “practice of estheticizing” in this chapter, such photographers mine their interior imaginative capacities, achieving artistic singularity and originality. With artistic aspiration, they fulfill their existential authenticity, which privileges spontaneity and personal vision. They show their disinterestedness towards commercial concerns when they approach art for its own sake. Bourdieu described the nature of such a mode as follows: “the world of art, a sacred island systematically and ostentatiously opposed to the profane world of production, a sanctuary for gratuitous, disinterested activity in a world given over to money and self-interest” (Bourdieu, 1993b, p. 197).

In contrast with the “assembly line” approach, some photographers work in an artisanal mode turning image production practice into a “craft.” According to Sennett (2008), craftsmanship can resurface in unexpected places. In the field of commercial photography, some photographers work like artisans, thinking about their skill as a craft to which they are committed. They are dedicated to artisanship instead of speed and greed. Such a mode of work is quality driven, demanding much more time and contemplative efforts from the photographer, who has “an enduring, basic human instinct, the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (Sennett, 2008, p. 9). Photographer Lars said, “I worked at my own pace. Doing a job properly takes the time it takes. I can work on a product for a day with one picture. The work totally involved me in the picture and in the object” (photographer Lars, interview, March 19, 2018).

Rather than conflicting with the commercial imperatives and ethos, photographers can reconcile themselves with it. Photographer John Selbing thought that the selling and artistic effort can go together in some way: “[T]o make photos that sell, you need

195 Jönköping International Business School to have some artistic approach to it” (C. Selbing, 1995). For those photographic images that do not necessarily lead to buying, John Selbing argued that the effectiveness should not be judged at face value: “[G]oodwill advertising is maybe the most interesting form even if it does not give any direct sales results. Its purpose is to use psychological or pictorial means to stimulate the eye to register a dynamic movement or tension during the short time when the eye focuses on the image” (J. Selbing, 1951). As demonstrated in the analyses earlier in this chapter (see “practice of estheticizing”), photographers can walk a fine line between art and commerce. Art can be juxtaposed with commodities, and the boundary between art and commerce can be transgressed. The economic logics, the creative logics, and the art logics can be mixed. This situation of harmonization is what Bourdieu (1996, p. 344) termed “the increasingly greater interpenetration between the world of art and the world of money.” Commerce and authenticity are not necessarily a dichotomous pair of concepts. Photographers can remain authentic while doing commercial assignments. They can create authenticity of marketing offerings for commercial purposes. There is no clear separation between the economic and the extra-economic because the economic instrumentality can coexist, interact and overlap with other logics of action (Wherry, 2006).

5.2.5.2 The paradox in the notion of reproduction In his essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin treats photography as the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction (Benjamin, 1969). Photography represents the shift as a critical turning point in the impact of the new technologies of cultural production in modern times – the “mechanical” (we would call it “electronic” today) reproduction. The indefinite repeatability, Benjamin argued, is one of the essential characteristics of the modern means of cultural production. Unlike painting, the photograph is infinitely reproducible. From a photographic negative, one can make any number of prints. Digitized photo-taking and dissemination are even more convenient demonstrations of the reproducibility. As the opposite of painting or a work of art that is unrepeatable with the status of being an authentic work of art, photographs, especially digital ones, have infinite repeatability and duplicability. In this current study, the photographic images are meant to be reproduced, in paper or digital media, in large quantities with the widest possible exposure in the marketplace. Commercial photographers are part of the marketing communications operation that creates numerous images and distributes them to multiple outlets for consumers.

Photography and film are the most serviceable exemplifications of the value of exhibition (Benjamin, 1969). Photography stands at the polar of exhibition value of the work, to be viewed by many people, as against the other polar of cult value of works of art that is meant to be limited in its exihibtion. It is much easier to exhibit, disseminate and circulate a photograph of a glass product than to place a physical glass object in front of any viewer. Technical reproduction generates a copy (the image, object type 3) of the original object (object type 1), to enable the original to meet the beholder halfway. The beholder may not touch the actual original object. In

196 5. Findings permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder in his or her own particular situation, the reproduction (the image, object type 3) reactivates the object (object type 1) reproduced. Photography can bring things “closer” to the beholder or viewer spatially and humanly (Benjamin, 1969) ‒ a cultural experience available to anyone who wishes to participate.

Benjamin (1969) argues that mass production of photographs eliminates the very possibility of authenticity as the presence of the original is the prerequisite for the concept of authenticity. Authenticity originally supposes unicity and the impossibility of any duplication (Heilbrunn, 1998). According to Benjamin, art objects will lose aura, original meaning and authenticity due to their ever-increasing mechanical reproduction and diffusion. The mechanical reproduction in industrialization will displace the aura of an object. Benjamin (ibid.) brings up the concept of “aura,” which is the basis of the authenticity of a work of art. By being auratic, an object does not resemble or imitate anything but itself. Copies, forgeries and fakes seek to partake of the aura of original artistic works. He suggests that the aura of an authentic work of art is tied up with its originality, and in industrial eras originals are robbed of their “aura” of authenticity. He also mentions that only with the mass reproduction of symbols does authenticity emerge as a quality to be prized. In even the most perfect reproduction, what is lacking is “the here and now of the work of art—its unique existence in a particular place” (ibid., p. 21). The here and now of the original underlies the concept of the authenticity of the work. The technique of reproduction will detach the reproduced object from the domain of tradition (e.g., ritual and magical practices), in which works of art were created (ibid.). The technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By duplicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence.

The paradox of photographers discussed here lies in the coexistence of mechanical reproduction and the possibility that the photographic images can be original, auratic, and one of a kind, as demonstrated by the empirical analysis of the “practice of estheticizing” in this chapter. For Benjamin (ibid., p. 21), “the whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological—and of course not only technological— reproduction.” If we follow Benjamin’s logic faithfully, then “mechanical reproduction” and “authenticity” cannot be reconciled. So the word “authentic” turns out to be ironic if we talk about photographers’ “practice of reproduction” and their output of images that are reproduced and distributed everywhere.

Benjamin’s thought has a retrosepctive sense, of some point in time and a specific location from which subsequent things and conditions have developed. In the case of works of arts, what he meant by “an authentic work of art” is the first work, as distinct from a copy, an imitated or fake one. What his argument adeptly addresses is the issue of the authentic work of art (e.g., a painting of Picasso) in comparison with its copy or forgery. The forgery can devalue the here and now of the original art work.

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In this current study, the quality of authenticity of market offerings concerns something different – the sense of something singular, individual, rare, or new (not like other works or not an imitation), distinguished by genius. It is not about the original art work embedded in tradition or founded on rituals. A photographic image is shot for reproducibility for marketing purposes in the first place. It does not make sense to ask for the “authenticity” of an original image or an original object to be photographed. The dichotomy of the original vs. its copies in a Benjamin sense does not matter. What reaches the consumers is the copy (i.e., image), which can be esthetically appealing. It is not about objects handed down from the past. This current study shows that even through reproduction, a photographic image can gain uniqueness and aura through photographers’ esthetic creativity (see the “practice of estheticizing” in this chapter), combined with some technical procedures.

The mechanical reproduction of photographs can be independent of the original. What’s more, the reproduction can bring out aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the camera lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. Photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes (e.g., enlargement), can capture images that escape natural vision. As an example, photographer Jörgen told me a story about his shooting of a glass object with small engraving and how an image can show something that could not be seen by regular eyes: We cannot actually see it (the engraving in the glass object) in reality. I worked for some extra hours … I deliberately chose to get a very short focus. It was very useful to let the light enter it in a narrow beam and not spread. I took black scotch tape to be put on the back side of the glass object just to stop the light bouncing back. Then, after seeing the image, they said “wow, it is so beautiful. We didn’t know that.” So, this photo shows something you cannot see otherwise. (Photographer Jörgen, October 3, 2018) The authenticity in this current study does not concern the original printed copy of a certain photographic image or an original glass object to be photographed. Sternberg (1999, p. 141) noted: “In our commercial culture, everything that is produced is reproducible: there are no originals and no fakes, and ‘copies’ are merely additional instances of the same work.” The copy is not an issue. Consumers do not necessarily want the real glass object or the first photographic image. What counts is how vividly and faithfully the copy (i.e., image, object type 3) can depict the original (object type 1) (see “practice of reproducing” in this chapter) and how creative, novel and singular an image is (see “practice of estheticizing” in this chapter). The authenticity of an image lies in the quintessence of all that is transmissible from its referent (e.g., a glass object). Consumers pursue the everyday uniqueness of market offerings (e.g., products, images, experiences) while at the same time accepting reproductions of them.

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5.2.5.3 The paradox between realism and arbitrariness in photographic image production Photography, assumed as a medium with the realistic nature, has the epistemological nature of being realistic and objective due to its precise, mechanical and impersonal rendering of the appearance of objects (Slater, 1995). Compared with other media or technologies of representation, photography is considered a mechanical analogue of reality. Realism concerns the apparent fidelity of the representation to the thing or concept represented. From the perspective of the realists, the photograph is an icon of the reality because it has the capacity of capturing the “reality” in sharp and vivid details. There has been the accepted notion that photography is a natural and objective medium because it can transmit “the literal reality” that it has technologically captured. A photograph came into being as if it was made by an objective, impartial recording machine. In her critique of photographic realism, Sontag (1977) notes that a photograph is representationally accurate, and ontologically connected with the world, so it can be treated as a piece of the world, and a substitute for it.

Authenticity has been conventionally ascribed to the medium of photography. According to Barthes (1981), the photograph emanates beyond reality and authenticates the past existence of what it represents. He explains that photography is different from other means of representation (e.g., painting, writing) because the object that is photographed has really been there. Photographic images draw their authenticity from their nature of being realistic and objective. “The authority which emanates from the sense of authenticity or ‘truth to actuality’ conferred by photography is a fundamental element within photographic language and esthetic” (Price & Wells, 1997, p. 27). The analyses of the “practice of reproduction,” “practice of indexing” and “practice of documenting” in this chapter detail how photographers’ image-making practices can represent the verisimilitude and optical truth of the material of glass, as well as the documentary and evidentiary reality of the craft production of glass, thereby contributing to the authenticity of market offerings at Glasriket.

However, photography has representational inauthenticity. Cultural relativists discount the realistic and objective nature of photography by pointing out its features of arbitrariness (Nöth, 1990). Photographic representation has an ambiguous and constructed nature. The creation of an image can be staged and contrived – the opposite of what it means to be authentic. A photograph can lie due to the manipulation of the photographer, who can deliberately stage the shooting, deploy optical techniques and lighting, artistically frame and compose an image, post-edit an image, add tricks, or alter the image digitally (digital retouching or editing in post- production).

For the “practice of documenting” analyzed earlier in this chapter, what is to be documented is not an automated, mechanized, innocent, and impersonal action. Photographers serving Glasriket have their representational strategies and choices guided by a certain ideological direction – the purposive representation of the sacred ‒ craft objects (products, tools, craft workers, designers, factories, events, etc.), and

199 Jönköping International Business School the downplaying and omission of the “profane.” Visual imagery of closed-down factories and deserted countryside due to depopulation is conspicuously absent. It concerns not only the photographic shooting done by photographers, but also the preselecting and post-editing decisions made by marketers of some institutions. As an example, designer Ludvig shared an episode of purposive choice of documenting craft production: “It is ironic that on the day when the factory of Orrefors was closed down, its new owner, the New Wave group, sent photographers there to take photos of the old factory scenes in order to market craftsmanship” (designer Ludvig, interview, July 18, 2017). For the “practice of reproducing” analyzed earlier in this chapter, to highlight the glossy surface of a glass object, photographers sometimes soaked a glass product in soapy water before shooting it (interviews). So, the optical verisimilitude in the photographic representation of the material properties of glass was not natural and can only be counted as the perceived realistic authenticity. There are times when consumers could be “fooled” by the image, and consumer Marcus shared such an experience: “[T]he photo looks brilliant, but the product looks ordinary. When you see the photo, you think this is beautiful. Then, you open the box, and you take the product and say ‘oh, it is not so special.’ It is typical – the photo sells more than the plain product” (interview, October 26, 2016).

So, photographers’ image making work is a controlled production process that aims to produce an idealized and naturalized version of social reality. Photography does not simply record a moment or circumstances. Although it is a representation of some reality, a photographic image is not the original referent (object type 1). The objects in images can look posed and contrived. The contrived and constructed nature of the resulting images will undermine their sincerity and realism. Therefore, we see the dual existence of photography’s perceived realism vs. its “fictional” or “rhetorical” possibilities, the objective properties of photography vs. the subjective intention of the photographer, and the mechanical vs. the stylistic and compositional, and the naturalness vs. the artificiality.

5.2.6 Summary This section (5.2) has answered RQ2 (“How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing images representing craft production?”) by analyzing the image production practices of commercial photographers aiming to authenticate marketing offerings. The analysis was done from a practice-theory perspective – I first analyzed the situations of each of the three elements within the circuit of practice (Magaudda, 2011): object, doing, and meaning as teleoaffective property. Then, the practices of photographers were dimensionalized into a typology consisting of five categories of practices: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. The labels of these five types of practices were derived from the meanings or teleoaffective properties, which are photographers’ intentions that purport to authenticate market offerings. The five image-making practices of photographers can also be viewed as authenticating practices, whose teleoaffective properties (meanings) lean towards the goal of legitimizing craft production and constructing authenticity for market offerings (products, brands, images, experiences, places, etc.) at Glasriket. Table 4

200 5. Findings summarizes the key findings of the five practices within this typology. Each practice consists of the elements of objects (types 1, 2, 3), meaning (teleoaffective property), and doings (see the top row in Table 4). The five categories of practices do not always have neat boundaries, and they are interlinked in certain dimensions. For example, the “practice of documenting” is entangled with the “practice of participating” as photographers did visual documentation of craft production while staying and participating in glass making in the hot shops.

Photographers’ image-making practices generate authenticity for various market offerings at Glasriket (brands, products, experience, place, marketing messages, etc.). Among these market offerings, three entities, as loci of authenticity, are unique and worth noting: • Authenticity of the referents (object type 1, such as products, events, people to be photographed). Photographers’ visual representation practices help establish referents’ authenticity, demonstrated by the empirical findings concerning the visual representation of the “real” world of craft production and the visual depiction of the “real” and “authentic” material of glass (see “practice of reproducing” and “practice of documenting”). • Authenticity of the representation act, which is a practice of cultural production. It concerns how accurate and faithful an image production practice is and whether a production practice is an “authentic” method of visual depiction of referents (see “practice of reproducing”). • Authenticity of photographers’ self (“the authentic producer or artist”). Photographers achieve existential authenticity when they are “true” to their own individual “genius” (Frosh, 2001, p. 542), are freer, more innocent, more spontaneous, purer and truer to themselves than usual (Wang, 1999, p. 360), or engage in the activities in glassworks and share the same love and passion as craftsmen and designers (see “practice of estheticizing” and “practice of participating”).

Lastly, I have discussed the paradoxical components in the construction of authenticity in photographers’ image-making practices. The paradoxes are different from those in craft production of glass (see Section 5.1) and are exemplified in three scenarios of dialectics: 1) the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values; 2) the paradox in the notion of reproduction; and 3) the paradox between realism and arbitrariness in photographic image production.

201

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zing Esthetici Indexing Jönköping International Business School

5.3 Relationships between the two types of production

This section addresses Research Question 3, “In what way are the two types of production related?” The foregoing sections (5.1 and 5.2) analyzed how the authenticity of market offerings is constructed in the two types of production – craft production of glass objects and photographers’ image-making practices. It is necessary to explore the linkage between these two types of production, located in the world of glass making and the world of photography, respectively. The following parts first discuss the commonalities and differences between them. Then, their relationship is inferred as being of two key types – iconic and indexical – from the perspective of Peirce's (1998) semiotic framework.

5.3.1 Commonalities Both types of production belong to the “production” or the making of things. Both are reproductions of things, belonging to what was described by Baudrillard (1983b) as modes of infinite exact technical reproduction and reproducibility of the same object, which have existed since the industrialization. There exists convergence between these two types of production due to the concerted efforts of glass makers and photographers.

Both are creative practices in “creative voice” fields (Peterson, 2005). Both the making of objects (i.e., glass objects) and the making of images are cultural practices because both produce products with symbolic values, the products influence consumers’ experience and knowledge, and both are a system for the management of creativity (Mato, 2009). The outputs from both types of production (glass products, photographic images) are cultural artifacts or cultural products that offer symbolic values and carry meanings from the culturally constituted world (McCracken, 1988).

Both types of production endow market offerings with authenticity. The construction of authenticity is embedded in and mediated through the two types of production. Both can be viewed as authenticating processes. Both production practices generate “authentic objects” that can appeal to multiple genres of authenticity, and the objects are appropriated by consumers. Both types of production serve as the antecedents of authenticity, which are subject to the evaluation and appropriation of consumers.

Both types of production have ambiguities and complexities in the construction of authenticity. For both types of production, the analyses conducted earlier in this chapter have discussed the paradoxes inherent in how authenticity operates in the commercially based production practices of glass producers and commercial photographers, who act as the promoter of the former.

Lastly, informants in this study shared some anecdotal observations of analogies between the practice of image making and the practice of glass making. Both types of activities can be a craft in their own right, demanding long hours of work and

204 5. Findings involving difficulties in handling the objects (the image for photographers, the material of glass for designers and glassblowers). Practitioners from both fields face some similar conditions and shared artifacts (e.g., the material of glass and glass objects). Consider the following quotation from photographer Hans: Photo-taking is the same thing as blowing glass – you don’t know what is exactly going to happen, but suddenly it does. You start by working, and then suddenly “there it is, there is the picture.” (Photographer Hans, October 3, 2018) Hans’s quotation points out one area of similarity between image making and glassblowing ‒ the unpredictability in handling the objects and moments of surprises and exhilarating discoveries. But the unpredictability can be tamed by years of hands- on practices, so a seasoned photographer or glassblower would know roughly what is going to happen.

5.3.2 Differences Marketing textbooks have differentiated marketing from other productive activities that produce physical objects (Dixon, 1990). Photographers’ production of images belongs to marketing communications, which is peripheral to the actual production of products. Glasriket’s key undertaking is the manufacturing of glass products, or the making of physical objects. To sell them, glassworks conduct marketing, including the production and circulation of photographic images. The designers and craftsmen fashion the objects, and photographers fashion the photographic images of the objects.

The making of glass and the making of images are two distinctive modes of production. The craft production of glass deals with transforming and manipulating things to be commodities, which are physical objects with material attributes. It is the production mainly for use value and exchange value (Baudrillard, 1981), prioritized by economists who were mainly concerned with value in tangible goods created in the process of physical production. As a substantive act, the production of glass is characterized by the physical production of material things. In contrast, the production of photographic images is mostly about immaterial and conceptual construction, prioritized by the production of sign value (Goldman & Papson, 2000). As a communicative act, the production of images focuses on intangible and symbolic aspects. The work of commercial photographers falls into the realm of culture production, as an expressive esthetic activity.

So, glass making and photograph making are two different spheres, addressing material/physical production and representational/symbolic production, respectively. One focuses on the creation of concrete products, and the other on the creation of symbols mirroring the products. The two productions are located at different points in the commodity chain, or the circuit of culture (du Gay et al., 2013; Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2012). In terms of output, these two types of production generate two

205 Jönköping International Business School distinctive outcomes, namely glass products and photographic images, which are two forms of expression using two different techniques and materials.

The two types of production are two different authenticity domains, with different manifestations of authenticity in the marketplace. The first production constructs authenticity mostly physically and materially, while the second production constructs authenticity mostly symbolically and communicatively. The photographic images represent or signify the authentic features of their referents in the first production, as the reproduced authenticity in the visual images. The second production animates the modes of authenticity of the first production as the visual representation is what viewers will respond to judge market offerings’ authenticity.

5.3.3 The relationship between the two types of production From making things to making images, these two types of production are the dual productions of two types of objects, side by side. The making of things and the making of marketing text are in a symbiotic relationship. Commercial photographic image making is an extension of the glass manufacturing industry and its marketing organ.

Peirce's (1998) semiotic framework is a suitable tool to be used to think about the relationship between these two types of production, which are in the dialectic relationship between Object and Sign (see Figure 14). The craft production and its output (products) are the Object (see the left side of Figure 14) and the image production and its output (images) are the Sign (see the right side of Figure 14). Object and Sign are two of the three key elements30 in the semiotic framework of Peirce (1998), and these two elements are the two key nodes in the work process for marketers – in their work, marketers need to draw on raw resources from their own companies (Object) to create various contents (Sign) in their marketing communications.

30 The third element is “Interpretant.” For the definitions of the three elements, please refer to “Terminologies in semiotics” in Section 1.7 in Chapter 1. For Peirce’s (1998) semiotic framework about the triangular relationship among the three basic elements of sign, object and interpretant, please refer to Section 4.3.3 in Chapter 4.

206 5. Findings

Figure 14. Relationship between the two types of production

There is a linear flow from Object to Sign or “from substance to image” (Alvesson, 1990, p. 379). Historically, advertising has been considered primarily an extension of the industrial process of manufacturing and distribution (Leiss, Kline, & Jhally, 2000). When it comes to visual image making, the conventional view of marketing thinks that it is the work of adding something symbolic or discursive to the work of manufacturing. However, the flow from Object to Sign works in more intricate, nuanced ways rather than a mechanical logic of simply “adding” Sign to Object. In this current study, the photographic images hold up a mirror to the craft production of glass and the region of Glasriket. The photographic images unveil and bear witness to the objects that they capture. The images concretize the abstract concepts of “craft” into specific objects (i.e., technique, material, objects, events, people) in the backstage. Glass making occurs at the designated setting of factories, happening inside the walls of glassworks. The second production (photographers’ image-making practices) reproduces the first production photographically. The photographic images represent objects as the world of craft production of glass is projected onto the photographic images. The encountering of the craft production of glass by multiple stakeholders, including consumers, is mediated by the medium of photographic images. Viewers rely on the image to apprehend the real object as the image is the reference or proxy of the object. In providing resources for cuing the authenticity of market offerings for consumers, the photographic images will influence how viewers perceive the objects.

Besides a linear flow, there could be reciprocity or exchanges between these two types of production. Breaking the norm of translating Object into Image, photographer John Selbing tried an “inversion” practice. He did some bold experiments and developed a method of glass etching, which could embed text or a monogram into a glass object. As the reverse of the logic of translating glass objects into photographic images, this patented method transferred photographs onto glass objects. Below is his description about the technique in a Swedish photography- themed trade publication:

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It is based on the earlier knowledge that certain glue substances in conjunction with chromium salt will not dissolve in water when exposed to light under a photographic positive. This light-sensitive solution is placed on an acid resistant surface that protects the glass from etching. The two acid resistant layers have a special relation to the etching solution comprising two components. The method can be used to transfer texts or emblems onto a glass object. A problem with the contact between the positive film and bent surfaces was solved by detaching the gelatine film layer from the film base and shaping it directly on the surface. The image cannot be projected directly onto the surface because of the low photosensitivity of chromium salt. (J. Selbing, 1960, p. 19) The reversed transfer from Sign to Object has already been addressed by scholars commenting on postmodernism: The image possesses the value, deserving to be marketed rather than the product and “products do not project images; they fill images” (Firat et al., 1995, p. 46, emphasis in original). The image is a marketable entity and the product strives to represent the image (Firat et al., 1995). The production and proliferation of signs have become more important than the production of material objects (Alvesson, 1990). Such theories were echoed by the observation of cultural journalist Anders: “[S]ince today’s consumers rely on images so much, companies treat image as the starting point of product design. They create products that look good on images on marketing materials, especially those on websites and digital platforms” (interview, February 22, 2018).

According to Peirce, the relationship between a Sign and an Object can take mainly three forms: iconic, indexical, and symbolic (Peirce, 1955). For the two types of production examined in this current study, they demonstrate two kinds of relationships – iconic and indexical, which will be explained next.

5.3.3.1 Iconic relationship Photography mirrored the external world automatically, yielding an exactly repeatable visual image. (McLuhan, 2003, p. 259) The production of images can be viewed as in an iconic relationship with the craft production of glass from a semiotic perspective (see the arrow in the middle of Figure 10). According to Peirce (1998), an icon is something that is perceived as being similar to something else. Peirce characterizes photographs as icons (Nöth, 1990), which means that the image resembles the object in reality. For Barthes (1977), the photographic image is an icon of the reality it depicts and is an analogical representation. In this current study, photographic images created out of photographers’ production practices unveil and bear witness to the objects that they capture. The images mirror the reality and are a kind of simulacrum or microcosm of the glass making world. In the iconic relationship, the photographic image is the signifier and the reality it captures is the referential object. Such an iconic relationship is conducive to “authentic” communication as iconic signs have the inherent attribute of being realistic (see “practice of reproduction” in Section 5.2 in this same chapter).

208 5. Findings

On many occasions, it is impossible to access the real glass object due to its weight, clumsiness or logistic reasons. So, people rely on the image to carry out work-related or consumption activities. When the object is not at hand and the reality is distant, the photograph implies instant access to the real (Sontag, 1977, p. 128).

5.3.3.2 Indexical relationship The production of images can be viewed as in an indexical relationship with the craft production from a semiotic perspective (see the arrow in the middle of Figure 10). In addition to icons, Charles Sanders Peirce also characterizes photographs as indices (Nöth, 1990). Barthes points out the photograph’s indexical dependence on its referential object – photography “always carries its referent with itself” since it is “an emanation of past reality” (Barthes, 1980, as cited in Nöth, 1990, p. 461). Indexical cues are attributes of an object that have a “spatiotemporal” and/or verifiable link to a referent point (Grayson & Martinec, 2004).

In this current study, a causal relationship exists between craft production and photographic image production. The glassworks (or the manufacturing segment) functions as a referent system, providing cultural resources for photographers to appropriate and transfer into signifiers and signs. Some photographic images tied to Glasriket were created with the intention of signifying how an object was manufactured, tracing the image to its prior root. Therefore, the image will have a causal relationship with craft production, providing an indexical trace to the production of glass. The indexical relationship between a photographic image and its referent implies that some actual events have occurred (Mick, 1986). The indexical relationship builds referential authenticity as the images index how things are made (see “practice of indexing” and “practice of documenting” in Section 5.2 in this same chapter). Authenticity is thus communicated via indexical links – the establishment of a connection with a trusted point of reference to demonstrate how the products are made and the work behind the scene.

5.3.4 Summary This section (5.3) has addressed Research Question 3 “In what way are the two production practices related?” by exploring the relationship between these two types of production – craft production of glass objects and photographers’ image-making practices representing the former. After discussing the similarities and differences between them, this section argues that they are related in two ways – iconic and indexical – from the perspective of Peirce's (1998) semiotic framework.

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6 Discussion

In this chapter, Section 6.1 reiterates empirical findings addressing the three research questions, and cross-views them to see how they fit into the two theoretical domains this dissertation aims to make contributions to. Then, Sections 6.2 and 6.3 abstract up from the research context and empirical findings and branch out to broader issues to show that this current study is a specific instance of much larger categories of phenomena. This was done by linking the empirical findings in Chapter 5 to strands of conversations in the two domains of “authenticity” and “cultural/marketing production” to make contrasts and comparisons, come up with theoretically informed implications, and argue theoretical contributions. Section 6.2, “Authenticity rendered in production,” contains discussions in five strands of conversations under the rubrics of “authenticity.” Section 6.3, “Production that authenticates,” includes discussions in four strands of conversations under the rubrics of “cultural/marketing production.”

6.1 Recap of empirical findings addressing the research questions

This dissertation has examined how authenticity is constructed in two cultural/marketing production sites—the craft production of glass objects and commercial photographers’ image production as visual representation of the former—to understand mechanisms of authentication of market offerings and paradoxes within the construction work. These two practices of cultural/marketing production rendering authenticity to market offerings (i.e., products, brands, experiences, places, marketing text, etc.) can inform our understanding of the meanings of authenticity and various mechanisms of its formation. Chapter 5 has answered the three research questions to achieve the overarching research purpose: 1) How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via the craft production of objects?; 2) How is the authenticity of market offerings constructed via commercial photographers’ practices of producing photographic images representing the craft production?; and 3) In what way are the two types of production related?

To answer the first research question, Section 5.1 analyzes the substantive construction of authenticity of market offerings via craft production at Glasriket, where producers render authenticity on marketing offerings through various practices of making glass objects. There are five categories of authenticity constructed by producers, namely technique, material, geographical, temporal, and original, which form a bundle of characteristics. Painting a picture of the concepts about authenticity, these five categories of authenticity are also the semantic content of the meanings of authenticity. In these five categories of authenticity, producers deploy various authenticating strategies and mechanisms, embedded with paradoxes or ambiguities. This section unpacks the concept of authenticity in craft production as well as how authenticity is constructed in the making of physical objects.

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To answer the second research question, Section 5.2 analyzes commercial photographers’ image-making practices in communicating and authenticating the craft production world. Through practice theory (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Hartmann, 2013; Magaudda, 2011; Reckwitz, 2002b; Schatzki, 1996; Warde, 2005), especially the framework of the circuit of practice (Magaudda, 2011), this section analyzes the situations of each of the three elements within this circuit: object, doing, and meaning as teleoaffective property. Then, the practices of photographers are dimensionalized into a typology consisting of five categories of practices: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. Each practice is a result of the configuration of the three elements of objects, doings, and meaning (teleoaffective property). This section also discusses three types of paradoxes in the construction of authenticity in photographers’ image-making practices: the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values, the paradox in the notion of reproduction, and the paradox between realism and arbitrariness in photographic image production.

To answer the third research question, Section 5.3 first discusses the commonalities and differences between the two types of production analyzed in the previous two subsections. Then, it suggests that their relationship can be viewed as being in two key types – iconic and indexical – from the perspective of Peirce's (1998) semiotic framework. First, the production of images can be viewed as in an iconic relationship with the craft production of glass as the images mirror the reality and are a kind of simulacrum or microcosm of the glass making world. Such an iconic relationship is conducive to “authentic” communication as iconic signs have the inherent attribute of being realistic (see “practice of reproducing” in Section 5.2). Second, the production of images can be viewed as in an indexical relationship with the craft production as there exists a causal relationship between craft production and photographic image production. The glassworks (or the manufacturing segment) functions as a referent system, providing cultural resources for photographers to appropriate and transfer into signifiers and signs. The indexical relationship builds referential authenticity as the images index how things are made (see “practice of documenting” and “practice of indexing” in Section 5.2). Section 5.3 discovers the intersections of the two types of production: the making of objects vs. the making of images mirroring the former.

Next, I will cross-view the empirical findings corresponding to Section 5.1 (tied to RQ1) and Section 5.2 (tied to RQ2) to see how they relate to the two theoretical domains this dissertation aims to make theoretical contributions to. Table 5 summarizes this effort, which goes beyond merely seeing the empirical findings addressing RQ1 and RQ2 in a separate manner. The findings addressing RQ1 and RQ2 do not narrowly correspond to either the theoretical domain “authenticity” or the theoretical domain “cultural/marketing production.” Rather, each of them concerns both theoretical domains.

212 6. Discussion

Both Section 5.1 and Section 5.2 concern “authenticity” (see contents in the column labeled “Theoretical domain: Authenticity” in Table 5):For the first type of production examined in Section 5.1 (answering RQ1), the findings reveal the meanings and attributes of authenticity as the five categories of authenticity, as well as the paradoxical nature of authenticity in the form of paradoxes or ambiguities in the construction in each of the five categories of authenticity. For the second type of production examined in Section 5.2 (answering RQ2), the findings analyze photographers’ image making as a way of authenticating market offerings, and also the paradoxical nature of authenticity, represented by the three types of paradoxes in the construction of authenticity of photographers. Both types of productions demonstrate the paradoxical nature of authenticity.

Both Section 5.1 and Section 5.2 concern “cultural/marketing production” (see contents in the column labeled “Theoretical domain:Cultural/marketing production” in Table 5):The craft production of glass objects examined in Section 5.1 (answering RQ1) is cultural production, consisting of the three mechanisms of contructing authenticity in each of the five categories of authenticity (for details, see Table 3). For the second type of production examined in Section 5.2 (answering RQ2), photographers’ practices in making images are cultural/marketing production.

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Table 5. Matrix indicating how empirical findings relate to the two theoretical domains Empirical findings Theoretical domain: Authenticity Theoretical domain: in subsections in Cultural/marketing Chapter 5 production Empirical findings Empirical findings: Empirical findings: in Section 5.1 • Meanings and attributes of • Craft production of answering RQ1 authenticity—5 categories of glass objects as (How is the authenticity: cultural production: 3 authenticity of Technique mechanisms of market offerings o Material constructing constructed via the o Geographic authenticity in each of craft production of o Temporal the 5 categories of glass objects?) o o Original authenticity • Paradoxical nature of authenticity: paradoxes or ambiguities in the construction in each of the 5 categories of authenticity Empirical findings Empirical findings: Empirical findings: in Section 5.2 • Photographers’ image making • Photographers’ answering RQ2 as a way of authenticating practices in making (How is the market offerings images as authenticity of • cultural/marketing market offerings Paradoxical nature of paradoxes in the production: constructed via authenticity— construction of authenticity of The circuit of commercial o photographers: practice photographers’ The paradox between The typology of practices of o o commercial imperatives and practice: producing nonmarket values reproducing, photographic images The paradox in the notion of documenting, representing the o reproduction participating, craft production?) o The paradox between estheticizing, and realism and arbitrariness in indexing the photographic image production

The following two sections—6.2 and 6.3—unfold discussions in directions that are beyond the research questions and findings, and link the findings to broader academic conversations. Section 6.2 and Section 6.3 compare the empirical findings of Chapter 5 with previous research, connect this current study to strands of existing conversations, and reveal what the findings mean for larger categories or adjacent categories of phenomena. Such efforts are carried out by relating findings in Chapter 5 back to the state of knowledge in the two key theoretical domains—authenticity and cultural/marketing production.

214 6. Discussion

6.2 Authenticity rendered in production

The discussions in this section fall under the rubric of “authenticity,” which is a theoretical domain in the conceptual framework proposed earlier in Chapter 3 (see the right-hand side in Figure 15). The discussions in this section include five streams: 1) the attributes or meanings of authenticity (extending from Section 5.1); 2) manifestations and dynamics of paradoxes in authenticity construction (extending from Sections 5.1 and 5.2); 3) photographic images ‒ authenticity in advertising and marketing communications (extending from Sections 5.1 and 5.2); 4) experiential offerings at Glasriket ‒ authenticity in tourism (extending from Section 5.1); and 5) authenticity examined through a visual approach (extending from Sections 5.1 and 5.2). Each line of discussion starts from empirical findings in either Section 5.1 (craft production of glass objects) or Section 5.2 (photographers’ image-making practices) or both (see content in the parentheses after the name of each line of discussion in the box under the box “Authenticity” on the right-hand side in Figure 15).

Figure 15. Discussion “Authenticity rendered in production” situated in the conceptual framework

6.2.1 The attributes or meanings of authenticity The conceptualizations of authenticity are premised on the understanding of its key dimensions or attributes. Examination of the construction of authenticity in market offerings inevitably sheds light on the nature and attributes of the term “authenticity.” Section 5.1 in Chapter 5 reveals and details five genres or attributes of authenticity: technique, material, geographical, temporal, and original. Being subjective and

215 Jönköping International Business School objective sources of authenticity, these five focal characteristics illustrate what constitutes authenticity, as well as its various manifestations and meanings.

The five attributes of authenticity identified in Chapter 5 are consistent with the conceptual elements or themes uncovered in previous studies about authenticity (Beverland, 2005b, 2006; Beverland et al., 2008; Bruner, 1994; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Littrell et al., 1993). Table 6 illustrates the similarities. For the attribute of “technique authenticity,” we see similar themes in previous literature: workmanship (Littrell et al., 1993), method of production (Beverland, 2006), and using traditional production methods (Beverland, 2005b; Beverland & Luxton, 2005). The attribute of “temporal authenticity” was found in previous studies that express it in similar terms: cultural and historic integrity (Littrell et al., 1993), heritage and pedigree (Beverland, 2006), using culture and history as referents (Beverland, 2005b), and drawing on history and culture as brand referents (Beverland & Luxton, 2005). For example, in Beverland's (2005b) study of authenticity in the context of luxury wineries, for the element “using history and culture as referents,” winemakers drew upon their histories in marketing and often reinforced their links to the past through rituals and ceremonies. Such mechanisms are similar to what the Kosta Boda glassworks did (ceremonies and exhibitions) to celebrate its 275-year anniversary (see Section 5.1.4). I see analogies between the attribute of “geographic authenticity” in this current study and themes in the literature: relating the brand to a particular place (Beverland & Luxton, 2005), relationship to place (Beverland, 2006), and using place as a referent (Beverland, 2005b). The similarities with previous studies indicate the theoretical generalizability or possibility of extrapolating these five attributes or anchors to other contexts.

216 6. Discussion

Table 6. Similarities in conceptual dimensions about authenticity between this current study and previous literature Conceptual Similar conceptual themes in Research topics and dimensions found previous studies contexts of previous in the current studies study Technique • Workmanship (Littrell et al., • Consumer-based authenticity 1993) research of • Method of production (Beverland, authenticity in tourism 2006) crafts (Littrell et al., • Using traditional production 1993) methods (Beverland, 2005b) • Case studies of how • Linking a brand to traditional luxury wine firms methods of production (Beverland created images of & Luxton, 2005) authenticity by Material • Craftsperson and materials interviewing both authenticity (Littrell et al., 1993) producers and • Ingredients and materials consumers (Gundlach & Neville, 2012) (Beverland, 2005b) Geographic • Relating the brand to a particular • Case studies of how authenticity place (Beverland & Luxton, luxury wine firms 2005) managed integrated • Relationship to place (Beverland, marketing 2006) communication (IMC) to create and recreate • Using place as a referent images of authenticity (Beverland, 2005b) by interviewing both Temporal • Cultural and historic integrity producers and authenticity (Littrell et al., 1993) consumers (Beverland • Heritage and pedigree (Beverland, & Luxton, 2005) 2006) • Case studies of ultra- • Using culture and history as premium wineries to referents (Beverland, 2005b) map out six attributes • Drawing on history and culture as of authenticity by brand referents (Beverland & interviewing Luxton, 2005) consumers Original • Esthetics (Littrell et al., 1993) (Beverland, 2006) authenticity • Uniqueness and originality • Consumer-based (Littrell et al., 1993) research (qualitative • Esthetics (Gundlach & Neville, interviews) to map out 2012) the attributes of • Exclusivity (Gundlach & Neville, authenticity in the 2012) context of the beer industry (Gundlach & Neville, 2012)

In Gundlach and Neville's (2012) research of consumers’ perceptions of attributes of authenticity in the context of the beer industry, the attribute of ingredients and materials echoes the “material authenticity” in this current study. In beer making,

217 Jönköping International Business School organic ingredients add authenticity to the product. Also, Gundlach and Neville (2012) revealed that bottles are seen as authentic packaging for a beer (rather than cans or “on tap”). The differences in product packaging lie in the physical aspect and its material consequences can impact stakeholders’ perception of authenticity. The attribute of “material authenticity” is similar to the notion of “object-related authenticity” in a study of the heritage tourist site of Gettysburg in the US (Chronis & Hampton, 2008, p. 115), in which authenticity derived from artifacts such as original canons, the landscape, buildings, and museum objects. These artifacts were tangible manifestations of the original battlefield and made the tourist site more “real.” Such material-related concepts in relation to authenticity concern real things, objective property, or fact in the world.

Analyses and interpretations in previous studies about the material dimension of authenticity were very limited, only asserting that material/ingredients would contribute to authenticity without explaining the mechanisms of how and why – Littrell et al. (1993, p. 206) only briefly mentioned that the “use of indigenous materials, such as local clays or grasses, adds to its authenticity,” and Gundlach and Neville (2012, p. 491) only pointed out that it is a complicated combination of ingredients and production method that contributes to overall authenticity. The current study (Section 5.1.2) finds that authenticity can be bestowed on market offerings due to the virtue of the physical, material properties of certain objects. The salience of material authenticity dwells upon the issue of the material, matter, or ingredients of objects. Stakeholders’ perception of authenticity can be ascribed to not only finished objects, but also the material or ingredients of the objects. Backed up by theoretical concepts in material culture (Drazin, 2015b; Drazin & Küchler, 2015; Ingold, 2012), Section 5.1.2 reveals the meanings of material authenticity (i.e., genuinely and truly “glass,” the material properties), as well as three ways in which it is constructed at Glasriket as a socioculturally shaped concept: constructed in the craft making practice, constructed in the natural performance of the craft making activities, and constructed in knowledge generation and circulation. The findings thus contribute to a deeper understanding of the material dimension in authenticity in terms of: 1) materiality can be an important contributor to authenticity; and 2) the authenticity is constructed when materials function as carriers of a range of forms of information, conveying data, imagination, meaning, knowledge, beliefs and truths (Drazin, 2015a, p. 24). The notion of material authenticity has wider applications evidenced by previous research about craft products, luxury products and brands, and products bearing the “natural” label (Dudley, 2014; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Kapferer & Bastien, 2008; Kniazeva, 2002; Miller, 2017; Thompson, 2004). For luxury brands and products, the legitimacy of luxury relies on one traditional quality—the rarity of materials (e.g., precious materials like leather, gold, gemstones) (Dion & Arnould, 2011). In the natural health marketplace, advertisements often emphasize that the ingredients in a certain product are from the nature rather than synthetic chemicals (Thompson, 2004). In artisanal guitar making, the authenticity partially lies in the properties of materials (such as wood and metal), which can affect the interaction between the material and the artisan, and can influence the lively enchantment of the finished instrument (Dudley, 2014).

218 6. Discussion

For all of the five attributes, the findings of previous studies were mainly based on consumers’ assessment, experiences and understanding of authenticity31 (Beverland, 2006; Gundlach & Neville, 2012; Littrell et al., 1993). Thus, the distilled authenticity attributes, which were viewed as common cues or anchors in these studies, are meanings created and defined by consumers. Such attributes tend to delineate the perceptions and meanings of a certain attribute without exposing how such an attribute is created and manufactured by producers. In this dissertation, the findings about the five authenticity attributes were based on multiple data gathered from the producer side, enabling much deeper behind-the-scenes stories of how such attributes come in to being. For each of the five genres of authenticity, previous studies only depicted them as a one-sided, positive attribute without commenting on the intrinsic paradoxes embedded in each theme. This current study uncovers the paradoxes and ambiguities (see the paradoxes in each of the five genres of authenticity in Section 5.1), further explicating the rich palette of each individual attribute of authenticity. This study contributes to the knowledge about the socially constructed nature of authenticity in the context of the glass making industry at Glasriket, providing evidence of the usefulness of social construction theory in understanding authenticity (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 1988).

6.2.2 Manifestations and dynamics of paradoxes in authenticity construction Trilling (1972, p. 94) has cautioned: “[A]uthenticity is implicitly a polemical concept.” Authenticity concepts are wrought with contradictions and creating authenticity involves various paradoxes. At Glasriket, creating authenticity through making glass products and photographic images for commercial purposes imputes value relative to inauthenticity. From the perspective of Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), modern corporations in the capitalism system are driven by commercial imperatives, standardization, and mass production, being faceless and bureaucratic. Their ethos represents the polar opposite of the authentic, which is represented by distinctive cultural and artistic expression.

Examining the tensions or paradoxes in dichotomies (e.g., authentic vs. inauthentic, real vs. fake) is a fruitful way of problematizing the concept and market manifestations of authenticity (examples: Chalmers & Price, 2009; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Jones & Smith, 2005; Rose & Wood, 2005; Stern, 1994). The study of Grayson and Martinec (2004) showed that consumers’ perceived authenticity can manifest itself in both “authentic” (factual) and “inauthentic” (fictional) environments – both Shakespeare’s birthplace (factual) and Sherlock Holmes’s house (fictional) were perceived as being authentic. Paradoxes are inherent in not only the operation of authenticity in consumers’ lives, but also the operation in practices of marketers and cultural producers. The challenge of creating and managing authenticity for cultural producers and marketing managers lies in the inherent

31 Some of the studies also included data from interviews with producers.

219 Jönköping International Business School paradoxes to be constantly managed by them with balancing actions for moral obligations and business imperatives.

Cultural producers’ practices of authenticating unfold as paradoxes, whose manifestations vary according to specific contexts. In his study of “fabricating authenticity” in the country music industry in the US, Peterson (1997) admitted that the term “fabricating authenticity” is paradoxical and ironic: The notion of “fabricating” lies in the deliberate manufacture of spurious “tradition” by cultural producers in order to appeal to consumers of cultural products. Country music producers “invented” various traditions to legitimize and create identity for ultimate commercial success. Therefore, authenticity is never naturally born or given, but is “continuously negotiated in an ongoing interplay” among industry stakeholders (Peterson, 1997, p. 6). In their study of how CEO portraits embodied and were the loci for the visual construction of organizations’ identity, Guthey and Jackson (2005) suggested that authenticity was fundamentally paradoxical – on the one hand, photographers were expected by their corporate clients to capture the authenticity of a CEO in the photographic portrait; on the other hand, the stylistic and artistic conventions of corporate photographic portraits ended up revealing artificiality, manipulation, and corporations’ chronic lack of authenticity. Finally, in a study about how luxury wine firms manage integrated marketing communication (IMC) to achieve authenticity, Beverland and Luxton (2005) discovered their solution to be a strategic decoupling (decoupling of their outward projected images and their internal supportive strategies) to balance claims of authenticity with commercial imperatives: On the one hand, wine firms tactically projected an outward image consistent with the authenticity positioning – downplaying marketing expertise and business acumen, appearing above commercial considerations, and continuing craft production; on the other hand, behind the scenes, wine firms adapted slowly to market changes to ensure relevance to the market (evolving styles in relation to changes in competitors’ products, investing in marketing information and scientific innovation).

The current study provides an alternative delineation of the ways in which the contestations in authenticity exist and are resolved in the two types of production (craft production of glass products and photographic image production). Glass producers and commercial photographers do not have one all-encompassing contradiction to deal with but rather a number of smaller frictions, ambiguities, or tensions. For the site of the craft production of glass products, a set of dichotomies were identified scattered among the five categories of authenticity: Technique authenticity is characterized by the dialectic contestation between handmade and machine-made techniques; for material authenticity, the machine-based mode of production will obscure the material properties of glass, and the mass production mode tends to lead to numbness or indifference towards the material properties of glass; geographical authenticity has been threatened by the region’s struggles with production delocalization as rationalized measures were taken to outsource manufacturing to machine-based factories in other countries; temporal authenticity is overshadowed by the dialectic between “looking backwards” and “looking forward;” finally, original authenticity contains two paradoxes: the paradox of art vs. functional

220 6. Discussion

(or art vs. commerce), and the paradox of originality vs. reproduction. For the site of photographers’ image production, three scenarios of contestations were identified: 1) the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values; 2) the paradox in the notion of reproduction; and 3) the paradox between realism and arbitrariness in photographic image production.

In a nutshell, what holds back the authenticity of market offerings at Glasriket is symptomatic of the rationalizing trajectories of modernity: the need to create the quantity of products as part of commoditization, the temptation to shift to machine- based production in outsourced locations overseas to lower costs, the need to craft a viable commercial product, and the need to carry out marketing communications by creating and distributing numerous discourses and images. Such mass production- driven imperatives reduce the perception of exclusivity, distinction, singularity, and esthetic and technical superiority (Benjamin, 1969; Dion & Arnould, 2011), thereby threatening the authenticity of products and brands. As a response, glassworks have adopted various mechanisms to fend off the alienating pressures exerted by the forces of market, rationalization and industrialization. The bundle of paradoxes examined in this research is similar to those examined in previous studies (Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Frosh, 2001; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Peterson, 1997) in that both yield theoretical and practical insights into the efforts of singularizing, decommoditizing, and enchanting in the face of rationalization, commoditization and commercialization that lead to the loss of authenticity. The bundle of paradoxes discovered in the current study is different than those examined in previous studies in that Glasriket’s craft approach to production, small-scale manufacturing, and decoupling from the mechanization associated with larger-scale production paints a different backdrop for the existence of paradoxes in authenticity construction. This region demonstrates an artisanal scenario of decommodification and singularization. The mode of craft production is viewed as an authentic end in itself, due to moral authenticity, a concept proposed by Beverland et al. (2008), whereby small, handicraft production is delivered by artisans. Through measures of differentiation, craftmanship is repeatedly singularized as a worthy point of attachment for the construction of authenticity. In addition, in this current study, paradox is a complementary dimension to offer extra understanding of the attributes of authenticity in craft production as well as the characteristics of authentication practices in photographers’ image-making practices. This is different than some previous studies (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Rose & Wood, 2005), which treated paradox and negotiation as the key and defining feature of the experience of actors. In their study of luxury retail strategy, Dion and Arnould (2011) treated these two poles as an antithesis: “traditional legitimacy based on craft skills” vs. “charismatic legitimacy based on an exceptional charismatic persona.” In the current study, craft making contains artistic elements, and these two are merged rather than contested.

Some previous studies (e.g., Guthey & Jackson, 2005) presented paradoxes without addressing whether they can be resolved or how producers reconcile them. In the current study, the findings reveal some instances of producers reconciling

221 Jönköping International Business School contradictory forces. For example, in “construction of technique authenticity” (Section 5.1.1), there is no clear answer to the antithesis of handmade vs. machine- made techniques, and glassworks can sometimes find a middle ground, whereby the idea of “handmade” can be twisted. For the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values for photographers (Section 5.2.5), they can walk a fine line between art and commerce. Art can be juxtaposed with commodities, and the boundary between art and commerce can be transgressed. The dissolution of the paradoxes shows that commoditization and authenticity are not necessarily a dichotomous pair of concepts.

To close, authenticity is not a matter of black or white, but rather being ambiguous in terms of colors. There is no single stable idea of “authenticity.” What is judged inauthentic by experts may be experienced as authentic and real by consumers from an emic perspective. Thus, a revisionist position can be adopted in response to the complicated and constructive nature of authenticity (Wang, 1999). Authenticity is always a product of human action, and the difference between the authentic and the inauthentic is a matter of context. The paradoxes inherent in authenticity reveal the tenets about authenticity, and at the same time imply that there is no singular objective criterion of authenticity, which is a social construction in a certain context.

6.2.3 Photographic images: Authenticity in advertising and marketing communications In Section 5.1, for the site of craft production of glass products, a set of selected photographic images are used as empirical data to analyze how authenticity is constructed for market offerings at Glasriket. These images are a kind of marketing text and are the result of commercial photographers’ production practices. For the second site of photographers’ image-making practices (Section 5.2), analyses were conducted to theorize about photographers’ practices of creating images to authenticate market offerings. Such practices by photographers are a kind of marketing work, similar to what advertising agency practitioners or corporate in- house marketing staff do (Kover, 1995a; Moeran, 2005; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Svensson, 2007). This current study concerns the text or image itself, as well as its production, and these two aspects are intertwined. The marketing text and the marketing practices/work examined in this dissertation reveal insights and implications for research about the authenticity in advertising and marketing communications.

As reviewed in Chapter 3 (Section 3.2), marketing communication and advertising serve as the mediation between production and consumption, and they inherently contain the tension between authenticity and inauthenticity (Brown, 2001). The marketing texts are cues that convey the authenticity of an object. There are two main directions in extant research about authenticity in advertising and marketing communications. First, past studies would like to problematize the authenticity of the marketing text itself (Becker et al., 2019; Duffy, 2013; Stern, 1994) with such interests as: authenticity within ads, what an authentic ad should be, authenticity as a

222 6. Discussion content cue, and ads perceived by consumers as authentic. The second direction concerns the authenticity of the production act with such research questions as whether the marketers’ production is authentic, or whether marketing work is authentic in a moral sense (Anderberg & Morris, 2006; Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Frosh, 2001; Weinberger, 2008). Therefore, authenticity can locate itself in either the content or the creator. As for the second direction, the next section (Section 6.2 “Production that authenticates”) will discuss this. The following passages will discuss the first direction.

The photographic images examined in this dissertation can communicate the authenticity of various referents (products, places, technique, etc.). The photographic images, similarly to ads, can serve as cues for consumers to draw on to make assessments about the authenticity of brands or products. For ads or other marketing texts to communicate authenticity, they themselves must be authentic, meaning that they must appear to be real (rather than fictional), literal replication of cues, or original (rather than simulated reality) (Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994). Marketers always want an ad to be an authentic message, which will ring true for the target audience. However, marketing, and particularly advertising, is believed to be antithetical to the positioning of authenticity (Beverland et al., 2008). What are the criteria for an ad to be “authentic”? Stern (1994, p. 388) defined an authentic ad as one that conveys the illusion of the reality of ordinary life in reference to a consumption situation. According to Becker et al. (2019), an authentic ad is one that is genuine, real and true with regard to some executional elements or content cues; distinctive content cues that can render an ad authentic have two dimensions: showing a realistic plot and presenting a credible advertising message.

Advertising contents, which are viewed as being contrived and deceptive with tricks such as false association, depth psychology, and so on, are doomed to be inauthentic. For Baudrillard, the inauthenticity of signs is an open secret in a postmodern culture as everyone knows that signs (e.g., ads, television news, soap opera shows) are artifices and simulations rather than the reality (Webster, 2014, p. 323). Everyone knows that Levi jeans won’t transform middle-aged men into 20-year-old hunks, and that Coca Cola does not “teach the world to sing.” Even though marketers pursue authenticity with such efforts as Dove’s 2004 “Campaign for Real Beauty” (Bahadur, 2014) and the annual “authentic brands rankings” conducted by communication consulting firm Cohn & Wolfe, 32 the fluidity of the commodity culture will turn today’s “authenticity” into tomorrow’s “falseness” (Goldman & Papson, 1996, p. 186). Due to advertising’s epistemological status as a blueprint for everyday life (Mick et al., 2004), the majority of ads belong to the stereotype called “lifestyle advertising” that portrays a desirable social reality (e.g., an imitation of consumer

32 The Cohn & Wolfe Authentic Brands Study (www.authentic100.com) releases “Authentic 100,” an annual index of global brands ranked by consumer perception of authenticity. The program researches the role of authenticity in business, the attributes associated with an authentic brand, and the impact of authenticity on consumer, investor and employee attitudes and behaviors.

223 Jönköping International Business School life, consumers’ social identity, product usage in social situations), everyday life of consumers (Solomon & Englis, 1994), or a consumer slice-of-life narrative (Askegaard, 2006). In terms of style, the dominant discourses in advertising research focus on the “fictive” or “poetic” characteristics of typical ads (Scott, 2006). Scott (1994a, p. 260) proposed the concept of “visual rhetoric,” which means that imagery in advertising can be used to “pose arguments, raise questions, create fictions, present metaphors.” The visual rhetoric theory downplays or neglects the realistic, iconic, or denotative quality of marketing visuals, and discredits merits of the factual content of the visual message. The rhetoric goal is to persuade to consume.

Postmodernist thinking treats ads as something even further away from being realistic. According to Baudrillard’s social constructionist view of signs, if phenomena are socially created, they are simulations with no “reality” beyond themselves. Baudrillard proposed the idea of hyperreality in which simulation substitutes for genuine experience (Baudrillard, 1983b). All signs (ads are a type of sign) are hyperreal, as they have no relationship with an underlying reality. There is no authenticity behind signs. Signifiers are detached from their original referents, and become free-floating signifiers (Baudrillard, 1988). All substance and depth collapse onto the surface, behind which there is nothing hidden (Firat & Venkatesh, 1993). Ads are just make-believe or simulations rather than the real thing. The inauthenticity of signs is an open secret in postmodern culture as even the masses are aware of it but are not bothered about making a fuss about it. So, ads turn out to be fictive discourse devised to represent a sponsor’s viewpoint and to be “the appeal of the contrived” (Boorstin, 1964, p. 231).

Compared with the inauthentic nature of mainstream ads as discussed above, the photographic images created at Glasriket are more authentic due to a different visual code rather than a rhetoric visual code. This conclusion can be drawn from the visual analysis of images in Section 5.1 and the analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2. As explained in photographers’ “practice of reproducing” (Section 5.2.4), Plates 4, 12, 13, and 29-31 are accurate replicas of the original objects with verisimilitude and pictorial accuracy. The verisimilitude or pictorial accuracy depends on the similarities between the referent object and the photographic image capturing it. Plates 4, 12, and 13 express faithfully the material properties of glass to give viewers a strong sense of the reality of the material, so that a glass product in an image looks like “real” glass rather than plastic. The “practice of reproducing” (in Section 5.2.4) is based on the logic of copying, which is in the sense of “representing observed reality” in Western pictorial realism (Mitchell, 1994). The “practice of reproducing” leads to the visual representation of an object in a factual form, and the resulting image is an accurate mirroring of reality (referent, object type 1). The “practice of reproducing” leads to iconic authenticity, where the focal object in an image is similar to the referential object. The focal object in an image is represented in factual, realistic, and objective ways, benefiting from photography’s superb function of portraying the vividness of the real world (Barrett, 2005).

224 6. Discussion

As explained in photographers’ “practice of indexing” (Section 5.2.4), indexing is an approach whereby the advertised product is linked to its various referents, which are located in the glassworks: manufacturing scenes, designers, origin, history, territory, and so on. The resulting images show material and productive aspects tied to the objects in the backstage—the glassworks. The resulting images (Plates 3, 5A, 9A-C, 10, 15, 19-23, 27, 28) link products to signs depicting various referents, which are about craft production (technique, materials, tools, people) to establish the causal relationship between a finished object and the craft making. For example, Plates 25 and 26 illustrate the indexing of designers to imply the causal relationship between creators and the finished products. Plates 19, 21 and 22 index historical events and places to establish spatial and temporal ties between products and the destination and their referents (historical time points and places). The referent system is not about consumers’ lifeworld (Askegaard, 2006; Solomon & Englis, 1994), but craft production, which is a nonfictional social reality. The indexical relationships between products and the referent system are not haphazard or arbitrary as the objects in the factory are material evidence of the making of products and the craft claim is manifested in local, concrete instances.

As for advertising campaigns, what a company says about its business and its offerings must match the reality consumers encounter to be authentic. The indexing approach (see “practice of indexing” in Section 5.2.4) in visual representation as analyzed in this study has truth value, as what is depicted involves real commitment and actions. The indexical approach links the two sites – the site of manufacturing and the site of mediation (marketing communication and advertising). Such a linkage creates referential authenticity, which emphasizes the connection of focal products to real referents, which lie in the glassworks.

In the current study, what makes the photographic images authentic is not the decoupling strategy – to appear to be above commercial consideration (Beverland & Luxton, 2005), but that they are factual, realistic and indexical. The photographic images in this study are characterized by the core visual codes of realism, iconicity and referentiality. The realistic visual code discovered in this current study is similar to the situation of pure (literal) authenticity found in Beverland et al.'s (2008) study about how ads project authenticity. Such ads, which are cues, provide consumers with an in situ guarantee of the genuine object.

Previous studies about authenticity in advertising tended to focus on the “authentic” attributes (e.g., executional elements, realistic plot, or content cues) within the ads (Becker et al., 2019; Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994), without considering the referents of those content cues – objects that are external to an ad. In the current study, the logic of accomplishing authenticity for marketing texts is through indexing rather than an executional element or content cues within the texts (Becker et al., 2019). The current study adds to the stream of research on advertising authenticity (Becker et al., 2019; Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994) by providing an alternative approach to the accomplishment of authenticity in ads or marketing texts. The photographic images examined in this dissertation have strong iconicity and indexicality, making them less

225 Jönköping International Business School arbitrary and rhetorical and helping viewers put things back into the material world of causes, effects and resemblances (Tilley, 2006). Marketing images communicating craft production contain a different motif, agenda and visual code from the visual rhetoric theory (Scott, 1994a). Such a realism-centric visual code remedies the stigma of contemporary mass communication that has been criticized as a source of inauthenticity (Heilbrunn, 2018).

The visual code found in this current study provides a counterbalance to the unreal and dematerialized image system as forecasted by postmoderist thinkers (Baudrillard, 1983b). The images in this current study assert that the social reality comprises not only the world of consumption (Askegaard, 2006; Scott, 1994a; Solomon & Englis, 1994), but also the world of manufacturing or production. Surprisingly, little attention in marketing literature has been paid to imagery depicting the production or manufacturing of products in the backstage (A.-S. Lehmann, 2012 is an exception). The key logic of the images examined in this dissertation is “to document, prove and reproduce” rather than “to persuade.” They are about the real, authentic, and material world of craft objects and craft making in conspicuous production rather than “use” and “lifestyle” in the consumption world. There are few of the tropes, narratives or dramatizations (Deighton, Romer, & Mcqueen, 1989) that are typical in rhetoric-rich ads. The images are in contrast to the fictional, fantasy-like, and artificial styles of ads that tend to be inauthentic and give consumers “false” content (Williamson, 1978, p. 170). The visual code discovered in this study that can generate authenticity for ads or other marketing texts has applicability in not only the craft sector but also other sectors such as luxury (Kapferer, 2012; Kapferer & Bastien, 2008), natural foods/medicines (Kniazeva, 2002; Thompson, 2004), and organic food (Grosglik, 2017) because the production methods and materials/ingredients are key anchors of authenticity (Beverland, 2005b; Gundlach & Neville, 2012) in these sectors and consumers like to see “behind-the-scenes” facts and reality of the producer (Narsey & Russell, 2013).

6.2.4 Experiential offerings at Glasriket: Authenticity in tourism Though this dissertation is not focused on tourism or experiential consumption, several parts in Chapter 5 (Section 5.1.2 ‒ “construction of material authenticity” and Plate 11; Section 5.1.3 ‒ “construction of geographic authenticity,” “the geographic dimension concerning tourist experience” and Plate 19) touch upon how glassworks at Glasriket stage experiential offerings and how consumers and visitors consume them to seek authentic experiences. At Glasriket, tourism is a key by-product afforded by the glass making industry as tourism has been developed alongside the glass making. The two have mutually reinforced the cultural authenticity of the region and its offerings – products and experiences. Revering the technique of handmade glass and the material wonders of glass, tourists come to the destination to engage with craft through various experiences: observing how craftsmen make glass via a guided tour of a factory, shopping in the factory store next door to a glassworks, attending a “blow your own glass” class guided by a craftsman, visiting museums and galleries, or attending the “Hyttsill” dinner banquet on the factory floor mimicking an

226 6. Discussion indigenous tradition (see analysis of Plate 11 in “construction of material authenticity” in Section 5.1.2).

The experiential offerings at Glasriket are both substantively and communicatively constructed or staged (Arnould, 2006). They are substantively staged given the presence of physical and tangible artifacts on site ‒ the real and operating hot shop of a glassworks, real craftsmen who are making products, the ambience, the vintage building, etc. They are communicatively staged because a factory tour is guided by a real staff member from a glassworks, who provides a verbal introduction. Also, there are exhibition boards on site (for example in the glassworks of Målerås) with texts and photographs explaining the company history, knowledge of glass, and production techniques (field notes).

The experiential offerings at Glasriket can be viewed as cultural tourism, in which traditional craft is treated as a form of intangible heritage and a resource for cultural tourism or heritage tourism (Richards, 1996), for which traditional craft has been repurposed and developed as an attraction or anchor. The notion of “traditional craft” can refer to two scenarios: the craft objects (e.g., souvenirs bought during travel), and the craft production activity. For the first scenario, tourism scholars labelled craft products as “tourist art,” “ethnic art,” or “craftworks” (Cohen, 1993; Littrell et al., 1993; Scrase, 2005), which are in the forms of rugs, tableware, wood carvings, embroidery, basket wares, weaving, and so on. Such products are produced by local artisans or ethnic people usually in Third World countries for an “external” audience in industrialized countries (Cohen, 1993). These art and craft products were changed in form, materials, or colors, in a commoditization process, in response to the impositions or temptations from large-scale or faraway consumers (Appadurai, 1986; Cohen, 1993). For the second scenario, tourists go to exotic places or craft villages to meet the craftspeople and observe their work and life. The tourist landscape at Glasriket fits the second scenario better as the craft making of glass is what appeals most to tourists and the products sold by Glasriket do not neatly fit the descriptions of Appadurai (1986) and Cohen (1993) about “tourist art” or “ethnic art.”

The experiential offerings at Glasriket are similar to tourist experiences studied in previous tourism literature in two aspects. • Both are the results of the commodification of cultural products: commercialization of destinations, product commoditization and commercialization of local cultures (Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). Traditional crafts and art are commoditized, and aboriginal crafts and culture are commercialized for the type of ethnic, cultural or historical tourists (Graburn, 1977). To give examples to show the commercial nature of tourist offerings at Glasriket, a session of the “blow your own glass” class costs 300-400 Swedish krona, and the free “factory tour” is used by glassworks to prompt visitors to buy products at the factory store next door (field notes). • Tourists come to Glasriket to not only gaze but also participate in embodied activities such as a “blow your own lass” class (see Section 5.1.2 “Material

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authenticity constructed in the performance of craft making activities” in Chapter 5). Tourists practice embodied craft work in making things by hand to have a taste of what the craft work feels like. The embodied craft work offered at Glasriket is similar to a special form of craft vacation in Japan studied by Creighton (1995) ‒ affluent urban housewives paid money to reside at historical villages in the mountains of Shinshu at the Alps of Nagano Prefecture to study silk weaving, which used to be a common domestic chore for wives in that region. “Craft work” was practiced and experienced by tourists as “leisure” (Creighton, 1995, p. 476). For both cases, embodied experiences can make tourists feel the authenticity of the craft activity as well as their own existential being (Wang, 1999).

At Glasriket, authenticity manifests itself in two forms: the authenticity of visitors’ experience and the authenticity of the tourist product (experiential offerings). In terms of the authenticity of tourists’ experience, what visitors obtain at Glasriket is similar to the findings in previous literature. The motivations of tourists in both cases are the same: a need to escape from everyday life, to escape from the alienation caused by modernization or escape from everyday mundane life for a while (MacCannell, 1976), to engage in a culturally valued folkcraft (Creighton, 1995; Horjan, 2011) and to shop for souvenirs and gifts as a leisure activity (Murphy et al., 2011; Timothy, 2005). Tourists in both cases can achieve existential authenticity by participating in embodied craft activities. The following passages will discuss in what ways the authenticity of tourist products “staged” (MacCannell, 1973) or “presented” at Glasriket differs from that studied in previous tourism literature.

First, in terms of the notion of “staging,” Glasriket is different from other tourist sites that are the result of artificial constructions and staging of pseudo experiences. What have been described in tourism literature are sites that are exceedingly commercialized, artificially staged, or built from scratch (Cohen, 1988; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). Examples include Disneyland theme parks, which were based on fictitious stories and characters and were built from scratch (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006), and Sherlock Holmes’s house in the UK, which was built based on a fictional character in stories written by an author (Grayson & Martinec, 2004). In addition, these artificial sites present contrived pseudo events that were orchestrated with imitations or simulations. In what Cohen (1988) described, in some tourist sites, local customs, rituals, and ethnic/folk arts were produced or performed as tourist services or commodities for the consumption of tourists. In such sites, aboriginal cultures and traditions were distorted in terms of commoditization to fit external tourists rather than portraying local culture in a faithful way. This kind of sites achieve the “staged authenticity” in tourism that is covert and contrived in nature (MacCannell, 1973), being the outcome of commoditization of local culture and ethnic arts for external audiences rather than locals. Such offerings look authentic, but they have lost authenticity as the back regions are “false” and insidiously staged for tourists, misleading them to accept contrived attractions as “authentic” (Cohen, 1988).

228 6. Discussion

In contrast, Glasriket belongs to craft manufacturing-induced tourism, being a “living” craft place. The sites are the glassworks that have existed there for decades or even over one hundred years. The facilities are already there, without being reconstructed. The glassworks inherently possess a “living” factory site to demonstrate handmade procedures to tourists. For the tourist product of guided factory tours, the activities of craftsmen in the hot shop of a glassworks for the gaze of tourists are genuine and real rather than being contrived or artificially staged as described in previous literature (Cohen, 1988; MacCannell, 1973). The craftsmen, who are real workers rather than actors, do what they should do no matter whether tourists show off or not. They are making real products rather than just performing there. Thus, the craft production demonstrated in the glassworks at Glasriket is both a front-stage and a backstage activity following the terminologies of Goffman (1959). It is a matter of the voluntary initiative of a glassworks to open its door to expose its real manufacturing to external audiences. Visitors are able to experience authentic production environments, and witness craft work taking place in situ as an embodied live performative act.

While studying the tourist site of New Salem, a reconstructed village where former American President Abraham Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837, Bruner (1994) proposed that authenticity can be constructed in four mutually exclusive forms. First, a reconstruction looks credible, convincing and believable, possessing mimetic credibility. For example, the 1990s New Salem resembles the 1830s New Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived. Second, a reconstruction is an immaculate simulation that is historically accurate and true. This can be achieved through museum professionals’ sound historical scholarship work. Third, a tourist site is the original, as opposed to copies (no reproduction can be authentic). Fourth, there is some authority or power that certifies and legally validates a tourist site. The guided factory tour at Glasriket fits the third form of Bruner (1994) because the hot shop in the glassworks is original rather than being reconstructed or copied.

Second, some studies of the authenticity of tourism focus on historical or heritage tourism, in which site producers staged “the reality of another time” (Anderson, 1984). As for how the past is packaged and sold as authentic (Goulding, 2000), producers are concerned with how the past is interpreted in museums and heritage attractions, how historically accurate staged events are, whether they are the original places where certain events occurred, and whether museum artifacts demonstrate historical accuracy (Chronis & Hampton, 2008). The key concern for tourists is to experience the past getting in touch with history, and sense another world different from that in which they live now. Visitors will imagine “what it really was like to live in the past” (Chronis & Hampton, 2008, p. 114). Glasriket is a heritage site with a history of more than a hundred years and heritage contributes authenticity to market offerings there (see “construction of temporal authenticity” in Chapter 5). However, heritage and history only serve as the backdrop for the tourist experiences. What visitors look for mainly is the craft rather than the “historic” aspect and the motivation of connecting to the past.

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Third, the destination of Glasriket offers the “craft work” for tourists to experience as leisure, but not the “life of another community culture” as described in previous literature (Cohen, 1988). Craftsmen usually live near glassworks and their houses and family lives are not a selling point of Glasriket and are kept away from tourists. The so-called “village life” or “aboriginal life” is not offered to tourists.

To sum up, the artisanal mode of production is a key driver of the authentic experiences offered at Glasriket, where tourists escape from urban and modern life to get closer to the craft techniques of a place that they feel alienated from. Glassworks draw credibility from the preserved legacy of factories and locally situated craft making. The “living” craft making site is a unique tourist form different than heritage/historical sites, artificially reconstructed sites, and sites with staged pseudo experiences as studied in extant tourism literature (Bruner, 1994; Chronis & Hampton, 2008; Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; MacCannell, 1973). This form of tourism deserves further research as craft can serve as a unique anchor or source of meaning for the construction of authenticity of a tourist product and visitors’ experience.

6.2.5 Authenticity examined through a visual approach The intellectual tradition of the West treated the concern of image as being inferior to the word in matters of truth and knowledge because images are ephemeral (Schroeder, 2002). Much of the extant research about authenticity (Frosh, 2001; Hamby et al., 2019; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Thurnell-Read, 2019; Visconti, 2010) has been based on a discursive or narrative approach, where authenticity was interpreted as discursive or narrative themes, coded with meanings and values. In some studies, actors claim authenticity verbally as voiced-out rhetoric, or narrate it. Such studies focused on how actors make authenticity claims (Peterson, 1997; Spooner, 1988; Thurnell-Read, 2019). For example, Beverland (2005b, pp. 1012, 1025) treated authenticity as a “sincere story” that was crucial to claims of it, and authenticity can be a sincere story to be projected through a number of attributes: the avowal of commitments to traditions, passion for craft and production excellence, and the public disavowal of the role of modern industrial attributes and commercial motivation. As another example, in a study of how a retro brand was authenticated through collective re-enchantment, Hartmann and Ostberg (2013) theorized the discursive processes that constructed specific brand meanings about authenticity centering around a particular mode of manufacturing (craft production); the study showed how a brand was produced in and through discursive practices of reauthentication, enacted through five categories of enchanting craft discourses: vocation, dedication, tradition, mystification, and association. Despite the fact that Beverland alluded to the visual implication by stating “luxury wine brands create and recreate images of authenticity” (Beverland, 2005b, p. 1026, emphasis added) and “project an image of authenticity” (Beverland et al., 2008, p. 5, emphasis added), extant studies about authenticity have paid little attention to the visual aspect.

The term discourse reminds us of Wittgenstein’s notion of a language game, which means the collection of phrases that are more or less the same as speech acts

230 6. Discussion

(Schatzki, 1996). For Foucault (2002), discourse is a particular way of speaking. In the discursive approach, social construction is the product of discursive practices. As noted by Reckwitz (2002b, p. 255), discursive practices are one specific type of practice: “[I]n discursive practices the participants ascribe, in a routinized way, certain meanings to certain objects (which thus become ‘signs’) to understand other objects, and above all, in order to do something.” Discourse practices are linguistic and rhetorical (ibid.). Within the performances of discursive practices, text is produced. The text can be speeches, blog posts, marketing messages, and so on. In the domain of consumer research, consumption can be treated as a kind of discursive text (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1992; Shankar, Elliott, & Goulding, 2001).

Narratives are stories as argued by Shankar et al. (2001, p. 429). With the relational structure and temporal dimension, stories are created by people to organize their experiences, sort out the order, explain events, gain perspectives, and make evaluations (Escalas, 2004). Narratives can be created by either brands/producers or consumers. Companies or brands tell stories as a way of building a brand, doing marketing communications, persuading, or fulfilling some needs of the consumers (Cooper, Schembri, & Miller, 2010). The use of narrative is widely seen in advertising and marketing communications. Narrative advertising includes a variety of advertising types studied by marketing researchers: drama ads (Deighton et al., 1989), some forms of transformational advertisements (Puto & Wells, 1984), and slice-of-life ads (Askegaard, 2006). An ad can have a plot that is like a modern tale, with a problem finally solved by a hero, which is the product or brand. A brand can be a story with itself or its products being the hero. Marketing narratives provided by brands will appeal to consumers seeking to achieve an approximation to their “ideal story” (Shankar et al., 2001). On the other hand, consumers can make use of narrative frames provided by marketers, or they tell their own stories of using products or brands through user-generated content (UGC) to build their identity (Escalas, 2004). The exchange of stories between brands and consumers becomes a marketing activity. Marketers suggest narrative elements, and consumers can actively create the rest, or rework their value propositions in light of their own life projects (Arnould, 2006). Narratives can be an interpretive or analytical tool as consumer narratives can be employed as a research epistemology (Shankar et al., 2001) to help with the understanding of how consumers structure and make sense of their consumption experiences.

As a means of bestowing authenticity, how does the visual approach differ from the discursive or narrative approach? At Glasriket, the photographic images are critical in the constructing of the meanings of authenticity, helping to represent, convey and reproduce various objects—technique, materiality, geographic cues, temporal cues, originality (see the five genres of authenticity analyzed in Section 5.1). The photographic images function as a visual manifestation of authenticity due to the epistemological nature of photography – photography has been assumed as a realist medium due to its precise, mechanical and impersonal rendering of the appearance of objects (Slater, 1995). Photography is different from other means of representation such as painting and drawing in the sense that “it has the ‘problem’ of the meaning

231 Jönköping International Business School of verisimilitude” (Rosenblum, 1978a, p. 18) due to its capacity to capture the “reality” in sharp and vivid details. For example, in the journalism industry, in which credibility is paramount, photographs have been used for a long time based on the assumed realism and authority of this medium. Photographic images have a unique value in communicating the manufacturing in the backstage given the nature of the iconicity and indexicality of photography. The textual words and the photographic image are different kinds of languages and different kinds of sign systems, performing different types of signification with different structures and logics.

Photographic images can illustrate the making process (see Plates 1-7 in “construction of technique authenticity” in Section 5.1). It seems that photographic images are quite poised to represent “craft” as they can concretize the abstract concepts of “craft” and “handmade” into specific objects (technique, material, object, people) in the backstage. Visual experience enables human eyes to do the thinking about material things (A.-S. Lehmann, 2012; Sennett, 2008), and material things are core to craft work. According to Sennett (2008, p. 95), craftwork “established a realm of skill and knowledge perhaps beyond human verbal capacities to explain; it taxes the powers of the most professional writer to describe precisely how to tie a slipknot”; “language is not an adequate ‘mirror tool’ for the physical movements of the human body.” Sennett suggests that one solution to the limits of language is to substitute the image for the word. Plates 1-7, analyzed for the “construction of technique authenticity” in Section 5.1, are examples of the representational capability of visual images to communicate craft production to generate authenticity.

Photographic images can highlight the material qualities of glass (see Plates 9-13 in “construction of material authenticity in Section 5.1). A glass object has discrete physical entities to be observed and captured visually. It seems that photographic images are quite poised to capture the intricacy and materiality of glass objects, where words fail to do so. Photographic images can highlight material, sculptural attributes of glass objects that are too small to see with regular eyesight (see “practice of reproduction” in Section 5.2). The photographic images serve as a proxy for consumers to feel and evaluate the physical products and consumers get to know the objects via constructed visual experiences. Serving as a communicative extension of the glass object, photographic images compensate for the deficiency of textual description of glass objects.

Photographic images can document the referents in the factories (see “practice of documenting” in Section 5.2) due to the epistemological nature of photography, which is a medium for recording (McLuhan, 2003), a reproduction technology (Benjamin, 1969), and a tool for doing sociological research (Becker, 1974b). The photographic images are perceived socially to offer objective representation of reality.

The photographic image is the nonverbal side of communication. It is a language built upon wordless signs, unlike verbal language. Visual images are visual discourses that can capture and express relevant meanings different from words. In order to learn or

232 6. Discussion know an object, a consumer has to see it rather than just reading texts describing it. In an image-driven form of marketing, marketers rely on more figurative images, unsupported by explanatory words because of presumed sophistication and skepticism from consumers about the words of claims (Scott & Vargas, 2007). Images are stitched together with texts, stories and experiences created and staged by brands in their marketing materials. Image has been treated as secondary to text (or word), crafted after the text as something complementary. Actually, the visual is not just an “augmentation” to the textual, but it is an integral part of a product. The image itself can be an object to be consumed (e.g., viewed, shared, exhibited, or collected by various audiences) (Wernick, 2000).

With a focus on visual images in the form of photographs, the current study supplements the extant authenticity literature, which focuses on the narrative or discursive construction of authenticity (Frosh, 2001; Hamby et al., 2019; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Thurnell-Read, 2019; Visconti, 2010). These studies about authenticity relied on discourses, stories, or narratives, which were treated as the most important vehicle for achieving authenticity for relevant actors. Such research looked at the rhetorical strategies and meaning-giving statements of actors, analyzing the words, linguistic utterances, verbal and rhetorical patterns, or linguistic doings on specific objects. Authenticity was reified as a storied form of discourses, narratives and myths.

This dissertation takes a visual approach to the examination of issues about authenticity, proving the centrality of visual images to the communication of authenticity. The visual approach in this current study has three aspects. First, photographic images serve as the research data, from which the five genres of authenticity were distilled (see Section 5.1) and the meanings of the five genres of authenticity are visually grounded and communicated. Second, the analytical method is visual as semiotics and the critical visual method were applied to analyze a sample of images in Section 5.1; in this case, visual research is used as a methodological tool in the current study (see Chapter 4 regarding the explanation of data analysis). Third, this dissertation examines photographers’ production of visual images, which is a part of the marketing operation and cultural production; the production practices are viewed as a way of constructing authenticity (see Section 5.2). In this dissertation, the empirical findings in Chapter 5 reveal the representational function of photographic images, which can serve as visual cues about authenticity. Authenticity can be better cued to consumers through visual images rather than explicit claims in textual discourses. This dissertation shows that the construction of authenticity can be achieved in ways other than discursive or narrative practices that have been privileged in previous studies. For example, photographers’ image-making practices (see Section 5.2) can construct authenticity of market offerings through visual representation (see the typology of the five different practices in Section 5.2) instead of discourses or narratives.

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6.3 Production that authenticates

The discussions in this section fall under the rubric of “cultural/marketing production,” which is a theoretical domain in the conceptual framework proposed earlier in Chapter 3 (see the left side in Figure 16). Discussions in this section include four lines: 1) production that renders market offerings authentic (extending from Section 5.1 and Section 5.2); 2) authentic production? The ironic pairing of the words “authentic” and “reproduction” (extending from Section 5.1 and Section 5.2); 3) cultural/marketing production examined through a practice-theory lens (extending from Section 5.2); and 4) the salience of production for consumers and marketers (extending from Section 5.1 and Section 5.2). Each line of discussion starts from empirical findings in either Section 5.1 (craft production of glass objects) or Section 5.2 (photographers’ image-making practices) or both (see content in the parentheses after the name of each thread of discussion in the box under the box “Cultural/marketing production” on the left side in Figure 16).

Figure 16. Discussion “Production that authenticates” situated in the conceptual framework

6.3.1 Production that renders market offerings authentic The current study focuses on the concept of authenticity and its interplay with cultural/marketing production in a glass making craft industry site. As with the country music industry in the US studied by Peterson (1997), authenticity could be fabricated in cultural/marketing production processes. The current study has provided empirical evidence of cultural producers and marketers engaging in authenticating practices in their production work of delivering objects and marketing texts. In this research, authenticity operates in two fields of production – the making of glass

234 6. Discussion objects (Section 5.1) and the making of attendant photographic images (Section 5.2) at Glasriket. The two types of productions at Glasriket can render brands, firms, products or experiences authentic, or confer authenticity to these market offerings.

Cultural/marketing production can be used as a lens to better understand authenticity. This research has approached the concept of “authenticity” in terms of a series of cultural themes (see the five genres in Section 5.1) legitimized by production practices. Authenticity is reflected and shaped by the modes of production including relevant knowledge in it. The two types of production create cultural meanings and values related to authenticity. Additionally, the production work creates the cues for consumers to infer authenticity about brands, products, experiences or the self.

The producers and marketers at Glasriket belong to the culture or creative industries. They focus on the fabrication of expressive-symbol elements of culture – in this study the glass wares and photographic images that are cultural products. The production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004) focuses on how the symbolic elements of culture are shaped by the systems within which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught, and preserved. Cultural production is part of commercial culture, which is considered inauthentic. Critical theorists viewed the cultural industries and authenticity as fundamentally irreconcilable in contemporary capitalism (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002). This study shows that cultural producers can still find leeway in achieving authenticity despite the negative judgments of critics. Glass producers and photographers create multiple meanings of authenticity to accommodate and react to the effects of commercialization and commoditization driven by the mass production ethos of industrialization. Producers’ various ways of constructing authenticity are deeply implicated in efforts to create differentiation and singularity in the two fields of cultural production. This speaks to the note of Jones et al. (2005) that all work of culture industries, in some way, is preoccupied with claims to authenticity.

The following passages discuss the similarities and differences between this current study and previous research.

Similarities between this current study and previous research: • Previous studies about photographers (Frosh, 2001; Guthey & Jackson, 2005) suggested that photographers resisted corporate photography practice and a commercialized system; they did not follow the stipulations from corporate PR people; they inscribed resistance into their individual, idiosyncratic photographic outputs; they had their own ways to bring up the “true self” of CEOs, and their own pursuit of personal and artistic authenticity (their own authenticity, own identity). In the current study, in the site of photographic image production (Section 5.2, “practice of estheticizing”), commercial photographers serving Glasriket share the same practice of fleeing away from commercial imperatives and working in an artisanal mode with artistic ambition to fulfill self-expression and artistic ideals. By doing so, they nurture their personal productive capacities

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as individual artists and achieve existential authenticity by being “true” to their own individual “genius.” • In the site of photographic image production (Section 5.2), one finding regarding photographers’ values is compatible with previous studies. In Section 5.2.5, commercial photographers face the paradox between commercial imperatives and nonmarket values in their image-making practices for authentication. Their “nonmarket values” (i.e., morality, artisanal work mode and ethos, artistic spontaneity and creativity) are similar to what Beverland (2005b) described as the practice of cultural producers and marketers of appearing above commercial considerations and downplaying marketing prowess. Both this finding in this dissertation and that of Beverland (2005b) show that creative artists and brands sometimes appear disinterested or distant from commercial considerations to maintain legitimacy and support from external and internal publics (Holt, 2002). Otherwise, they can undermine themselves by being perceived as being too commercial, or too effective at understanding and exploiting their customers. • In the site of photographic image production (Section 5.2), the “practice of participating” in Section 5.2.4 is similar to previous studies of the patronage relationships between photographers and their shooting subjects. In their study of the visual representation of corporate leaders in relation to the issue of authenticity, Guthey and Jackson (2005) found that the authenticity of an executive could be achieved when a photographer developed relaxed, engaging, and truly human relationships with his shooting subject (the executive). When the famous Danish photographer Per Morten Abrahamsen was shooting Mærsk Mckinney Møller, chairman of the board of A. P. Møller, the photographer joined the executive on his morning walk along Copenhagen harbor to his company’s offices one day. During the walk, they had lengthy discussions and got to know each other. When the photographer was shooting, the executive “did not look at the camera ‒ he looked at Per Morten Abrahamsen directly, acknowledging him as another person rather than just a camera lens … This gave the photo its penetrating quality … and showed an image of a notoriously hard man loosening up and displaying his humanity, or in the terms of this investigation, his authenticity” (pp. 1074-1075). In the current study, photographers participate in glass making rather than being merely an observer or promoter of it. They interact with designers and craftsmen in the hot shop, engaging with the making of glass to make better images. There exists some reciprocity between photographers and their shooting subjects on the factory floor. Photographers shoot photographs to do justice to the objects made in the hot shop, and folks in the hot shop offer some “performance” to do justice to the shooting.

Differences between the current study and previous studies: • There are various mechanisms of marketers and cultural producers authenticating products and brands such as packaging design cues, seals, labels, and certifications (e.g., Lee, Sung, Phau, & Lim, 2019; Neff, 2010). Some are real and some are fake. These measures are more on the surface (e.g., a product’s appearance and features, communicative interfacing with consumers), while findings in this study contain more concrete, physical manufacturing of products

236 6. Discussion

at the back end. The current study goes more deeply into the production processes and practices underlying and leading to authentic market offerings, going beyond the representation of some surface artifacts such as product packaging and labels. • In the current study, “authenticity” has seldom been claimed by producers at Glasriket, a situation different than what was often described in previous literature – producers “claim” or “assert” authenticity (Beverland, 2005a, 2005b; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Jones & Smith, 2005; Peterson, 2005; Visconti, 2010). This study shows the possibility that authenticity can be rendered onto market offerings in subtle ways without producers loudly proclaiming it.

The current study has added to previous literature on cultural/marketing production through findings about how two types of cultural/marketing productions can render market offerings authentic – the physical production of products and visual image production as a part of marketing. The current study examines these two types of production by treating them distinctively and linking them, a rare undertaking in past studies, which either study the production of marketing texts (Beverland et al., 2008; Moeran, 2005; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Svensson, 2007) or the production of physical products (Beverland, 2005b) separately as being autonomous areas of analysis, or mix them up in a lump sum manner (Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Peñaloza, 2000; Visconti, 2010). This study adds new insights to Wernick's (1991) notion of the process of commodity imaging, where commodity production and the promotional work of adding cultural values and meanings to commodities overlap. As detailed in Section 5.3, the two types of production demonstrate two kinds of relationships – iconic and indexical – from a semiotic perspective. The symbiotic relationship between the two types of production (indexical and iconic) is different than the a priori view that the production of commodities is subordinated under the immaterial production of information (Arvidsson, 2008). Material production is not obsolete and is still important, and the value derives from both sites. Demonstrating how the two types of production are related, the current study offers alternative modes of how commodity is transfigured by the techniques of the promotion machine, specifically marketing visual images, following the proposition of a “promotional culture” proposed by Wernick (1991). The current study shows that it is not a process of simply inscribing cultural associations onto products.

The study of photographers’ image production work contributes to McCracken's (1986, pp. 74-77) model of cultural meaning movement. McCracken explored two key instruments of meaning transfer—advertising and the fashion system—in terms of how these two institutions effect the transfer of meaning from a culturally constituted world to the goods. These two institutions are prominent but cannot account for other important instruments of meaning transfer in the marketplace. Given the significance of photographic images in the contemporary marketing landscape, this dissertation provides a meaningful complement to these two instruments by theorizing about another important institution—commercial photographic image-making practices as part of marketing communications. By analyzing both the structures of photographic images semiotically (Section 5.1) and photographers’ social-material practices of producing such images (Section 5.2), this

237 Jönköping International Business School dissertation develops a typology of photographers’ image-making practices (containing a factual, realistic, indexical, and referential visual code) to explain the mechanics of meaning making and meaning transfer from the culturally constituted world to consumer goods, or more specifically, how photographers project authenticity onto various market offerings. Here, the “meanings” in McCracken’s theory are equivalent to the connotations of authenticity in an ontological sense and refer to the five genres of authenticity detailed in Section 5.1. The explication of the production mechanisms can help us better understand the conceptualizations of authenticity.

The research about the production side can be easily misunderstood by consumer researchers as being managerial in nature. In this dissertation, research about productions is culturally informed and goes beyond merely managerial concerns. In the marketing literature, little research has been conducted on the producer side (Peñaloza, 2000 is an example). The current study helps with the understanding of marketer behavior in ways parallel to those established for the study of consumers as an end in itself (Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Holbrook, 1995; Thompson, Locander, & Pollio, 1989). The research of marketers, cultural producers, market institutions, and market behavior as sociocultural ends in themselves and as a means of facilitating marketing objectives is important for striking a balance in the knowledge about the contemporary marketplace. At Glasriket, the glass producers and photographers maintain an important social function in reproducing specific cultural meanings and values tied to authenticity. The current study examines cultural/marketing producers’ roles in producing culture at Glasriket, specifically the various values and meanings of authenticity backdropped by the craft ideology. The activities, objects, images and discourses constitute the marketplace and the larger cultural world.

6.3.2 Authentic production? The ironic pairing of the words “authentic” and “reproduction” This dissertation examines two types of production – that of glass objects (Section 5.1) and that of photographic images (Section 5.2). As Sternberg (1999, p. 141) states: “In our commercial culture, everything that is produced is reproducible: there are no originals and no fakes, and ‘copies’ are merely additional instances of the same work.” For these two fields of “creative voice” (Peterson, 2005), both of them involve reproductions of things, belonging to what was described by Baudrillard (1983b) as modes of infinite exact technical reproduction and reproducibility of the same object, which have existed since the industrialization. Benjamin (1969) mentioned that only with the mass reproduction of symbols does authenticity emerge as a quality to be prized. So, the authenticity of an art work becomes a quality to be treasured in the face of the mass production of symbols. Therefore, the “authentic” production or reproduction of things becomes something desirable but also questionable for multiple stakeholders.

Cultural/marketing production has the inherent tendency of being inauthentic, due to the nature of mass production in industrialization (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002).

238 6. Discussion

Researchers treated mass production and authenticity as fundamentally irreconcilable. According to Eco (1986), reproductions are the antithesis of authenticity. Benjamin (1969, p. 220) contended that the rise of mechanical reproduction in industrialization threatened to displace the aura of an object, thereby effacing its “unique existence in time and space.” Conflating authenticity with originality, Benjamin pointed out that the insidious instruments of capitalism (e.g., mass culture) had supplanted “authentic” cultural expressions. Heilbrunn (1998) wrote that the reproducibility of objects leads to the fading of meaning of most everyday objects that have become commodities and lost their substance. Thus, mass production of objects leads to the basic discomfort of both producers and consumers. The pairing of the two words “authentic” and “reproduction” turns out to be ironic. In this dissertation, both types of production (glass products and photographic images) are designed to reproduce an indefinite number of objects and circulate them in the marketplace. Thus, these questions arise: Can craft production of glass objects be “authentic reproduction”? Can photographers’ image-making practices be “authentic reproduction”? How can authenticity still be achieved in the postmodern era, when reproductions are doomed to be inauthentic?

The philosopher Walter Benjamin was concerned with authenticity, which he associated with the notion of aura and the realm of art and cultural production. In his chapter “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” Benjamin (1969) contended that authenticity cannot exist in objects that are reproduced, and works of art have lost their sacred aura in the industrial era because they can be easily reproduced. Benjamin (ibid.) brought up the concept of “aura,” which is the basis of the authenticity of a piece of work of art. For Benjamin, aura is associated with tradition, mystery and the contemplative. By being auratic, an object does not resemble or imitate anything but itself. He suggested that the aura of an authentic work of art is tied up with its originality, and, in the industrial era, originals are robbed of their “aura” of authenticity. In even the most perfect reproduction, what is lacking is “the here and now of the work of art—its unique existence in a particular place” (ibid., p. 21). For example, there is only one Michelangelo’s David sculpture, and the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling by Michelangelo cannot be removed from the Vatican building. The here and now of the original underlies the concept of the authenticity of the work. In a word, for Benjamin, reproduced products and images were typified by an absence of aura.

Benjamin’s thoughts drew people’s attention to the distinction between the original and its duplications (e.g., copies, forgeries and fakes), but his thoughts are overgeneralized accounts, which cannot explain more contemporary phenomena with diversified scenarios of object reproduction. For the site of craft production of glass objects in the current study, as analyzed earlier in Chapter 5 (Section 5.1.5 “Paradoxes between originality and reproduction”), a glass object can gain original authenticity as a result of the aura stemming from its designer’s artistic creativity, as well as the handmade production technique rendering individuality to each object. In addition, producers can create some attributes (exclusiveness, limited production, rarity) to create the perception of original authenticity. I came up with a continuum with

239 Jönköping International Business School different degrees of reproduction of objects (stand-alone art object, limited edition, unlimited reproduction of commodities) as illustrated in Figure 5. Therefore, authenticity is not a matter of black or white in a simplistic authentic/inauthentic dichotomy. It is multidimensional, with porous boundaries, and can be interpreted differently depending on the context. If aura is lost, it will not be lost completely for the case of “limited edition” in the middle of the continuum.

For photographers’ image making practices, as analyzed in Chapter 5 (Section 5.2.5. “Paradoxes in the notion of reproduction”), mechanically reproduced photographic images can be original, auratic, and one of a kind, achieved through the “practice of estheticizing” (Section 5.2.4). A photographic image was shot for reproducibility for circulation in marketing in the first place. It does not make sense to ask for the “authenticity” of an original image or an original object to be photographed. The binary opposition between the original and its copies in a Benjamin sense has lost its salience. The copy (i.e., image) can be esthetically appealing, emitting an aura of “art.” It is not about objects handed down from the past (e.g., a painting of Pablo Picasso). The analysis of the “practice of estheticizing” (Section 5.2.4) shows that even through reproduction, a photographic image can gain uniqueness, creativity, singularity, and authenticity out of photographers’ esthetic practices.

To address the paradox in the notion of “authentic reproduction,” the school of thought in postmodernism is another theoretical domain to reference. Postmodern theorists such as Umberto Eco (1986) and Jean Baudrillard (1983b) suggested that contemporary consumer society was defined by the inauthentic, the hyperreal and simulation. Baudrillard made a related point that built on an argument first made in the 1930s by Walter Benjamin (1969) by inventing the term “simulacrum” to identify signs that were copies without originals (Webster, 2014). A “simulacrum” refers to an idealized and often entertainment-oriented and mass-mediated construction of a time, place, or object that is preferable to its original (Baudrillard, 1983b). For Baudrillard, all signs and artifacts (e.g., images, historical towns) are hyperreal without a relationship with an underlying reality. They were fabrications with no authenticity outside their own simulations. There was no authenticity behind these signs. They were the hyperreal, “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (Baudrillard, 1988, p. 166). Signs referred to nothing but themselves (Baudrillard, 1983b). The copies were simulations of the original and therefore inauthentic (Baudrillard, 1994). What’s more, postmodernism writers even proposed that the reproduction was more real and better than the original in the situation of hyperreality (Eco, 1986).

For postmodernists, authenticity was meaningless and the boundaries between the copy and the original should be abandoned (Eco, 1986). The postmodern world is dominated by simulacra and hyperreality, full of spectacle and simulation. Disneyland in the US is an example of extreme “simulacrum” or “hyperreal” experiences, which are pure spectacles and inauthentic on the basis of their fictitious story and characters (Chronis & Hampton, 2008). Viewers of television news may watch under the presumption that the signs (the news content) indicate a reality

240 6. Discussion beyond them (i.e., what is going on in the world). But reflexive thinking will tell us that news contents are not the reality, but a construction created by journalists and media organizations, shaped by such factors as their production practices, moral values, political dispositions, and access to newsmakers. Ads are not the “real thing,” but make-believe or simulations. Advertising “acts as spectacle and fascination” (Baudrillard, 1983a, p. 35) for consumers to enjoy as pleasure. It does not matter whether it is real or not. Consumers know it and just enjoy it as a spectacle.

Postmodernism was criticized by Gottdiener (1995) as being reductionist, idealist, subjective and impressionist. It neglects materiality and the world of objects as “the enemy of authenticity,” “leaving us only the empty shell of sign value” (ibid.; p. 234). In this dissertation, the photographic images analyzed in Section 5.1 (see analyses of plates under “construction of technique authenticity” and “construction of material authenticity”) demonstrate the characteristics of the modernist approach: real (rather than hyperreal), objectification (rather than symbolization), and production (rather than consumption) (Venkatesh et al., 1993). By prioritizing production, the visual code of the photographic images analyzed in this dissertation is against the reversal of production and consumption in a postmodernist logic. Following the modernist metanarratives, the visual code gives the primacy to production, which has a revered status to be signified and glorified. Production is treated as being sacred, meaningful and valuable again. The images serve as the mirror for us to see and understand the craft making. The physical referent precedes the image and behind the images are true situations. The images are real or original due to the referential connections or esthetic values, rather than being advertising puffery. The indexical relationship between photographic images and their referents counter postmodernist arguments of the nihilism of the materiality and tangibility of the world perceived by consumers. It is not about simulators trying to make the reality, nor artificial resurrection in systems of signs. The visual code with the motif of craft and making in the current study can alleviate the alienation between producers and consumers. It is not surprising that contemporary consumers still demand authentic media formats such as documentaries applied in marketing (McKee, 2018) and reality television shows (Redden, 2010; Rose & Wood, 2005). Following modernists, I argue that there is some reality behind the photographic images. The visual code of the photographic images in the current study can help reclaim reality and reacquire the meaning of things in a postmodern world of free-floating images. Such a realism-centric visual code remedies the stigma of contemporary mass marketing that has been criticized as a source of inauthenticity (Heilbrunn, 2018). It provides an antidote to the unreal and dematerialized image system as forecasted by postmodernist thinkers. The existence of such a visual code in this dissertation is also a testimony to the fragmentation in postmodernity—there is no unified truth or subject about human conditions and there is no need to look for or conform to any grand meanings or themes (Venkatesh et al., 1993).

The images analyzed in Section 5.1 in this dissertation are the results of photographers’ authenticating practices (see Section 5.2, “practices of reproducing, indexing, documenting, participating, and estheticizing”). The fact that the images

241 Jönköping International Business School deliver a realism-centric visual code reflects the mode of their reproduction, which can be authentic. The notion of “authentic reproduction” concerns the authenticity of the representation act of photographers, specifically whether they create authentic representations of referents. It concerns how accurate and faithful an image production practice is and whether a production practice is an “authentic” method of visual depiction of referents. As analyzed in Section 5.2, photographers’ “practice of reproducing” is driven by their intention to deliver an accurate depiction or visual replica of objective reality to express the innate qualities of glass’s special material properties and objects made of it. Photographers work to authenticate the vivid and detailed sense of the glass material, leading to the verisimilitude of representation. This practice is an authentic reproduction in visual images, resulting in the faithful reproduction of the material, optical, and graphic properties of glass and glass objects.

In Section 5.1, the analysis of the “construction of material authenticity” shows that authenticity lies in the real thing: objective, tangible and material. Following the stance of modernists, realists and objectivists (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006), I treat authenticity as an objectively observable quality of objects. I see authenticity as a real property of the material of glass and objects made of it, which can be measured against absolute and objective criteria. Glass is something inherent, as a real and tangible property, in the object. The material authenticity lies in an artifact’s tangible properties.

Past studies also found that authenticity can be identified in obvious reproductions (Bruner, 1994). In tourism, many historical sites are considered authentic reproduction. For example, in a study of the tourist site of New Salem, Illinois in the US, Bruner (1994) shows that the carefully reconstituted town where American former President Abraham Lincoln spent his early formative years was rendered authentic due to historical verisimilitude achieved through reconstruction. Rose and Wood (2005) examined how reality television shows, as a type of contrived reproduction of people’s lives, can be authentic. They found that consumers blended fantastic elements of programming with indexical elements connected to their lived experiences to create a form of self-referential hyperauthenticity.

My argument about authenticity and reproductions is different than the postmodern thoughts of Baudrillard and Eco and the theory of Walter Benjamin. I lean towards the perspective of modernists, realists and objectivists (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). As a way of thinking, the modernist perspective sees authenticity as genuineness, actuality, accuracy, originality or truth that can be determined objectively (Boorstin, 1964; MacCannell, 1973). It has the flavor of realism, which “is based on the idea that there is an objectively real world to which one can refer as a standard or for confirmation when making judgments about what is true, genuine, accurate, and authentic” (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006, p. 69).

As elaborated above with evidence, authentic forms of cultural/marketing production can be achieved. The original and the reproduced can coexist. Authenticity does not have to be rescued from mass culture (Benjamin, 1969), and can exist in reproduced

242 6. Discussion commercial products (e.g., glass wares, photographic images). The technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By duplicating the work many times over, the technology of reproduction substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. The current study shows that even through reproduction, objects can gain uniqueness and aura through designers’ esthetic creativity or photographers’ authenticating practices. The notion of the original vs. its copies does not matter. What reaches the consumers is the copy, which can be singular, unique, or esthetically appealing with aura. It is not about objects handed down from the past, nor an original art work embedded in tradition or founded on ritual (Benjamin, 1969). Benjamin’s thought is limited because it is too narrow and unable to account for more complex situations in contemporary marketplaces. The current study overcomes this limitation, suggesting alternative patterns of reproduction of cultural products. It also proposes that reproduction can exist in a continuum (see Figure 5 in Section 5.1.5 “Two paradoxes in the construction of original authenticity: originality vs. reproduction”) rather than be in simplistic dualism-inspired dichotomies.

6.3.3 Cultural/marketing production examined through a practice- theory lens Section 5.2 in Chapter 5 of this dissertation uses practice theory (Hartmann, 2013; Magaudda, 2011; Reckwitz, 2002b; Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2005) as a lens through which to study and analyze commercial photographers’ work in creating images as part of the marketing system and in an arena of cultural production. Their practices can also be viewed as efforts to authenticate market offerings at Glasriket. The practice theory-based analysis of photographers’ work can illuminate the intention of symbol makers and the social-material characters of the production process behind the resulting images. The findings reveal how photographers really do the work, their actual practices, and their lifeworlds of symbol-creating activities. The following passages compare the research in Section 5.2 with pertinent studies in the domains of cultural production and marketing practices to indicate theoretical contributions.

The analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2 of this dissertation differs from previous studies of the “fabrication” of authenticity in these ways: • Analytical level: Peterson's (1997) research about the fabrication of authenticity of American country music used an institutional approach to studying an industry, while Section 5.2 in this dissertation does not look at the institutional and structural conditions (i.e., the production system, audience tastes) of a certain industry. Peterson’s work emphasized an industry-based commercial agenda as the driving force in “fabricating authenticity” as well as the institutionalization of a cultural industry. He focused on how industrial and organizational arrangements and markets shaped cultural forms. Section 5.2 in this dissertation focuses on the practices of photographers on a micro level, capturing seemingly small, micro- level phenomena—routines, objects, meanings, knowledge, and materiality (Reckwitz, 2002b)—of photographers. A practice-based account of

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photographers’ image production work puts the emphasis on their micro processes and activities, and the logic is to start from capturing the actions, and then move upward to map out the structure. • Theoretical positioning: Moeran (2005)’s study of a Japanese ad agency and the study of Guthey and Jackson (2005) about CEO portrait photography treated their objects of study as phenomena within an organization, positioned within the domain of organization studies. Moeran's (2005) study of an ad agency contributed to discussions about corporate credibility and legitimization and corporate performance in organization studies literature. The study of CEO photographic portraits and images by Guthey and Jackson (2005) contributed to the literature about corporate identity and image, and corporate legitimacy and authenticity in organization studies literature. Section 5.2 in this dissertation resonates against the domain of marketing practices in connection with cultural production, building on the marketing-as-practice (MAP) perspective and exploring production work in marketing. • Context-specific issues surrounding authenticity: Different studies of authenticity fabrication entail different issues depending on the selected contexts, so there are no universal research topics. In an ethnographic study of a Japanese ad agency, Moeran (2005) examined two authenticity issues—advertising as “authentic reproduction” in the context of the interpretation of cultural stereotypes and the performance and interpretation of authenticity as tricks of trade for the advertising agency. The first issue was analyzed with the concept of “impression management” for achieving corporate credibility and legitimization, and the second issue was analyzed with the “back stage and front stage” concept of Goffman (1959) pointing to the notion of “corporation-as-performer” (Moeran, 2005, p. 917). In their study of CEO photographic portraits and images, Guthey and Jackson (2005) examined the constructed nature of CEO identity and their portrait photography as well as the authenticity paradox in the production processes. Positioned under the rubrics of organization studies, corporate image and corporate reputation, the study addressed the issues of the paradoxical visual construction of corporate identity and image, as well as corporate legitimacy and authenticity. These two studies focused on the field of organizational-level processes that contributed to the manufacturing of authenticity. Beverland and Luxton (2005), through an ethnographic study, examined how images of authenticity were projected by winery producers in integrated marketing communication (IMC). They found that the outward image was decoupled from the firms’ internal marketing practices to maintain their brand authenticity. Their “decoupling” concept was borrowed from institutional theory to be applied in a marketing phenomenon. Section 5.2 in this dissertation applies the “circuit of practice” (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Magaudda, 2011) framework in practice theory to account for the three organizing elements of doings, objects, and meanings in photographers’ image-making practices, and then dimensionalizes the work of photographers into a typology consisting of five categories of practices: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. The five practices within the typology can also be viewed as authenticating practices,

244 6. Discussion

whose teleoaffective properties (meanings) lean towards the goal of legitimizing craft production and constructing authenticity for market offerings at Glasriket.

The analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2 of this dissertation differs from studies in the realm of the sociology of art or sociology of cultural production (Becker, 2008; Bourdieu, 1993b; Solaroli, 2016) as the former looks up from the micro level of social action, while the latter looks down from the macro level of the social structure (Cluley, 2012). Studies in the latter school tended to be on an aggregate level, looking at the impact of social conditions on the development of conventions in the production of art works (Becker, 2008). For example, the sociologist Rosenblum (1978a, 1978b) examined how social structures and processes shaped the cultural forms (e.g., style) of photographic work. For Bourdieu (1993b), much of his work on cultural production was concerned about the ways in which culture contributed to domination and to the process of social reproduction. Bourdieu's (1993b) “field” theory concerned the processes of structuration, covering such issues as forces of various kinds, power, conflicts, control of resources, legitimation, esteem, and recognition on a macro level. Previous studies in sociology of cultural production did not address cultural production considering key elements such as material objects, doings, and meanings, as well as the interrelatedness of these elements (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Magaudda, 2011), which are core to Section 5.2 of this dissertation. The practice theory-based research in Section 5.2 differs from the conventional school of sociology of cultural production in that it emphasizes practical understandings and doings that are entangled with material configurations of objects/artifacts (Reckwitz, 2002b; Schatzki, 2002). The analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2 of this dissertation differs from the production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004) as the latter looks down from the macro level of the social structure, while the former looks up from the micro level of social action (Cluley, 2012). The latter paradigm focuses on infrastructure and aggregations of institutions that shape cultural production, and how social institutions determine the production. Studies in this latter paradigm mainly focus on one industry at a time, such as country music in the US (Peterson, 1997) and the cassette culture in India (Manuel, 1993). Section 5.2 of this dissertation unravels the work of commercial photographers as socio-material practices configured in the three elements of objects, doings, and meanings on a micro level.

The analysis of photographers’ image-making practices in Section 5.2 of this dissertation differs from previous studies with the marketing-as-practice (MAP) perspective (Jaakkola, 2011; Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2011; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Skålén & Hackley, 2011; Svensson, 2007) in that the former explores production work in marketing via an alternative route than using an organization as the unit of analysis. Usually through a firm-based ethnographic approach, MAP studies tended to examine one company at a time, geared towards practices situated in an organizational setting. They focused on organizations or companies with theoretical support from literature in organization studies and strategy-as-practice (SAP). Their analytical level was meso with an organization or ad agency as the research context

245 Jönköping International Business School or unit of analysis. They could not address marketing work in a nebulous form of organization such as freelancers or the self-employed, which is core to Section 5.2 of this dissertation, whose unit of analysis is “practice” rather than “firm.” Previous studies neglected one emerging trend in marketing that practitioners (e.g., commercial photographers) are not bound to any organization, but distinctive enough in their own right to be examined.

The research in Section 5.2 of this dissertation contributes to the literature on marketing practices and cultural production in these aspects: • New phenomenon: Photographic image making is an important type of marketing work given the pervasiveness of visual images in marketing. There has been little research about this niche leg of symbolic production within the ecosystem of marketing and as a diversified form of cultural production (exceptions include: Rosenblum, 1978a; Schroeder, 2005; Solaroli, 2016). The findings, drawing on practice theory, provide an alternative way of viewing and theorizing an understudied type of cultural production and marketing work and offer new insights into marketer behaviors. • Unit of analysis: The point of departure for Section 5.2 of this dissertation from past research about cultural/marketing production is that it does not treat commercial photographers’ image production analytically as: 1) an industry; 2) an organization; 3) a market; 4) a field; and 5) a system or network. The focus is not on industry structure, organizational structure, or aggregations of institutions that shape cultural production. Instead, it researches the production as “practice” enacted in the profession, trade or craft of commercial photography. The analysis is on the micro level, where the research looks at discrete production moments rather than production work on a more aggregate, societal, meso, or macro level. Past studies were on a collective level rather than nailing down a specific trade level in a micro sense. Such a micro-level approach is in line with the notion of Reckwitz (2002b, p. 249) that practice theory treats practice as the “smallest unit” of social analysis. • The linkage between production and the resulting text: Section 5.1 analyzes the five genres of authenticity constructed in craft production, and the five genres also reveal core cultural meanings about authenticity. In Section 5.1, the findings were obtained through the interpretation of a sample of photographic images, which are cultural products (Lash & Urry, 1994) and the output of commercial photographers’ image-making practices, analyzed in Section 5.2. An image, as an artifact, cannot exercise independent causal influence on the social world, but is a product of certain cultural codes and social practices (Reckwitz, 2002a, p. 207). Then, Section 5.3 explores the relationship between the two types of production corresponding to Section 5.1 and Section 5.2 and concludes that they have two kinds of relationships – iconic and indexical – from the perspective of Peirce's (1998) semiotic framework. Therefore, this dissertation remedies the disconnect between the study of marketing/cultural production and the analysis of text in previous literatures. As pointed out by Hesmondhalgh (2013), past studies would separate these two domains as being autonomous areas of analysis – the production of culture perspective and the study of texts. Studies of cultural

246 6. Discussion

production (e.g., Rosenblum, 1978a; Solaroli, 2016) or marketing practices (Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2011; Kover, 1995b; Ots & Nyilasy, 2015, 2017; Turnbull & Wheeler, 2017) often shunned the resulting text itself and encoded meanings. Studies of marketing texts (Arnold, Kozinets, & Handelman, 2001; Belk & Pollay, 1985; Goss, 2000; Mortelmans, 2014; Zhao & Belk, 2008a, 2008b) focused on the finished output of advertising and marketing production, overlooking the production process and practice that precede it. This dissertation fills this gap by linking production to the output, with an implicit intention of exploring meaning making and encoding mechanisms in photographers’ production work. This dissertation treats the photographers as meaning makers (McCracken, 2005b) and infers how the images are socially and materially constructed to potentiate intended meanings through symbol makers’ production practices.

In summary, Section 5.2 of this dissertation demonstrates the usefulness of a novel approach, the practice theory that functions as a theoretical and methodological tool in theorizing how image making is actually practiced by photographers in the social processes of producing cultural texts. It explores thoroughly the production process and mechanisms of commercial photographers in creating images, as part of cultural production and marketing and as a way of authenticating market offerings. In enhancing the understanding of market agents, marketers’ behaviors and activities, and their impacts in shaping marketing outputs, the current study makes a number of theoretical contributions as elaborated above to the marketing literature from a production perspective (Cronin, 2004b; Hackley, 2002; Kover, 1995a; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Peñaloza, 2000; Skålén & Hackley, 2011; Solomon, 1988; Svensson, 2007; Venkatesh & Meamber, 2006).

6.3.4 The salience of production for consumers and marketers This dissertation has answered the call to research how brands and marketers create and develop images of authenticity (Beverland, 2005a) by examining two types of production—the craft production of glass products (Section 5.1) and photographers’ image production practices (Section 5.2). The discussions below will address this question: Why does production, as a subject, matter for consumers and marketers? Authenticity has a strong relationship with manufacturing or production. In his study of the authenticity issue in the premium wine sector, Beverland (2006) found a production orientation, which is characterized by the projection of stylized images of craft production, the continuance of timeless production methods, limited production runs, a focus on intrinsic product qualities, and limited consumer-oriented activities. The “projection of stylized images of craft production” and “the continuance of timeless production methods” in Beverland (2006) are similar to the technique authenticity and the temporal authenticity, respectively, in Section 5.1 of this dissertation. For the characteristic of “limited consumer-oriented activities,” Beverland (2006) found that firms in the premium wine sector held the view that consumers must adapt to the product and producers rather than vice versa. Such a pattern runs counter to modern marketing norms and theory, which always emphasize

247 Jönköping International Business School doing market research about consumers to guide marketing strategies. In a similar vein, in my fieldwork, I found that in the craft sector, the production side is the key driver in command of major cultural resources, which is not symmetrical with the consumer side. The cultural capital flows from the production side to the consumer side.

In another study, Beverland and Farrelly (2010) discovered that consumers’ quest for authenticity in the marketplace sprung from three interrelated goals: sovereignty, connection to the (real) other, and morality. The goal of “connection to the (real) other” is tied to production. For this goal, consumers would like to be connected to real people (i.e., sincere people who own or represent brands) in real, unstaged contexts, and they would like to closely experience and observe noncommercial passion, disinterestedness and dedication to a profession exhibited by others in real- life situations, specifically in marketing contexts. The findings in this dissertation about the craft production at Glasriket (Section 5.1) echo Beverland and Farrelly (2010) in terms of the importance of manufacturing or production in shaping authenticity. Similarly to the findings in Beverland and Farrelly (2010), the craft production of glass objects at Glasriket yields attributes (see the five categories of authenticity in Section 5.1) desired by consumers. For example, craft production provides something “real” and “material” (see “construction of material authenticity” in Section 5.1) for consumers to appropriate in combination with their subjective, existential and imaginary efforts in the fulfillment of their quest for authenticity. The visual representation and the knowledge about craft production procedures (see Plates 1-8 under “construction of technique authenticity” in Section 5.1) help reduce the alienation between producers and consumers, who may have some institutional, cognitive and spatial distances from each other (Appadurai, 1986).

Postmodernism privileges consumers’ imaginative, creative and hedonic play (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995), while downplaying production and the fact that the physical product and its material roots still exist. As a trend scout, Christian Mikunda (2004, p. 37) observed: “In the days before the Industrial Revolution the ‘making’ of products was still immediately accessible for people. They were able to watch the cobbler repairing their shoes and craftspeople making products. This ‘presence’ created credibility and proximity, and fueled people’s demands for buying something new or their desire to use a service. Then the entire production process was locked up in factories.” Previous studies about authenticity (Arnould & Price, 2000; Belk & Costa, 1998; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Goulding & Derbaix, 2019; Grayson & Martinec, 2004) tended to privilege the consumer’s personal authenticity quest over the material consequences associated with production. Consumers’ quest for authenticity was decoupled from the physical production sources of products, which have implications for the product’s material and environmental consequences (Handelman & Kozinets, 2009).

Contrary to the forecasts of postmodernism, we see the trend that production matters again. It is salient for consumers and marketers to understand and problematize the conditions and modes of production. The recent renaissance in the interest in organic

248 6. Discussion movements and consumer craft work implies the concerns of re-establishing connections and engagements among products, consumers and producers beyond market exchange (Thurnell-Read, 2019). Production is deemed to be meaningful again for consumers in two senses: Consumers would like to “produce” things to realize their productive potential, and consumers would like to know the reality about the production behind commodities.

First, in terms of consumers’ ever-increasing will to “produce” things, we are entering a post-mass consumption era, in which Western economies are shifting away from mass production and consumption, and are witnessing the booming of organic movements: craft beer or craft breweries (Chapman et al., 2017; Gómez-Corona et al., 2016; Smith Maguire, 2018), and hipster neighborhoods in urban areas (Scott, 2017; Zukin, 2010). We also see revivals of craft work embraced by consumers (Orton-Johnson, 2014; Zevnik, 2012). For example, in a revived popular interest in sewing in Canada (Kopun, 2013), consumers are sick of mass-produced fast fashion and think that “it is cool to sew again” by taking sewing lessons and sewing their clothes at home in a DIY (do-it-yourself) manner. These trends represent a shift from conspicuous consumption to conspicuous creation. One key driver of these trends is that consumers start waking up by asking: “Where does this product come from? Where is this stuff made that I put on my body?” They realize that big brands may outsource their manufacturing to sweat shops in developing countries, and consumers have bought too much and thrown out too much leaving dire material consequences for the environment.

Second, when it comes to consumers’ awareness of the production behind commodities, Miller (2011) points out a deficit by reflecting: “[T]he more things we possess and consume the more the origins of those things are taken for granted. How is it not part of our most basic education, at primary school, to learn the fundamentals of how most things are made and from what?” Miller’s question concerns consumers’ numbness to the issue of production. Thanks to sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and environmental movements, more and more consumers have started to show interest in knowing the methods of production and what went into producing the final product (Beverland, 2006). They would like to know an identifiable person (e.g., the designer or artisan) who has created the product. Such knowledge would enhance the authenticity of the product due to the link between the final product and the creative process.

Marketers’ presentation of the production of things has value for consumers. As demonstrated by findings in Section 5.1 and Section 5.2, photographic images, as part of marketing texts produced at Glasriket, serve as the mirror for consumers to see and understand the craft making of glass behind the final products they face in retail fronts. The images serve as indexical and iconic cues for consumers (Grayson & Martinec, 2004) in their authenticity judgment. The images can also function as pedagogical tools, which guide consumers to appreciate the products, induce them to experience the craft production, or even inspire them to do projects themselves in a crafty spirit. There are also narratives addressing the origin of the product with such

249 Jönköping International Business School designations as “made by hand” (see “construction of technique authenticity” in Section 5.1) or “Made in….” (see “construction of geographic authenticity in Section 5.1). Such marketing messages can re-engage consumers with the production process from which they have been detached (Ocejo, 2017). Communicative substances related to the “production” or “making” can convey the legitimacy, prestige, and stability of the manufacturer, and can serve as original and relevant cultural materials to be developed into marketing discourses to gain cultural relevance.

The marketing texts about production, the backstage or conspicuous production have cultural relevance for consumers, tapping into many contemporary consumption trends including the quest for authentic consumption (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Gilmore & Pine, 2007a), healthy and environmentally sound goods (Kniazeva & Belk, 2007; Thompson, 2003, 2004), and a sense of cultural rootedness (Goulding, 2000). Such a motif of marketing texts provides elements of multiplicity or counterbalancing to the homogenized marketplace of cultural commodification and hyperreal signs (Baudrillard, 1988). Such texts have intrinsic qualities rather than being a slick promotional dressing up of commodities or unnatural embellishment as an externality. For certain sectors and categories of products (e.g., craft, luxury, natural food and health, authenticity-related), the marketing texts about the “making” or “production” are to be appreciated by consumers.

The issue of production has been overlooked in marketing messages as well as the marketing literature. Given the specialization and fragmentation of production and consumption in modernist societies, producers and production have served as hidden referents in marketing messages (Peñaloza, 2000). In most advertising and other marketing texts, the prevailing theme has been the everyday life of consumers, including the representations of consumer identity and consumers’ lifestyle ideals (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, p. 874). Such texts communicate ideals about the good life and instructions on how to be a consumer and how to live one’s life (Hirschman & Thompson, 1997). Such texts engineer consumer desires by reminding them of certain qualities they should achieve – status, glamour, reduction of anxiety, happy families, and so on, which all belong to the social motivations for consumption (Leiss et al., 2000). The logic of the communication is that ads present idealized images to consumers to implicitly promise that the promoted product can move the consumer toward the desired ideal state (Hirschman & Thompson, 1997). However, consumers might be skeptical of companies and their marketing rhetoric as they think there might be contradictions between the brand’s espoused ideals and the real-world activities of the companies that profit from them. Consumers, who seek their sovereignty, would like to watch not only what is presented onstage but also what is going on in the backstage. Thus, the viral dissemination on the Web of the backstage activities of companies has become welcomed by consumers (Holt, 2002).

The “Food with Integrity” campaign of the US-headquartered fast-casual Mexican food chain Chipotle is a contemporary example. In 2013, Chipotle released an animated film The Scarecrow with puppets to show a family farmer switching first to factory farming, where animals were injected with drugs and treated inhumanely.

250 6. Discussion

Then, he shifted back to the sustainable approach to running a natural farm. The video promoted preindustrial food production traditions as a fix to the many evils in America’s dominant industrial food culture. The video went viral among consumers and won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It also attracted comments from media and marketing observers (e.g., Cohen, 2014; Gasparro & Jargon, 2016; Weiss, 2013; Weiss, 2014) as well as scholars (Bellmana, Raskb, & Varanb, 2017; Holt, 2016; Swenson, Gilkerson, & Anderson, 2016).

The video The Scarecrow, the animated short film Back to the Start released in 2012, and a four-part comedy series Farmed and Dangerous released in 2014 constitute Chipotle’s “Food with Integrity” campaign focusing on the issue of the production of food. The company felt that after 17 years of producing what it called “food with integrity,” customers knew little about the company’s devotion to ethically raised livestock and family farms (Weiss, 2014). The company promises, wherever possible, to use produce grown organically, dairy products from cows that have not been treated with synthetic hormones and meat from animals raised humanely and free of antibiotics (Cohen, 2014). The campaign documented the journey that ethically produced food takes to get from farm to plate. The key message is about food production – that it’s virtuous to source naturally raised pork and organic and local produce, in contrast to the evil ogre of industrial farming and other fast food chains’ practice of sourcing ingredients at scale.

“Food with Integrity” was salient to consumers, who became curious about where their food comes from and how it is raised. Chipotle kicked off a conversation about the issue of production of food, and consumers wanted to watch the videos and participate in the discussions. Commenting about The Scarecrow film as a branded content campaign and a way of myth making in an article in Harvard Business Review, Douglas Holt (2016) wrote that the brand gained cultural relevance by playing off intriguing or contentious issues that dominate the media discourse related to an ideology; it promoted the “preindustrial food ideology” and tapped into consumers’ anxieties about issues of animal welfare, monoculture, locally sourced produce, and food health. The contents developed by Chipotle is a major shift or departure from mainstream discourses of brands in the food sector. The company changed the debate on agricultural production, promoted an anti-industrial-farming message, and sparked a conversation about food practices (Swensona et al., 2016).

The production world has been studied by a few scholars: the brand narratives of the “backstage” (Narsey & Russell, 2013), conspicuous production (Kassaye & Mirmirani, 1994; Overton & Banks, 2015), and “showing the making” (A.-S. Lehmann, 2012). Narsey and Russell (2013) studied the “backstage” as a place for consumer-brand relationship development by examining a museum exhibit documenting the television series Outrageous Fortune and a factory tour of snack foods brand Herr Food Inc. In tourism literature, attention has been paid to the phenomenon of guided tours and presentations offered by brand plants such as Volkswagen’s Autostadt in Wolfsburg, the Ducati plant and museum (Italy), the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, and the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam (Carù &

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Cova, 2006a). These types of offerings by brands belong to a factory experience where consumers pay a visit to a brand plant, which sometimes includes a brand museum that is either a part of the plant or adjacent to it. The implicit messages are: Whatever you would buy are made in this way here, and this is the legacy handmade craftsmanship process.

This dissertation adds important dimensions to the marketing literature by problematizing and examining the issue of production and its representation in marketing texts done by marketers. In Section 5.1, the five genres of authenticity (technique, material, geographic, temporal, and original) are also five areas of cultural meanings and contested areas centering on craft production as a subject matter. The research unravels the mechanics of cultural producers’ constructing of authenticity and meaning making, as well as contestations and paradoxes in the processes. The key narratives are about what is going on in the backstage of the production world different than the common themes of consumer identity and consumers’ lifestyle ideals (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, p. 874) depicted in ads and other marketing texts. Section 5.2 theorizes photographers’ image-making practices in communicating with and authenticating the production world, suggesting some novel propositions about the nature of the institution of marketing text production. “Production” offers naturally occurring meanings for marketers to build an original myth that can claim authenticity. As illustrated by photographers’ “practice of documenting” and “practice of participating,” marketers can get valuable content source (cultural capital, knowledge) from the upstream, which is the manufacturing site. In contemporary marketing practice, there is some detachment between marketing texts from the operation of manufacturing in the back end. Marketers seldom look inside for valuable raw materials for the development of marketing texts. The production work of creating the marketing text involves representing and repackaging selected aspects of the social world (McFall, 2011). In the current study, the “social world” depicted by the photographic images is about the “production” or “making” of glass. The findings in Section 5.2 show the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the production of marketing text and the production of physical objects. This symbiotic relationship reflects the symbiotic relation between advertising and the goods-producing sector, as advertising is considered an extension of the industrial process of manufacture and distribution (Leiss et al., 2000, p. 248). Through such production practices, marketers can help recouple brands and products to their production sources to make authenticity more tangible.

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7 Conclusion

This last chapter is the conclusion of this dissertation. It consists of four sub-sections: theoretical contributions (7.1), managerial implications (7.2), limitations (7.3), and future research (7.4).

7.1 Theoretical contributions

This dissertation answers the call of Jones et al. (2005, p. 894) to identify the strategies that are used for creating and defining authenticity and to determine how these strategies shape our understanding of what is authentic and the call of Beverland (2005a) to find out how brands and marketers create and develop images of authenticity. After answering these calls with an empirical study, this dissertation advances the knowledge within the two theoretical domains of authenticity and cultural/marketing production. The contributions to these two domains are explained below.

7.1.1 Contributions to the literature on authenticity This dissertation has revealed how the craft production of objects and its visual representation can inform our understanding of the meanings and ontology of authenticity. It has approached the concept of “authenticity” in terms of a series of cultural themes (the five categories of authenticity in Section 5.1) legitimized by production practices. The research enlarges our understanding of authenticity through the two distinct types of cultural/marketing production that create it. Referring back to authenticity scholarship, the findings and theorizing in this dissertation help to expound the multivocality of the construct of authenticity and offer different ways of conceptualizing the term “authenticity.” Both the constructed nature of authenticity and the production mechanics reveal the elusive nature of authenticity itself. Specifically, this dissertation contributes to the authenticity literature in the following five areas.

First, in terms of the attributes or meanings of authenticity, the similarities of the findings in the current study to those in previous studies (Beverland, 2005b; Gundlach & Neville, 2012) indicate the theoretical generalizability or possibility of extrapolating these five authenticity attributes or anchors to other contexts. This dissertation explored the meanings of material authenticity as well as the three approaches through which it is constructed in Glasriket as a socio-culturally shaped concept. It contributes a deeper understanding of the material dimension of authenticity in the following terms: 1) materiality can be an important contributor to authenticity; and 2) authenticity is constructed when materials function as carriers of a range of forms of information, conveying data, imagination, meaning, knowledge, beliefs, and truths. The findings about the five authenticity attributes were based on multiple types of data gathered from the producer side, offering much deeper behind- the-scenes stories of how such attributes come into being, while previous studies have

253 Jönköping International Business School mainly been based on consumers’ assessment. In addition, this dissertation uncovered the paradoxes and ambiguities in each of the five categories of authenticity rather than depicting them as a one-sided, positive attribute, a situation that has occurred in previous studies.

Second, regarding the manifestations and dynamics of paradoxes in authenticity construction, this dissertation provides an alternative delineation of the ways in which the contestations in authenticity exist and are resolved in the two sites of production— craft production of glass products and photographic image production. It reveals some instances of producers reconciling contradictory forces.

Third, this dissertation adds to the stream of research on advertising authenticity (Becker et al., 2019; Beverland et al., 2008; Stern, 1994) by providing an alternative approach to the accomplishment of authenticity in ads or marketing texts. The photographic images created in Glasriket are more authentic than others due to a different visual code of realism, iconicity, and referentiality rather than a rhetoric visual code due to photographers’ “practice of reproducing” (accurate replicas of the original objects with verisimilitude and pictorial accuracy, in Section 5.2) and “practice of indexing” (indexical relationships between products and the referent system creating referential authenticity, in Section 5.2). The logic of accomplishing authenticity for marketing texts arises through indexing rather than an executional element or content cues within the texts, as found in the previous literature (Becker et al., 2019; Stern, 1994). I argue that social reality comprises not only the world of consumption (Askegaard, 2006; Scott, 1994a; Solomon & Englis, 1994) but also the world of manufacturing or production, an area that has been neglected in previous research.

Fourth, this dissertation joins conversations about authenticity in tourism by explicating the ways in which the authenticity of tourist products that are “staged” or “presented” in Glasriket differ from those studied in the previous tourism literature (Bruner, 1994; Chronis & Hampton, 2008; Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; MacCannell, 1973). This dissertation argues that the artisanal mode of production is a key driver of authentic experiences and that craft can serve as a unique anchor or source of meaning for the construction of authenticity of a tourist product as well as visitors’ experience.

Fifth, this dissertation contributes to the authenticity literature through a visual approach. It supplements the extant authenticity literature on the narrative or discursive construction of authenticity (Frosh, 2001; Hamby et al., 2019; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Thurnell-Read, 2019; Visconti, 2010) with a focus on visual images in the form of photographs. This dissertation took a visual approach to the examination of issues about authenticity in three respects: images served as the research data; the analytical method was visual, as semiotics and the critical visual method were applied; and it examined photographers’ production of visual images. The study showed that the construction of authenticity can be achieved in ways other than discursive or narrative practices that have been privileged in previous studies.

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7.1.2 Contributions to the literature on cultural/marketing production Illuminating how authenticity is constructed by the concurrent practices of product makers and promoters, this dissertation theorized about various authentication processes and mechanics. Evident in the visual images, discourses, and activities of cultural/marketing producers is a complex and contradictory amalgam of practices of authenticating market offerings. The research revealed the constructed nature of authenticity while also drawing out the implications of such constructions. The results allow us to understand the context and mechanisms through which cultural products are produced. Different from past studies on cultural/marketing production, which have tended to focus on a market (Peñaloza, 2000) or an industry (Beverland, 2005b; Peterson, 1997) and treat market outputs (e.g., brands, products, marketing images, events, experiences, and so on) in a lump sum manner, this dissertation deals with two distinctive production practices leading to two types of distinctive cultural products (i.e., glass objects and photographic images). This dissertation examined the micro, distinctive cultural/marketing production processes that have not received much attention. It unraveled the micro processes and the causal forces that drive and generate authenticity in the marketplace. This dissertation contributes to the literature on cultural/marketing production in the following four respects.

First, this dissertation suggests that cultural/marketing production can be used as a lens to gain a better understanding of authenticity. It shows that cultural producers can still find leeway for achieving authenticity despite critical theorists having viewed the cultural industries and authenticity as fundamentally irreconcilable (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002). The research delved deeper into the production processes and practices underlying and leading to authentic market offerings, extending beyond the representation of some surface artifacts such as product packaging and labels (e.g., Lee et al., 2019; Neff, 2010). It adds to the prior literature on cultural/marketing production through findings about how the two sites of cultural/marketing production can render market offerings authentic (Beverland, 2005a, 2005b; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Hartmann & Ostberg, 2013; Jones & Smith, 2005; Peterson, 2005; Visconti, 2010). It examined the two sites of production by treating them distinctively and linking them (see Section 5.3 in Chapter 5), a rare undertaking in past studies, which have studied either the production of marketing texts or the production of physical products separately as autonomous areas of analysis (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). This dissertation adds new insights to Wernick’s (1991) notion of the process of commodity imaging, in which commodity production and the promotional work of adding cultural values and meanings to commodities overlap. As detailed in Section 5.3, the two production sites demonstrate two kinds of relationships—iconic and indexical—from a semiotic perspective. The research about the production side (marketers, cultural producers, market institutions, and market behavior) as sociocultural ends in themselves and as a means of facilitating marketing objectives is important for striking a balance in the knowledge about the contemporary marketplace.

Second, this dissertation joins the debate about the paradox between “authentic” and “reproduction” by arguing, differently from Benjamin’s (1969) theory, that a glass

255 Jönköping International Business School object can gain original authenticity as a result of the aura stemming from its designer’s artistic creativity as well as the handmade production technique bestowing individuality on each piece of an object. This dissertation overcomes Benjamin’s limitation by suggesting alternative patterns of reproduction of cultural products. It proposes that reproduction can exist on a continuum with different degrees of reproduction of objects (stand-alone art objects, limited editions, and unlimited reproduction of commodities) rather than being in simplistic dualism-inspired dichotomies. The argument about authenticity and reproductions in this dissertation is different from the postmodern thoughts (Baudrillard, 1983; Eco, 1986) and leans toward the perspective of modernists, realists, and objectivists (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). Countering the postmodernist arguments of the nihilism of materiality and tangibility of the world perceived by consumers, a realism-centric visual code of the images analyzed in this dissertation indicates the indexical relationship between images and their referents. This dissertation argues that authentic forms of cultural/marketing production can be achieved and that the original and the reproduced can coexist. It shows that, even through reproduction, objects can gain uniqueness and aura through designers’ esthetic creativity or photographers’ authenticating practices.

Third, this dissertation probed photographers’ image-making work, a type of cultural/marketing production, through a practice theory lens. It studied photographers’ image-making work in an approach different from streams of previous studies about marketing/cultural production: the “fabrication” of authenticity (Beverland & Luxton, 2005; Guthey & Jackson, 2005; Moeran, 2005; Peterson, 1997), the sociology of art or of cultural production (Becker, 2008; Bourdieu, 1993b; Rosenblum, 1978a; Solaroli, 2016), the production of culture perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004), and the marketing-as-practice (MAP) perspective (Jaakkola, 2011; Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2011; Ots & Nyilasy, 2017; Skålén & Hackley, 2011; Svensson, 2007). This dissertation contributes to the literature on marketing practices and cultural production in three respects: a new phenomenon, the unit of analysis, and the linkage between the production and the resulting text (see Section 6.3.3). It demonstrates the usefulness of a novel approach, the practice theory functioning as a theoretical and methodological tool, in theorizing how image making is actually practiced by photographers in the social processes of producing cultural texts. The practice theory-based analysis of photographers’ image- making practices illuminates the intention of symbol makers and the social–material characters of the production process. The research on cultural/marketing production through a practice theory lens progresses the understanding of market agents, marketers’ behaviors and activities, and their impacts on shaping marketing outputs.

Fourth, this dissertation argues for the salience of production for consumers and marketers (see Section 6.3.4). It adds important dimensions to the marketing literature by problematizing and examining the issue of production and its representation in marketing texts by marketers. This dissertation asserts that production, as a subject, matters for consumers for the following reasons: first, awareness of production can reestablish connections and engagements among products, consumers, and producers

256 7. Conclusion beyond market exchange (Thurnell-Read, 2019); second, marketing messages about production can reengage consumers with the production process from which they have been detached (Ocejo, 2017); and third, production is deemed to be meaningful again for consumers in two senses: they would like to “produce” things to realize their productive potential, and they would like to know the reality of production behind commodities. This dissertation argues that production, as a subject, also matters for marketers for two reasons: first, “production” offers naturally occurring meanings for marketers to build an original myth that can claim authenticity. Communicative substances related to the “production” or “making” can convey the legitimacy, prestige, and stability of the manufacturer and can serve as original and relevant cultural material to be developed into marketing discourses to gain cultural relevance. Second, marketers can help to recouple brands and products to their production sources to make authenticity more tangible.

7.1.3 An additional note In an additional note about the entanglement between craft and authenticity, this dissertation examined the ways in which authenticity plays out in a craft production site and located the findings within the theoretical debates on authenticity. Craft is the contextual issue and authenticity is the conceptual issue. Bringing the discussion of authenticity into a site of craft production, this dissertation places craft phenomena within authenticity to examine the complex underpinnings of the authentication processes, linking craft production to larger marketing issues. It allows us to rethink authenticity through the prism of craft production and its visual representation, which offer exemplary instances of authenticity construction in the service of creating differentiated and singularized market offerings. Both concepts concern the configuration of values. Authenticity constructed in cultural processes has the effect of establishing or stabilizing cultural identities (Hobsbawm, 1983). In this dissertation, we see how the production of a particular cultural product (i.e., glassware) and its visual representation (photographic images) have legitimized the identity, craft ideology, and ethos of the region of Glasriket.

Finally, I close this section by highlighting the different voices that this dissertation may bring to the table. This dissertation explored various authentication mechanisms in a two-step process of cultural/marketing production, offering theorization on how authenticity operates vis-à-vis two types of production (substantive product making and communicative image making) and contributing to the understanding of the market manifestations of authenticity in response to the call of Peñaloza (2000, p. 103). The two types of production create cultural meanings and values related to authenticity, so we may view this dissertation as implicitly following the logic of addressing the two aspects of the culture produced vs. the production of culture (du Gay, 1997). The culture produced corresponds to the five categories of authenticity that connote the meanings of the concept of authenticity, and the production of culture corresponds to the two production practices. This dissertation identified relationships between constructs that are seemingly separate: glass making vs. image making (see Section 5.3) and the production of marketing text vs. text (see Section 6.3.3). The unexpected, non-obvious relations of constructs within these pairs have been under-

257 Jönköping International Business School problematized previously, and their discovery can change perspectives and actions. This dissertation adopted novel approaches—the visual approach for authenticity research and practice theory for cultural/marketing production research, thus augmenting the new ways of thinking about related issues.

7.2 Managerial implications

The findings and insights generated in this dissertation provide an outsider reconstruction of the market realities (Zaltman, 1997) of the research context of Glasriket, helping insiders to see themselves in a different way. 33 Some practical implications emerge from the empirical findings. The following sub-sections explain the managerial implications clustered into three areas. Some of the implications are for marketing managers in the research context and some are for marketing managers beyond the research context.

7.2.1 Cultural resources and retro marketing in Glasriket In this dissertation, the cultural analysis of a sample of 40+ photographic images produced in Glasriket can be viewed as a “content audit” exercise in the terminology of marketing practitioners. Serving as a review of what has been achieved in the visual domain of marketing, the research generated insights into the subjects (the five genres of authenticity in Section 5.1 in Chapter 5 are also five themes of cultural meanings) and forms of photographic images in this region. These images, produced in the past, constitute the memory and heritage of the region. The images are just the tip of the iceberg of what the research context possesses. In carrying out this research project, I, as an outsider, have seen a bountiful reservoir of undertapped cultural resources in Glasriket: 278 34 years of history and heritage (see “construction of geographic authenticity” and “construction of temporal authenticity” in Section 5.1 in Chapter 5), demised factories, generations of designer artists and their designs (see “construction of original authenticity in Section 5.1 in Chapter 5), and advertisements and marketing collateral created since the 1940s. All of the glassworks are heritage brands with rich substances. Located in Glasriket, which is a “living” industry region, all these resources are authentic rather than being faked or fabricated from scratch today.

The heritage of Glasriket characterizes this region and draws strength from its country of origin (Sweden). Glasriket has been associated with Swedish cultural icons such as the Swedish Royal Family and the Nobel Prize, emitting an imagery of “Swedishness” (see “construction of temporal authenticity” in Section 5.1). On the other hand, glass products from Glasriket have been used to market Sweden internationally, and glass making is often regarded as a typically Swedish

33 I received such a comment from a few informants, who read an earlier version of the Findings chapter during the member-checking process. 34 The figure 278 was calculated from the time when the first glassworks, Kosta, was founded in 1742 to the time when this dissertation was finalized in 2020.

258 7. Conclusion phenomenon (Nicklasson, 2007, p. 60) (see “construction of geographic authenticity” in Section 5.1). Glasriket can appeal to international audiences as a Swedish cultural icon and at the same time arouse patriotic sentiments from domestic consumers.

Histories, heritage, and historical associations are sources of market value (Peñaloza, 2000) and a “cultural marker of legitimacy and authenticity” (Brown et al., 2003, p. 19). The glassworks, the DMO, and the museums in this region can turn to retro branding or nostalgia marketing (Rosenbaum-Elliott, Percy, & Pervan, 2018), which never goes out of fashion, as modern-day consumers have a nostalgic itch. Presently, consumers are dependent on technology, finding less value in physical things. Retro branding or nostalgia marketing has seen a particularly strong resurgence recently as millennials search for a sanctuary from the stress and confusion of the digital age. Retro offerings would also appeal to hipsters and retro lovers.

Authenticity is specifically relevant to retro branding, in which historic resources cannot always be found in modern reproductions (Brown et al., 2003). The tenet of engaging in retro or nostalgic marketing is to revive concepts or objects that are not necessarily considered to be modern and constantly to recycle the past and give it a new and improved look in the present. The tenet fits what was pointed out by Peterson (1997)—authenticity is a renewable resource and the past can be continuously reinterpreted to fit the changing needs of the present.

Marketers from glassworks, museums, and the DMO in Glasriket can think about how to repurpose the rich cultural resources bestowed by this region. First, they need to tap into positive cultural memories and beloved ideals from the past and identify retro-themed concepts, retro objects, and nostalgic cues: product designs, images, ads, visual elements, colors, tales, and so on. They need to make sure that these cues can be reused while being relevant to today’s consumers to achieve the effect of “the old is the new ‘new’.” Then, they can implement retro branding or nostalgia marketing projects in the following areas.

Retro products: Big brands such as Nike and Adidas have designed collections specifically around retro themes. Edison Bulbs is a shining example of how this old product, launched back in 1879 by Thomas Edison, became a retro hit today. The spirits brand Absolut Vodka is a Swedish icon, which originated from Åhus in Southern Sweden. It is partially related to Glasriket, as the iconic Absolut Vodka glass bottle was designed by a Swede, who was inspired by the shape of the 18th century medicine flask in Sweden. It is a classic case of how a brand used retro design in product packaging to make a hit in international markets. Glassworks in Glasriket can consider rolling out nostalgic products, which can be reissued editions or replicas of some classic products from the past. For example, Intermezzo was one of the best- selling stemware product lines under the brand Orrefors, designed by Erika Lagerbielke in 1985. The series has undergone several rounds of upgrading by phasing out old styles of pieces and adding new items with more contemporary designs. The brand can roll out some discontinued items with classic designs from

259 Jönköping International Business School the past, making them as special editions, which look old fashioned while still being appealing.

Retro co-branding: Glassworks in Glasriket can collaborate with other brands in other sectors by contributing their cultural resources. A modern product from another sector can adopt retro styling to make it look and feel different from similar products. It can capitalize on the vintage designs, color palettes, or imagery from Glasriket to reference some nostalgic themes. For example, some vintage designs of glassware can be reappropriated in other sectors, such as toys, fashion, furniture, and electronic gadgets.

Retro places and experiences: Glasriket has tangible objects, such as vintage buildings, old hot shops, and deserted machines, which can serve as points of reference and inspiration. They can be turned into nostalgic places for tourists. Some of the sites can be remodeled into retro-themed restaurants or hotels. Retroscapes can be built into the retail outlets (factory stores in Glasriket and stores in other cities and countries) of glassworks, allowing consumers to experience the nostalgia.

Retro-marketing messaging: Glassworks, museums, and the DMO can carry out historic storytelling of the cultural heritage with narratives, fascinating stories, and meaningful reflections, with a candor that is evocative of times gone by. Such messaging in marketing communications can pay homage to the heritage of the craftsmanship, the lives of glassblowing families, designer artists, and the regional community.

7.2.2 Authenticity-based marketing As stated in Section 5.1 in Chapter 5, the strategies and mechanisms identified in the substantive construction of authenticity by glass makers also exist in other sectors. “Temporal authenticity” can be transferred to other settings, especially fashion or luxury brands. Companies like Gucci and Prada leverage their heritage by referencing their past on corporate websites, in retail outlets, and in brand museums. As for “technique authenticity,” some brands make reference to craft production methods, or craftsmen in production. For example, Rolls Royce has always promoted the fact that parts of their cars were handmade (Beverland & Luxton, 2005). “Original authenticity” can be transferred to sectors that are design focused, prioritizing the esthetics, creativity, and aura tied to designers and celebrities. As for “geographic authenticity,” many mass production brands also refer to place in their marketing communications. For example, IKEA, the global giant of well-designed flat-packed furniture markets, presents itself as being “Swedish” through its democratic design, Swedish myths, and stereotypes represented by the colors of the company logo and the naming of products. The mapped-out five categories of authenticity in Section 5.1 can give marketing practitioners a picture, and they can reinforce and enhance consumers’ perceptions of the authenticity of their brands by working on any of the five anchors of authenticity identified in Section 5.1. They can select one or a few out of the five anchors rather than all of them, as each company has its own situations and does not resemble the situations of Glasriket.

260 7. Conclusion

In Section 5.2 in Chapter 5, photographers’ image-making practices demonstrate how advertising and marketing communications can authenticate market offerings as a way of mediation. The five practices (reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing) within the typology of the photographers’ authenticating practices can serve as five tropes, which marketers of other sectors can borrow to establish a referential relationship between marketing texts and their referents (what the texts mirror).

Every company wants to be authentic and sell authentic products. However, marketing, as a function, campaign, or institution, may have its own authenticity crisis. In the post-financial crisis era since 2008, consumers are far more cynical about corporate brands and messages. When it comes to authenticity-based marketing, there are two scenarios: companies claim authenticity with lots of narratives in marketing messages or they do not claim it verbally but achieve it. In the former scenario, companies run marketing campaigns couched in the rhetoric of authenticity. The concept of “craft,” “authentic,” or “artisan” is attractive and fashionable, and industrial giants often engage in “craft-washing” or use such idioms without practicing it. They run corporate craft-washing campaigns, with claims or descriptors such as “real,” “artisan,” “quality,” “authentic,” and “passionately crafted.” The problem is that many marketing managers treat authenticity as a marketing device or marketing gimmick. It is easy for big corporations to co-opt the language and symbolism of authenticity. Marketers slap the “authenticity” label on a product that is vague or entirely out of context. The claims are made at face value. Consumers are skeptical about what brands say and do. If they want the truth, they can Google it to match words with actions. Consumers avoid fake companies that make claims that ring false. When the product or service fails to meet the expectations established by the marketing messages, it will backfire. Marketing managers need to avoid “fake marketing” of authenticity, which just does lip service by making claims of craftsmanship or authenticity without owning substantial grounding and roots. They need to avoid dissonance between what a brand says it stands for and the reality on the ground.

The authentication of market offerings works in Glasriket in a referential and indexical way—the marketing texts (photographic images) mirror the reality that real craftsmen are performing real craft work in the factories. This meets the expectation of consumers, who want to see real people doing real things with authenticity and real offerings from genuinely transparent sources. Section 5.1 in Chapter 5 analyzed the photographic images centering on the craft of making glass, which depict what is taking place in the backstage of factories rather than the life world of consumers. Section 6.3.4 in Chapter 6 discussed the salience of marketing texts describing the production or manufacturing world. With these findings, I suggest that marketers can consider obtaining raw materials internally for developing marketing texts to create and manage authenticity. Marketers often tap into external sources, such as ad agencies, PR firms, creative/design shops, or celebrity bloggers as influencers. They seldom look inside for valuable raw materials for the development of marketing texts.

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Such a practice would hollow out brands, making them void of material or historical anchoring. Brands would end up lacking an original point of view that they can claim as their own. Sometimes, the manufacturing process and technique, material/ingredient, and provenance of making are key dimensions worth communicating to consumers, who appreciate the knowledge and information about these aspects tied to production. As illustrated by the study of photographers’ image production practices in Section 5.2 (“practice of documenting” and “practice of participating”), marketers can gain valuable content sources from the upstream, which is the manufacturing site. The best ideas about possible content or stories usually come from inside. Marketing content can originate not only from outside a company but also from other places inside it: manufacturing, the C-suite, customer service, human resources, R&D, IT, customer relationship management (CRM), sales, customer service, product development, and so on.

By tapping internally, marketers can create contents that are linked to the reality (i.e., its referent), creating transparency about a firm’s actions. What is happening at the back end will be linked and synergized with what is presented and promoted in the foreground. Such an approach to indexing marketing text with its referent would make the marketing messages factual, realistic, and authentic, yielding referential authenticity (Gilmore & Pine, 2007a). The marketing texts will be less glossy and rhetoric-like, helping consumers put things back into the material world of a company’s real commitment and actions. There is no way that the medium or the message can possibly make any kind of connection on its own. By doing so, marketers can ensure that a brand will walk the talk and avoid the result that the claims in ads do not communicate anything concrete to the consumers. Such an approach does not treat authenticity-based marketing as dressing up messages.

7.2.3 Visual marketing Effective marketing depends on compelling visual imagery. The visual is not just an “augmentation” of the textual but an integral part of the overall marketing content. In a cluttered marketing landscape, a brand can stand out with compelling visual images. Given the insights generated in this dissertation about photography in advertising and marketing, I offer the following implications and suggestions for marketers.

First, the analyses of the production practices of commercial photographers in Section 5.2 in Chapter 5 will allow marketers and photographers to reflect on their image creation processes for improved practices. As pointed out by Gherardi (2012, p. 5), “practices are as opaque to researchers as they are to practitioners but precisely for this reason their description and reflection on practice is a potential means to empower practitioners.” By capturing what commercial photographers do and by presenting “the logic of practice” back to photographers and marketers, this dissertation allows practitioners to reflect critically on, understand, and improve their practices in concrete and evidence-based ways. The five practices in the typology of photographers’ image production practices in Section 5.2 serve as tropes, containing certain logics regarding the use of image making as a way of authenticating products

262 7. Conclusion and brands. Marketing managers can borrow any of the five practices in the typology in their image creation management.

Second, in today’s image-led marketing communication landscape, marketers can make full use of the nature of the medium of photography to craft authentic images, which can express realism, verisimilitude, spontaneity, and documentary styles. Compared with other art forms (e.g., painting), photography is a technique that directly reproduces and evidences reality (Batchen, 1997). As factual representation, photographs have persuasive, evidentiary power and credibility (Sontag, 1977). Therefore, photography is an important medium for conveying authenticity. Companies should avoid using stock photographs and hire professional photographers to capture the live activities or “backstage” of a firm and its inner workings to tell “behind-the-scenes” visual stories (see “practice of documenting” in Section 5.2) to bring target audiences into the fold and concretize the brand, which could otherwise be faceless.

Third, marketing managers need to pay attention to the mode of collaboration between client and photographer. As more and more companies cannot afford in- house photographers, they rely on contracted photographers (i.e., freelancers), who tend to have limited time and incentives to know more about the product and the designer and production behind it. The work can be hurried. Section 5.2 identified the symbiotic relationship between making products and making marketing images, demonstrated in photographers’ production practice of participating. Photographers, as marketing personnel, must have close engagement with the “upstream,” the manufacturing of products, rather than being alienated. As an example in this dissertation, photographer John Selbing engaged with the making of glass to produce better images. He lived with the designers and craftsmen, being part of the daily life of the glassworks. John’s image-making practice was performed in a social network, in which he and the glass industry were in a symbiotic relationship that connected marketers and manufacturing. John went the extra mile by interacting with designers and artisans in the hot shop to experience the creation of glass. He obtained the intentions behind an object from its designer or the craftsmen who made it. On the other hand, a designer might be interested in how his or her products will be photographed or would brief the photographer about what should be highlighted. As the de facto gatekeeper or liaison from a client company to interface with a photographer, marketing managers should give more access to photographers to talk with designers and people at the manufacturing site and the supply chain to gain more knowledge about a product. Marketing managers need to give photographers freedom to access the real scenes to create authentic images, rather than asking them to shill a brand. Photography is creative production and is not about purely promotional materials. By managing the relationship between client and photographer in the right way, a company can avoid the “assembly line” mode of image production (see “paradoxes in authenticity construction in photographers’ image-making practices” in Section 5.2.5), which will lead to the output of standardized, uninspiring images.

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Lastly, as Glasriket needs to reach out to new and younger audiences, who are digitally savvy, glassworks, museums, and the DMO in Glasriket can experiment with new visual media to visualize the material of glass and represent craftsmanship. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can be incorporated into the e- commerce and brick-and-mortar retail outlets of glassworks to tell the stories about the craft making of each product. VR and simulation can be used by the DMO to provide faraway consumers with virtual demonstrations and virtual tours of factories and other spots in the destination in an interactive way of communication. Computer animation can be used to visualize the micro structure and chemical properties of the material of glass in a way similar to the educational videos visualizing chemistry produced by the company Beauty of Science (www.beautyofscience.com), which uses animation and artistic presentation to explain science-related contents.

7.3 Limitations

The present study has a number of theoretical and empirical limitations that are explained hereinafter, and they spur further research.

The generalization of the findings and theorizing in this dissertation should be made with caution. The current study was limited to a single research context, which is a relatively less generalizable context of a craft-producing region making consumer glass products. Perceptions or conceptualizations of authenticity are product category specific, as some dimensions of authenticity are more visible or salient in certain product categories. For example, “material authenticity” is more salient to Glasriket than the context of luxury wine (Beverland, 2005b). Even within the same realm of craft products, which have alternative names of “ethnic and tourist art” or “tourist souvenirs,” glass products differ from other categories of products (e.g., textile crafts, woodcarvings, soaps, chocolate, and beer) in terms of the importance of conceptual dimensions (material, production technique, form, and spatial/temporal factors). In terms of external validity, the results in the current study are limited by some context specificity, and the generalizability of the findings to other contexts (e.g., other sectors or product categories) could be speculative.

My choice of the current research context followed the extant academic research about authenticity in marketing—to select a niche sector (traditional, small in terms of scale of operation, and low tech) rather than multinational giants in fast-moving consumer goods or mass production sectors, which are more industrialized and technology driven. Previous studies have unanimously focused on small-scale niche sectors—Beverland (2005b, 2006; Beverland & Luxton, 2005) consistently selected ultra-premium wine companies to conduct case studies, Thurnell-Read (2019) interviewed workers in small and independent breweries, Smith Maguire (2018) focused on fine wine, Waehning et al. (2018) selected craft beer producers, and Hartmann and Ostberg (2013) chose the Swedish guitar maker Hagström. It seems that these scholars presumed that these small-scale, traditional, and niche sectors or companies tend to be better research contexts, as they articulate a “counter-logic” to that of mass production and inherently possess more distinctive attributes of

264 7. Conclusion authenticity. Such a perspective of choosing research contexts for authenticity research leaves out large-sized multi-national brands (e.g., those on the Fortune Global 500 list), which also pursue authenticity. These academic studies have seldom explained the transferability of their findings to more mainstream brands. The communication consulting firm Cohn & Wolfe has been conducting authentic brand study since 2012, and it releases a ranking list of the most authentic brands each year (www.authentic100.com) as well as insights into the attributes associated with an authentic brand. The ranking list includes mass marketing brands, such as Amazon, Google, Adidas, BMW, and Lego, and none of the companies researched by academics appear on this list. Thus, there is a disconnection between academic research and industry research, as these two camps address different samples, and there is barely any conversation between them. The Cohn & Wolfe approach is about how big global brands deal with authenticity, which covers more general concepts, for example, three key drivers of authenticity—reliable, respectful, and real— according to the 2016 study (Cohn & Wolfe, 2016). The conceptual dimensions are different from those of the academic studies mentioned above. The circumscription of research contexts by the academics mentioned above (including this current study) has the shortcoming of lacking broader marketing practice relevance, as their chosen firms or sectors tend to be idiosyncratic and it is hard to see how their findings and knowledge pertain to mainstream brands that exert more influence on consumers, markets, and societies.

This dissertation is production-side oriented, yielding supply-side perspectives. Consumers are also an active participant in the construction of authenticity in a marketplace or consumer society. This study did not examine the site of consumption in terms of how consumers search or quest for authenticity—how they read and interpret images and marketing texts as cues and assess their authenticity, how they confer authenticity on objects, how they conduct self-authentication practices, and how they achieve self-authenticity (existential). A focus on the producer side might assume a hegemonic stance, treating the consumers as passive takers of market offerings (brands, products, experiences, ads, and signs). Consumers may co- construct, reinterpret, negotiate, or rework marketplace offerings for their own purposes, such as identity construction (Arnould & Thompson, 2005) or developing an authentic self (Wang, 1999).

As for the various paradoxes presented in Section 5.1 (see the paradoxes at the end of each of the five genres of authenticity) and Section 5.2.5 (the last part regarding the three types of paradoxes in authenticity construction in photographers’ image- making practices), this dissertation did not investigate how multiple actors in Glasriket negotiated in the face of these paradoxes in social settings. As noted by Goulding (2000, p. 837), “authenticity is a fluid concept that can be negotiated.” What counts as authenticity is open to negotiation, either being contested or in collective and concerted efforts by multiple actors. This dissertation did not consider how cultural/marketing producers negotiate paradoxical situations with other actors or deal with multiple actors’ negotiations of the meanings of authenticity vs. inauthenticity in various paradoxes. The findings are about one side—the producer

265 Jönköping International Business School side. These paradoxes are hidden behind the scenes in the production work of producers; they are not necessarily visible and explicit in front of consumers.

In Section 5.1, glass producers’ constructions of the five genres of authenticity, including the conceptual dimensions of the five genres, were mostly a result of my interpretations and viewpoints rather than being co-produced by multiple scholars or from deep interaction between me and the informants in the research context. This result is not ideal given the principle that authenticity is a social construction (Peterson, 1997; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; Wang, 1999). It is necessary to include the perspectives of all the stakeholders. The current study did not explore the social aspect of the negotiations in the interpretations of authenticity by multiple stakeholders. Each person in the quest for authenticity does not make his or her judgement in isolation from others; thus, the criteria about authenticity involve some social mechanisms in the negotiation of authenticity.

Lastly, the approach of using semiotics to analyze photographic images and unearth the deep structure of a text has its shortcomings—in their structuralist form, semiotic accounts are highly deterministic. The structures are treated as objective (as if they exist in the world and can be scientifically known by analysts). The semiotic analysis lacked proof of why it was more scientific or objective (Slater, 1997). The semiotic analyses of the images just yielded findings in potentialized or immanent meanings, leaving the actualized meanings on the part of consumers/viewers to be addressed by future research (Mick et al., 2004).

7.4 Future research

To make the findings more generalizable and transferable, future research will need to broaden the sampling frame used in this study to examine more mainstream and generalizable contexts or sectors that produce widely distributed mass-produced products on a global scale. The research on non-craft sectors, multinational firms, or technology brands might provide an extra understanding of alternative ways in which marketers deal with authenticity. Small-scale craft companies and mass market brands are two different breeds of businesses representing different operation logics and ethoses: small-scale craft production vs. large-scale industrialized mass production, niche brands vs. mass market brands, romanticism vs. rationalization, and dedication to artisanship vs. economic instrumentality. Mass market global brands have inauthenticity potential inherent in their ways of operation. It will be interesting to investigate how multinational giants render their inauthentic offerings authentic and make comparisons between the two types of companies to identify the different ways in which authenticity is constructed and manifested. The comparisons will offer a richer understanding of the many shades of grey of authenticity.

More research is needed on consumption to complement the current study, which has concerned itself with the production of objects and images, just one side of the dyad. Potential lines of inquiry include consumers’ search for authenticity, consumers’ judging of authenticity, and how ideas of craft and authenticity diffuse through

266 7. Conclusion consumer culture over time. This dissertation has covered what is carried out by producers/marketers and what is communicated, and future research can examine what is perceived. Section 5.1 analyzed the five genres of authenticity based on multiple data, especially photographic images as marketing texts. The indexical and iconic cues in the images lead to consumers’ assessment. Future research can examine consumers’ response to these images, their actualized meanings, and how they interpret the images to form judgments of (in)authenticity. Research can be conducted with techniques of photo elicitation, ethnography, phenomenological interviews, or techniques in the information-processing model. The research questions may include the following. How do consumers view and understand such images as cues in relation to their own construction of authenticity with marketer-provided resources? How do consumers rely on these cues to assess different kinds of authenticity of market offerings in Glasriket? How do the cues influence consumers’ consumption of authenticity? Such empirical findings might verify, enhance, or modify the findings (the five genres of authenticity as key conceptual dimensions) obtained in Section 5.1 in this research.

For the market offerings (images, products, and tourism experiences) in Glasriket, their authenticity is to be activated by consumers in their evaluation and consumption experience of these offerings. Future research can link market-offered authentic objects with consumers’ self-authenticity by investigating how consumers construct their own authenticity from producers’ offerings while interacting with the resources provided by producers and marketers in Glasriket. The research can compare consumers’ and producers’ perspectives to explore the dynamics between them and to determine whether it is a top-down process or an interactive loop/negotiated process, as the craft sector is production oriented rather than responding to consumer needs and market trends (see Section 6.3.4 “The salience of production for consumers and marketers” in Chapter 6). The research can explore whether the producer- generated attributes of authenticity resonate well with consumers and how the nature of authenticity is defined and constructed by consumers. In addition, it will be necessary to conduct research projects intermingling data from the three sites (production, consumption, and marketing texts) to obtain a more holistic understanding of how authenticity is constructed in the marketplace. Such research will take a more holistic approach to cover a number of distinct processes within the “circuit of culture” (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 2013) through which the market offerings pass.

Regarding the various paradoxes in the construction of authenticity already discovered in Section 5.1 and Section 5.2, my analyses only addressed the fact that marketers/producers harmonized some of them among themselves. Future research can present these discovered paradoxes to consumers in Glasriket to solicit their views about them. In addition, future research can explore how these paradoxes and dilemmas are resolved among different actors in a continuous process of negotiation in a social arena. The dissolution of the paradoxes can be viewed as a type of authentication through some kind of social mechanism.

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Given that Glasriket is a tourist destination, future research from an experiential consumption theoretical perspective (Arnould, 2006; Carù & Cova, 2006) can study the experiences of tourists in the region and how they obtain authenticity by engaging in various activities and appropriating producer-provided cultural resources. Such efforts can link experiential consumption with product consumption and image consumption, all of which are backdropped by the conceptual context of authenticity. Given that this destination offers craft-manufacturing-induced tourist products (see Section 2.3 in Chapter 2), consumers may adopt craft-like practices in their leisure life (e.g., blowing glass). Research can be conducted to examine such a mode of craft consumption by finding out how consumers perform craft activities by mimicking real artisans, how they obtain existential authenticity in this process, and the commonalities and differences between the practices of real artisans and consumers. Future research can compare the results with previous studies of authenticity in tourist sites (Bruner, 1994; Chronis & Hampton, 2008; Cohen, 1988; Goulding, 2000; Grayson & Martinec, 2004) to identify the different ways in which a craft-producing “living” industry site can facilitate the fulfillment of authenticity for tourists compared with other types of tourist sites—heritage/historical sites, artificially reconstructed sites, and sites with staged pseudo-experiences.

In this dissertation, I interpreted a sample of photographic images to map out the conceptual dimensions of authenticity in Section 5.1, and I analyzed photographers’ production practices of creating them in Section 5.2. From a visual marketing perspective, an interesting research path is to track the sales of a certain product line and corroborate the data about sales with textual features of photographic images communicating this product line and photographers’ production practices behind them. Such a research project with a “marketing effectiveness” purpose can establish a link for causal relationships indicating the marketing effectiveness of images as text and creators’ work by tracking what works well and what fails.

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9 Appendices

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interview

Third

Second interview Oct. 3, 2018 23, March 2018 14, Dec. 2018 23, Nov. 2017

intervew

First 19, 2018 March 23, 2018 March 19, 2018 March 22, 2018 March Jan. 25, 2018 28, 2017 Nov. Oct. 3, 2018 2016 Sept. 1, 9, 2018 March 2016 Sept. 19, 5, 2018 Dec. 12, 2018 Dec. 12, 2018 Dec. 13, 2018 Dec. 24, 2017 Aug.

Location Växjö Kalmar Gothenburg Gothenburg Linköping Linköping Växjö Målerås, Kosta Boda Nybro Nybro Växjö Växjö Boda Stockholm

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Glass Museum Glass (John Selbing was an was Selbing (John

employed employed employed employed employed employed ------Employer Musuem Glass Swedish Self Self Self Self Orrefors employee) Self Målerås Kosta Boda marketing Destination organization marketing Destination organization Swedish Museum Glass Swedish (as Factory Glass The museum) Self

Name Jörgen Jonas Lars Nils Jonas Anders Selbing Hans Runesson Martin Maria Stine Henrik Marianne Therése Maja Erika Lagerbielke

Rolestudy the in Photographer Photographer Photographer Photographer critic, Photograph photographer ofSon photographer John Selbing Photographer manager Marketing manager Marketing manager Marketing (former) manager Marketing manager Marketing manager Marketing (visual communication) manager Marketing Designer Appendix 1: List and profiles of interview informants

# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 9.1

26, 2018 Nov.

June 14, June 14, 2018 15, Nov. 2017 June 8, 2018 Feb. 22, 2019 11, Dec. 2017

2016 Nov. 15, 2017 Nov. 2017 July 17, 17, 2017 Nov. 23, 2018 Nov. 5, 2017 Dec. 2017 July 17, 17, 2017 Nov. Feb. 22, 2018 27, 2018 March phone) (via 2016 Sept. 13, June 7, 2018 5, 2017 Dec. 12, 2017 Dec. 27, 2017 Nov. 2016 Sept. 21, Oct. 26, 2016 Sept. 7, June 5, 2018

Kosta Boda Boda, Glasriket Växjö Kosta Boda Pukeberg Boda Kosta Boda Stockholm Köln, Germany Johansfors Växjö Pukeberg Växjö Kosta Boda Nybro Nybro Nybro Jönköping

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Design Archive Design

employed employed employed employed employed - - - - - Kosta Boda artist Independent Self Kosta Boda University Linnaeus Self Boda & Kosta Orrefors Self magazine GLASS NEW and in English (bilingual German) Self Museum Glass Swedish Swedish Self Orrefors

Anna Anna Ehrner Tillie Burden Torben Bertil Vallien Ole Ludvig Löfgren Peter Anders Uta Duncan Gunnel Eva Bo Kia Nina Marcus Peter Astrid

Designer Designer Designer Designer & professor Designer Designer manager Production journalist Cultural journalist Cultural Glass gallery owner curator Museum curator Museum Tourist guide service store Factory staffer Consumer Consumer Consumer Consumer

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

9.2 Appendix 2: Interview questions

9.2.1 Interview questions for production manager The production manager Peter at the hot shop of Kosta Boda is in charge of the manufacturing of the Intermezzo series. • Can you tell me the procedure of making the Intermezzo glass products? • In here on the floor, how do you organize the manufacturing. Today, I see that there are two groups. • Because there are more than 15 different items under the Intermezzo series, how is the manufacturing organized? Today, the craftsmen are only making these two models, right? • For one group here, how many pieces under each model can they make each day? • What’s the rule – for example, how do you decide which day to make what models? • You said that you produce one model for three days. After the three days, will you stop or will you still do it? • For the same group of people, is it true that they can produce more than one model of glass products? Can they produce items of other series? • You mentioned they change roles within the group. Does it mean that each one of them masters the skills of different roles, so that they can shift roles? • I guess the shifting is used to avoid boredom, right? • For the craftsmen here in the workshop, when they make it, what do they think? I think a working day is quite repetitive. They are making the same thing, and each person does one leg of the work and passes the item to the next person. • For each working day, when do they start and when do they finish? • When they finish work and go home, what do they do? • Do craftsmen talk to the designers? • Intermezzo items are considered as handmade? Why? • For the items you are making here, do you think that they slook different than machine made items? Why? • Are the items you make easy to be copied by other glassworks? Why? • What are the differences between the making of Intermezzo and other series? Does Intermezzo cost more labor time and skills than other items? The price of the Line series is much lower than Intermezzo and the Chateau series is cheaper.

9.2.2 Interview questions for designers Background: • Please introduce your background. • How long have you been doing this? What made you get into this trade?

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The design work: • How did you come up with your design ideas? • When you design, do you think of the customers and imagine how they use it? • When you design, do you aim to come up with marketable, big-hit products? • Do you solicit opinions, ideas and feedbacks from customers and other stakeholders? • What do you think of the approach of some glassworks putting a designer’s signature on the product and its package? • Please explain your creation/ design process. Try to reconstruct. How did the ideas happen? What really happened during the design process? • Please explain your daily work. Is there a routine, a regular way, or process of designing glass? • What is your design language?

About craft production of glass: • Some marketing materials said that in the initial state, in design, you worked with the craftsmen on the factory floor a lot. So when you worked with them, what collaborations did you undergo?

The essential quality of the material of glass: • What attributes or nature do you think glass has? What are the essential qualities of glass as a material? • If you use metaphors, what words will you use to describe glass? • What roles does glass plays in people’s everyday life? • Imagine the material is not glass (but other types such as plastic, metal or pottery), what changes or loss will the object demonstrate? • What potentials does glass (as a material) offer for design and manufacturing? How do the unique properties of glass played out in design and production processes? How do you make sense of the materiality of glass in your design? • Does glass offer the form, shape, sensory, tactile, corporal, and experiential qualities? • Is there any quality of glass, which resists verbal expression?

Regarding photography: • As a glass designer, what are the roles of photographs in your work? On what occasions do you use photos? • In your work, for what purpose do you use glass photographs? • Do you read glass photos together with other elements (e.g., text, package)? • Do you feel the photos from Glasriket (see attachments) look like advertisements or promotional messages? • What meanings can you draw from the photos tied to Glasriket (see examples)?

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• Have you been impressed by good glass photographs? If yes, please provide a few examples? What photos are counted as good ones? • Have you worked with photographers? If yes, please tell me a little bit about your experience of working with them (what projects, the process, the issues, etc.). • What are the differences between a photo vs. the glass object it captures? What is the relationship between the image and the thing? • Does the photo image influence your relationship with the object?

The notion of “Swedishness:” • Do your designs have a strong association with the identity of Sweden? Do you think that your design is very Swedish? • Do you think the designs at Glasriket have country specific styles of Sweden? Or regional identity of Småland? • Where are the Swedishness or Smålandness? What are the connotations of being “Swedishness” or Smålandness?

9.2.3 Interview questions for photographers Background: • How long have you been doing this? The profile of your business (self-employed or in-house, how many people in your firm)? What made you get into this trade? • Have you taken training in college courses? Did you receive some training in art and art history?

Working with others: • Before taking an assignment, did you talk to the designer of a product? If you talk, what are subjects of the conversations? Did the designer tell you some meanings and properties of a product to remind you to show them in the photo? • Before taking an assignment, did you talk to the marketing manager (or personnel in charge) to get their requirement about what the photos should be like? • When you took an assignment from a client, did the client (or manager in charge) give you a creative brief? What was the communication between you and the client? Did it have very specific requirement about the effects of the photos? • For each photo, did you have to get the approval of the marketing manager (or personnel in charge) about how it should be shot? Who decided how a photo should be shot (what props, what settings, what color tone, lighting, etc.)? • Do you think it is individual work, or work in cooperation with others? • Who do you work with? A network of people. Social structure. Who shapes the final result? • Any problems or issues in working with others? • Alienation - Do you think you have full control of your works? For which segments do you have control, and for which parts you do not? (no control on context of using the photos, circulations)

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• How much freedom do you have? What constraints are there? • Do you think the “freelancing” mode for today’s photographers would influence their output and result? (compared with fulltime in-house photographers).

Purpose, motives, and aspiration: • When you take photos of glass products, what are your motivations and objectives? What are your key concerns? o To make photos that sell? o For creativity? o For effectiveness of marketing (to help the glassworks to sell)? o To do art? o To satisfy your clients? • As for the notion of “effectiveness of marketing” or “quality of photos”: o What counts as good photos? o Who decide it? o How to judge it (what criteria)? • What are the goals of the photos? For product photographs, what are their major purposes? To illustrate product attributes? To create a setting and atmosphere? To show how to use it? • What roles would you position yourself? (e.g., as “ storyteller”, an agent helping with the selling of products, or artist for the sake of artistic creation) • What is creativity in your eyes?

Creative process: • Please describe the process of you taking photos of glass products? Please explain each step. (For example, when you face a glass product, what do you think? What considerations? Then, what do you do?) • By doing photography, do you think you invent and recreate some new meanings (not just making copy of the designed product)? • How did you stage a scene? For many photos about glass products, different props (glass wares, table, flowers, etc.) were put together. When you decided to put some props, what were the logic (why you put an object there)? For what purposes? • Where did you get ideas of how to shoot a photo? • Do you get inspirations from art? Do you leverage the techniques, look, and creators of art? Do you follow atylistic conventions? – tied to ad and marketing, product, conform to standards. • Do you think your works have style of “Swedish way of life”? Do you think your style was shaped by the “Swedish way of life”?

Material qualities of glass: • What are the differences between the photography of glass products and photography of other types of products (e.g., furniture)?

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• What unique characteristics and attributes do glass products have? • What are the challenges of glass photography? How to overcome them?

9.2.4 Interview questions for marketing managers The purpose: • What values and roles do photographs play in the whole glass industry of Glasriket? • What values and roles do photographs play in the marketing of glass products? • What are the purposes of doing photographs for your glassworks? o To focus on the attributes of the product? o To show a life style? o To show the brand? o To show the manufacturing? o Other? • From the perspective of a brand, what are the key concerns for doing photographs? o To make photos that sell? o For creativity? o For effectiveness of marketing (to help the glassworks to sell)? o To do art?

General operation: • For a project (e.g., a product catalogue), did you give the photographer a creative brief? What is the major content of the Creative Brief? Does it have very specific requirement about the effects of photos? • For a project (e.g., a product catalogue), did you talk to the designer of the product? If you talk, what are subjects of the talk? Did the designer tell you some meanings and properties of a product to remind you to show them in the photo? • For a project (e.g., a product catalogue), did you talk to the craftsmen who make a product? If you talk, what are subjects of the talk? • For each photo, who decided how a photo should be shot (what props, what settings, what color tone, lighting, etc.)? • About the staging the scene of a photo – for many photos about glass products, different props (glass wares, table, flowers, etc.) were put together. When you/photographer decided to put some props, what were the logic (why you put an object there)? For what purposes? • How was the communication between you and the photographer? Simple or complicated? • As for the notion of “effectiveness for marketing” or “quality of photos”: o Who decided it? o How to judge it (what criteria)? • When you manage photo taking, do you think about the consumers (buyers)?

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• What are the differences between “freelancing” photographers and fulltime in- house photographers? What impacts will the different work modes have on the final result?

Creative process: • Where did you and the photographers get ideas of how to shoot a photo? • By managing photography, do you think you and the photographer invent and recreate some new meanings (not just making a copy of the designed product)? • Do you and the photographer get inspirations from art? • Do you think photos of your glassworks show the style of “Swedish way of life” (the social democratic ideology in Sweden, which advocates the “good life” of the individual, entitled for security, beauty, and care)?

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9.3 Appendix 3: Photographic images

- Plate 1. Technique authenticity—a photograph explaining the chair system in hand-made mode of Technique Plate 1. glass production. Source: Book “Svenskt glas under sex sekler” (Swedish six centu ries) edited by Nicklasson (2007, p. 208). Courtesy of Kulturspridaren forlag. in the Section 5.1.1 “Construction of technique authenticity” This image is analyzed on page 111 in Chapter 5 and is discussed other parts of 6.

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Plate 2A (left) and Plate 2B (right). Technique authenticity—the sequence of making mouth-blown glass. Photographer: Technique (left) and Plate 2B (right). Plate 2A Group. Wave 2016 product catalogue of Orrefors (pp. 9-10). Courtesy New A Jonas Lindström. Source: in the Section 5.1.1 “Construction of technique authenticity” These two images are analyzed on pages 112-113 Chapter 5 and are discussed in other parts of 6.

306 307 Appendices

Plate 2C (left) and Plate 2D (right). Technique authenticity—the sequence of making mouth-blown glass. Photographer: Technique Plate 2C (left) and 2D (right). Group. Wave Courtesy of New 2016 product catalogue of Orrefors (pp. 11-12). A Jonas Lindström. Source: in the Section 5.1.1 “Construction of technique authenticity” These two images are analyzed on pages 112-113 Chapter 5 and are discussed in other parts of 6.

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Plate 2E. Technique authenticity—the sequence of making mouth-blown glass. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: A 2016 product catalogue of Orrefors (p. 13). Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 112-113 in the Section 5.1.1 “Construc- tion of technique authenticity” in Chapter 5 and is discussed in other parts of Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.

308 Appendices

magazine 2017 Glasriket Plate 3. Technique authenticity—two pages showing the 6 steps in making of hand-made glass Technique Plate 3. products at Målerås. Photographer: Lars Nilsson, Light & Bold. Source: AB Glasriket. (pp. 26-27). Courtesy of in the Section 5.1.1 “Construction of technique authenticity” This image is analyzed on page 113 Chapter 5 and is discussed in other parts of 6.

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Plate 4. Technique authenticity—the Château series. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: The Kosta Boda product catalogue authenticity—the Château series. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: Technique Plate 4. Group. Wave Anniversary” (2017, p. 46). Courtesy of New Years “275 in the Section 5.1.1 “Construction of technique authenticity” Chapter 5 and is This image is analyzed on pages 113-114 mentioned in other parts of Chapter 5 and 6.

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- magazine Glasriket Plate 5B. Technique authenticity—a scene Technique Plate 5B. showing tools. Photographer: Lars Nilsson, Light & Bold. Source: AB Glasriket. 2018 (back cover). Courtesy of in the This image is analyzed on page 115 Section 5.1.1.3 “Handmade technique in dexed by tools” and on page 192 in Section 5.2.4.5 “Practice of indexing” in Chapter 5.

Plate 5A. Technique authenticity—a scene in Technique Plate 5A. a workshop showing vase and tools. Photo- grapher: John Selbing. Source: Courtesy of the Selbing family archives. in This image is analyzed on pages 114-115 Section 5.1.1.3 “Handmade technique indexed by tools” and on pages 191-192 in the Section 5.2.4.5 “Practice of indexing” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 6A. Technique authenticity—A glass cutting workshop of Orrefors in the 1930s. Photographer: Winells ateljé. Source: book “Orrefors: A century of Swedish glassmaking” edited by Wickman (1998, p. 217). Courtesy of Byggförlaget Kultur. This image is analyzed on page 116 in the Section 5.1.1.4 “The paradox in the antithesis of handmade vs. machine-made” in Chapter 5.

Plate 6B. Technique authenticity —an engraver at work at Orrefors in the 1940s. Photographer: John Selbing. Source: book “Orrefors: A century of Swedish glassmaking” edited by Wickman (1998, p. 220). Courtesy of Byggförlaget Kultur. This image is analyzed on page 116 in the Section 5.1.1.4 “The paradox in the antithesis of handmade vs. machine-made” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 7. Technique authenticity—the overview scene in the hot shop of Kosta Boda, where a chair and his team were making mouth-blown Intermezzo wine glassware. Source: this author, taken on November 11, 2017. This image is analyzed on page 118 in the Section 5.1.1.4 “The paradox in the antithesis of handmade vs. machine-made” in Chapter 5.

Plate 8. Technique authenticity—the product series Atoll of Kosta Boda. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: A product catalogue of Kosta Boda in 2017. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on page 119 in the Section 5.1.1.4 “The paradox in the antithesis of handmade vs. machine-made” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 9A. Material authenticity—molten glass gathered from the furnace. Photographer: Jörgen Ludwigsson. Source: Exhibition catalogue “Light-fire-life: Swedish Glass in China” published by Suzhou Museum. Courtesy of Suzhou Museum and the Swedish Glass Museum. This image is analyzed on page 122 in the Section 5.1.2.1 “Material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice” in Chapter 5.

Plate 9B. Material authenticity —molten glass in a mould. Photographer: Jörgen Ludwigsson. Source: Exhibition catalogue “Light-fire-life: Swedish Glass in China” published by Suzhou Museum. Courtesy of Suzhou Museum and the Swedish Glass Museum. This image is analyzed on page 122 in the Section 5.1.2.1 “Material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 9C. Material authenticity—molten glass held by a craftsman. Photographer: Hans Runesson. Source: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid= 106&artikel=7062104. Courtesy of Sveriges Radio (P4 Kronoberg). This image is analyzed on page 122 in the Section 5.1.2.1 “Material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice” in Chapter 5.

Plate 10. Material authenticity—designer and glassblower Björn Friborg handling molten glass at The Glass Factory. Photographer: Hans Runesson. Source: Glasriket magazine 2015 (p. 25). Courtesy of AB Glasriket. This image is analyzed on page 123 in the Section 5.1.2.1 “Material authenticity constructed in the craft making practice” and on page 191 in Section 5.2.4.5 “Practice of indexing” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 11. Material authenticity—tourists watching a craftsman handling glass in a Hyttsill event. Photographer: Mats Samuelsson. Source: The website of Visit Småland: https://www.visitsmaland.se/ sv/upplevelser/mat-och-dryck/hyttsill-i-glasriket/. Courtesy of Visit Småland. This image is analyzed on pages 123-124 in the Section 5.1.2.2 “Material authenticity constructed in the performance of craft making activities” and on page 177 in Section 5.2.4.2 “Practice of documenting” in Chapter 5. It is also discussed on pages 226-227 in Section 6.2.4 “Experiential offerings at Glasriket: Authenticity in tourism” in Chapter 6.

Plate 12. Material authenticity—a glass bottle with shadow and lights. Photographer: John Selbing. Source: Courtesy of the Orrefors archive. This image is analyzed on pages 126-127 in the Section 5.1.2.3 “Material authenticity constructed through knowledge generation and circulation” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 13. Material authenticity—a piece of glass. Photographer: John Selbing. Source: Courtesy of the Orrefors archive. This image is analyzed on page 127 in the Section 5.1.2.3 “Material authenticity constructed through knowledge generation and circulation” in Chapter 5.

Plate 14. Material authenticity—a webpage from Orrefors’ ecommerce site. Source: https://orrefors.co.uk/products/?gid=111. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on page 127 in the Section 5.1.2.4 “Ambiguities and paradoxes in the construction of material authenticity” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 15. Geographic authenticity—a print advertisement of Orrefors’ Intermezzo series. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: a Swedish newspaper. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 130-131 in the Section 5.1.3.1 “The geographic dimension concerning making” and on pages 191-192 in Section 5.2.4.5 “Practice of indexing” in Chapter 5.

Plate 16. Geographic authenticity— Crystal Eye: Orrefors’ glass gear box in Volvo car. Photographer: Volvo Sweden. Source: A 2016 product catalogue of Orrefors. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 131-132 in the Section 5.1.3.1 “The geographic dimension concerning making” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 17. Geographic authenticity—an advertisement about the “Bruk” series of Kosta Boda. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: A press release in 2016 at: https://news.cision.com/kosta-boda/r/world-premiere-of-bruk--a-new-colorful- glass-collection-by-kosta-boda-,c9908253. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 133-134 in the Section 5.1.3.2 “The geographic dimension concerning design” and on page 186 in Section 5.2.4.4 “Practice of estheticizing” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 18. Geographic authenticity—the “Nordic Icons” series of decorative glass items of Målerås. Photographer: Ida Jonasson. Source: A 2017 product catalogue of Målerås. Courtesy of Målerås. This image is analyzed on pages 134-135 in the Section 5.1.3.2 “The geographic dimension concerning design” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 19A. Geographic authenticity—the vintage roof and wall of the Kosta glassworks. Source: product catalogues and official website of Kosta Boda. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 135-136 in the Section 5.1.3.3 “The geographic dimension concerning tourist experience” in Chapter 5.

Plate 19B. Geographic authenticity —the back cover in a product catalogue of Orrefors, showing the media context in which Plate 19A is situated. Source: product catalogues of Kosta Boda. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on page 135 in the Section 5.1.3.3 “The geographic dimension concerning tourist experience” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 20A. Temporal authenticity—a black-and-white group portrait of workers at Kosta in 1900. Source: the Kosta Boda product catalogue “275 Years Anniversary” in 2017 (p. 2). Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 140-141 in the Section 5.1.4.2 “Referencing company history” and on page 191 in the Section 5.2.4.5 “Practice of indexing” in Chapter 5.

322 Appendices

Plate 20B. Temporal authenticity—a color group portrait of staff of Kosta Boda in 2017. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: the Kosta Boda product catalogue “275 Years Anniversary” in 2017 (p. 4). Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 140-141 in the Section 5.1.4.2 “Ref- erencing company history” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 21. Temporal authenticity—the Royal Couple of the Swedish monarchy (King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia) were visiting the Kosta village to celebrate the 275th anniversary of Kosta Boda in 2017. Photographer: Sara Skovgaard. Source: https://designbase. dk/kosta-275-%C3%A5r. Courtesy of Designbase.dk. This image is analyzed on pages 141-142 in the Section 5.1.4.3 “Referencing national heritage” in Chapter 5.

Plate 22. Temporal authenticity—an act of “crowning” by the Swedish King in the process in which a work of art, Kungabåten (The Royal Boat), was cast at Kosta Boda in 2017. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: A press release at: https://news.cision.com/ kosta-boda/r/their-majesties-celebrated-national-day-at-kosta,c2285048. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on page 142 in the Section 5.1.4.3 “Referencing national heritage” in Chapter 5. 324 Appendices

Plate 23. Temporal authenticity—a page featuring the Nobel Prize stemware series of Orrefors. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: a product catalogue of Orrefors in 2017. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 142-143 in the Section 5.1.4.3 “Referencing national heritage” in Chapter 5.

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magazine 2015 (pp. 38-39). Courtesy of AB Glasriket. magazine 2015 (pp. 38-39). Courtesy of Plate 24. Temporal authenticity—two pages showing various new applications of glass in other sectors. Source: Temporal Plate 24. Glasriket This image is mentioned on page 143 in the Section 5.1.4.4 “The paradox construction of temporal authenticity” in Chapter 5.

326 Appendices

Plate 25. Original authenticity—A card showing a photographic image and texts about a designer was put alongside the corresponding products at the factory store of Kosta Boda. Source: this author, taken on November 12, 2017. This image is mentioned on page 148 in the Section 5.1.5.1 “The designer artist as the human creator with aura” in Chapter 5.

Plate 26. Original authenticity—large-sized posters with black-and- white photographic portraits of designers deployed inside the factory store of Orrefors. Source: this author, taken on November 12, 2017. This image is mentioned on page 148 in the Section 5.1.5.1 “The designer artist as the human creator with aura” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 27. Original authenticity—a portrait photograph of designer artist Mats Jonasson of the Målerås. Photographer: Hans Runesson. Source: www.maleras.se. Courtesy of Målerås. This image is analyzed on pages 149-150 in the Section 5.1.5.1 “The designer artist as the human creator with aura” in Chapter 5.

Plate 28. Original authenticity—a portrait photograph of designer artist Åsa Jungnelius. Photographer: Lars Nilsson, Light & Bold. Source: Glasriket magazine 2017 (pp. 4-5). Courtesy of AB Glasriket. This image is analyzed on page 150 in the Section 5.1.5.1 “The designer artist as the human creator with aura” in Chapter 5.

328 Appendices

Plate 29. Original authenticity—the Make Up series designed by Åsa Jungnelius. Photographer: Jonas Lindström. Source: a product catalogue of Kosta Boda in 2017. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on pages 151-152 in the Section 5.1.5.2 “Artistically oriented glass objects with aura” in Chapter 5.

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Plate 30. Original authenticity—art glass items “beige and amber being bags” designed and made by Tillie Burden. Photographer: Torben Villumsen. Source: Courtesy of Tillie Burden. This image is analyzed on pages 152-153 in the Section 5.1.5.2 “Artistically oriented glass objects with aura” in Chapter 5.

Plate 31. Original authenticity—the “Still Life” decorative/art series designed by Ludvig Löfgren. Photogra- pher: Jonas Lindström. Source: a product catalogue of Kosta Boda in 2017. Courtesy of New Wave Group. This image is analyzed on page 153 in the Section 5.1.5.2 “Artistically oriented glass objects with aura” in Chapter 5. 330 Appendices

Plate 32. Original authenticity—a comparison between a photograph of John Selbing (left) and an artwork of Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (right). Photographer: John Selbing. Source: Courtesy of the Orrefors archive. This image is analyzed on page 186 in the Section 5.2.4.4 “Practice of estheticizing” in Chapter 5.

Plate 33. Original authenticity— a photograph about drinking glassware taken in 1988. Photographer: John Selbing. Source: Courtesy of the Selbing family archives. This image is analyzed on page 187 in the Section 5.2.4.4 “Practice of estheticizing” in Chapter 5.

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Craft production in the Kingdom of Crystal (Glasriket) and its visual representation Constructing authenticity in cultural/marketing production

Authenticity is a core concept and phenomenon in contemporary marketing as both marketers and consumers seek the authentic. However, authenticity is a concept with heavily debated characteristics, and it is not well understood in its market manifestations. How producers and marketers engineer, fabricate, or construct authentic market offerings remain unanswered questions. This dissertation examines how the authenticity of market offerings is constructed in two cultural/marketing production sites—the craft production of glass objects and commercial photographers’ image production as the visual representation of the former—to understand the mechanisms behind the authentication of market offerings and the paradoxes in the construction work. This purpose was fulfilled by pairing the two theoretical domains of cultural/marketing production and authenticity for investigating an empirical site—the Kingdom of Crystal (‘Glasriket’ in Swedish)—located in southern Sweden. As a traditional craft-producing industrial region and a tourist destination, Glasriket has been dedicated to making consumer glass products, maintaining its production mode as a handmade craft for 278 years. This research was conducted over a three-year period with an interpretive and ethnographic approach tapping into multiple sources of data. This dissertation found that glass producers in Glasriket substantively construct five categories of authenticity (technique, material, geographical, temporal, and original) in market offerings via craft production and that commercial photographers communicate and authenticate this craft production world via their image-making practices, which are dimensionalized into a typology consisting of five categories of practice: reproducing, documenting, participating, estheticizing, and indexing. Illuminating the two-step micro-process of cultural/marketing production—the concurrent practices of the product makers and the promoters—this dissertation theorizes about how authenticity operates vis-à-vis two types of production (substantive product making and communicative image making), yielding a number of contributions to authenticity scholarship and the literature on cultural/marketing production.

SONGMING FENG is a PhD candidate in Business Administration at Jönköping International Business School of Jönköping University. His research focuses on the production practices in the marketing, media, and cultural/creative industries which deal with issues of authenticity, visuality, materiality, and cultural meanings. He made his academic publication debut in the Journal of Interactive Advertising. Prior to his academic career, Songming worked for a decade in marketing and public relations with stints at Lenovo and Burson-Marsteller, a subsidiary of WPP.

ISSN 1403-0470 ISBN 978-91-7914-003-8