On the Impossibility of Sustainable Development Without Culture the Gaze of Art and Perspectives on a Cultural Approach to Marketing
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EDHEC BUSINESS SCHOOL INTERACT RESEARCH CENTRE 24 avenue Gustave Delory CS 50411 F- 59057 ROUBAIX CEDEX 1 Tel. : + 33 (0)3 20 15 45 00 e-mail: [email protected] On the Impossibility of Sustainable Development without Culture The Gaze of Art and Perspectives on a Cultural Approach to Marketing June 2010 Guillaume Logé Patronage and Philanthropy Manager, musée d’Orsay Lisa Peñaloza Professor of Marketing, Director InteraCT Research Centre, EDHEC Business School Guergana Guintcheva Professor of Marketing, with the support of Member of InteraCT Research Centre, EDHEC Business School Abstract Why assert that culture is intrinsic and Research in marketing has drawn on absolutely necessary to sustainable culture for guidance. Is it not possible for development? Why examine art and why art and culture to endow the markets with choose to forge ties with marketing? meaning, and for all economic activity, Why should companies, institutions, and the production of goods, social ties, the policies include a cultural dimension in their protection of the environment, and the strategies for sustainable development? center of our daily lives? We have shown How can marketing help integrate this that, through history, culture and art have dimension? met this challenge. We have shown that the markets can integrate this efficacy to We seek to put our work in perspective with become truly sustainable markets. the wealth of collections in museums, the wealth of artistic production, regardless Without culture it is not possible to of their origin. We also seek to study the develop markets that are truly sustainable. dialogue between art and consumption. Let us apply the same truth to marketing, for another view of consumption and of We provide a brief overview of sustainable markets for the creation not of a new development. Culture emerges as an utopia but of a sustainable reality. issue, most often—and insufficiently— only as cultural diversity. What do the terms “sustainable” and “development” mean? What do they contain? What do they demand? What do they need to be responsibly enacted? Art and culture create meaning, as do the markets and consumption. People draw on them for their identities. Is it really possible to make cultural dimensions part of consumption and the markets? Is the notion that we propose—the poetic efficacy of art—able to provide guidance? Is it possible to extend this notion to marketing and to an efficacy (poetic efficacy) of consumption that stems from the poetic efficacy of art? For their invaluable aid, the authors wish to thank Sigrid Berger, Gaël Bonnin, Ginevra Boralevi, Françoise Brousse, Mylène Charon, Pauline Daniez, Caroline Mathieu, Dominique Nguyen, Olivier Simmat, Alice Thomine-Berrada, and Karine and Philippe Turlure. 2 The opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of EDHEC Business School or the musée d’Orsay. About the Authors Guillaume Logé is responsible for building Guergana Guintcheva is professor of ties, through partnerships and acts of marketing and member of the InteraCT patronage, between the musée d’Orsay Research Centre at EDHEC Business School and individuals, companies, foundations, in Lille, France. Her research revolves and institutions in France and abroad. around museum marketing practices He was active in the creation and launch of and, more broadly, around the marketing the musée d’Orsay’s workshop on culture of leisure activities. Recent work of hers and sustainable development. He has also has been published in the International held positions at the musée du quai Branly Journal of Arts Management. Her future and as deputy to the presidential advisor research projects look into the impact of for patronage. He has a DEA in French the experience of contradictory feelings literature and civilization (Université on moviegoers. la Sorbonne Nouvelle), a DESS in law (Université Panthéon-Assas), and a DESS in finance (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris). He is a member of the steering committee of the Ateliers de la Terre (Planetworkshops). Lisa Peñaloza is academic director of the InteraCT Research Centre at EDHEC Business School in Lille, France, and co- editor of Consumption, Markets & Culture. Her ethnographic research looks at the complexity of the interactions of cultural meaning and economic value in daily family and community life as well as in business. Her recent research deals with the market and sustainable development. Her work is regularly published in such scholarly journals as Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing. She has also produced two movies to promote her work: Generaciones: Cultural Memory, Identity, and the Market, and Inside the Mainstream: Credit in the US White Middle Class (with Michelle Barnhart). 3 Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 1. Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development ............................................................... 7 2. The Poetic Efficacy of Art for Sustainable Development...................................................14 3. Harnessing Cultural Sensibilities in Consumption and Markets for Sustainability ....27 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................46 References .........................................................................................................................................47 EDHEC Position Papers and Publications (2008-2010) ............................................................55 4 Introduction Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of the Artist, 1887, oil on canvas. ©Photo RMN (musée d'Orsay) — Gérard Blot Someone is looking at us. We know nothing St. John the Baptist no less than to those of him. When we went into the room, we of Mantegna’s Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, looked around. We saw him, his picture Watteau’s Pierrot, Warhol’s Mick Jagger, hanging on the wall. He is there looking Freud’s Girl with a Kitten, an Ife queen, at us. We can tell that he has been there or an Oba of Benin sculpted in wood or a long time. We had sensed his presence bronze. long before we had come across him. It is the gaze not of one man but of all men. We are objects of all these gazes that, It is our gaze as much as anyone else’s. beyond time, point to the human being. We approach the painting Portrait of the Artist. Van Gogh did it in the fall of 1887. What do they come to throw into The brushstrokes are heavy. Blows. The sky confusion? What portions of our reality do is threatening. A blue night of the spirit in they approach? the center of which shines a bright sun. On the man’s forehead. The bright light strikes They question us. They question the past, us the way the gaze strikes us. It comes the present, the future. They give us a place from inside. It comes from the blood. With in history as human beings. They foist a the blood is violence. We are no longer responsibility on us: that of the world, the spectators. We are those being questioned. world of which Heidegger speaks: “that is, Those of whom a gesture is expected. the constantly changing cycle of decision Speech. We are a jumble of ourselves and and work, of action and responsibility, but of this man on the canvas. Of this alien also of arbitrariness and turmoil, decay who strips us of our selves and ties us to all and confusion” (Heidegger 2000, 56). other faces, to that of Leonardo da Vinci’s 5 Introduction We have given a name—sustainable mongers, huge advertising campaigns that development—to our responsibility wrap all policies, all trades, all businesses, in this Heideggerian world. An oft- and all consumer goods in green have repeated expression whose music we no stripped it of its significance. We thought longer hear. An expression so seemingly we could disregard its essence. The self-sufficient it has lost all meaning. ontological foundations that govern it The turmoil of debates, the shouts of were put aside. alarm from environmental disaster Outline This paper shows how culture is intrinsic to sustainable development and why the conception and application of sustainable development require culture. It shows how, through this cultural approach, we can, from a perspective of sustainable development, understand and craft the market. We will begin by reviewing the birth of the expression “sustainable development.” This review of the terms and the major debates recurring in international treaties and academic texts will show the way the role of culture has been revealed (1). To conceptualize the role played by culture, the need for culture, and to show how it has inspired and guided this dynamic throughout history, we then work from the point of view of art to shed light on its contribution to the very essence of sustainable development (2). This approach will enable us to foresee changes in the markets that portend ever-greater societal responsibilities (3). We will conclude with the romising role of culture, art particularly, in contemporary debate, in the development of our societies most generally, and that pertaining to the market and to consumer practices (4). We attempt to write under the gaze of the artist. We attempt to encounter him, over periods, styles, and tastes, throughout our work. We offer to the reader, as to the artist, this essay on culture, art, society, economics, and consumption in the wonder of being in the world. 6 1. Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development The ambition is clear: to decide on and durable, stable, solid). It is a recent term for create the new reality we are seeking. an old idea. A stone that philosophies and This ambition is known as “sustainable religions have been polishing for centuries; development.” An expression whose art tries out its forms, praises it, opposes it; essence must be looked at before the it shapes it at the junction of the mind, the circumstances of its appearance in polity, heart, and the senses. the bounds it has been assigned, and the emergence of the culture that has gradually The noun développement first appeared in been imposed on it can be examined.