ABSTRACT
Marketing is contemplating its End, in at least two senses of the word (Brown 1993; Brownlie and Saren 1992, 1995). Ruminations on its demise are unsurprising, since crisis and images of death are primal parts of our attempt at making sense of the world (Kermode 1967). Such apocalyptic visions occur with particular sharpness at fin de siècle times, not to mention towards the close of a millennium, which might explain the recent flurry of announcements of the End: of the world (Meadows et at . 1972); industrial society (Touraine 1974); capitalism (Lash and Urry 1987); the social (Baudrillard 1988); history (Fukuyama 1989); and work (Rifkin 1995). Latter-day predictions of marketing’s imminent downfall can be seen as prototypical of this phenomenon. Moreover, these declarations are singularly characteristic of modernity, with its passion for re-invention, for new Ends and new Beginnings. But histrionic proclamations of the End often fail to deliver on their promise of finality: for beneath the cloak of eschatological language is modernity’s ongoing teleological project of rampantly re-visioning the future. We prefer, therefore, to demur from the current discussion on the End of Marketing. Rather, we shall focus, in this chapter, on the End in Marketing. Here, we interpret End as meaning limit, extreme or margin, and, in particular, the extremes of the human condition. We posit that these extremes are pervasive in the market-place, which we view as a site where human limitations can be quite overtly articulated. This chapter, then, contributes to our understanding of market phenomena through a study of the complex inter-relationship between markets, exchange and the extreme.
