ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book examines an ethnographic account of doing anthropology in practice. It represents working knowledge, not perfect knowledge. In 1995, in Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior, John Sherry observed that if it was a propitious time for anthropologists given the interest in ethnography in marketing domains, it was also a crucial time in the marketing of anthropology. Project by project, success is achieving mutual intelligibility between the discourse of marketing and the goals of cultural analysis. Thus, if anthropology and academic consumer research are to have a voice in the practice of consumer research, we still need to reattach cultural analysis to ethnographic as well as other research in marketing practice. Ethnography and related research practices will continue on as misused terms and co-opted techniques. Anthropology will be rendered by the market in ways that trivialize, marginalize, and exoticize it.
