ABSTRACT
Globalized capitalism is currently disintegrating, but there is nothing on the horizon to immediately replace it. This book has sought to re-politicize the study of marketing communications in order to not only diagnose some defining and harmful characteristics of our present moment but also demonstrate some of the ways in which marketing communications keeps globalized capitalism ticking over for the time being. And it is marketing communication’s ability to uphold this interregnum is its dark side, since it prevents alternative, more equitable, and morally just systems of ordering social life from developing. Of all actors, it is the individual consumer that marketing and consumer research has paid most attention to when trying to understand how radical alternative futures may be created. Marketing and consumer researchers describe how indignant and motivated consumers can target specific organizations. One certainty is that marketing has been slow to engage the critical lens in comparison with the parts of the academy.
