Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes a cross-disciplinary focus: they look from interpretive marketing, media and hermeneutic psychological studies' perspectives, their analytical 'horizons of understanding', towards audiences and consumer-citizen research. It draws on the philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur to outline a hermeneutics of practices as embodied and equipped, tacitly assuming and anticipating while also articulating activity with public criteria of achieving. The book considers instances of our communication, consumer and cultural behaviour viewed in terms of hermeneutic practices theory. It also draws on hermeneutic concepts, discussing contributions from Gadamer and Ricoeur, establishing a philosophical platform from which to view our habitual behaviour and establishing its latent understanding of the world made manifest through our subsequent reflective awareness, albeit in focuses group discussion of choice. The book considers how this content and context are equally shaped by implementing a ubiquitous generic 'fore-understanding'.