Business Events as Mirrors, Models and Laboratories of Social Imaginaries: The Paradox of Suffering in Ritualized Contexts

Laura Litre Valentin ()
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Laura Litre Valentin: ESCP Europe - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris

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Abstract: If painful or disappointing experiences generally drive consumers away, the results of a recent study about the experience of participants attending big fairs and trade shows reveal that suffering, whether physical, psychological or moral, stems from ambivalent experiences and is massively accepted with resignation. This article seeks to understand why suffering is still accepted in the overwhelming contexts of business events while it destroys the experiential and economic value, and to explore which alternative scenario could be imagined. Drawing on anthropology, sociology and social psychology literature, as well as on history and philosophy, this multi-sited ethnography sheds light on the nature of business events. We call to see them as secular rituals that perpetuate social orders and asymmetries, simultaneously endowed with the power to operate social imaginaries transformations.

Keywords: Business Events; Rituals; Social Imaginaries; Ill-being; Well-being; Public Spheres (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06-25
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://normandie-univ.hal.science/hal-04308956v1
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Published in Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2020: Interrogating Social Imaginaries, Georgios Patsiaouras, James Fitchett and AJ Earley (Eds.), Jun 2020, Leicester, United Kingdom

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