Iain MacRury

Drivers of attitudes toward luxury brands

Purpose – Limited attention has been paid to the cultural influences on the formation of consumer attitudes toward luxury brands (LUX). The purpose of this paper is to investigate this relationship by developing a model that additionally employs the constructs of susceptibility to normative interpersonal influence (SNII) and brand consciousness (BCO). Design/methodology/approach – Sample data were gathered through surveys administered to 383 college students in the UK and Taiwan. The model of cultural influences on attitudes toward luxury brands was empirically tested using multi-group structural equation modeling to evaluate its applicability across the two countries. Findings – Results are presented in two parts: first, the exogenous construct part of the model establishing the reliability and validity of the cultural dimension constructs (horizontal individualism, vertical individualism, horizontal collectivism, and vertical collectivism) that are antecedent to consumer SNII and 2) the endogenous part ...

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012*

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socio-economic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Cost-benefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games.

Re-thinking the Legacy 2012: the Olympics as commodity and gift

This paper opens discussion about the nature of Olympic ‘legacy’ and articulates a contradiction in the way ‘legacy’ is conceived - between ’gift’ and ’commodity’ (Mauss 1954).The The paper argues that establishing working definitions and parameters for ‘legacy’ is a difficult task. Defining ‘legacy’ is problematic especially if conceived as an entirely predictable or measurable set of objectives. Indeed, the definition of ‘legacy’ is partly constitutive of the legacy itself, a component of achievements that the city might make. Such a ‘legacy definition’ will become a functional term in the complex planning and evolving conceptions underpinning urban change for some time—if successfully negotiated and if governable. As such, ‘legacy’, and the activities and values entailed to it, can come to provide a catalytic ‘vocabulary of motives’ and a legitimating discourse enabling politicians, communities and their individual representatives to justify investments, evolving strategies and activities connected to and connecting developmental gains in a more or less healthy fashion. It is because of this that legacy and its various meanings come to matter.

Humour as ‘social dreaming’: Stand-up comedy as therapeutic performance

Stand-up comedy binds dramatic cultural spectacle to ritualised, intimate exposure. Examining ‘case’ examples from live comic performance, this paper describes stand-up as a kind of social dreaming. The article proposes a theoretical frame drawing on Thomas Ogdens notion of ‘talking as dreaming’ and psychoanalytic accounts connecting humour and melancholia. Locating the stand-up comedians propensity for humour in a specialist capacity to hone, display and process traumata, the paper characterises stand-up as a performative oscillation evoking paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. A psychosocial gloss places stand-up as a cultural resource in the service of the popular-as-therapeutic. The paper articulates complementarities between Henri Bergsons formulations on the function of laughter and an emergent object relations account in order to help to recognise ‘containing’ and ‘cultural-restorative’ aspects of much stand-up, understood as contemporary psychosocial ritual.

Branding the Games: Commercialism and the Olympic City

This chapter examines the role of branding and sponsorship in the Olympic games - with particular reference to the urban. The chapter identifies tensions between Olympic values, branding activities and a projected legacy. The chapter offers a social-theoretical account of the Olympic brand to analyisis on :London2012. It is a contributiuon to wider analysis in a book drawing upon historical, cultural, economic and socio-demographic perspectives. Olympic Cities examines the role of London hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a means to promote urban regeneration and social renewal in East London.

The inner world of Doctor Who: Psychoanalytic reflections in time and space

As Doctor Who approaches its fiftieth anniversary recent series have taken the show to new heights in terms of popular appeal and critical acclaim.The Doctor and his TARDIS-driven adventures, along with companions and iconic monsters, are now recognised and enjoyed globally. The time is ripe for a detailed analytic assessment of this cultural phenomenon. Focussing on the most recent television output The Inner World of Doctor Who examines why the show continues to fascinate contemporary audiences. Presenting closely-observed psychoanalytic readings of selected episodes, this book examines why these stories of time travel, monsters, and complex human relationships have been successful in providing such an emotionally rich dramatization of human experience. The Inner World of Doctor Who seeks to explore the multiple cultural and emotional dimensions of the series, moving back and forth from behind the famous sofa, where children remember hiding from scary monsters, and onto the proverbial psychoanalytic couch. The approach that the authors take recognizes the richness that Doctor Who contains, episode by episode and in its culture and mythos, in order to show how Doctor Who adventures can be appreciated in the acknowledgement that both sofa and couch provide lively places from which to enjoy the stories as they continue to unfold for the next fifty years.

Olympic Turnaround: How the Olympic Games Stepped Back from the Brink of Extinction to Become the World’s Best Known Brand - and a Multibillion Dollar Global Franchise

A notable moment in the 1993 film adaptation of Kasuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day comes when Lewis, a wealthy American dinner party guest, pillories a table full of European aristocrats. The party, a group reminiscent in habitus and preoccupation with Pierre de Coubertin’s foundational International Olympic Committee (IOC), is taken aback. Lewis throws up his hands at their meddling in the serious business of global diplomacy, as it turns out, hurtling into World War II: