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Morris B. Holbrook & Elizabeth C. Hirschman: The semiotics of consumption. Interpreting symbolic consumer behaviour in popular culture and work of arts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1993. ISBN 311-013491-8, 365 pp. DEM 188.00.
This book is a collection of articles published earlier by Holbrook and Hirschman in various contexts and now assembled in this book. There is nothing really new to find here, but this does not make the book uninteresting, since it gives a good insight into the theoretical development of consumer behaviour research, which Holbrook and Hirschman represented from 1986 to 1991.
Chapter 1 starts with an exposition of the epistemological foundation for the study of consumer aesthetics according to Holbrook and Hirschman. This implies that aesthetics can be understood only through the study of signs. Now, it is not any theory of the study of signs that can be the basis of Holbrook and Hirschman's analyses. Holbrook and Hirschman reflect upon the epistemological foundation for the study of signs and the French inspired semiology becomes the point of origin. The American founded semiotics are left on neopositivism's dumping ground, since a restricted and rigid semiotic analysis does not fit with Holbrook and Hirschman's often radical intentions.
In Chapter 2 we are presented with a number of Hirschman's more or less well-known analyses in relation to movies and TV. The provocative and interesting analyses of the soap operas "Dallas" and "Dynasty" are excellent examples of how Hirschman breaks with traditional "mainstream" consumer research. It is shown how these famous TV-series...