Attended the seminar “Canon of Classics” at The University of Southern Denmark, Odense.

Consumption is taking center stage as a subject of study in multiple disciplines, including sociology and anthropology among others.  Marketing and consumer research disciplines, along with economics, which had claimed consumption studies as their terrain, are both energized and challenged by this new interest in consumption.  The purpose of this workshop is to critically investigate some of the key classics that constitute the foundation for many of the current perspectives in consumer research. Authors covered during the seminar include but is not restricted to Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Jürgen Habermas, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins. The learning goals of the seminar are on the one hand to provide a basic academic education for doctoral candidates within some of the major founding texts behind the current work of consumer culture theorists. On the other hand, the goal is also to demonstrate the relevance of general and classical theory for the specific empirical projects and contexts of the doctoral students.

Therefore, the program includes three major types of tutoring: 1) lecturing from the faculty on the canon of classics, 2) dialogues where faculty and students elaborate on the relationship between the bodies of theory covered and specific applications in contemporary consumer research and the students’ own projects. The seminar covers classical works and authors within a multitude of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, critical theory and philosophy.

Faculty: Søren Askegaard, Jeff B. Murray, Eric Arnould, Dannie Kjeldgaard, Matthias Bode, Benoît Heilbrunn, Per Østergaard and Craig J. Thompson.