Cultural Mediations of Brands

Introduction to Part 3

“Culture is a paradoxical commodity. So completely is it subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. Therefore it amalgamates with advertising. The more meaningless the latter seems to be under a monopoly, the more omnipotent it becomes.”

(Adorno and Horkheimer 1974)

Cultural mediations are as much the emanation of authority as the elements of its constitution. Embedded in communication processes, they are fundamental in the modeling of public relations.

Bourricaud’s research on authority in political science and Lamizet’s work in ICS on cultural mediation converge on the question of the foundations of authority and culture. The first emphasizes the importance of consensus in authority.

Belonging to a collective consciousness, that is, to the same “culture” (Bourricaud 1969, p. 15) acts as a ferment of a foundational consensus of authority and does not appear to be a constraint. Education and cultural mediations promote such a shared awareness.

As Bourricaud emphasizes the role of collective consciousness, Lamizet refers to a “social consciousness” (Lamizet 1999, pp. 11–12). It emerges in situations of representation, a representation that “transforms the place in which it takes place into a public space of sociability” (Lamizet 1999, p. 32), the place of committed social practices. Thus:

Cultural practices constitute a form of symbolic citizenship in the political field ...