Working on Qualitative Research - Hermeneutics

Working On Qualitative Research: the Practices Perspective

consuming considered as a hermeneutic practice - a play-like project of producing participatory meaning

consuming in malls and media ‘ready-t0-hand’ (heidegger) tacit narrative building

Tony WilsonResearch Office & Business School,

Sunway University, [email protected]

Wednesday, 19 March 2014

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Projecting Meaning in the Practice of Consuming Marketing Media

Audiences reflect in present-at-hand interpreting (Heidegger) on the ‘complex’ use of narrative tools in their understanding branding.

'For me, the reality of investing in HSBC is as complex as how to understand the image', to 'capture' meaning (female Malay

respondent asked by a Chinese focus group facilitator: ‘Do you feel you can relate to the video?').

University of Science, Malaysia (USM) focus group viewing an HSBC Marketing Narrative (on YouTube social media)


How do we ‘understand the image’ (student) or ‘entities’ (Heidegger) ?

seeing is always culturally (in)formed seeing as: our basic awareness of entities is as equipment (‘tools’)

this philosophical psychology challenges empiricism - which underlies dominant marketing theory (e.g. Likert five point scale measuring attitudes to ‘objects’)

we perceive entities as types (genres) of equipment, expecting to use them accordingly to enable their/our potentiality-for-being: experience is future-oriented


The Project(ion) of Understanding-in-Practice(s) The Practice of Consuming Media

We engage in a play-like (ludic) ‘ready-to-hand’ (minimally monitored) managing of meaning: (i) projecting - from tacit ‘horizons of understanding’ entities as types of ‘equipment’; (ii) producing - integrating narrative ‘projection’ (embodied expectation) with events;

(iii) participating - (dis)enabling generic modes of ‘being-with-others’. ‘Being is projected upon ( ... ) significance’ [Heidegger: Being and Time (1962), 187] (1962),187]


The Project of Understanding

Marketing Media and Malls • Visiting malls and media, people engage in tacit play-like

managing meaning - the goal is making sense. Albeit with attenuated attention to this hermeneutic practice, visitors:

(i) project - anticipate eventuality from their ‘horizons of understanding’ entities as types of ‘equipment’/‘tool’ (Zeug);

(ii) produce - intelligibility, as audiences/ authors integrating embodied expectation of equipment with event in their ‘hermeneutic circle of understanding’-in-use;(iii) participate - through (i) & (ii), (dis)enabling generic modes of (digitally, materially) ‘being-with-others’.



Practices as Play-Like Projects(in constructing meaning)

The participatory embodied management of projections incorporates a

productive hermeneutic circle of understanding. Expectations are confirmed or changed, secured or subverted by reference to events.

The Practice of Choosing Apples as Constructing Meaning

‘Let’s say, a simple one: apples. Maybe the apples look the same to the guys (laughter). No offence. But, we, we, we pick the apple that looks nicer with no flaws. ( ... ) Like this apple looks fresher. Something like this. Normally, they would say, “it’s just the same. Just grab and go.”’ (female Chinese student mall visitor addressing a focus group)


‘Ready-to-Hand’ Behaviour Building Narrative, ‘Presented-at-Hand’ for Focus Group Discussion.

In Heidegger’s technical terms, this youthful mall consumer primordia!y (primarily) understands entities everywhere as equipment. She enters the supermarket from this horizon of understanding, thus (with little reflection until the focus group) producing a narrative inscribed in her behaviour of seeking fruit ‘with no flaws’, participatory activity which shapes a mode of being-with-others (‘the guys’, who ‘just grab and go’!) This tacit ready-to-hand understanding - here presented-at-hand in a focus group - informs her selective behaviour as a narrative open to reading by observers.


‘Propagating’ a Youthful ‘Taste Regime‘

• The practice of choosing apples exercises expectation, or ‘fore-understanding’, integrating anticipation with actuality. Should this young person be asked to further unpack her idea of apples with ‘no flaws’, she could well engage in an abstracting or secondary account of such a fruit as being an object with qualities (e.g. its having a colour and shape).

• Presented-at-hand, this discourse delineates a ‘taste regime’ -it ‘propagates a shared understanding of aesthetic order that shapes the ways people use objects and deploy the meanings associated with the material’ (Arsel and Bean, 2013: 900). Projecting meaning produces a mode of participation.


A Hermeneutic Practices Perspective in Consumer Research

- - - ‘fore-grounding’ pre-reflective horizons of understanding from which meaning in consumer practices is tacitly projected, (e.g. in walking), produced and positioned in participation.

Another female Chinese student told us in our study: ‘Basically, I expect good security from the mall.‘ Located on a shared horizon of understanding the mall, she projects place as equipped behaviour. Inscribed across her behaviour (e.g. in slowly strolling) will be embodied narrative, integrating her anticipation and achievement (hopefully!) - in this immersive mode of being-with-others or participation.


Mall Consuming as Doubly Ludic

• Considered as hermeneutic practice - embodied projecting narrative meaning - for the young people considered in this research, visiting the Sunway Pyramid Mall is doubly ludic: (i) tacitly producing a participatory understanding of events; (ii) thematically playful (e.g. at the Lagoon Leisure Park).

• Recommendation: addressing audiences in marketing media needs to recognise the multiple ludicity of consumption.


Ludic Themes in Hermeneutic Practices Consumer Projects of Narrative Building

Sunway University Student Focus Group ‘Open’ Questions on Visiting Pyramid Mall: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ‘Tell us about the times when you are in the mall.’ ‘Do you have a visit that you particularly like, particularly memorable?’ ‘What would you comment ( ... ) that you like about (the mall)? And what would you criticise about the mall?’ ‘Anything concerning the way I’ve been asking questions?’ (convener’s emphasis).

Ludic themes in student responses (transcribed after repeated listening): -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A female Chinese visitor to the mall has a sense of ‘belonging ( ... ) feels like the (sic) second home’. Unlike the primary white colours of a classroom (work), in this mall’s space for consuming, ‘warm colours ( ... ) feel comfortable’. We visit the mall, ‘just because we want to relax’ (female, Chinese). So enabled by the cinema, male Chinese participants assert, ‘usually we go for movie(s) and dining’,‘extra time only, we go shop around’: equally, ‘one of the reasons I usually come (here) is because there’s always a movie screening.’ (female, Chinese) ‘Sometimes, (I) accompany friends ( ... ) we go together.’ (male, Chinese) Generation can be a gathering point of recognition: ‘I usually see people among our age.’ (female, Chinese)


Understanding the Mall as a ‘Second Home’, ‘Third Place’ for Play

• Malls as ‘Hangouts at the Heart of a Community’ (Oldenburg) - ludic characteristics of these ‘second homes’, ‘third places‘ -

• ‘It is the regulars ( ... ) who feel at home in (such) a place and set the tone of conviviality’ (34). The ‘mood is playful’ (37). Oldenburg notes ‘play occurs in a place apart’ (38). A third place is a ‘home away from home’ (1999, 38).

• Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (2nd edition). New York: Marlowe and Company.


Youthful ‘Fore-Understanding’ (Heidegger) the Mall as ‘Third Place’ (Oldenburg) or ‘Second Home’ (Student) for Play

Thematic responses in the focus group suggest in their practice of visiting the Sunway Pyramid Mall, students enter from a cultural horizon of understanding this massive place as their ‘second home’: (i) projecting in behaviour the tacit expectation that they will ‘feel comfortable’, with the mall ‘equipment’ (e.g warm colours) enabling them to (ii) produce a narrative of ‘relaxed’ ‘belonging’. There is skilled managing of (iii) participatory experience: ‘When we are going for food, (the guys) will definitely join (us).’


Interpretive Focus Group Reflection on Consumer Practice (1)Revising the Projection of Marketed Meaning

(Fore-Sight/ Fore-Understanding)

A Petronas oil marketing video showed only a hedge, to the sound of a Tamil song, followed by ‘a hidden guy standing up’, the ‘visual of the Chinese guy cutting’: ‘when he came upright, at first I said "is it?" You know,"what is it?" (intense indecipherable speech and group laughter) I thought "Oh. OK." But I think normal, lah ( ... ) but not many Chinese can sing (Tamil) so fluently ( ... ). So I guess it makes sense, lah. OK. And I took time over understanding it' (speaker’s emphasis)

(female Chinese student @ Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman -

response to being prompted to give an account of events on screen).


Interpretive Focus Group Reflection on Consumer Practice (2) An Absent Generic Horizon of Understanding ‘Service’ Narrative

(‘normally’ marked out by a brand ‘logo’ or ‘icon’) from which to project (‘expect’) meaning (‘at first’)

‘Normally the handphone telecommunication service video will have many logos or icons such as the Yellow Man in Digi video, but I can’t find any Maxis logo or icon during the video except the last part, so at first I can’t expect that it is a Maxis video.’

[female Indian respondent in a focus group on telco YouTube

marketing (University Malaysia Sarawak student project)]


Interpretive Focus Group Reflection on Consumer Practice (3)Revising a Hermeneutic Circle of Understanding Marketing

Watching a ‘middle-aged man showing his car key to his wife (it’s like flaunting his new car to his wife)’, a male Chinese contributor formed an

initial anticipatory vision of probable ‘car-sale’ marketing on screen. Hence, watching the video’s subsequent stories about ‘people conversing

through mobile phones’, he found this services narrative ‘really surprising’. Turning back in a hermeneutic circle of understanding, with the goal of articulating a coherent content, he retraced his epistemic path

of making sense to see (real-ise) telco media marketing.

[extracts, focus group contribution, University of Malaysia Sarawak student project using Maxis (telco) Media Marketing Narrative

(on YouTube social media)]


THE ‘COMPLEX’ PRACTICE OF CONSUMING OR ‘MINDING ABOUT’ (HEIDEGGER) MALLS AND MEDIA

(1) Narrative Projection (‘fore-sight "takes the first cut"’)of (mall, media) meaning, engaging with entities from a

(2) Horizon of Understanding (‘fore-conception’) ‘with a view to a definite way in which this (equipment)

can be interpreted' in a (3) Hermeneutic Circle of Understanding as (dis)enabling

a mode of ‘being-with-others’.[Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), p. 191]



Acknowledgement

Thanks for listening to (my attempt to) make intelligible ‘making intelligible’!

A co-authored April conference paper -’Being as Becoming’ - which further considers consumers in Sunway Pyramid Mall can be located in Conference Items, Sunway Institutional Repository @ Tun Hussein Onn Library.

[email protected]
