I am still not on board with the rhetorical framing of this point “hey, stop doing case studies.” My first reason is that the misunderstanding which Eric highlights is bound to happen. My sense from the CCT5 session is that the majority of the room interpreted “no case studies” in a manner more consistent with my earlier reservation. Also, I believe that Rob took away a more methodological restrictive implication. So, I think no case studies admonition is not an effective communication device because it has to come with so many caveats and qualifications.

My second reservation is that I continue to believe that this a rhetorical gesture from a prior discursive moment in the CCT tradition. When we were developing this paper, as with our original CCT paper, we took a lot of cues from what was being published and in this case, the cues were that CCT is clearly moving toward a more actor-network oriented ontology. To elaborate, let’s take the brand gestalt via American girl analysis [full cite Diamond, Nina, John F. Sherry, Jr., Albert Muñiz, Robert V. Kozinets, and Stefania Borghini (2008), “American Girl and the Brand Gestalt: Closing the Loop on Socio-Cultural Branding Research,” Journal of Marketing, 73 (May), 118-134.]. This paper is a great exemplar of ongoing theoretical turn toward a network view (and interestingly applied to branding) but it is not a stand-alone harbinger. Rob’s analysis of technological fields (based on interviews with I believe 7 consumers) offered a network view of consumers-technology relationships. My work with Gokcen Coskuner-Balli on countervailing market systems (in the context of community supported agriculture) exhibited this kind of network perspective as did Markus Giesler’s analysis of the historical shaping of a market system (downloadable music) by dramatic narrative structures. The work I did with Zeynep Arsel on the hegemonic brandscapes and Doppelganger Brand Images (again based on the analysis of Starbucks) had a similar orientation. McAlexander, Schouten, and Koneig (2002) Journal of Marketing study of building brand communities displays the same network orientation. Jean Sebastian Marcoux’s recent JCR on consumers seeking to flee the gift economy has a network perspective. Amber Epp’s recent work on family identity and their use of possessions is explicitly framed as a network orientation. Ashlee Humphrey’s has recent papers in JCR and JM which are steeped in a network world-view.

So, I suggest that the normative proscriptions should be stated in a more positive manner as in look at what makes these papers so interesting and innovative. This papers are setting the cutting edge, do more work like this. That we can avoid restrictive pronouncement that can be misunderstood; that fail to give credit to all the researchers (and many new assistants who are bringing beau coup talent to this area of inquiry) who ARE doing network oriented work as a matter of course; and that fails prey into the very kind of thinking that Eric and I railed against in our 2005 CCT review piece: being overly obsessed on method. It is clear that Eric’s intent was not in that direction but the rhetorical gesture of saying “no cases studies” invariably invokes the anachronistic, neo-positivistic vernacular of the natural inquiry era.
So, I am going to contradict myself be making my own definitive pronouncement. It is time to stop framing our discussions in terms of neo-positivistic rhetoric. If we want to advance a network ontology, then we need a network epistemology. I have read enough Bruno LaTour, and interact with enough sociologists who are implementing those ideas in their field work, to feel confident in saying that devout actor-network theorists, would have collective apoplectic fit (at the sound of “no case studies).”

Rob, sorry for hijacking your blog in this way but thank you so much for the opportunity to discuss these issues in this forum.

I just read Eric’s post and on this specific issue, we have some differences of opinion (which is totally cool, colleagues and friends can debate ideas without things getting personalized).

Since we are co-authoring, we will need to find a compromise position.

I personally would like to negotiate this difference in less public space but, like Michael Phelps learned through his infamous bong at the party scandal, in Web 2.0 the private is fully publicized and the genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

My overall impression is that Eric’s response is, though not entirely, a rhetorical gesture that hails from a prior positivistic framing of CCT via naturalistic inquiry, though spun in a more sophisticated way.

Let’s take Robert Harrison’s example. That was in some sense a case study of Black Friday. He may have had multiple retailers but it was focusing on specific event diffused across multiple outlets. And the impact of his analysis did not come from the multiple site per se but through the contrast to existing theory. As Eric notes, the hedonic/chaotic Dyonisian elements conflict with conventional notions of big middle retailers. That “extended case method” (see Michael Burawoy’s writings on the topic) is where the theoretical insight lies.

I completely disagree that single site or single event ethnographies are not good for generating theory. I would concur that there are certain kinds of theoretical claims that require multi-sites to tease out but that is far from being a general rule. Let us, not that this year’s winner of the Levy award (Luedicke, Marius, Craig Thompson, and Markus Giesler (2010), “Consumer
Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (April), 1016-1032, could technically be classified as a case study, though we investigated the Hummer brand across multiple inflections.

The empirical evidence points to the power of more case study oriented research for theory development (again appropriately framed and interpreted). For example, many people regard Doug Holt’s cultural capital paper as having had a huge influence on the field. Well, that was a single site study in an odd ball college town. The power lies in the way Doug was able to use that data to engage with the corpus of Bourdieuian theory.

It is clear to me that an indepth multi-year investment in a site (as Rob K. did with Burning man or Lisa Penaloza did with Western Stock shows) can allow for kinds of claims that can not be developed with multi-site “blitzkrieg” approaches (to poach a classic term that John Sherry used to critique the Odyssey’s 365 sites in 365 days approach).

Let’s note, that the quality of CCT analysis has significantly improved since we abandoned making pragmatic concessions to positivistic formulations of generalizability. WE DO NOT NEED TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK!!!!

I TOTALLY Disagree that it is getting harder to publish “case study” research. These matters are decided on a case by case basis (ironically enough). Zeynep Arsel dissertation paper for example moved through quickly and cleanly at JCR and it fits a case study profile (consumers of indie music in specific regional locale) and it sailed through because she used that case to challenge and enrich existing theorizations on the relationships between myth, identity, a cultural capital.

My response is going on too long but I think the overall mantra for cultural research should be too find ways to tell more interesting and challenging stories. If multi-site ethnographies serve that purpose for a given research project, fantastic but we should not elevate those particular situations to epistemological rules.

I am stunned that we are having this retrograde conversation in 2010.