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This article has been published in: Ocula 16, Semiotics of Economic Discourse

author: Tiziana Barone (Dipartimento di Comunicazione e Ricerca sociale, Università di Roma La Sapienza (IT))

Countertendencies in the retail and the new millennium crisis

language: italian

abstract: Just like Language and Kinship Relations, Economy is an effective system in which the relations between its various components make up and transform the components themselves. Such systematic relationships have a narrative nature because the subjects who take part in this system construct, deconstruct and reconstruct their identities in relation to other people with whom they are in contact in a sometimes contractual, sometimes controversial way. In this system of signification two different forms of human experience interact: the sensitive dimension (economic and productive practices) and the intelligible one (concerning the economic values of a brand). In recent years the ongoing economic crisis has provoked a particular countertendency in a key area of the economic system such as retailing.
If we apply narrativity as an explanatory principle, we may interpret the crisis as a sort of Anti-Subject whose narrative programme clashes with that of the company (considered as the Subject): the latter will implement programmes that will allow it to be separated from the Actant-Object, namely the failure of the company. Some of these tactics involve the closure of retail outlets and the general reduction of costs, through the use of web resourcesand social campaigns. The economic environment and the subjective experiences are thus modified; there is a variation in trends definition concerning the way in which they are received and accepted. The trend identifies an emerging micro-universe “capable of bringing together attitudes and behaviours” (Ceriani, 2007) which extends transversely; a continuous tension between existing values and uses of society which pursue the same rate of mutation.

citation information: Tiziana Barone, Controtendenza del retail nella crisi del nuovo millennio, "Ocula", vol.16, n.16, December 2015. DOI: 10.12977/ocula42

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