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==== Culture and Consumption ====
==== Culture and Consumption ====


Two volumes, ''Culture and Consumption'' (1988) and ''Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management'' (2005), setting out an account of goods as carriers of cultural meaning rather than as satisfactions of need. The premise is that meaning moves from the culturally constituted world into consumer goods through advertising and fashion, and from goods into the lives of individuals through possession, exchange, grooming, and divestment rituals.
He published two volumes ''Culture and Consumption'' (1988) and ''Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management'' (2005), setting out an account of goods as carriers of cultural meaning rather than as satisfactions of need. The premise is that meaning moves from the culturally constituted world into consumer goods through advertising and fashion, and from goods into the lives of individuals through possession, exchange, grooming, and divestment rituals.


McCracken coined this term The Diderot effect.<ref name="wikipedia" /> It names the pattern in which acquiring a single new possession triggers a cascade of further acquisitions, because the new object makes surrounding objects look inadequate by comparison and pulls the whole set toward a new level of consistency. The name comes from Denis Diderot's essay on the regret occasioned by his new dressing gown, which obliged him to replace everything else in his study.
McCracken coined this term The Diderot effect.<ref name="wikipedia" /> It names the pattern in which acquiring a single new possession triggers a cascade of further acquisitions, because the new object makes surrounding objects look inadequate by comparison and pulls the whole set toward a new level of consistency. The name comes from Denis Diderot's essay on the regret occasioned by his new dressing gown, which obliged him to replace everything else in his study.

Latest revision as of 20:32, 24 August 2026

Grant McCracken

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Biography

Grant David McCracken, born 1951, Canadian anthropologist and author known for his work on culture and commerce.[1] He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.[1] He lives in Rowayton, Connecticut.[1]

He founded and directed the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he mounted the first museum exhibition on youth cultures.[1][2] He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.[3] He was an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and of the Berkman Center at Harvard, and a member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT.[3][1] He was also an adjunct professor at McGill.[4]

He has consulted for Coca-Cola, IKEA, Chrysler, Kraft, Kodak, Kimberly-Clark, Timberland, Diageo, Nike, Google, Netflix, Sony, Delta, State Farm, IBM, PBS, Reddit, Sesame Street, the New York Historical Society, the Ford Foundation, and the Obama White House.[4][5] He appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in a home-makeover episode, paired with a New York designer.[6]

He writes the blog This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics at cultureby.com.[4]

Projects

Culture and Consumption

He published two volumes Culture and Consumption (1988) and Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management (2005), setting out an account of goods as carriers of cultural meaning rather than as satisfactions of need. The premise is that meaning moves from the culturally constituted world into consumer goods through advertising and fashion, and from goods into the lives of individuals through possession, exchange, grooming, and divestment rituals.

McCracken coined this term The Diderot effect.[1] It names the pattern in which acquiring a single new possession triggers a cascade of further acquisitions, because the new object makes surrounding objects look inadequate by comparison and pulls the whole set toward a new level of consistency. The name comes from Denis Diderot's essay on the regret occasioned by his new dressing gown, which obliged him to replace everything else in his study.

A single new object with a distinct material vocabulary can obsolete an entire room of otherwise functional equipment.

Chief Culture Officer

His eighth book, published by Basic Books in 2009, 261 pages.[7] The argument is that corporations need a senior manager working on culture full time, someone tracking both fast-moving surface trends and slower structural currents, so that the organization can register changes while they are still weak signals.[3] He examines cases including the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and the I Love New York campaign.[7] He has said he hopes the role becomes an occupational destination for arts and humanities graduates.[2]

The Long Interview

Published 1988. A short methods manual on the extended qualitative interview, still used as a teaching text in consumer research and design research.

He named an early warning system for social and cultural change The Griff.[5] He credits it with identifying the rise of Donald Trump, the decline of Second Life, and the disruption of consumer packaged goods by the artisanal movement.[5]

Convergence 2008

McCracken presented on culture and consumption at Convergence 2008, a conference of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, the research group directed by Henry Jenkins in the Department of Comparative Media Studies.

Books

  • The Long Interview (1988)
  • Culture and Consumption (1990)
  • Big Hair: A Journey into the Transformation of Self (1996)
  • Plenitude: Culture by Commotion (1997)
  • Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management (2005)
  • Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace (2006)
  • Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (2008)
  • Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation (2009)
  • Culturematic (2012, Harvard Business Review Press)
  • Dark Value (2016)
  • The New Honor Code (2020)
  • Return of the Artisan (2022)[1]

Reception

Chief Culture Officer drew a sharp review in Bookforum, which characterized the proposed role as a way of gathering what already exists rather than generating anything, and questioned the substitution of cultural surveillance for ideas.[6] Philip Kotler praised the same book for combining marketing, culture, anthropology, and business practice.[3]

Further Reading

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Grant McCracken, Wikipedia.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Grant McCracken bio, Executive Speakers Bureau.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Chief Culture Officer, author biography, Amazon.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 From Cool Hunters to Chief Culture Officers: An Interview with Grant McCracken, Henry Jenkins.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Grant McCracken, Matt Artz.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Brand Plays On, Bookforum.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chief Culture Officer, Wikipedia.
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