(International Library of Sociology) Celia Lury - Brands_ The Logos of the Global Economy-Routledge (2004)

dimensions along which the substitutability of goods may be established.
The management of relations between these attributes is what produces
the brand. The suggestion to be developed in this book is that this
management provides the basis for the controlled re-introduction of
quality into the means of exchange.4 Second, these and other attributes
are at the same time both concrete (instantiated in specific products and
services) and part of an abstract object, the dynamic unity of the
organisation of relations between products in time. The brand is thus
simultaneously both concrete and abstract. Another way of putting this
is to say that the contrast being drawn is that while price—through
representation—leads the economy back to the daily world, the brand
comprises (some of) the world itself (Kwinter, 2001:44).
In the approach outlined here, the question of the logos of the economy
takes on a particular importance, where ‘logos’ is taken to mean not
simply the signs or slogans that mark brands, but the kind of thought or
rationality that organises the economy. Economists have long taken as a
central concern the organisation of a rational economic order, and some
of the most dominant
page_5
Page 6
economic perspectives today rely upon a notion of a calculating,
selfinterested individual to embody this rationality. This reliance has
been criticised by sociologists and others who have sought to
(re-)introduce the social—frequently understood as value, meaning or
culture—into what are seen as restricted accounts of the rationality of
the agents of the economy. This book suggests that the brand is an
alternative or supplement to the rational order reason, or ‘logos’ of the
economy established by price and is thus an example of an object of the
economy that is already a matter of value. In particular, it is an example
of an object that opens up how it is that the economy is organised, and
does so in ways which introduce qualitative intensivity into the
extensive but limited rationality of a conventional market economy of
price.
The brand as new media object
In the approach that Callon adopts—sometimes called Actor Network
Theory (or ANT)—technological devices or objects are seen as ‘image
instruments’ or as ‘media of translation’ (Latour, 1987; Callon, 1986;
Law, 1984). This book adopts this approach in relation to a sociological
account of the economy. However, it also elaborates the notions of
image, information and medium, which are sometimes left implicit in
ANT. After all, the brand stands at the intersection of the diverse
histories of computing, information technology and media as well as