La "scoperta" del consumatore etnico. I rituali del marketing: comunicAzione, conoscenza e potere.

The present essay is the result of an ethnographic research, carried out through participant observation and interviews from September 2005 to September 2006 in the Milan branch of Etnocom, first – and unique so far – Italian communication agency operating in multicultural marketing (ethnomarketing). The research takes an interactionist, constructivist perspective, focusing not so much on organizations considered as basically stable, but on the social processes which inform their action (organizing); it inquires into the processes that inspire the everyday life of organizations operating in the professional communication field. The core of the research deals with the working activity of a group of professionals operating in the multicultural marketing: it was from that activity that originated and shaped the ethnomarketing business. However ethnomarketing is studied mainly for its capacity to emphasize dynamics and processes that pass the limit of its own professional sphere; it also helps to better understand the background of this new – for Italy – type of marketing. In other words, the study of ethnomarketing – in its embryonic stages – helps to emphasize and get a clearer idea of the implicit conditions and the social processes that permeate traditional marketing. Furthermore, the organizations of professional communication are a breeding ground of imagination and (scraps of) meaning, which many people will make use of in order to build and interpret the world they are living in. Thus, those who work in such organizations act as social workers, whether they are aware of it or not. Considering that today’s power shows itself in its capacity to control both language and imagination, if such power is concerned in the way the meaning of communication is produced and received, the observation and the research into the professional communication organizations afford a great many starting points for investigating into the complex connections between knowledge, communication and power.