Buying and Believing : Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in a Transnational World

Book Description
Advertising is a central part of the global system of commerce and culture. Every day it exposes consumers around the world to practices associated with the West, urban life, prosperity, and modernity. One consequence of this exposure is that it frees people's imaginations from time and place, and imposes a new and foreign reality. In this book Steven Kemper looks at a parallel trend, arguing that advertising firms in Nairobi, Caracas, and Colombo also domesticate the imagination, insinuating images into people's minds of the traditional as well as the modern, the local as much as the global.

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted over thirty years, Kemper examines the Sri Lankan advertising industry to show how executives draw on their skills as folk ethnographers to "Sri Lankanize" commodities and practices to make them locally desirable, essentially producing new forms of Sri Lankan culture. Addressing many of the most pressing agendas of contemporary anthropology, Buying and Becoming breaks new ground in studies of culture and globalization.





From the Inside Flap
Every day advertising exposes consumers around the world to practices associated with the West, urban life, prosperity, and modernity. At least, that's usually how we think of it. Here Steven Kemper investigates how the Sri Lankan advertising industry uses these practices. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted over thirty years, Kemper shows how executives in Kuala Lumpur and Colombo use their skills as folk ethnographers to domesticate commodities and practices, essentially producing new forms of culture. Addressing many of the most pressing agendas of contemporary anthropology and providing one of the first anthropological perspectives on advertising, Buying and Believing presents a groundbreaking account of advertising and consumption that is both transnational and ethnographic.



About the Author
Steven Kemper is a professor of anthropology at Bates College. He is the author of numerous journal articles on Sinhala society and Buddhism and of the book, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life.



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Advertising is a central part of the global system of commerce and culture. Every day it exposes consumers around the world to practices associated with the West, urban life, prosperity, and modernity. One consequence of this exposure is that it frees people's imaginations from time and place, and imposes a new and foreign reality. In this book Steven Kemper looks at a parallel trend, arguing that advertising firms in Nairobi, Caracas, and Colombo also domesticate the imagination, insinuating images into people's minds of the traditional as well as the modern, the local as much as the global.

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted over thirty years, Kemper examines the Sri Lankan advertising industry to show how executives draw on their skills as folk ethnographers to "Sri Lankanize" commodities and practices to make them locally desirable, essentially producing new forms of Sri Lankan culture. Addressing many of the most pressing agendas of contemporary anthropology, Buying and Becoming breaks new ground in studies of culture and globalization.


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