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Feminist Theory
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Gender in the making of commercial worlds

Creativity, vitalism and the practices of marketing

Anne M. Cronin

Lancaster University, a.cronin{at}lancaster.ac.uk

If capitalism is being increasingly understood as performative and processual, and if these understandings are being folded into capitalism's production of itself, what place does gender have in performing the commercial world? This article argues that the significance of gender as genre or type has been overlooked in the recent literature on the performance of the market or market relations. While the role of economic theories and management practices in making markets has been examined, and the place of women in organizations has been explored, little attention has been paid to how gender as a productive process marks the creation and maintenance of market relations. Using material from a recent ethnographic study of the advertising industry, I examine how advertising practitioners incorporate vitalist understandings of market relations and of knowledge-producing activities into their practices. Framed as `creativity' and `innovation', these discursive practices perform what practitioners understand as a reproductive function in commercial life.

Key Words: advertising • capitalism • commercial autogenesis • creativity • innovation • market • reproduction • vitalism

Feminist Theory, Vol. 9, No. 3, 293-312 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1464700108095852
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