RESULTADOS OBTENIDOS TRAS LA PUESTA EN PRÁCTICA

Searches for meanings in a process of transition

Within culturalist research texts, goals of seeking quantifiable effects are relinquished. Instead, more complex ideas around the relationships of meanings and identities are explored. There was not a singular approach in the much

smaller culturalist body of work reviewed, but the projects are broadly identifiable as culturalist-interpretative in intent. This does not mean that all the culturalist research reviewed totally 'fits' with the positions identifiable in contemporary media frameworks. What is clear is that the shift towards more culturalist positions has not been a straightforward or complete process. Traditional thinking still has structuring effects in some projects, and in the research reviewed the difficulties of shifting paradigms were sometimes visible.

In one key study, positioned within a culturalist-interpretative framework, the methodology used is semiotic. However, the research approach is described as a “science that studies the life of signs within society” (Bassett, 1994, p.5). Use of the word ‘science’ signals the need to be aware that this research may be structured through more traditional positivist forms of motivation and rhetorical ‘warranting’. The analysis was then positioned as one that can:

identify the messages associated with visual signs and how meanings embedded in them are communicated. The objectives of such an analysis are to decode and construct liquor advertisements in such a way that not only are meanings exposed but also the techniques used in communication of those meanings. (Bassett, 1994, p.5)

The problematic implication here – from a culturalist perspective – is that all meanings are intended and they are all available to one (expert) person using the right tools. This excerpt locates meaning in the text, suggesting that meaning is determinate, and that it can, like some archaeological discovery, be ‘exposed’. This approach is in tension with some of the key objections culturalist critiques have made in relation to traditional approaches: critiques of notions of objectivity, truth, meanings as stable, meanings as located in a text, or about final arrival where meanings are concerned. Despite this, within the research Bassett clearly orientates towards culturalist perspectives because he also argues that meaning depends on the relationship any advertisement has to existing cultures and cultural practices. Yet, the implications of this argument notwithstanding, we are

still offered a definitive account of content. One cannot take up all positions in the culture-text relationship and this must ultimately set limits on interpretations. Cultural practices and positions will differ within and between groups.

The unexamined limits to Bassett's locations become more visibly problematic in his comments about masculinity. He states that advertising portrayals, to varying degrees, can serve merely to “reinforce undesirable qualities such as those related to macho characteristics” (p.20), (italics mine). (This reference to ‘macho’ qualities refers to the study cited above (Wyllie et al., 1991, p.194).) Macho qualities may be undesirable within Bassett's communities of interest but they may be desirable, pleasurable, and of advantage within others. Yet, this problematised idea of ‘macho masculinity’ is offered as if it were a stable and coherent cultural resource to draw on. Despite taking a more culturalist position, ideals of ‘normativity’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘truth’ are still structuring the logic of the enterprise.

As compared with the majority of research, Bassett’s work represents a much more culturalist position. However, yet to be disrupted are traditional structuring ideas about definitive points of arrival, the researcher as removed, and meanings as coherent. What does tough 'mean' to whom? Is masculine toughness undesirable? We could be referring to Sir Edmund Hilary. If we were, macho qualities may be highly desirable. Once again, the reading appears to be framed through public health concerns about alcohol. The research was funded by the Alcohol Advisory Council, so there may well have been a need to frame the research from a public health perspective to meet the expectations of the funding body. The problem with this is that the research is positioned to read as if it were speaking in broader terms.

Bassett’s (1994) use of semiotics does raise the important idea that meanings in texts do not operate in any singular way. Such an approach can offer a way to examine contents in order to consider ‘layers’, or multiple inflections to what may be present. However, this is only half the shift required into culturalist

frameworks. Yet to be addressed by Bassett is the concern that readings are also multiply inflected through audiences, not just texts.

Interestingly, in the same piece of research, Bassett (1994) does however gesture towards views that he may hold beyond the constraints of the particular analysis he has conducted. In one comment he alludes to advertising being part of the processes of capitalism. Here Bassett hints at social theoretical possibilities for different forms (Marxian?) of analysis that might be brought to bear on this research to quite different effect. This remark suggests his research is inflected by the purchaser’s expectations (production forces). Yet, despite being thus constrained, a brief moment of textual ‘excess’ (of Marxian politics?) was still interpretatively present (for me). It alluded to the potentially different motives and interests of Bassett. In this way, he usefully [intentionally?] highlights broader relationships around production, meanings, and contexts of readings as conditions constrain but cannot necessarily fully contain, what is in, or perceived to be in, any text.

Struggling with locations

The work of Hill (1999) appears to be even more firmly positioned in a culturalist- interpretative framework, but Hill is clearly struggling with the culturalist location. Hill does argue that her reading of a Lion Red advertisement works dominantly from a social constructionist perspective and draws on performance theories. She takes the position that the cultures we inhabit resource the development and performance of identities – and looks specifically here at the textual resources on offer around gender. Gender in the framework Hill argues is not a set of innate qualities but something that is socio-culturally learned and performed. The individual as subject that Hill sets out seems strongly compatible with the subjects of culturalist-interpretative positions. However, this dominant theoretical position is then destabilised through the invoking of positivist perspectives as support for her culturalist argument. For example, “research has also shown that alcohol ads on television may be particularly important in shaping younger people’s views on alcohol...most thought people in this [Lion Red] ad were

‘drinking heavily or getting drunk’” (Holibar, Wyllie, Moewaka Barnes et al., 1994, cited in Hill, 1999, p.68). Despite the epistemological distance between Hill's, and Holibar et al’s projects, Hill uses the research as warrant for her work. More troublingly Hill goes on to state that “Alcohol advertising portrays drinking as part of attractive adult lifestyles that appear within the reach of normal aspirations, and are designed to appeal to particular personality types” (my italics). Culturalist positions would not ascribe to particular personality types. The use of positivist work as warrant and the statement that there are such things as particular personality types has critical implications for Hill's own performance as a culturalist researcher that really need to be addressed.

Despite the troubling invoking of positivist positions Hill takes a firmly culturalist perspective in linking the performance of hegemonic masculinities in Aotearoa/New Zealand to certain ways of drinking. In making this link Hill raises the critical issue that certain performances of being an adult ‘male’, which involve drinking to excess, can act as a point of recruitment for younger men to become new generations of excessive drinkers. From a social constructionist perspective, this constitutes the base for a strong argument. If one accepts that such performances of identities are shaped and resourced through cultures, media texts can be argued as primary sites of such socialisation for young people in contemporary Western communities. The representations on offer in ad-texts can therefore be argued as requiring critique on the basis of what they offer. If ad- texts offer indentificatory performances that strongly reiterate excessive consumption, then they must be challenged.

However, the role of alcohol advertising texts in potentially contributing to resource particular (and problematic) performances of masculinities is given too much weight by Hill. Contextualisation of advertising portrayals within the broader and multiple forms of social processes through which such masculinities are reproduced is not given sufficient attention. While Hill does draw attention to wider socio-cultural forces shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand’s dominant performances of masculinities, the vital implications of this for advertising

portrayals are not addressed. Advertising representations must also be understood to be positioned within and resourced through such shaping forces; a problem not explored.

The very singular reading of the masculinities in the Lion Red commercial also leaves a gap around the pleasures and desires that such representations may resonate with. It may be useful to challenge dominant performances of masculinities, but what are the alternatives? Are the dominants 'wrong'? Where Hill (1999), like Bassett (1994), seems to interpret only aggressive and unacceptable masculinist qualities in liquor ads, what of interpretations that might understand the same texts as meaning community, pride, strength, and achievement? How can any versions of masculinities (or indeed contemporary femininities) be performed without invoking dominant cultural ideas? How can masculine not – at some level – mean toughness, determination, or strength within communities dominated through the structuring logics of competitive, individualistic, or capitalist interests? What about the wider structuring logics from which any representations in ad-texts draw for the enactment of such gender performances? How do questions of responsibility for portrayals become addressed, and who are they addressed to, when advertising is no longer abstracted from its social locations? This is a recurring and unaddressed issue in all the research. It reveals the problems and potential dead-ends inherent in critiques of any ad-text in isolation. We are taken back to the need to address the advertisements as part of broader social processes; to pull out or rail against their role or impacts in isolation lacks conviction.

The problem Hill is identifying – and in various ways this theme threads through all the research reviewed – is that various versions of adult masculinities are, for many in Aotearoa/New Zealand, socio-culturally and historically linked with drinking alcohol. In many communities, alcohol consumption appears to have a function within constructions about and performances of what it means to be a ‘Kiwi’. Advertising clearly plays a part in the re-circulation of such ideas, and this makes advertising potentially a part of the processes through which we construct

gender, adulthood, and myriad other aspects of human performances of self and other. Hill’s text is useful research. It opens up space for consideration of the processes through which subjectivities and texts may be connected, and therefore of textual responsibilities for what is on offer within texts, in ways most research cannot. However, because Hill’s work is so focused on concerns about advertisers (arguably structured through very particular logic about advertising), it does not sufficiently address the multiple texts and contexts – the inter-textuality – of which advertising is one interrelated part.

Hill's challenge to advertisers is for them to address their responsibilities for contributing to the construction of particular aspects of subjectivities identified by public health as problematic. This seems a fair challenge, certainly within the social-constructionist framework used to set out this argument. An additional issue here, though, may be that the constructionist framework being drawn on is not dominant in advertising or marketing theories. The social-constructionist subject is not even dominant in psychological theories. This suggests that’ when Hill accuses advertisers of employing 'psychological skills' to achieve their ends, intent is once again being overemphasised. The structuring in advertising texts is predominately through individualistic, capitalist (consumerist) frameworks. Within the logic of capitalist frameworks, agency – and therefore responsibility – lies with the individual (a model that is very compatible with psychology's dominant constructions). For Hill to have an impact on advertising’s dominant worldview with questions of responsibilities requires that common ground be first established; a ground upon which social-constructionist research can make sense.

Bassett and Hill’s projects clearly reflect the impacts of culturalist positions from within contemporary theories about communications. These projects also continue to reflect the influences of positivism. The logic structuring their approaches often slides back into traditional ideas about the subject, ‘truth’, or interpretative stability that remain deeply problematic from a culturalist perspective.

Introducing some interdisciplinary research attentions

Another body of local academic work addressing relationships between masculinities, alcohol, and (though to a much lesser degree) symbolic representations such as advertising, is also categorically culturalist-interpretative. This research was not from psychology or media studies but derived from sociologically-based identity studies focusing on masculinities. This small body of work was very consonant with positions in contemporary media studies, a compatibility locatable in their similarly culturalist origins (Campbell, 2000; Campbell, Law, & Honeyfield, 1999; Paton-Simpson, 2001). Campbell, et al. (1999) for example, combine analysis of socio-historical contexts, textual interpretations, and their own ethnographic observations to tell their story about what they see as the relationship between alcohol as commodity (material and symbolic) and the particular ways in which the alcohol industry, advertising industries, and male consumers may be using the cultural artefact ‘beer’ to construct and perform versions of masculinities. This research addresses social processes and people, weaving complex connections between individuals, communities, and social forces to set out a story whilst being clear that there are other stories, other ways of telling, and other strands one could bring in.

An interesting example of the usefulness of the Campbell et al. (1999) approach is in the way they argue that the alcohol industry, after deregulation, set out to expand the scope of beer drinking in response to the declining scale of beer drinking. This provides a convincing argument for how the alcohol industry and advertising might have roles in re-shaping processes of consumption. Such an argument could only stand on a thorough consideration of the interacting forces of legislation, social practices, production, distribution, and change. This body of work does not form part of the local alcohol advertising research being addressed in this critique, but it is included as an example of alternative culturalist frameworks that are being employed locally to make sense of similar issues.

Despite its benefits, there are areas in this rather different body of research that could benefit from critique. Categorisations tended to be overly complete and stabilising and to lack adequate explanations. For example, ‘cockfighting’ was a category given to describe the regularly competitive nature of verbal interactions between men in the bar (Campbell, 2000). The implication is of highly agentic and rather individual performances. How aware are participants of engaging in such performances? How might one understand such forms of interpersonal engagements if participants are not acting as deliberately as is being implied? Other forms of activities occurring within the same spaces are not addressed; surely cockfighting was not the only category identifiable? That said, Campbell offered a convincing account of how such sites and performances operate as sources of power within communities. This work opens up ideas about ways in which to examine alcohol and its roles in local as well as wider socio-cultural processes and relationships. This work is introduced here specifically to highlight what may represent more promising ways forward in making sense of such subjects.

Key issues and themes from both sets of research

This section will now identify key issues identified as running through both the positivist and culturalist research projects. These are examined as themes.

Theoretical gaps: addressing ‘unconscious’ processes

Both public health and academic researchers raised concerns about advertising potentially operating at ‘unconscious’ levels (Bassett, 1994; Holibar, Wyllie, Moewaka Barnes et al., 1994; Wyllie et al., 1997). This concern with more, or less, aware ‘levels’ of textual engagements, and with how one deals with what potentially lies beyond awareness presented theoretical difficulties for both bodies of work. For positivism, variance and diversity are departures from dominant concepts of rational individuals and cognitive models. For culturalist theories, despite strong emphases on individuals and contexts, the psychological subject is as yet inadequately theorised (Hammersley, 2003a). In the local

research, as tends to be the case more widely (cf., Bordwell & Carroll, 1996), theories drawn on to fill such gaps are frequently psychoanalytic (e.g. the local use of Lannon & Cooper, 1983).

Psychoanalytic theories can seem to provide attractive alternatives – particularly at the limits of existing approaches that depend on stability and ‘norms’ – offering spaces in which explanations for variance and diversity become possible. However, despite their frequent deployment they are not reconcilable with positivist or culturalist positions about the subject (Phillips & Jorgensen, 2002). Tensions of logic between psychoanalytic models and other positions were unaddressed in the research, and, when referenced, such models tended to be offered as additions to not reconciled with the dominant stance in the research (e.g. Bassett, 1994; Hill, 1999). For example, when Hill says, that “the 'Law of the Father’ rules boys as well as women” (Hill, 1999, p.73), this invoking of very deterministic Lacanian psychoanalytic frameworks is at odds with the highly agentic performative framework of the dominant argument.

This deployment of psychoanalytic models in research raises the problem of present epistemological and theoretical uncertainties about how to address what lies beyond immediate awareness. This requires recognition of the limits of present theories when it comes to the psychological subject. Recognising a text as able to 'mean' in other than what appears to be the dominant sense and that people can interpret and respond to texts in more than one way problematises positivism but it also requires more than is presently supplied by culturalist media theories. This is a critical gap media theorists need to address.

Masculinities and alcohol – the ubiquitous ‘macho’ man

The performance of masculinities in alcohol advertising was a key theme across the research. As has been highlighted, public health research has suggested advertising has a direct effect of encouraging or increasing consumption through reproducing associations of alcohol consumption with 'macho-masculinity'. Culturalist researchers also link particular masculinities and forms of alcohol use

and using a different framework include advertising within the range of social forces that perpetuate such cultural ideas (Bassett, 1994; Campbell et al., 1999; Hill, 1999; Paton-Simpson, 2001). It seems clear that there is a link between the ways in which certain desirable qualities of what constitutes an adult male are defined, made sense of, and performed by some groups, and the drinking of alcohol. All texts and experiences re-producing that message will, at some level,