Educate or serve

The Paradox of 'Professional Service' and the Image of the West in Legitimacy Battles of Post-Socialist Advertising

Bibliographic Data

ID2059541
AuthorsZsuzsanna Vargha (0000-0002-1578-6531, Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume39
Issue2
Pages203-243
Publication date2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-2421 • E-ISSN: 1573-7853
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s11186-009-9104-6
OpenAlexW2166617168
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited68

This article investigates a puzzle in the rapidly evolving profession of advertising in post-socialist Hungary: young professionals who came of age during the shift to market-driven practices want to produce advertising that is uncompromised by clients and consumers, and to educate others about western modernity. It is their older colleagues-trained during customer-hostile socialism-who emphasize that good professionals serve their clients' needs. These unexpected generational positions show that 1) professions are more than groups expanding their jurisdiction. They are fields structured by two conflicting demands: autonomy of expertise and dependence on clients. We can explain the puzzle by noting that actors are positioning themselves on one or the other side based on their trajectory or movement in the field relative to other actors. Old and new groups vie for power in the transforming post-socialist professional field, responding to each other's claims and vulnerabilities, exploiting the professional field's contradictory demands on its actors. 2) The struggle is not between those who are oriented to the west and those that are not. Rather, the west is both the means and the stake of the struggle over historical continuity and professional power. Imposing a definition of the west is almost the same as imposing a definition of the profession on the field. In this historical case, "field" appears less as a stable structure based on actors' equipment with capital, than as dynamic relations moved forward by contestation of the field's relevant capital

Autonomy · Business · Capital (architecture · Communism · Jurisdiction · Legitimacy · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Socialism · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · History · Law · Marketing

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