From the subject to discursive practices: the epistemological ground of the Consumer Culture Theory in the Brazilian context

Abstract

The Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) emerged after a wave of interpretive tradition that influenced researchers in the area of consumer behavior in the 1980s, who began to seek to understand the sociocultural aspects of consumption. The CCT brand was launched in 2005 by Arnould and Thompson with the aim of classifying similar studies and cultural orientation in the research of methodological consumption. Currently, CCT is already an established academic community, with theoretical and methodological similarities. The aim of this article is to discuss the production of knowledge in the area and reflect on the epistemological soil that was consolidated in the midst of a diversity of epistemes. To this end, a systematic literature review on the epistemological soil of the Consumer Culture Theory was conducted. In this sense, the Brazilian production was analyzed in the area from 2010 to 2020, seeking to portray the main methodological and epistemological characteristics of the field. The results were synthesized in a structure composed of six dimensions that represent the assumptions of the main epistemes found in the empirical material.Thus, the article presents the picture of the production of CCT in the Brazilian context and discusses the implications for future research aimed at exploring cultural aspects of consumption through philosophical assumptions and methodological rigor.