Page 162 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce
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Sport, Media and Visual Culture • 151
For de Certeau, everyday life was characterised by numerous, miniscule acts of
creativity, as people manipulate the products of society to suit their own ends. While
Foucault focused on the operation of disciplinary regimes that keep people in their
place, De Certeau (1984: xv) proposed that consumers are involved in a micro-level
‘antidiscipline’ as they reappropriate culture in clandestine and makeshift ways.
These ‘ways of operating’ amount to a series of ‘tactics’ which consumers use to re-
sist the ‘strategies’ of the official producers of culture (de Certeau 1984: xix). Many
everyday practices, such as talking, reading, moving about, shopping and cooking,
can be understood as tactical operations, and as such are ‘victories of the “weak”
over the “strong” ’ (de Certeau 1984: xix). In contrast to the tactics used by the
‘weak’, the ‘strong’ use strategies to keep themselves in power. Institutions, enter-
prises and organisations are able to use strategies because they have an offi cial place
in society from which they are able to operate and generate relations with those out-
side (competitors, clients, target groups). While a strategy depends on ‘a place that
can be circumscribed as proper’ (a title, a place, a building, an address), a tactic has
‘no base where it can capitalize on its advantages, prepare its expansions, and secure
independence with respect to circumstances’ (de Certeau 1984: xix).
The strategies of the powerful are, therefore, associated with place. They estab-
lish places and master them through sight: dividing places up so that the people that
inhabit them can be seen and controlled. De Certeau referred to this as a panoptic
practice. Strategies attempt to create the conditions for continued existence and ex-
pansion. Companies use strategies to reduce the variability of consumers so that they
all buy the same product in the same way. Ritzer’s concept of ‘McDonaldization’
provides one explanation of the organisational strategies that transnational organisa-
tions employ, including predictability, calcuability, efficiency and control. Consum-
ers going to McDonald’s, IKEA, Disney World or Starbucks receive the same or
very similar product and style of service throughout the world (Paterson 2004). This
allows the corporation to consolidate resources in the manufacturing of a limited
number of items. While on the surface, these strategies appear designed to provide
customers with a quick and dependable product, they also provide a way of control-
ling the consumer. In the case of McDonald’s, consumers may develop a taste for
potentially unhealthy food, which may also be sourced from industries that are reli-
ant on environmentally unfriendly production techniques employed to meet the high
demand of a transnational corporation (Paterson 2004). Consumers may adjust their
demands to the expectations of the industry, accepting long waiting times, crowded
environments and ‘do it yourself’ aspects of the service (e.g. flat-pack furniture, self-
service grocery store scanning) to attain the desired object or experience.
Tactics, however, are associated with time, waiting for opportunities and seiz-
ing chances as they arise. Tactics also involve manipulating events to turn them
to advantage. De Certeau (1984) observed that power was limited by its very vis-
ibility. Institutions want to be seen to possess legitimate status, and as a result, they
cannot engage easily in trickery or deception. These arts, therefore, have become