Envisioning post-growth marketing: A dystopian-optimist’s guide

Abstract

This article introduces a mode of thought called dystopian optimism in response to the question of how critical marketing can be made more optimistic. Dystopian optimism counters both the utopian-optimistic belief that the climate crisis can be solved from within the current growth-capitalist system, and the dystopian pessimism of terminal marketing. We propose degrowth as a means to revitalise critical marketing and argue that theorising alternative marketing forms has performative potential. Additionally, we suggest that the transition to a post-growth society can be achieved incrementally rather than through radical upheaval and outline practical ways for critical marketing theory to contribute to this transition.

Introduction

The climate crisis is a global concern for consumers, marketers, and researchers alike. Marketing is increasingly viewed as complicit in this crisis, given its role in driving demand, overconsumption, overproduction, and waste. Critical scholars have challenged the viability of business sustainability (Bradshaw and Zwick, 2016) and sustainable consumption (Cluley and Dunne, 2012), suggested that focusing on such ideas has distracted us from making the systemic changes needed to safeguard human existence (Carrington et al., 2016), and questioned whether consumer culture can ever be environmentally sustainable (Borland and Lindgreen, 2013; Kilbourne et al., 1997).

Ahlberg et al. (2022: 669) introduce the term ‘terminal marketing’ to describe what they define as the ‘grave’ mood of the growing number of critical marketing scholars who take a pessimistic view on late capitalism and who refuse to temper their unpalatable conclusions about contemporary consumer culture’s excesses by proffering solutions. Such solutions, it is argued, merely soothe our anxieties about capitalism’s ability to address its exorbitant problems, rather than bringing about the changes required to solve them. They contrast this ‘radical form of urgent realism’ (2022: 670) with the work of ‘utopian optimists’ (e.g. Maclaran and Brown, 2001; Sherry, 2013) who believe in ‘progressive potential for change within consumer culture itself’ (Ahlberg et al., 2022: 669). While this article leans towards the dystopian view that individuals cannot solve the climate crisis within the current growth-driven economic system, we are more optimistic than terminal marketers about the potential for change.

Reflecting on critical marketing’s ‘depressive’ state, Coffin (2022) questions how to make it more optimistic. Many researchers suggest degrowth as a potential channel for optimism (Chatzidakis et al., 2014; Vandeventer and Lloveras, 2021; Varey, 2010). Degrowth is a planned process for equitably downscaling economic production and consumption. Unlike an unplanned recession, degrowth can be understood as ‘a prosperous way down’ (Odum and Odum, 2008) to a post-growth future, that is, a future in which resource extraction is drastically reduced and in which humans experience well-being while living within their ecological means (Hickel, 2021; Kallis, 2011).

By abandoning growth as the economy’s driving force and reducing production and consumption (Banerjee et al., 2021; Carrington et al., 2016), degrowth can potentially rebalance the earth’s climate and ecology while increasing human well-being (Gunderson, 2018; Hickel, 2021; Lloveras et al., 2022). However, it represents a radical shift from the dominant consumption paradigm, where well-being has long been linked with consumption. Consequently, resistance from consumers and producers is likely. To overcome this resistance, we suggest leveraging the performativity of marketing theory to create a new social imaginary, where degrowth is not only plausible but desirable.

One might ask whether marketing has a role in a post-growth future. The answer depends on whether marketing is inextricably linked to capitalist structures in general (Cova et al., 2013) and to financialised capitalism in particular (Hietanen et al., 2022; Jones and Hietanen, 2022). We subscribe to Arnould and Helkkula’s (2024) view that marketing could be one of several resource-circulation mechanisms in a post-growth future. This evolution necessitates a paradigm shift in marketing’s character, separating it from the growth imperative and redefining it as a practice for distributing and exchanging use-value to produce collective well-being (Varey, 2010).

We also argue that marketing has a role in the transition towards a post-growth future. Here, its role is twofold. First, it must create an optimistic vision of this future by theorising about it, manufacturing desire for something not yet conceived. Second, it must demonstrate the feasibility of bridging the gap between the current growth-driven economy and sustainable post-growth systems.

We employ the concepts of performativity of knowledge/theory to show how critical marketing theory can promote degrowth as a path to a post-growth future. We argue that by theorising post-growth models and promoting degrowth as desirable, critical marketers can actualise such a future.

Contemporary critical marketing research is pessimistic, with scholars reluctant to offer hopeful theories of progress (Dienstag, 2009) to address humanity’s challenges. We, in contrast, are optimistic about marketing theory’s potential to convince people of degrowth’s desirability. This, after all, is what marketing does best, manufacturing desire for something that people do not yet know they need.

Marketing and sustainability

Since the 1990s, critical marketing researchers have argued that a fundamental recalibration of the dominant social paradigm is necessary to facilitate sustainable modes of human existence (Borland and Lindgreen, 2013; Kilbourne et al., 1997; Varey, 2010). Nevertheless, most marketing publications on sustainability advocate for incremental, micro-level reforms rather than radical, macro-level systemic changes (Kemper and Ballantine, 2019). The critical voice has recently grown louder, as more researchers argue that radical change is necessary to address existential threats to humanity (Coffin and Egan–Wyer, 2022; Cova et al., 2013; Lloveras et al., 2022; Zwick, 2018). This tension between reformist and radical approaches continues to shape marketing sustainability research.

Ahlberg et al. characterise reformists as ‘utopian optimists’ due to their optimism about consumer culture’s potential to address the 21st-century’s existential threats or at least ‘its capacity to be transformed for the better’ (2022: 667). Utopian optimists believe in consumers’ ability to make ethical choices and producers’ capacity to satisfy consumers without causing harm. They assume consumers are agentic and sovereign (Ozanne et al., 2021), capable of changing their behaviour when provided with the right information (Bray et al., 2011; Carrigan and Attalla, 2001; Carrington et al., 2014), and able to drive change among producers through individual actions like buycotts and boycotts (Micheletti, 2006). From a utopian-optimistic perspective, the climate crisis can be solved within the current, growth-driven economic system by effectively tweaking reward mechanisms.

Utopian optimism is evident in the various marketing approaches that have promised global change over the past five decades. These include ecological marketing (Henion and Kinnear, 1976), green marketing (Peattie, 1992) environmental marketing (Polonsky et al., 1995), environpreneurial marketing (Menon and Menon, 1997), and sustainability marketing (Kemper and Ballantine, 2019). All assume producers are open to progressive, harm-reducing practices yet have led to the diminishing benefits and rising costs of economic growth seen today (Varey, 2010). It is also evident in the ‘techtopian ideology’ (Kozinets, 2008) which presumes technological advancements can decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions even though such efficiency gains are often offset by rebound effects, which encourage more consumption (Hickel, 2019; Lloveras et al., 2022).

Critical marketing has recently taken a pessimistic turn, with the term ‘terminal marketing’ describing a growing number of scholars who ‘resist the therapeutic urge to tell that all will be well’ (Ahlberg et al., 2022: 667). These researchers, categorised by a ‘pessimistic theoretical attitude’ (Ahlberg et al., 2022: 667), critique reformists for their naivety. They argue that excess is inherent in consumer culture and that effective change within the current economic system is impossible. Market-based solutions, they contend, merely perpetuate the growth-capitalist system and delay its inevitable downfall by providing ‘illusions of transformation’ without fundamental change (Ahlberg et al., 2022: 669). Consequently, they refuse to offer even partial therapeutic solutions to soothe anxieties about capitalism’s (in)ability to address its problems.

Beyond terminal marketing: Towards dystopian optimism

This article partially aligns with terminal marketing’s mood, agreeing that transformative economic system change is necessary for human survival and that ‘capital is systemically and ideologically incapable of reversing our disastrous environmental trajectory’ (Bradshaw and Zwick, 2016: 272). In this sense, the article’s mood may be described as dystopian. While dystopian futures often imply great suffering, we focus on the post-apocalyptic aspect of dystopia when considering what follows the end of the growth-capitalist economic ‘utopia’. As Maclaran and Brown (2001) note, one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia. The end of growth capitalism, while detrimental to capitalists and consumers, may offer alternative subjectivities and systems that engender collective well-being. It is here that our article’s mood diverges from, and perhaps somewhat rehabilitates, terminal marketing’s mood.

We suggest that terminal marketing is overly pessimistic. In exploring our ‘desire for […] annihilation’ and ‘environmental apocalypse’ (Bradshaw and Zwick, 2016: 269), it risks tipping into a nihilistic dystopia fixated on ‘death and destruction’ (Ahlberg et al., 2022: 670), where optimism is stigmatised and progress stymied. To avoid charges of nihilism, critical marketing must move beyond terminal marketing. If we do not merely want to enjoy humanity’s downfall (Bradshaw and Zwick, 2016), we must find a return to optimism without reinforcing the capitalist status quo.

We suggest that critical marketing move through terminal marketing and into a mood we call dystopian optimism. Dystopian because (like terminal marketing) it implies radical change of the current growth-capitalist economic system to address the climate crisis. Optimistic because (unlike terminal marketing) it invites critical marketing researchers to envision and promote solutions for the post-capitalist future. Optimism need not be naïve or conditional on maintaining growth capitalism. Hope is compatible with addressing growth capitalism’s problems. Dystopian optimism pushes through terminal marketing’s darkness while resisting a return to utopian optimism.

Dystopian optimism combines degrowth principles – collective sufficiency, conviviality, relocalisation, craft orientation (Banerjee et al., 2021; Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024) – with notions of knowledge/theory performativity (Ferraro et al., 2005; Gibson-Graham, 2008) and critical performativity (Spicer et al., 2009; Tadajewski, 2010a). Degrowth has gained some traction in social science (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2021; Lloveras et al., 2018; Rémy et al., 2024; Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024), but critical marketers have, so far, overlooked its potential for optimism. We argue that degrowth has the potential to rehabilitate critical marketing by making it progressive while still screaming for radical change. Concurrently, degrowth scholars recognise that public acceptance of post-growth requires ‘a shift in discourse [to emphasise the] benefits of a post-growth future’ (Paulson and Büchs, 2022: 11), a shift that critical marketing is well-positioned to facilitate.

Dystopian optimism is built on two assumptions. First, the theoretical formulation of alternative forms for organising the economy has performative potential (Bennett, 2010; Gibson-Graham, 2008) and may, thereby, facilitate the transition to a post-growth future. By introducing a novel vocabulary and new theoretical principles for post-growth marketing, scholars and practitioners can perform the post-growth era – where prosperity and well-being are decoupled from economic growth and profit maximisation.

Our second assumption relates to how the transition to a post-growth society may be achieved. We align with thinkers who argue that transformative social change can be accomplished incrementally (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Wickert and Schaefer, 2015), via ‘small wins’ (Weick, 1984). Transitioning to a post-growth future is possible by transforming the economic system from within – gradually altering goals, norms, and practices – rather than executing radical systemic change first. This incremental change differs from the utopian-optimists’ approach of maintaining and tweaking the growth-capitalist status quo. It is radical change through controlled descent (Odum and Odum, 2008) rather than crash landing. Via the dystopian optimistic model, we formulate a performative social imaginary of how marketing, production, and consumption can be organised to accomplish radical change without first razing the current economic system.

Dystopian optimism rehabilitates critical marketing by providing a framework for scholars to contribute to radical change of the growth-capitalist economic system. Our novel contribution combines degrowth principles with notions of critical performativity, offering a route to realise post-growth futures. This model of thought presents an alternative to both utopian-optimist and anti-progressive frameworks, allowing critical marketers to move beyond pessimism without reinforcing growth-capitalism’s fantasies. While not claiming to significantly contribute to extant degrowth research, our ideas about theory performativity suggest a way to concretely realise degrowth theory.

The article proceeds as follows: First, we outline central principles of post-growth thinking and relate them to marketing and the organisation of production and consumption within the dystopian optimism model. Next, we introduce performativity to suggest how dystopian-optimistic marketing may bring about a post-growth future. Finally, we discuss how our model advances extant critical marketing literature and provides new insights to degrowth literature.

Dystopian-optimistic, post-growth marketing

For 70 years, marketing has been steeped in a growth ideology, perpetuated by assumptions of limitless economic growth, consequence-free resource extraction, universal well-being through economic expansion (Banerjee et al., 2021; Varey, 2010), and ‘a system of representation that translates everything into a reified and autonomous reality inhabited by self-interested consumers’ (Fournier (2008: 529).

Marketing scholars have developed principles and models to maximise growth for companies and the economy (Kumar et al., 2000; Narver and Slater, 2012) by orchestrating consumer desire (Ind and Iglesias, 2016) and promoting the idea that newer products lead to happiness (Bauman, 2001). Despite evidence showing ‘diminishing benefits and rising costs’ of economic growth (Varey, 2010: 113), and suggesting that excessive materialism leads to lower life satisfaction (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), there is a notable lack of vision for post-growth marketing. To counter this, degrowth principles underpin our dystopian-optimistic vision.

Dystopian-optimistic production

This section outlines principles for production in a dystopian-optimistic, post-growth future. These principles advocate for slowing production by prioritising quality over quantity (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024), emphasising services over physical products, and transitioning away from producing abundant material goods for hedonic satisfaction towards creating limited objects for collective sufficiency (Banerjee et al., 2021). The ultimate aim is to equitably secure basic needs such as housing, clothing, food, and health (Liegey et al., 2020).

Marketing can encourage slower production by promoting a ‘craft orientation’ (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024) as the dominant principle for production. Instead of the traditional industrial orientation, which emphasises standardisation, efficiency, and machine control, craft orientation, rooted in craft practices, aligns with post-growth ideals by encouraging production of fewer, higher-quality material goods at a slower pace.

Craft orientation’s slowing-down effect on production relies on three foundations. First, it draws on Richard Sennett’s (2008) idea that production quality arises from intrinsic motivation and pride in craftsmanship. Second, it prioritises human engagement over standardisation and machine control, resulting in slower, labour-intensive production. Third, it implies an epistemic rather than instrumental relationship with produced objects (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024). In contrast to industrial orientation, in which objects are technical instruments, or means to ends, craft orientation views objects as open-ended and worthy of attention, intimacy, and care.

Marketing could also promote the degrowth principle of relocalisation to slow down production. Relocalisation entails localising production and distribution, establishing short supply chains, and sharing knowledge and skills, all crucial for reducing ecological footprints (Liegey et al., 2020). Degrowth scholars argue that local thinking has transformative potential. Initiatives like transition towns (Escobar, 2015; Khmara and Kronenberg, 2020), community currencies (Dittmer, 2013; Lloveras, 2014), food sovereignty movements (Roman-Alcalá, 2017; Vicdan et al., 2024), and eco-communities (Casey et al., 2020; Mocca, 2020) are performative local actions that demonstrate the benefits of environmental sustainability and social equity. Local actions transform macro-economic structures by enabling escape from the current system and remodelling it horizontally as local experiments scale and duplicate (D’Alisa et al., 2014).

The principle of relocalisation also encourages reduced commercial energy consumption, customised autonomous exchange, and the development of meaningful lives through experimental forms of collaborative living (Banerjee et al., 2021). This implies not just producing less, but also producing differently, by exploring alternative activities, relations, gender roles, interactions with the non-human sphere, energy uses, and time allocation between paid and unpaid work (D'Alisa et al., 2014). These all present opportunities for critical marketers to reimagine production/distribution processes, but their success hinges on consumers’ and citizens’ willingness to shift values and priorities towards more localised, sufficiency-based alternatives.

Dystopian-optimistic consumption

This section outlines principles for promoting dystopian-optimistic consumption, guided by post-growth principles that prioritise slowing down, and quality rather than quantity of consumption (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024).

Consumption of material goods has long been equated with well-being. However, research shows that a strong focus on material goods is actually associated with unhappiness (Belk, 1985). Indeed, critics argue that ‘economic growth can only be sustained if people are discontented’ (Varey, 2010: 113). Despite this, the dominant paradigm suggests that wealth, health, happiness, and success are found in market commodities (Varey, 2010).

Envisioning a dystopian-optimistic future requires separating measures of a good life from mass consumption and constant economic growth (Banerjee et al., 2021; Soper, 2020). This emphasises collective sufficiency – ensuring equitable access to basic clothing, food, healthcare, and housing (Liegey et al., 2020) – while discouraging non-essential consumption, such as SUVs, meat, fast-fashion (Lloveras et al., 2022). Collective sufficiency broadens the concept of abundance and emphasises eudaimonic pleasure, derived from non-material life goals (D’Alisa et al., 2014), such as enriched social relationships and a meaningful life with fewer goods (Banerjee et al., 2021).

Previous literature has proposed several paths to slower consumption and reduced ownership. These include minimalism (Meissner, 2019), which promotes fewer possessions and mindfully curated consumption (Wilson and Bellezza, 2022), to combat overconsumption (Oliveira de Mendonça et al., 2021; Wilson and Bellezza, 2022), a religious-spiritual ethics of consumption (Antonaccio, 2006), voluntary simplicity (Alexander, 2013), mindful consumption (Shaw and Duffy, 2020), deceleration (Husemann and Eckhardt, 2018), and anti-consumption (Chatzidakis and Lee, 2013). All encourage slowing-down consumption, renouncing pleasure, and/or curtailing excessive materiality as paths to well-being, happiness, and improved quality of life (Logan, 2017).

A third approach to slower consumption is craft-oriented consumption (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024), which involves treating consumer goods as epistemic objects. Here, consumption is what Campbell (2005) calls a craft activity and consumers employ knowledge, judgement, skill, love, and passion, in the entire production process, rather than just the final consumer object. Craft orientation is about understanding the materiality, production process, and environmental impact of an object (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024) and contrasts with commodity fetishism (Marx 1990/1887), which supports the current growth-driven economic system by masking exploitation chains and viewing commodities in isolation (Jones and Bradshaw, 2023). Treating consumer goods as epistemic objects worthy of attention, rather than mere instruments for identity or status, naturally leads to slower consumption as we cannot consume more than we can epistemologically engage with (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024). Craft orientation undergirds consumer movements like slow food, slow fashion, and slow tourism, which also promote more thoughtful consumption.

The challenge is that most contemporary consumption processes are not dominated by craft orientation or slow mindsets. Instead, consumption often involves using objects as instruments to achieve elevated states (Üstüner and Holt, 2010), with the ability to consume more being considered better (Soper, 2020), despite associated social and ecological problems. Craft orientation, minimalism, asceticism, and other slow-consumption movements currently exist on the fringes of consumer society, but we argue that critical marketing can help transform these into dominant consumption modes. This can be achieved by theorising a social imaginary that promotes and naturalises slow consumption as an attractive lifestyle. To explicate how this could be performed, we turn to our theoretical lens.

Theorising a post-growth society into existence

We recognise that changing the current economic system will not be easy (cf. Nason, 2008). In this section we will, therefore, outline how our post-growth marketing model of thought can be accomplished, by drawing upon the ontological claim that theory, knowledge, and language have performative potential and can stimulate alternative ways of constructing reality (Austin, 1963; Gibson-Graham, 2008).

The performativity of language and theory

The notion that language and theory possess constitutional and performative dimensions, capable of creating future empirical realities, is well-established. In his classical work ‘How to do things with words’, Austin (1963: 7) posits that ‘the issuing of an utterance is the performing of an action’, thereby suggesting that speech acts are not merely descriptive but actively shape reality. Austin contends that language does more than characterise the external world; utterances are not simply statements to be judged as true or false but are constitutive of reality itself (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015). Written or oral statements, therefore, become social facts that can validate and bring into existence the very reality they convey (Ferraro et al., 2005).

As knowledge and social theories are usually expressed through written and oral statements, they too may create our social reality. Gibson-Graham (2008) refers to this phenomenon as the ‘performativity of knowledge’, where a concept or theory can drive the way in which the economic world is performed. Social theories create the world they predict by promoting language and assumptions that become widely accepted and used, thereby shaping institutional designs, management practices, social norms, and behavioural expectations (Ferraro et al., 2005).

The capacity of theory to create the world places a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of scholars – given their power to bring new worlds into being (Gibson-Graham 2008; Tadajewski 2010a). Some have explicitly welcomed this responsibility as an opportunity for social change, arguing that social science research should take an active role in the shaping of a desirable, even utopian, future reality by theorising its conditions into being (Gümüsay and Reinecke, 2022; Wenzel et al., 2020). Theorising desirable realities into existence, Gümüsay and Reinecke (2022) argue, is not only plausible, but is something that social scientists ought to do.

Making post-growth marketing performative

We are inspired by the argument that marketing theories should be developed in order to bring about social change but, to make them performative, they must also be adopted and enacted by marketing practitioners, organisations, and consumers. To overcome this challenge, we draw on different versions of ‘critical performativity’ (Spicer et al., 2009; Tadajewski, 2010b; Wickert and Schaefer, 2015) to develop suggestions for how theorising about dystopian-optimistic production and consumption can become performative of a post-growth society.

Critical performativity

Critical performativity, originally developed within the field of critical management studies (CMS), is based on Judith Butler’s and J.L. Austin’s conception of performativity. It ‘involves active and subversive intervention into managerial discourses and practices’, which enables the creation of social change through affirmation, care, pragmatism, engagement with potentialities (moving beyond critiquing existing management practices and creating a sense of what could be), and normative orientation (Spicer et al., 2009: 538). Central to critical performativity is the idea that social transformations can be achieved via micro emancipations (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992), manifested in what Weick (1984) terms ‘small wins’. This implies that stepwise, moderate improvements in (managerial) norms and practices eventually generate transformational social change (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015).

Critical performativity has been picked up by critical marketing scholars (Tadajewski and Maclaran, 2009), who emphasise the need to raise critical consciousness of the moral, social, and political imperatives that undergird many marketing theories and practices (Catterall et al., 2002). However, they stop short of explicating how critical marketing scholars may accomplish transformative change of marketing practice.

Progressive performativity

Critical marketing literature may, here, find inspiration from a version of critical performativity termed progressive performativity (see Wickert and Schaefer, 2015). The concept ‘progressive’ implies moving forward via incremental changes in unfavourable social conditions, such as profit maximisation and continuous economic growth. Progressive performativity involves two interdependent processes: micro-engagement and reflexive conscientization. The first involves critical researchers activating performativity through micro-engagement with managers, by creating spaces where new practices are talked into existence. Here, language serves as a mechanism that allows managers to orient themselves towards progressive aims (Spicer et al., 2009), such as ecological sustainability and post-growth. This strategy requires a close and trustful relationship between managers and critical researchers where change can be accomplished by challenging taken-for granted beliefs (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015).

Micro-engagement with managers is a precondition for igniting the second process, termed reflexive conscientization. This ‘refers to the process of establishing continuous dialogue between researchers and managers in order to provide spaces in which managers are “nudged” gently to reflect upon their actions and […] organisational processes’ (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015: 120). Conscientization, hence, provides space for new practices to be talked into existence.

Wickert and Schaefer (2015) relate the notion of reflexive conscientization to Weick’s (1984) notion of ‘small wins’, which entails breaking-down large problems into smaller and manageable ones by identifying a series of controllable opportunities that are modest in size but that generate visible results (Weick, 2001). Complicated and cumbersome problems, such as climate change, generate anxiety and limit peoples’ ability to think and act creatively. The small-wins strategy enables them to attain a series of modest victories by dealing with a variety of small problems one at a time, rather than one single, overwhelming issue (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015). The small-wins strategy’s strength is that it can be applied to both lesser organisational issues and to bigger, structural problems (Weick, 1984).

While critical performativity offers promising ways to implement post-growth marketing principles, it has been criticised for overlooking the political, institutional, and material conditions needed to turn words into actions. In other words, it underestimates the entrenched norms and goals – profit and economic growth – that shape organisational behaviour (Banerjee et al., 2021; Cabantous et al., 2016). The dominance of market approaches reflects deeply rooted political systems that cannot be changed by simply introducing climate politics into managerial parlance (see, e.g., Callon, 2010). For example, Fleming and Banerjee (2016) argue that it is difficult for critical researchers to engage in meaningful dialogue with CEOs on issues like tax avoidance and climate change to make them change their practices. Consequently, incremental nudging of managers is unlikely to address the ecological impacts of big business and to accomplish transformative change. Fleming and Banerjee (2016) introduced their own ideas about how critical theory could become performative, arguing that critical scholars have a greater chance of achieving real change if they focus on their own institutions – business schools and universities.

The performativity of marketing education

Universities and business schools offer scholars the opportunity to exercise activism in the classroom, and in the training of students (Fleming and Banerjee, 2016). If scholars teach students critical theories, those theories will have transformative potential when the students put them into practice in the business world. This aligns with Bobulescu’s (2022) urgent call for introducing degrowth courses into business curricula to prepare future managers for a post-growth era.

To be impactful however, such critical management education requires a shift both in terms of what is taught and how it is taught (Grey, 2002). In terms of how, both critical management and critical marketing studies have found inspiration in critical pedagogy (Catterall et al., 1999, 2002; Fleming and Banerjee, 2016). Often associated with pedagogical theorists Friere (1972) and McLaren (1995), this pedagogy assumes that the critical classroom harbours the potential to transform society for the better (Catterall et al., 2002). Students are encouraged to relate to their own experiences of different social systems to identify and articulate avenues for transformative change (Catterall et al., 1999). As emphasised by White (2024), such education can help prepare students for a post-growth future by developing ecological literacy, embracing place-based education, and enhancing their capacity to think critically about alternative economic futures.

In terms of what, previous critical marketing literature suggests that marketing students should be trained in critical theory so they can question the ideology and taken-for-granted assumptions of mainstream marketing principles and uncover the hidden interests behind those principles (Catterall et al., 1999, 2002; Tadajewski, 2010a, 2010b). However, prior literature has not articulated what new marketing principles and practices should be taught instead of – or in parallel with – mainstream marketing, in order to accomplish social change.

To remedy this shortcoming, we propose that the marketing principles outlined here should be included in marketing curricula and taught as desirable alternatives to regular growth-based marketing, thereby performing post-growth ideals. This implies teaching marketing principles that maintain ideals of sufficiency, conviviality, relocalisation, and a craft orientation towards production and consumption. It also implies using empirical examples and cases that normalise and legitimise post-growth as something good, desirable, and attainable.

Alternative ways of distributing resources already exist – including but not limited to ‘co-operatives, local markets, kinship systems, swaps, groups, complementary or subaltern currencies, herds, networks, communes, clubs, worker self-management, associations [etcetera]’ (Parker, 2018: 112) – and many of them constitute viable models for organising production, distribution, and consumption in a post-growth society. By teaching only growth-driven marketing models, we seriously limit the imagination of future marketers to perform alternative economic systems.

Consumer mobilisation and the performativity of advertising

Relying solely on emancipated marketing managers as change-agents is not enough. Fleming and Banerjee (2016) suggest that critical theorists should engage and mobilise social and activist movements, consumer organisations, think tanks, and public policy makers to create public pressure for social change. After all, it was not an epiphany among Nike’s senior management that made them clamp down on child labour in their supply chains. It was public pressure from social movements and investigative research that put the issue on the consumer agenda.

Consumers may, thus, act as important agents of change in transforming the current economic system. However, this requires adoption and enactment of post-growth lifestyles: consuming only what sustains an acceptable quality of life, consuming only what one can emotionally and epistemologically engage with, prioritising quality over quantity, and abandoning consumption as both a status marker (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) and provider of extraordinary experiences (Arnould and Price, 1993; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). The question is how to convince consumers of the desirability and attractiveness of such lifestyles.

Here, marketing and advertising can play a vital role, given that their raison d’être is to create desire. While climate crisis communication has historically relied on fear and shame (Andersen, 2024; Gössling et al., 2020; Kleres and Wettergren, 2017), we propose highlighting the benefits of post-growth lifestyles through attractive visual, discursive, and material representations (cf. Thompson and Byrne, 2022). This approach could showcase the benefits of reduced consumption – decreased anxiety, enhanced well-being, and character preservation (cf. Sennett, 1998) – derived from long-term engagement with people, places, and organisations (Andreoni and Galmarini, 2014; Muraca, 2012).

A word of caution is necessary though. There is a risk that craft-oriented, slow-consumption, and -production lifestyles only appeal to the middle classes – a common critique of contemporary sustainability movements. Wilk, for example, criticises Soper’s (2008, 2020) concept of ‘alternative hedonism’, arguing that the sustainable pleasures Soper envisions, such as gardening and crafting, are predominantly middle-class pursuits and are lacking the ‘sex, recreational drugs, and dancing to loud music’ (Wilk, 2022: 266) that many people find fun.

We agree with Wilk on the importance of fun in discussions of degrowth. While the current growth-driven economic system excels at marketing new forms of fun, post-growth futures are often perceived to lack it, with sustainability linked to sacrificing enjoyable things, like animal products, cars, air travel, and fashionable clothing. However, fun is socially constructed, as shown by Sassatelli’s (2010) work on bodybuilders, who construct painful training as fun. By promoting the positive aspects of a post-growth future, we argue that marketing researchers and practitioners can performatively shape our decisions and our desires, redefining what we consider fun.

Dystopian optimism: Revitalising critique and manifesting change

To answer Coffin’s (2022) call for more optimistic critical marketing, we propose moving beyond terminal marketing into a mood called dystopian optimism. Dystopian because (like terminal marketing) it implies a paradigm shift away from the current growth-capitalist economic system. Optimistic because (unlike terminal marketing) it involves critical marketing researchers and practitioners in envisioning and promoting solutions for a progressive post-growth society.

Dystopian optimism, the model of thought we outline in this article, builds on central degrowth principles – collective sufficiency, conviviality, relocalisation, and craft orientation – combined with the notion of knowledge/theory performativity. It rests on two assumptions. First, that theorising alternative forms of marketing and markets has performative potential. Second, that transitioning to a post-growth society can be achieved incrementally by continuously pursuing small wins in how production and consumption are organised, and by improving marketing practices and norms, potentially transforming the economic system from within, rather than through instant, destructive, systemic change.

We have theoretically envisioned some principles for organising production and consumption in a dystopian-optimistic model of thought. These principles generally focus on slowing down production and consumption by emphasising quality over quantity and deep engagement with objects. While they are not novel in degrowth studies, we present these principles to illustrate the kind of desirable realities that critical marketing theorists can perform to bring about a post-growth future. We introduce degrowth as a way to move critical marketing from its current, dystopian-pessimistic dead-end towards a more optimistic future. Importantly, we also outline alternatives for how this might actually be done. That is, the practical ways in which dystopian optimistic production and consumption can become performative of a post-growth society.

The first contribution of this article is to the field of critical marketing. Our dystopian-optimistic model of thought counters the utopian thinking in mainstream marketing (Ahlberg et al., 2022), which suggests that there is potential for solving the climate crisis by tweaking the current growth-based economic system. It also counters the pessimism of terminal marketing, characterised by a refusal to offer resolutions. Our model of thought aligns with authors who argue that radical systemic change is needed to address the climate crisis (Borland and Lindgreen, 2013; Cova et al., 2013; Kilbourne et al., 1997; Lloveras et al., 2022; Tadajewski et al., 2019; Varey, 2010; Zwick, 2018). However, it differs from terminal marketing (Ahlberg et al., 2022) by providing inspiration for critical marketing scholars to participate in transformative change. Our model helps critical marketing theorists to think differently (and more positively) about marketing theory’s potential to accomplish positive, systemic change by normalising degrowth principles. Drawing on critical performativity, we highlight that transformative change is possible from within the system by altering norms, thoughts, values, and practices, rather than abolishing the existing system before performing the sought-after changes. Dystopian optimism, therefore, has the potential to rehabilitate critical marketing by suggesting ways to be optimistic while still screaming for change (Ahlberg et al., 2022).

The second contribution of this article lies in combining degrowth principles with critical performativity to offer a route towards realising post-growth futures. While the idea of theory being constitutive and performative is not new, it has not been widely applied in marketing research. Borrowing from organisation and management studies, we suggest that marketing should actively contribute to realising degrowth by developing theoretical representations of such a reality. Indeed, rather than just sketching out the essential aspects of what is required to build a post-growth future, we also delve into the detail of how critical marketing researchers can contribute to this paradigm shift, both inside and outside of the academy.

Our suggestion that marketing scholars can theoretically envision the positive aspects of a post-growth future advances conversations about how utopian projects such as eco-villages can ‘prefigure alternative systems of production and consumption’ (Casey et al., 2020: 1658). Critical marketing should help transform these fringe movements into the dominant modes of consumption and production.

While not claiming a significant contribution to extant degrowth research, our ideas about the performativity of theory suggest a way to concretely realise degrowth theory. Building on Lloveras et al.’s (2022) sketch of the essential aspects of the work required to build a post-growth future, we detail how critical marketing researchers can contribute to this paradigm shift both within and outside academia. We add depth to discussions on the performativity of alternative ways of organising (Gibson-Graham, 2008; Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024) by detailing how performativity can intentionally drive change. Degrowth scholars have wondered where to look for subversive narratives in the current political economic landscape (Lloveras, 2014). Where better than the field of critical marketing? ‘The critical tradition is degrowth’s friend’ (Gunderson 2018: 1577) and critical marketing scholars are ideal candidates for the work of broadening ‘the restricted imaginary of late capitalist societies’ (Gunderson, 2018: 1580).