At InsightOS, we develop ‘thinking tools’ to help you understand the complexities of culture. In this post I’ll outline some of our macro-level concepts that we’ll be taking into 2019.
If you find any of these intriguing, get in touch to explore them in depth through one of our unique immersive workshops.
#1 Cultural Logic of Meta-Modernism
If you want to understand the success of Donald Trump, the chaos of Kanye West, or the appeal of ‘Rick and Morty’ — then you want to look at the world through the lens of meta-modernism.
Practitioners of this cultural logic are weird, heroic and yearn for a truth that they don’t expect to find. They oscillate between optimism and irony, searching for a new sincerity. They hold onto the security of existing structures (such as the family) and institutions (such as the university) — but at the same time they demand that these structures embrace the tectonic shifts underway in culture.
Although an expansive concept, meta-modernism can be understood simply: it is an approach to problem solving that focuses on the logic of ‘AND’ as opposed to ‘NOT/OR’.
To help get your head around this concept — think about it as a historical period. It combines the ‘modernist’ desire for progress, with the stylistic insights that came with ‘post-modernism’ (such as irony and incredulity). And, through this connection, it offers a vision for the future that strives to return to ‘romanticism’.
Strategic Implication
After a year of attending tech conferences I am repeatedly confronted with the following question — all the tools are here, but how do we start using them?
The answer is this — technological transformation requires a corresponding cultural transformation. This can be achieved via a deep understanding of the meta-modern cultural logic.
#2 Digital Hauntology
If we were to turn the study of culture into a science, it would be the science of ghosts. This ‘generative contradiction’ is known as hauntology.
Don’t worry, this isn’t about paranormal activity — it is about the cultural insight unlocked via the analysis of the ‘ghost’ as a metaphor.
This strategy is common in cultural studies - we use the monstrous and the gothic to decode culture. For example, zombies were interpreted as a comment on ‘brain-dead’ consumer culture in the sixties, but more recently they are read as the millennial generations desire to build a better world after the Apocalypse (e.g. climate change/the recession). This is a tradition that goes back to Frankenstein, a novel that was written in response to the mechanised inhumanity at the heart of the industrial revolution.
Returning to hauntology, it might be better to say it is the science of ‘spectres’. After all, a ‘spectre’ was at the heart of the most significant cultural pamphlet of all time: Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto opened with the line ‘a spectre is haunting Europe’.
Following Marx, hauntology has been defined by the most notable of cultural critics — Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher. On one hand, it helps us understand why culture is obsessed, or haunted, by old retro styles. On the other, it helps articulate how our culture is still being shaped by the racial and gender traumas of the past.
But the concept takes on extra resonance in our advancing digital age. There is a growing need to articulate technology from an existential perspective (existentialism is the philosophical approach concerned with the human experience of time, memory, selfhood, sociality, space, and death).
Digital hauntology is a method that embraces the uncanniness of the web by exploring things like the digital afterlife and memorials. It helps us understand how our experience of time changes in a world of instant and urgent communication. But, ultimately, it equips us with a method for working with contradictory ideas — giving them the space they need to generate radical and disruptive thinking.
Strategic Implication
Organisations need to shift their research focus from the digitally-savvy early-adopters, and towards the struggling and vulnerable people trying to make sense of the digital world. This will help diagnose ‘problems-to-be-solved’ and help establish meaningful and authentic connections.
#3 Collaborative Ecosystems
I interviewed a whole bunch of leading CMO’s and CEO’s last year — and the pattern was clear. Embracing openness, building communities, and sharing knowledge was the only viable strategy in the networked age.
This makes sense in an age where the ‘network’ is the dominating structure of our time. It has replaced the logic of the ‘production line’ — a system formulated in Henry Ford’s automotive factories that was dominant throughout most of the 20th century.
Of course, the production line mindset still holds strong — many are struggling to adapt to the network age. But those that are — particularly the new and agile — understand that developing rich interdependent ecosystems is central to marketing and innovation.
Strategic Implications
The key here is to focus on building communities. Community building is both a science and an art, with clear design principles that can be followed. A central pivot for these communities is education — encouraging others to cultivate their creativity and emotional intelligence. One of my favourite interviews of last year was with the CMO of Salesforce — they seem to be pioneering this type of strategy.
#4 Mapping Affective (or Emotional) Landscapes
As the advent of Brexit and Trump makes clear — the culture war has started. Those two campaigns succeeded in part by combining emotional insight with consumer targeting tools.
In response to this, cultural analysts are going back to the roots of cultural studies and reinventing the tools that gave the discipline its initial critical force. Central to this is the following strategy: articulate the multiple ‘structures of feeling’ that define the modern ‘affective landscape’.
This is a strategy based on understanding the complexity of emotions, or ‘affects’. This involves mapping out what matters to people. Exploring how their emotions are organised. Describing their sites of belonging and forms of identification. Narrating the rhythms of their social experience.
Ultimately, this is about resisting the notion that you have the contemporary cultural field all figured out. You don’t. The ‘popular’ isn’t something that academies and corporations are good at understanding.
At least not yet…
Strategic Implication
Many organisations and brands are becoming political. Nike and Patagonia are stand-out examples. This is new, perilous and fascinating territory. However, the implications of ill-thought out marketing could have disastrous effects for both the brand and for society.
Now is the time to develop deeper and more advanced insight methodologies. This is about creating a space where, for example, political scientists can sit at the same table as brand communication experts.
#5 The Post-Stuff Economy
This is the area I’m going to start looking at in depth in 2019. It’s an old area, but it needs a fresh perspective.
The subscription/on-demand/experience/sharing economy is being driven by social media, sustainability and dozens of other trends. We can comprehend it by looking through any number of theoretical lenses: the festivalisation/ludification of culture, the reinvention of circus, tourism innovation etc.
But what I find most interesting is the different forms of experience that are emerging.
There are educational, healing and spiritual forms of experiences, as well as a new range of hedonistic experiences. We’re seeing escape rooms, flotation tanks, hallucinogenic retreats, food theatre, blackout music events, digital detoxes, humanistic psychotherapy and more.
I’m looking forward to exploring this area further using all the other tools outlined above. Get in touch if you want to get involved!
