Inculture

Food is a cultural bearer

andersson — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:20:06 +0000

What is one of the first things one tries when one visits a (new) country? Just what I thought – food! I mean, who would go to Thailand and not eat a Tom Yam Kung or who misses out on a Tiramisú in Italy?!

Food and drinks are not just only hunger and thirst quenchers, they also bring people together. Eating is a pleasure and combining it with good company and some tasteful wine is a nice way to spend a Saturday evening. And just like always, one also ends up in the kitchen at the end of the night. The saying that “the kitchen is the heart of the house” truly does match with reality! But food has also become a conscious restrainer. What is the “right” food to eat, which is more nutritious and what product is as cheap as fast to prepare?! In the last 5 years organic and locally produced food has been on everybody’s agenda and different diets and an overall “food consciousness” has become more and more common. People create different kinds of belongingness through their belief in “the right food”. In an ongoing study Inculture analyze consumers opinions on whether their consciousness or their wallet choose their food and their cultural food belonging. Think about it yourself, does your belief in the GI-diet win over the on-sale-bacon?

Volvo Subject60 experiment

graffman — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:14:21 +0000

This report and film is the result of our ethnographic observational study of the Volvo Subject60 tour in Berlin, London, Milan, Paris and Madrid. At each event experiments were weaved into the party environment to trigger the participant’s naughty behavior. An anthropologist was engaged at each event to execute observations with focus on behavior, facial expressions, party mood and reactions to the ‘hidden’ experiments. The task was to observe patterns of behavior in a real world context with the aim to enhance and deepen the understanding of the figures resulting from as well the experiments as the previous quantitative study. By doing cross-cultural comparisons of those five cities we have tried to differentiate between the various types of ‘naughty’ behavior we observed. Are there really cultural differences when it comes to naughtiness?

The world’s most modern country

graffman — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:33:50 +0000

This summer SVT is once again sending the TV programme Världens modernaste land, a series that discuss different issues about Swedish culture. A relief for all of us that get quite tired of football… In programme number 4 Katarina Graffman is guest together with Peter Englund. View here.

Organic vs local part 1

andersson — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:09:13 +0000

What do you prefer? Organic food in large scales or locally produced food in rather small scales? The latter? – Not surprising at all.
The organic boom has blown up and now the ashes and the after effect is what is left. The after effect being locally produced food! Is this the new belief, just like organic food was? Or will something new eventually come up?

These questions are what we have in mind in our ongoing stydy about organic and local food consumption.
How do people choose? Why do they choose that specific product? What is their belief and how do they justify their arguments for it? And most importantly why?

A different kind of media behavior

graffman — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:06:41 +0000

Media, especially for young users, is about a complete integration with everyday life, which constantly is ongoing. It is no longer about the “new” in media technologies that should be problematizied in order to understand the use and impact – it’s about to see media as a cultural expression that mediates social relations. Only then one can also understand how media works and how it affects everyday life. This is what “old” media logic has difficult to relate to. Today they still use rigid metrics that fail to measure a total integrated behavior.

In the culture

andersson — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:31:50 +0000

What will be the next big behavior, trend and brand preference? Without deep understanding of contemporary culture companies and organizations are living in constant uncertainty surrounding these issues. By understanding culture and cultural change one can also understand consumers on a more fundamental level.

In this contemporary ever-changing time where consumers convert and interpret brands to create affiliation and identity, is the understanding of human ideas, feelings and sense the key in branding and product development. The companies who hope to create relevant and sought-after products have to act proactively in tune with ideas, feelings and activities that are the basis of consumers´ lives. A culture-oriented approach makes it possible to process large amounts of data and sort the potentiality from a murmur of information – that is to predict the future and how to create increased value for shareholders, control product development in the right direction and how to improve the outcome when one understands “what´s hidden under the surface”. Anthropology within consumer research seeks to understand consumption in a broader context, to analyze the consumer – based on his everyday life. The focus area for the anthropologist is to understand the cultural meanings and values which different brands and products have, and the cultural practices that surrounds them, even the small choices like fridge magnet that some families have to create a feeling of homeliness…

Katarina Graffman will answer the following questions in a lecture at Handels School of Business, Economics and Law in Gothenburg today.

What exactly is culture from an anthropological perspective?

How can we learn about culture and cultural change?

What is the significance of such knowledge in brand development?

Ethnography and trendspotting

graffman — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:53:55 +0000

By using ethnography one can identify key patterns in the users´ emotinal, functional and social needs. That is what real “trendspotting” is – detailed analysis of behaviour in order to predict change. One have to know that human behavior is likely to lead to some development, such as the human need for comfort is often a stronger driving force rather than attitude and lifestyle.

Hattrick and Why do ethnography

graffman — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:00:30 +0000

For widening the understanding of their own online service, especially how it is perceived by their users, the owners of the text-based football manager game Hattrick and their associates at Tribaling recently called for ethnographic research as one step in the process of making a marketing strategy plan. The research found answers to questions that were not previously thought of and showed new insights into both functional and social values of the game. Thus, the research revealed Hattrick to be more than a strategy game: the inherently versatile online service is shown to be not only a resource for entertainment, personal challenge and a social community but also a unique cultural environment in which users over time familiarize with, find meaningful to engage in and even extend outwardly into everyday life. It is comforting to learn that our efforts has rendered a more comprehensive understanding of what Hattrick is and what kind of role it plays in peoples’ lives. Having been able to present from a qualitative perspective, a captivating and also a somewhat entertaining insight into users’ experiences, which the owners, board of directors and developers have not previously been acquainted with, the response during and after the presentation was positive. We hope that the outcome of this project will help the management at Hattrick Ltd. to make necessary decisions for maintaining their good reputation and to further improve their online service for the benefit of the users. Extra thanks go to Elia Mörling for the collaboration and his enthusiastic yet sincere comments during the process.

Ecology 2010

graffman — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:48:09 +0000

We can well state that there is an increasing interest for organic food and the central theme for it circles around environment and health. No one can escape the fact that organic alternatives are on the market. Our informants, disregarding ethnicity, socioeconomic background and education, have all a relative good knowledge of what organic food is and what it is considered to be good for. Health and environment are fundamental ideas since the informants discuss these issues automatically. But having dealt with this theme, thoughts and behavior exceed to other topics in which the phenomenon “organic” can be explored in a more profound way. Inculture will under this following year investigate what satisfaction (immediate meaning) organic products really give the consumers.

Generation “Noll koll” 2

graffman — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:57:43 +0000

The term Generation “Noll koll” is spreading. Our expression refer to the notion that we have a younger generation that doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s used as an allusion to how younger people define media, namely “to know what’s going on”, or in Swedish “att ha koll”. This phenomenon is getting increasingly attention and the phrase is gradually being adapted by journalists and bloggers. Read a good article in Computer Sweden by Johan Hallsenius.