Markets, identities and the discourses of antique dealing

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which market exchanges in the world of antique dealing offer dealers resources for the creation and expression of identity. As such, the paper takes a specific view of identity as discursively produced through interaction. Analysis of interviews with 16 UK antique dealers found that they typically drew on discourses of taste and aesthetics, and of morality and care, to manage their identities. In doing so they mobilized differing (and most often oppositional) constructions of customers, other dealers, antique markets and antique objects. The paper therefore has two key aims: to explore the antiques world as a marketplace institution within which particular sets of discourses circulate, and to examine the intersection of these discourses in dealers’ constructions of self, others and ‘world’. In closing, the paper argues for a fuller application and conceptualization of ‘discourse’ within marketing and consumer research. The author suggests that the hitherto underused concept of ‘marketplace institutions’ might help to understand how discourses and identities are thoroughly embedded in the marketplace.

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