Mass Consumer Market Research Articles

Abducting Mary and Carol: Reading Carol Shields’s Swann and the Representation of the Writer Through Theories of Biographical Recognition

ABDUCTING MARY AND CAROL: READING CAROL SHIELDS’S SWANN AND THE REPRESENTATION OF THE WRITER THROUGH THEORIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL RECOGNITION HELEN M. BUSS University of Calgary E a r l y in the pages of Carol Shields’s Swann, her feminist scholar, Sarah Maloney, announces that she is the only one who can protect the reputation of the dead poet Mary Swann from the deprecations of the patriarchy. She is worried that men such as Willard Lang, whom Sarah calls “swine incarnate ... capable of violating ... [Mary] for his own gain” (31), will abduct Swann for his own nefarious purposes. Even Sarah’s seeming ally, Morton Jimroy, the biographer, is seen by her as abducting Mary by “tryfing] to catch her out or bend her into God’s messenger or the handmaiden of Emily Dickinson; or else he’ll stick her into a three cornered constellation along with [Jimroy’s other biographical subjects] poor impotent Pound and that prating penis­ dragging Starman” (31-32). Sarah feels that only she can save Mary Swann from being pigeon-holed into a minor literary star category by academic men. She feels that her “Mary Swann is going to be big, big, big. She’s the right person at the right time ... a woman, a survivor, self-created” (32). For Sarah her male counterparts are academic “scavengers, Brutes.” “This is a wicked world,” says Sarah, “and the innocent need protection” (32). Carol Shields’s Swann is a satiric critique of the economy of literary pro­ duction and literary criticism in general, but since the subject is an obscure Canadian woman poet who dies practically unknown, it is particularly a cri­ tique of the biographical enterprise that attends the entry of such a figure into the canon. I use the word “enterprise,” with its attendant entrepreneurial and economic emphasis, to evoke the commodification process that William Epstein describes in his book Recognizing Biography. Epstein maintains that the eighteenth century saw a basic shift in the way that lives are represented, from the “sacred” form (lives of saints, heroes, and the like) to a “secular” form, whereby biography became “an individualizing tactic through which the mass consumer market of the modern state could materially reproduce the individual” for public consumption (71). According to this theory, the process by which biographers “recognize” their biographical subjects is not a “proof of existence” (78) but a demonstration of “just how easily the English St u d ie s in Ca n a d a , 23, 4, Dec. 1997 emerging consumer society could reinscribe the biographical subject in its new ‘pattern book’ ” (79). When Epstein turns to twentieth-century biographical practice in his arti­ cle “(Post)Modern Lives: Abducting the Biographical Subject,” he examines the way in which women subjects are particularly badly served by this cul­ tural “recognition” process, proposing that Norman Mailer’s “novel biogra­ phy” of Marilyn Monroe demonstrates the “reinscripción of] Eve Sedgwick’s and Luce Irigaray’s emplotments of the recurrent scene of patriarchal cul­ ture— a homosocial bonding between men (even, or especially, if they are rivals) that triangulates and victimizes women as it eroticizes, commodifies, and exchanges their bodies” (217-18). Epstein names this process “abduc­ tion,” a complex process by which biographers, while seeking to represent their subjects, must, by necessity, exclude and/or revise portions of the sub­ ject so that she can be “recognized” by current commodification standards. I wish to use Epstein’s theorization of the “recognition” and “abduction” processes for two different purposes: to explicate the satiric effect of Carol Shields’s Swann and to point to abductive processes that effect the biograph­ ical construction of the writer Carol Shields. By Epstein’s standards, the biographer Morton Jimroy is certainly out to abduct Mary Swann. In the past he has written two biographies of men and, while doing so, he has had an increasingly difficult time liking his subjects. After five years spent studying Pound, “Jimroy observed the disgust he felt, and indeed he recognized a moral ungainliness in himself that vibrated with a near-Poundian rhythm. His original attraction to the old fart, he supposed, must lie in this perverse brotherly recognition. Like persons who in secret...

Using the Information Superhighway1

The Infonnation Superhighway raises several uncomfortable questions which need careful consideration. New technologies create new opportunities but they highlight the realities of world in which the take-up of new inventions is not necessarily related to their merits. Betamax was the right answer, but everyone standardised on VHS. Also, the adoption of new inventions is not necessarily related to the underlying intentions of the technology's inventor. Alexander Graham Bell knew he was on to something important when he came up with the telephone. He believed one of its great virtues would be the fact that you could listen to an opera without having to go to the perfonnance. Right idea wrong technology! Again, the take-up is not even necessarily related to the imagination or creativity of those who could benefit. Alfred Hitchcock, film director who could make the. beating of wings or the hissing ofa shower curdle your blood, scorned the idea ofmovies with sound when The Jazz Singer came out in 1927. Sound, he said, was a complete gimmick and waste of time, which would ruin the dramatic effect. He even ended up having to re-shoot one film to add voices. These examples all demonstrate that we have never been very good at predicting the future use of technology, even when we have had some success in predicting technology changes themselves. We may, by now, have shrewd idea about some of the new tools that will be available to us. We should be very wary indeed about assuming we know how they will make their impact. With the Infonnation Superhighway, it is going to be important to distinguish between technological developments that we know are going to happen and the consequences of these developments, where history tells us our predictions may well be far from accurate. This is especially, and infuriatingly, true when it comes to forecasting what will happen in mass-market consumer areas. The best strategy to adopt there is one that allows for number of different outcomes. But though the actions of large corporations are not entirely ruled by logic, we do stand more of chance of being right

Strategic Maneuvering and Mass-Market Dynamics: The Triumph of VHS over Beta

This article deals with the diffusion and standardization rivalry between two similar but incompatible formats for home videocassette recorders (VCRs): the Betamax, introduced in 1975 by the Sony Corporation, and the VHS (Video Home System), introduced in 1976 by the Victor Company of Japan (Japan Victor or JVC). Despite being first to the home market, the Beta format fell behind the VHS in market share during 1978 and declined thereafter. By the end of the 1980s, Sony and its partners had ceased producing Beta models. This study analyzes the history of this rivalry and examines its context—a mass consumer market with a dynamic standardization process subject to “bandwagon” effects that took years to unfold and that were largely shaped by the strategic maneuvering of the VHS producers.

Alkaliphiles: Ecology, diversity and applications

Organisms with pH optima for growth in excess of pH8, usually between 9 and 10, are properly defined as alkaliphiles (or sometimes alkalophiles). Most of the organisms described to date as growing under very alkaline conditions are prokaryotes, comprising a heterogeneous collection of eubacteria (including cyanobacteria) with a few examples of archaebacteria. With the exception of the alkaliphilic archaebacteria (which are also halophilic), few of the isolates have been comprehensively classified. However, it is clearly that may different taxa are represented amongst the alkaliphiles, and that some of these at least are likely to be new taxa. Alkaliphiles can be isolated from ‘normal’ environments such as garde soil, presumably because there are transient alkaline conditions generated in such environments by biological activity, but a relatively restricted range of types results from the exploration of such environments (often Bacillus spp.). Naturally-occurring stable alkaline environments such as eutrophic soda (Na 2CO 3) lakes harbour a much wider range of types. A similarity wide range of types may exist in oligotrophic Ca(OH) 2-dominated ground water in certain parts of the world. Alkaliphilic microorganisms have already made a large impact in the application of biotechnology for the manufacture of mass market consumer products. “Biological detergents” contain enzymes that have usually been obtained from alkaliphilic or alkalitolerant bacteria. The current proportion of total world enzyme production destined for the laundry detergents market comfortably exceeds 25%, and there are other possible applications in food and waste treatment industies. To date, most commercially available enzymes are derived from a few bacterial taxa (notably Bacillus spp.) and we have been very conservative in our choice of environments in which to look for new products. It is reasonable to suppose that soda lakes (and other alkaline environments) will yield a wealth of new organisms with useful commercial properties.

Alkaliphiles: Ecology, diversity and applications

Organisms with pH optima for growth in excess of pH8, usually between 9 and 10, are properly defined as alkaliphiles (or sometimes alkalophiles). Most of the organisms described to date as growing under very alkaline conditions are prokaryotes, comprising a heterogeneous collection of eubacteria (including cyanobacteria) with a few examples of archaebacteria. With the exception of the alkaliphilic archaebacteria (which are also halophilic), few of the isolates have been comprehensively classified. However, it is clearly that may different taxa are represented amongst the alkaliphiles, and that some of these at least are likely to be new taxa. Alkaliphiles can be isolated from ‘normal’ environments such as garde soil, presumably because there are transient alkaline conditions generated in such environments by biological activity, but a relatively restricted range of types results from the exploration of such environments (often Bacillus spp.). Naturally-occurring stable alkaline environments such as eutrophic soda (Na2CO3) lakes harbour a much wider range of types. A similarity wide range of types may exist in oligotrophic Ca(OH)2-dominated ground water in certain parts of the world. Alkaliphilic microorganisms have already made a large impact in the application of biotechnology for the manufacture of mass market consumer products. “Biological detergents” contain enzymes that have usually been obtained from alkaliphilic or alkalitolerant bacteria. The current proportion of total world enzyme production destined for the laundry detergents market comfortably exceeds 25%, and there are other possible applications in food and waste treatment industies. To date, most commercially available enzymes are derived from a few bacterial taxa (notably Bacillus spp.) and we have been very conservative in our choice of environments in which to look for new products. It is reasonable to suppose that soda lakes (and other alkaline environments) will yield a wealth of new organisms with useful commercial properties.

Technological Pioneering and Competitive Advantage: The Birth of the VCR Industry

This article examines a significant example of technological pioneering-the development of an emerging technology in pursuit of future comercial opportunity. In this case, the pioneer's efforts resulted in the birth of a major industry, the manufacture of videocassette recorders for the mass consumer market. The authors compare the actions of six firms that were pioneers in the development of this technology-two in the U.S. and four in Japan. Three firms-all Japanese-emerged in the late 1970s as the big winners in the growth of this new industry. However, this is not another case in which international differences in competitiveness were decisive. The real success story lies in the management practices of three pioneers, who just happened to be Japanese.

Demographics of mass market consumers

The ranks of people between the ages of 35 and 49 are swelling, and this cohort will be imposing its purchasing preferences on the market for books by the end of the century. Future patterns of book buying may therefore show increases for nonfiction at the expense of fiction as well as increases and decreases for specific nonfiction and fiction subcategories.

Oral Historians: Masters of or Slaves to Technology?

Many will recall that in the late 1940s, the act of committing our voices and antics to a mechanical recording machine and hearing the outcome played back was as unique an experience as turning on, tuning in, and squinting at snowflake-laden images on a television receiver. As surely as the tube, the radio, and (before it all) the phonograph meant a less-secluded home environment, so too the tape recorder's presence during a personal, one-to-one discussion challenged the intimacy of the exchange. After manufacturers introduced the electromagnetic tape recorder to the mass consumer market in the late 1940s, oral history interviewers began to use the device in earnest. Such geo-

Mass Market Potential for Home Terminals

Possible applications for a data processing terminal in the home are identified and discussed. Consideration is given to the likely start-up mechanisms for commercial services which will support these terminals. The 1977-78 status quo services which are likely to evolve into mass market consumer services are also identified and discussed.