Forwarded message from David Wengrow <[log in to unmask]>:

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, UCL 
ANNUAL CONFERENCE
May 10th-11th, 2008

Cultures of Commodity Branding: Archaeological and Anthropological 
Perspectives

Abstracts of c.500 words to [log in to unmask] and/or [log in to unmask]

Deadline for abstracts: 1st September 2007

Commodity branding has come to occupy a central but paradoxical place in 
understandings of modernity and globalization, and is widely equated with an
advanced phase in the development of capitalist societies. Mass consumption 
of branded goods—and of the images of personal transformation they project—
has been linked to the disappearance of older forms of identity based on 
kinship, class and caste. 

Branded products inspire visions of progress but also networks of 
resistance, both arising from the view that brands are a recent and 
unprecedented phenomenon in human history, spreading from a core area in 
the post-industrial West to influence a wider economic and cultural 
periphery. 

This conference will investigate and challenge these assumptions by 
approaching the production and consumption of branded goods on a 
comparative scale, across a wide variety of historical and cultural 
settings. In particular we seek to explore the contribution of
archaeological and anthropological perspectives, thereby broadening the 
scope of current debate on the role of commodity branding in contemporary 
social life and in the long-term transformation of human societies.

Key themes and questions
Archaeology: 
- How do different strategies of product identification (e.g.
standardisation of form and packaging; application of labels, seals, and 
innovative surface designs) develop within contrasting frameworks of 
economic activity, from household exchange to sacred hierarchies, and from 
village communities to empires?
- How do they relate to economies of scale and patterns of cross-cultural 
trade? 
- How far do ancient forms of quality control, authenticity and 
intellectual property resemble those of today's global economy? In what 
ways were they different?

Anthropology: 
- How far does the availability of branded goods in contemporary
societies really transform pre-existing hierarchies of value? 
- To what extent are the material and cognitive strategies invested in 
their production translatable across cultural contexts and styles of 
consumption? 
- What kind of comparisons can be drawn in terms of the web of agencies 
(real or imagined) through which homogeneous goods must be seen to pass in 
order to be consumed—be they the bodies of the ancestors, the gods, heads 
of state, secular business gurus, media celebrities, or consumer citizens?

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