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Fetishism has been often linked to misrecognition and false belief, to one being “ideologically duped” so to speak. But could we think that fetishism may be precisely the very opposite? The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of this at first sight counterintuitive notion. It locates the problem of fetishism at the crux of the problem of disavowal and argues that one needs to distinguish between a disavowal – marked by cynical knowledge – and fetishistic disavowal, which can be understood as a subcategory of the same belief structure of ideology.

This conceptual paper is based on literature review and utilizes examples from the author’s ethnographic fieldworks in India (2008-2013) and central Europe (2015-2019).

The paper provides a new insight into the structure of fetishism, relying on the psychoanalytic structure of disavowal, where all disavowal is ideological, but not all disavowal is fetishistic, thereby positing a crucial, often unacknowledged distinction. Where disavowal follows the structure “I know quite well how things are, but still […],” fetishistic disavowal follows the formula: “I don’t only know how things are, but also how they appear to me, and nonetheless […].”

The paper develops an original conceptualization of fetishism by distinguishing ideological disavowal from fetishistic disavowal.

This paper aims to discuss the concept of fetishism as an important but understudied kind of magical relationship to objects. Fetishism in the context of contemporary consumption is conceptualized as a multilayered construct underlining the attribution of an aura and magical power to a product to achieve personal goals.

In total, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted to highlight contextual factors influencing the emergence of fetishism in contemporary consumption, to underline the instrumental and aspirational dimensions of fetishism and to provide a definition of contemporary product fetishism.

The results show that fetishism appears as fragmented and unstable magical beliefs toward products related to a need to cope with uncertain and important aspirational situations.

The paper provides a multidisciplinary approach of fetishism to provide insights regarding this phenomenon and its manifestations in the context of contemporary consumption.

This paper aims to examine the concepts of gendered, entrepreneurial identity and fetishism through an analysis of images of Barbie entrepreneur. It draws on the literature of entrepreneurial identity and fetishism to examine how such identity is socially constructed from childhood and how exposure to such dolls can shape and influence perceptions of entrepreneurial identity.

Using semiotic analysis the authors conduct a visual analysis of the Barbie to make observations and inferences on gendered entrepreneurial identity and fetishism from the dolls and artifacts.

The gendered images of Barbie dolls were influenced by societal perceptions of what an entrepreneur should look like, reflecting the fetishisation of entrepreneurship, especially for women. Mirroring and exaggerating gendered perceptions, the dolls express hyper-femininity reflected in both the physical embodiment of the doll and their adornments/accessories. This includes handbags, high-heeled shoes, short skirts, haute-couture and designer clothes. Such items and the dolls themselves become fetishised objects, making context and culture of vital importance.

There are positive and negative implications in relation to how the authors might, as a society, present unrealistic gendered images and role models of entrepreneurship to children. The obvious limitation is that the methodology limits what can be said or understood, albeit the imagery mirrors socially constructed reality for the context examined.

This is original research in that no previous published studies have tackled gendered entrepreneurial identity in relation to fetishism. The value of the work lies in discussing the concepts and embeds them in the expanding conversation surrounding gendered entrepreneurial identities.

This essay uses Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism and Mauss’s description of the hau as the spirit that connects the giver to the gift to examine notions of production, value, and collectivity in the Santa Fe silver mining Cooperative in Guanajuato, Mexico. This case allows us to look at how fetishism on the one hand, and “hauism” on the other, can work together to form a hybrid form of value wherein silver participates in both commodified and giftlike processes. More broadly, it helps us to examine the relationship between the production of value and the production and legitimation of social groups.

The purpose of this chapter is to characterize fictitious capital and fictitious profits as extreme expressions of the fetishism of capital. Considering the incessant search for valorization and allowing for fictitious forms of capital, the subject of this study is at the center of the dynamics of recent capitalist accumulation, especially when we take into account the capitalist crises over the last four or five decades. Its mechanism of fictitious valorization (M – M′), a decisive dimension of contemporary capitalism, is contradictory, based on the growing obstacles to the extraction of surplus value on an expanded scale, and therefore the real valorization of capital. At the same time, we support the idea that this mass of overaccumulated capital produces profits unrelated to surplus value, that is fictitious profits, further intensifying the fetishistic and contradictory nature of capitalism.

Over the last four years in Spain, a strong autonomist movement (15M), based on radical democracy and mistrust of any kind of instituted politics, seems to be turning toward statist and institutionalized politics. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions: Can we speak of a community fetishism, as opposed to State fetishism? Do autonomist social movements have a spatial project as opposed to a State spatial project? Why do horizontal and self-management-oriented social movements turn to the conquest of the State in the current framework?

The empirical evidence for this study stems from a qualitative methodological approach. The authors used two different types of sources. First, direct observations from the authors’ own engagement in social movements in Spain from 2011 to the present are used. Second, this work is part of a systematic research on spatial dynamics and the evolution of collective action in Spain. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with activists involved in social movements from 2012 to 2015, in which time informal interviews were conducted, and documents and observational notes were also collected.

Social movements have tended to develop alternatives to state spatial projects, partially as a result of an institutional setting that has been progressively closed to political alternatives to the neoliberal state. This last point leads to the posing of politics as completely independent of the political arena of the State (community fetish). From the first square occupations to the subsequent organization in local meetings, the 15M movement was the last expression of this tendency in Spain, while the turn on State political institutions responds to the obvious limitations of community fetishism in the context of the social and political tensions of the Spanish crisis.

This analysis contributes to the current debates on social movements in two ways. First, the authors investigate a usually neglected agent in the production of spatial political projects and strategies such as social movements. Second, the specific case of the 15M movement in Spain strongly shows the contradictions and limitations of the movements, which supposedly do not aspire to replace the State’s sovereign power through the idea of community fetishism.

Deviation, fetishism and sexuality are often considered as emotive subjects that tend to be treated with amusement or disdain. Associating such concepts with technological innovation often instigates a reaction more akin to that of titillation, controversy and intrigue and has sometimes been dismissed outright. However, as this paper shows, deviation, fetishism and sexuality could prove to be fundamental factors in creativity and innovation. When consumers create their own technological innovations inspired by their personal predilections, arousal and preferences, new and unanticipated uses for technologies are being born. The role of deviation as a key to innovation must not be overlooked as it will contribute to our understanding of new intimacy, culture and the future of developing information and communications technologies (ICTs). Due to the multidisciplinary approach to this subject area there is a brief explanatory glossary that accompanies this contribution.

Since the 1990s, the German current of Value Criticism has been proposing to rework a critique of capitalism based on the mature works of Marx. Starting from the primary categories of capital – value, abstract labor, commodity fetishism – they intend to overcome the traditional contradictions of Marxism, capital/labor, proletariat/bourgeoisie, etc. The Canadian thinker Moishe Postone has, independently of value criticism, developed a thought that is close to the German current while distinguishing itself on certain important points. However, it is appropriate to question these new readings of Marx which, if they can be fruitful, pose many problems, both philosophical and political.

We compare two highly symbolized beverages – Coca-Cola and tesguino, a fermented maize beer of indigenous northern Mexico – to (re-)evaluate the notion of fetishism of commodities in contrasting ethnographic contexts. In the case of Coca-Cola, we observe a kind of hidden but active fetishization, meaning a strategic procedure wherein the producer invests images of social character, experience, and other naturalizing significations into its commodity. Tesguino, as a comparably sacred drink among the Rarámuri, is not characterized by its concealment in magical properties and simulacrized associations. The ritual consumption of tesguino, instead, reveals the organic social bonds in relations of production and exchange.

The purpose of the paper is to argue that an enriched understanding of texts would enable more informed and responsible management practice. The authors present an approach to the analysis of management texts that enjoys, rather than contests, multivocality with the aim of making our approach to defamiliarising texts an accessible change management tool.

Working with a reader‐response methodology we provide comment on, and analysis of, a popular management book, Kevin Roberts' Lovemarks. The authors context a response to this text in a discussion of commodity fetishism and deconstructed management theory texts. The interpretation of the subject text highlights its rhetorical suasion and pulls buried meaning into view.

The authors demonstrate that rhetorical analysis and satirical play, a mode of defamiliarisation that is employed in their own reading and incorporated into their classroom praxis, enables managers to better understand and control their own sense‐making. The authors argue that where their enriched understandings challenge embedded assumptions, changed management practices are enabled.

The authors offer their own construction of a Lovemark text, a satirical echo of the Roberts original, as an example of the distancing effect of humorous textual play.