CCB Meeting, Rio de Janeiro, 2019
In September 2019, I had the opportunity to give a presentation during the third meeting of our Cultura e Consumo Brasil (CCB) community, held at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). That day, my intention was to provoke an exercise of self-reflection by addressing the theme “Us, our publications, and the nature of a community in consumer studies.”
The idea behind the presentation was simple. It was an invitation to pause, even if only briefly, and reflect on who we were and what we were writing. But above all, it sought to address a question that might have felt uncomfortable: why had we decided to create a collective academic space such as CCB in the first place?
Looking back now, after facing the challenges of the pandemic through virtual meetings (2021 and 2022 hosted by FGV/EAESP) and our in-person reunion at PUC-Rio in 2024, I realize that revisiting those data is not only a way of understanding the genesis of an identity that began to take shape in 2016 at Unigranrio, but also a reminder that those provocations are still very much alive.
Who Are “We”?
To understand our community, I began by mapping who we were geographically and demographically. The 2019 data revealed a vibrant community, but one facing challenges of capillarity. Rio de Janeiro was our epicenter, concentrating 45% of our members. However, we were already seeing important fronts in Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, and São Paulo (ranging from 9.8% in the first two states to 8.4% in the latter two). In addition, we had a meaningful international presence, with members working in institutions outside Brazil.
More than location, however, what defined us was transition. By analyzing members’ higher education institutions of training and the time elapsed since their most recent academic degree, I realized that we were not merely a community, but a network of researchers at different stages of maturation. Senior scholars shared space with a new generation of researchers, many of whom were still institutionally connected to their home universities.
Something that caught my attention at the time, and still seems worth mentioning, was that CCB appeared to function as a kind of “second home” for researchers who felt isolated in traditional departments that recognized marketing, but not yet the field of culture and consumption. In other words, CCB seemed to operate as an institutional, intellectual, and even affective support network.
Our Publications: What We Say, Whom We Cite, and the Political Act of Writing
The analysis of our publications revealed an interesting detail. Between 2017 and 2018, we counted 90 papers presented at academic conferences, 40% of which were co-authored. At first glance, this suggested that we were indeed working collectively within CCB. Broadly speaking, our studies addressed both specific and broader themes related to gender, food, low-income consumption, fashion, markets, social media, meanings, and consumption practices, among others.
However, the deeper reflection emerged from examining 2,926 citations made across 60 journal articles published by CCB members. When I investigated whether members of the community were recognizing and citing one another, I entered somewhat delicate territory, especially when comparing citations of CCB members’ publications (4.3% of the total) with self-citations (2.0%). In other words, nearly half of the citations to CCB work were, strictly speaking, self-citations.
At that moment, I defended the idea that citing a colleague from the community is not merely a technical formality in academic writing, but a political act of strengthening. A community that does not recognize its peers remains invisible and risks being merely a cluster of individuals rather than a theoretical field. In my view, building a solid theoretical body of work from the Brazilian context goes beyond self-reference. It creates the conditions to engage in dialogue with international scholars and to promote the internationalization of academic production emerging from CCB.
The Nature of Our Community: Why Are We Here, After All?
This was the central point of the talk and what I consider the thesis of our existence, as well as what brought us to the 2024 meeting at PUC-Rio. I argued that CCB was not born merely out of academic interaction, bibliographic exchange, or shared experiences, but rather from four fundamental pillars:
Legitimization: the search to validate Consumer Culture Studies as a serious and necessary field within Brazilian academia, an autonomous and rigorous area that moves beyond the simplistic view that we are merely an “appendix” of Marketing;
Respect: the achievement of a space where our perspective is heard and respected among traditional disciplines and within institutional environments, including our own universities;
Power: the understanding that academia is also a field of disputes, and that having an organized community allows us to generate influence in academic and institutional arenas, so that once organized, we become a voice that cannot be ignored;
Occupation of Space: the active participation in discussions, organizations, institutional structures, funding calls, councils, committees, associations, classrooms, and public debates as both a synthesis and the very justification for CCB’s existence.
Looking Ahead
Since its foundation in 2016 at Unigranrio, through COPPEAD in 2017, PUC-Rio in 2018, the virtual meetings during the pandemic, and finally our most recent in-person encounter, I believe that Cultura e Consumo Brasil has remained committed to its purpose despite the adversities and uncertainties of the Brazilian academic environment. Strictly speaking, I believe its essence remains the same: we are researchers, professors, and students who understand that consumption is a complex and important phenomenon, one that is worth studying.
That 2019 talk was an invitation to self-recognition. Today, I see that we have moved forward. We no longer need to prove that we exist. Gradually, I believe we are consolidating the territory we occupy. Our challenge now is to continuously revisit the nature of our community, while expanding and deepening the knowledge we produce.
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