Working on Qualitative Research - Hermeneutics

Working On Qualitative Research:
the Practices Perspective
consuming considered as a hermeneutic practice
- a play-like project of producing participatory meaning
consuming in malls and media
‘ready-t0-hand’ (heidegger) tacit narrative building
Tony Wilson
Research Office & Business School,
Sunway University, Malaysia
tonyjwilson2@yahoo.com
Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Projecting Meaning in the Practice of
Consuming Marketing Media
Audiences reflect in present-at-hand interpreting (Heidegger) on the
‘complex’ use of narrative tools in their understanding branding.
'For me, the reality of investing in HSBC is as complex as how to
understand the image', to 'capture' meaning (female Malay
respondent asked by a Chinese focus group facilitator:
‘Do you feel you can relate to the video?').
University of Science, Malaysia (USM) focus group viewing an
HSBC Marketing Narrative (on YouTube social media)

How do we ‘understand the
image’ (student) or ‘entities’ (Heidegger) ?
seeing is always culturally (in)formed seeing as: our
basic awareness of entities is as equipment (‘tools’)
this philosophical psychology challenges empiricism -
which underlies dominant marketing theory (e.g. Likert
ﬁve point scale measuring attitudes to ‘objects’)
we perceive entities as types (genres) of equipment,
expecting to use them accordingly to enable their/our
potentiality-for-being: experience is future-oriented

The Project(ion) of Understanding-in-Practice(s) The Practice of Consuming Media
We engage in a play-like (ludic) ‘ready-to-hand’ (minimally monitored) managing of meaning:
(i) projecting - from tacit ‘horizons of understanding’ entities as types of ‘equipment’;
(ii) producing - integrating narrative ‘projection’ (embodied expectation) with events;
(iii) participating - (dis)enabling generic modes of ‘being-with-others’.
‘Being is projected upon ( ... ) significance’ [Heidegger: Being and Time (1962), 187] (1962),
187]

The Project of Understanding
Marketing Media and Malls
• Visiting malls and media, people engage in tacit play-like
managing meaning - the goal is making sense. Albeit with
attenuated attention to this hermeneutic practice, visitors:
(i) project - anticipate eventuality from their ‘horizons of
understanding’ entities as types of ‘equipment’/‘tool’ (Zeug);
(ii) produce - intelligibility, as audiences/ authors integrating
embodied expectation of equipment with event in their
‘hermeneutic circle of understanding’-in-use;
(iii) participate - through (i) & (ii), (dis)enabling generic modes
of (digitally, materially) ‘being-with-others’.

Practices as Play-Like Projects
(in constructing meaning)
The participatory embodied management of projections incorporates a
productive hermeneutic circle of understanding. Expectations are
confirmed or changed, secured or subverted by reference to events.
The Practice of Choosing Apples as Constructing Meaning
‘Let’s say, a simple one: apples. Maybe the apples look the same
to the guys (laughter). No oﬀence. But, we, we, we pick the
apple that looks nicer with no ﬂaws. ( ... ) Like this apple looks
fresher. Something like this. Normally, they would say, “it’s just
the same. Just grab and go.”’ (female Chinese student mall
visitor addressing a focus group)

‘Ready-to-Hand’ Behaviour Building Narrative,
‘Presented-at-Hand’ for Focus Group Discussion.
In Heidegger’s technical terms, this youthful mall consumer
primordia!y (primarily) understands entities everywhere as
equipment. She enters the supermarket from this horizon of
understanding, thus (with little reflection until the focus
group) producing a narrative inscribed in her behaviour of
seeking fruit ‘with no ﬂaws’, participatory activity which
shapes a mode of being-with-others (‘the guys’, who ‘just
grab and go’!) This tacit ready-to-hand understanding - here
presented-at-hand in a focus group - informs her selective
behaviour as a narrative open to reading by observers.

‘Propagating’ a Youthful ‘Taste Regime‘
• The practice of choosing apples exercises expectation, or
‘fore-understanding’, integrating anticipation with actuality.
Should this young person be asked to further unpack her
idea of apples with ‘no ﬂaws’, she could well engage in an
abstracting or secondary account of such a fruit as being an
object with qualities (e.g. its having a colour and shape).
• Presented-at-hand, this discourse delineates a ‘taste regime’ -
it ‘propagates a shared understanding of aesthetic order that
shapes the ways people use objects and deploy the meanings
associated with the material’ (Arsel and Bean, 2013: 900).
Projecting meaning produces a mode of participation.

A Hermeneutic Practices Perspective in Consumer Research
- - - ‘fore-grounding’ pre-reflective horizons of understanding
from which meaning in consumer practices is tacitly projected,
(e.g. in walking), produced and positioned in participation.
Another female Chinese student told us in our study:
‘Basically, I expect good security from the mall.‘
Located on a shared horizon of understanding the mall, she
projects place as equipped behaviour. Inscribed across her
behaviour (e.g. in slowly strolling) will be embodied narrative,
integrating her anticipation and achievement (hopefully!) -
in this immersive mode of being-with-others or participation.

Mall Consuming as
Doubly Ludic
• Considered as hermeneutic practice - embodied projecting
narrative meaning - for the young people considered in this
research, visiting the Sunway Pyramid Mall is doubly ludic:
(i) tacitly producing a participatory understanding of events;
(ii) thematically playful (e.g. at the Lagoon Leisure Park).
• Recommendation: addressing audiences in marketing media
needs to recognise the multiple ludicity of consumption.

Ludic Themes in Hermeneutic Practices
Consumer Projects of Narrative Building
Sunway University Student Focus Group ‘Open’ Questions on Visiting Pyramid Mall:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘Tell us about the times when you are in the mall.’ ‘Do you have a visit that you
particularly like, particularly memorable?’ ‘What would you comment ( ... ) that you
like about (the mall)? And what would you criticise about the mall?’ ‘Anything
concerning the way I’ve been asking questions?’ (convener’s emphasis).
Ludic themes in student responses (transcribed after repeated listening):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A female Chinese visitor to the mall has a sense of ‘belonging ( ... ) feels like the (sic)
second home’. Unlike the primary white colours of a classroom (work), in this mall’s
space for consuming, ‘warm colours ( ... ) feel comfortable’. We visit the mall, ‘just
because we want to relax’ (female, Chinese). So enabled by the cinema, male Chinese
participants assert, ‘usually we go for movie(s) and dining’,‘extra time only, we go
shop around’: equally, ‘one of the reasons I usually come (here) is because there’s
always a movie screening.’ (female, Chinese) ‘Sometimes, (I) accompany friends ( ... )
we go together.’ (male, Chinese) Generation can be a gathering point of recognition:
‘I usually see people among our age.’ (female, Chinese)

Understanding the Mall as a ‘Second Home’,
‘Third Place’ for Play
• Malls as ‘Hangouts at the Heart of a Community’ (Oldenburg)
- ludic characteristics of these ‘second homes’, ‘third places‘ -
• ‘It is the regulars ( ... ) who feel at home in (such) a place and set
the tone of conviviality’ (34). The ‘mood is playful’ (37).
Oldenburg notes ‘play occurs in a place apart’ (38). A third place
is a ‘home away from home’ (1999, 38).
• Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee
Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the
Heart of a Community (2nd edition).
New York: Marlowe and Company.

Youthful ‘Fore-Understanding’ (Heidegger) the Mall as ‘Third
Place’ (Oldenburg) or ‘Second Home’ (Student) for Play
Thematic responses in the focus group suggest in their practice of
visiting the Sunway Pyramid Mall, students enter from a cultural
horizon of understanding this massive place as their ‘second home’:
(i) projecting in behaviour the tacit expectation that they will ‘feel
comfortable’, with the mall ‘equipment’ (e.g warm colours) enabling
them to (ii) produce a narrative of ‘relaxed’ ‘belonging’.
There is skilled managing of (iii) participatory experience: ‘When we
are going for food, (the guys) will definitely join (us).’

Interpretive Focus Group Reflection on Consumer Practice (1)
Revising the Projection of Marketed Meaning
(Fore-Sight/ Fore-Understanding)
A Petronas oil marketing video showed only a hedge, to the sound of a
Tamil song, followed by ‘a hidden guy standing up’, the ‘visual of the
Chinese guy cutting’: ‘when he came upright, at first I said "is it?" You
know,"what is it?" (intense indecipherable speech and group laughter)
I thought "Oh. OK." But I think normal, lah ( ... ) but not many
Chinese can sing (Tamil) so fluently ( ... ). So I guess it makes sense, lah.
OK. And I took time over understanding it' (speaker’s emphasis)
(female Chinese student @ Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman -
response to being prompted to give an account of events on screen).

An Absent Generic Horizon of Understanding ‘Service’ Narrative
(‘normally’ marked out by a brand ‘logo’ or ‘icon’)
from which to project (‘expect’) meaning (‘at first’)
‘Normally the handphone telecommunication service video will
have many logos or icons such as the Yellow Man in Digi video,
but I can’t find any Maxis logo or icon during the video except
the last part, so at first I can’t expect that it is a Maxis video.’
[female Indian respondent in a focus group on telco YouTube
marketing (University Malaysia Sarawak student project)]

Revising a Hermeneutic Circle of Understanding Marketing
Watching a ‘middle-aged man showing his car key to his wife (it’s like
flaunting his new car to his wife)’, a male Chinese contributor formed an
initial anticipatory vision of probable ‘car-sale’ marketing on screen.
Hence, watching the video’s subsequent stories about ‘people conversing
through mobile phones’, he found this services narrative ‘really
surprising’. Turning back in a hermeneutic circle of understanding, with
the goal of articulating a coherent content, he retraced his epistemic path
of making sense to see (real-ise) telco media marketing.
[extracts, focus group contribution, University of Malaysia Sarawak
student project using Maxis (telco) Media Marketing Narrative
(on YouTube social media)]

THE ‘COMPLEX’ PRACTICE OF CONSUMING OR
‘MINDING ABOUT’ (HEIDEGGER) MALLS AND MEDIA
(1) Narrative Projection (‘fore-sight "takes the first cut"’)
of (mall, media) meaning, engaging with entities from a
(2) Horizon of Understanding (‘fore-conception’)
‘with a view to a definite way in which this (equipment)
can be interpreted' in a
(3) Hermeneutic Circle of Understanding as (dis)enabling
a mode of ‘being-with-others’.
[Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), p. 191]

Acknowledgement
Thanks for listening to (my attempt to)
make intelligible ‘making intelligible’!
A co-authored April conference paper -’Being as Becoming’ -
which further considers consumers in Sunway Pyramid Mall
can be located in Conference Items, Sunway Institutional
Repository @ Tun Hussein Onn Library.
tonyjwilson2@yahoo.com

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