Habitus, Doxa, and Ethics: Insights from Advertising in Emerging Markets in the Middle East and North Africa
Dr. Minette E. Drumwright, Associate Professor of Advertising & Public Relations
October 13, 2016 — 3:30-4:30PM — BMC 5.102
How do advertising practitioners in other cultures confront ethical issues? Building on research conducted with Sara Kamal, Professor Drumwright employs Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine how the perceptions, practices, and discourses of advertising practitioners in Middle East and North Africa influence the advertising field’s habitus and doxa. Through this investigation into culturally inflected media practices, our understanding of the ethical problems of advertising is enhanced by examining them as macro, meso, and micro phenomena. Understanding how these three levels interrelate, interact, and reinforce one another is critical to understanding the habitus of advertising practitioners. Underlying biases that shape the doxa can be explained by ideas central to behavioral ethics. A better understanding of the forces that shape the habitus and doxa with respect to ethics is key to moving toward a culture that encourages ethical advertising practices.
Dr. Minette E. Drumwright previously was an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School and a senior lecturer in the U.T. Marketing Department. Her current research involves studies of social responsibility in business, particularly in marketing and advertising. Her research interests also include services marketing, marketing strategy, and business ethics, and she has written articles and cases for various books and journals, including Journal of Marketing and Marketing Letters. She has won two school-wide teaching awards at U.T. for her MBA course on services marketing. Outside the university, she has taught in corporate executive education programs in Mexico, Europe, and Asia as well as in the U.S. In between her undergraduate and graduate degrees, she worked in advertising and public relations for seven years.