In response to conditions of reflexive accumulation, advertising research has turned from positivist approaches dominant from the 1960s to the 1980s towards the use of qualitative methodologies such as focus groups and ethnography. This includes an emphasis on place rather than space and signals...

In this paper I examine the process of restructuring in advertising, an image-oriented industry, in the context of debates over flexible specialization and reflexive modernization. There have been far-reaching changes in the US advertising industry in the 1980s and 1990s, including the recent...