Algorithmic classifications in credit marketing: How marketing shapes inequalities
While critical marketing studies have discussed algorithm-driven marketing's role in governmentality, subjectivity formation and capitalist accumulation, its role in shaping class inequalities is less studied. Drawing on the performativity of marketing, 'classification situations' and critical algorithm studies, this paper uses the case of credit marketing to propose a twofold framework to analyse how algorithmic marketing shapes the cultural and economic inequalities of class. First, algorithms used for categorizing consumers and matching them with marketing messages and products provide access (1) to different symbolic resources and (2) to credit products with different financial consequences to different consumers depending on their categorization, which contribute to the creation of cultural and economic inequalities, respectively. Second, algorithms of financial advice devices overtake parts of consumer choice. Insofar as different financial preferences and rationalities are scripted into the devices for different client groups, these technologies constitute an additional process that affects social divisions.
Embodied, embedded and educated: How everyday heroes strive to save lives during a pandemic
Drawing on an ethnographic study of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we explore how ordinary people make extraordinary efforts to convince others to comply with health authorities' advice to change their behaviour. Theories of heroism and embodied health movements inform our typology consisting of four distinct types of everyday heroes. Everyday heroes adopt a variety of actions, uniquely drawing on their embodiment of the illness and embeddedness in the local context. The 'national role model' builds a personal brand promoting beauty with a purpose, while the 'national entrepreneur' assembles resources and builds support networks and institutions. The 'local caregiver' offers face-to-face support to the diseased and afflicted, while the 'local entrepreneur' creates non-risky health practices to replace risky ones. A significant finding is the heroes' courage and creative self-educational work, through which they find their own ways to translate medical knowledge into the local vernacular and practice.
