TY - JOUR

T1 - Performing a myth to make a market

T2 - The construction of the ‘magical world’ of Santa

AU - Palo, Teea

AU - Mason, Katy

AU - Roscoe, Philip John

N1 - This work was supported by an Early Career Small Grant Awarded by the Research Committee, Lancaster University (SGS21/35).

PY - 2020/1/1

Y1 - 2020/1/1

N2 - If you believe in Santa, do not read this paper. Through an in-depth, qualitative, empirical study, we follow the Santa myth to a remote northern location in Lapland, Finland where, for one month a year, multiple actors come together to create a tourist market offering: the chance to visit Santa in his ‘magical world’. We explore how the myth is transformed into reality through performative, organisational speech acts, whereby felicitous conditions for the performance of visits to Santa are embedded in a complex socio-material network. We develop the performative turn (Gond et al., 2016) in organisational studies by introducing a new category of speech act, ‘translocution’, a compendium of imagining, discussing, proposing, negotiating and contracting that transforms the myth into a model of an imaginary-real world. Through translocutionary acts, actors calculate, organise the socio-material networks of the market, and manage the considerable uncertainty inherent in its operation. Details of the myth become market facts, while commercial constructs fade into the imaginary. The result, when felicitous conditions are achieved, is a ‘Merry Christmas’ of magical, performative power.

AB - If you believe in Santa, do not read this paper. Through an in-depth, qualitative, empirical study, we follow the Santa myth to a remote northern location in Lapland, Finland where, for one month a year, multiple actors come together to create a tourist market offering: the chance to visit Santa in his ‘magical world’. We explore how the myth is transformed into reality through performative, organisational speech acts, whereby felicitous conditions for the performance of visits to Santa are embedded in a complex socio-material network. We develop the performative turn (Gond et al., 2016) in organisational studies by introducing a new category of speech act, ‘translocution’, a compendium of imagining, discussing, proposing, negotiating and contracting that transforms the myth into a model of an imaginary-real world. Through translocutionary acts, actors calculate, organise the socio-material networks of the market, and manage the considerable uncertainty inherent in its operation. Details of the myth become market facts, while commercial constructs fade into the imaginary. The result, when felicitous conditions are achieved, is a ‘Merry Christmas’ of magical, performative power.

KW - Myth

KW - Performativity

KW - Speech act

KW - Market

KW - Santa Claus

KW - Imaginary-real

KW - Translocution

U2 - 10.1177/0170840618789192

DO - 10.1177/0170840618789192

M3 - Article

VL - 41

SP - 53

EP - 75

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 1

ER -