The Semiotics of Brand Paul Manning Department of Anthropology, Trent University, Toronto, Ontario M6H 3Y3, Canada; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Anthro pol. 2010. 39:33–49 First published online as a Review in Advance on June 14, 2010 The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at anthro.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104939 Copyright c 2010 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 0084-6570/10/1021-0033$20.00 Key Words materiality, trademark, production, circulation, fetish Abstract Approaches to the semiotics of brand are troubled by the lack of any accept ed analy tic definition of the phenomeno n, as well as capac ious, almost met aph ysi cal, extensions in whi ch bra nd bec ome s identi fied wit h semiosis as such, and thus everything is a brand. In addition, studies of brand tend to focus on highly visible or successful brands, as often as not as a proxy for a real object of analytic interest that lies elsewhere. Bra nd discou rse defines bra nd in opposition to the mat erialpro per tiesof the product, leading to a demat erializ ation of bran d, which erases the messy materialities, contingencies, and hybrids that continually arise in the material semiosis of brand. Rather than attempt a definition of brand , the recent literatureon bra nd semiot ics is explor ed alon g severa l material and semiotic dimensions of the variousness of its relationship to its universes of circulation and in different professional discourses and historical and cultural contexts. 33 A n n u . R e v . A n t h r o p o l . 2 0 1 0 . 3 9 : 3 3 4 9 . D o w n l o a d e d f r o m w w w . a n n u a l r e v i e w s . o r g b y C o l l e g e o f W i l l i a m & M a r y o n 0 3 / 0 7 / 1 2 . F o r p e r s o n a l u s e o n l y . Click here for quick links to Annual Reviews content online, including: • Other articles in this volume • Top cited articles • Top downloaded articles • Our comprehensive search Further ANNUAL REVIEWS