Features
When Consumers, Cultures Clash
Sociologist helps advertisers walk a fine line
BY REBECCA KENDALL
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| Naki Osutei's master's thesis raises questions about whether culture can truly be shared, enhanced and preserved without being abused. Photo by Justin Morris |
In Canada's ever-growing multicultural landscape, consumers are thinking more critically about culture, says master's candidate Naki Osutei, who is challenging adver- tisers to dig deeper when presenting culture in their campaigns.
Cultural issues have been at the core of Osutei's extracurricular, academic and professional life for close to 15 years. Born in Toronto to Ghanaian parents, she grew up in a neighbourhood that had a wide mix of nationalities and ethnicities. Her work with the Metro Toronto Housing Authority as a teenager kindled a growing fascination with social dynamics that was eventually nourished at Guelph, where she earned a BA in sociology before embarking on a master's degree.
At Guelph, she worked with the Central Student Association's Human Rights Office and the C.J. Munford Centre and co-ordinated a series of conferences that brought in popular recording artists, music executives and academics to meet with local urban musicians, deliver workshops and challenge traditional views.
Osutei's masters' thesis, which she completed in the fall, examined two distinct examples of culture being used to engage an audience and questioned why one failed while the other flourished. It also raised questions about whether culture can truly be shared, enhanced and preserved — as stated in Canada's Multiculturalism Act — without being abused.
“I believe intention is very important when we speak about sharing culture,” she says. “The Canadian landscape offers so much in the way of cultural symbols and traditions, but it's critical that we recognize these cultures are bound to the history of different peoples. When we decide to adopt some aspect, we should consider why we wish to do so and how this impacts the history of others. It's really a fine line, but it's one we have to practise walking.”
Today, Osutei uses her knowledge as a project officer for the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of civic leaders formed to address challenges to the Toronto region's social and economic future.
She's also running NOX Group, a Toronto-based firm she founded to provide solutions to companies seeking to expand their cultural markets and move beyond conventional notions of diversity.
“We live in a multicultural country made up of multicultural people, and the popular understanding of diversity doesn't consider this important distinction,” she says. “People of my generation are growing up with multiple identities, and the ethnicity a person was born into may not necessarily exclusively define him or her. Where they grow up and who they grow up with also influence their sense of self.”
The NOX Group, whose growing roster of clients includes U of G's Human Rights and Equity Office, Wilbo Entertainment and the ReelWorld Film Festival, uses this knowledge to produce change.
“I've always been concerned that the academic work I'd do was going to sit on a shelf somewhere,” says Osutei. “NOX Group brings together all of my past experience with a major emphasis on the academic research. My work, in its totality, is aimed at contributing to a change in the way we relate to one another in a multicultural society.”