Be your product On youth, multilevel marketing, and nutritional cure‐alls in Puerto Princesa, Philippines

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 11-2019
Journal American Ethnologist
Volume | Issue number 46 | 4
Pages (from-to) 429-443
Organisations
  • Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) - Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)
Abstract
Young people in Puerto Princesa, the Philippines, are drawn to working as salespeople for AIM Global, a purveyor of the nutritional supplement C24/7. The company relies on multilevel marketing, in which sellers recruit other sellers, offering youth not only the chance to earn money but also educational discounts, access to bank cards, and an opportunity to develop do‐it‐yourself entrepreneurial skills. Trainers encourage sellers to capitalize on their intimate relations, to tailor the supplements to assuage aging clients’ metabolic‐health anxieties, and to use C24/7 themselves so that they can testify to its benefits. Such “sociometabolic” work is omnipresent in urban settings, where workers in beauty salons and gyms likewise promise to mitigate the material, bodily disturbances caused by toxic environments and precarious living conditions.
Document type Article
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12830
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amet.12830 (Final published version)
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