Conflicts at the bottom of the pyramid: profitability, poverty alleviation, and neoliberal governmentality

This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal government policies that dominate contemporary India. The initiative sounds good, even noble, but becomes mired in divergent discourses and practices that ultimately fail to help the poor whom it targets. This research helps explicate the problems with BOP policy interventions that encourage profit seeking as a way to alleviate poverty

‘Made to run’ : Biopolitical marketing and the making of the self-quantified runner

While previous critical marketing research on co-creation has focused on how consumers' cognitive and social abilities are governed, this article focuses on how firms' marketing strategies attempt to govern every aspect of consumers' lives. By drawing on a biopolitical framework and a study of Nike+, a marketing system for runners which Nike has developed around its self-tracking devices, three biopolitical marketing dimensions were identified: the gamification of the running experience, the transformation of running into a competitive activity and the conversion of running into a social activity. In identifying these marketing dimensions, the study demonstrates how self-tracking affordances are deployed in the development of a biopolitical marketing environment that tames, captures and appropriates value from different aspects of consumers' lives, including - and combining - their social behaviours, cognitive capacities and bodily conducts. This article contributes to critical studies of value co-creation by focusing on the tamed self-tracking body as a resource for value creation, but also by demonstrating that consumers engage, through cognitive labour, in the production of the biopolitical environment that leads to their exploitation.Peer reviewe

Workplace humiliation and the organization of domestic work

This study of domestic workers and employers in Kolkata (India) examines the significance of workplace humiliation as an important yet neglected concept for organization studies. It identifies practices of symbolic, sexual and physical workplace humiliation that shape corporeality and subjectivity in such a way that workers feel inferior, fearful and docile. Practices of workplace humiliation serve the purpose of social reproduction by stabilizing the existing skewed power relations between workers and employers, and making workers comply inexpensively with the harsh requirements of highly exploitative workplaces. In foregrounding humiliation as a key organizational mechanism, this study furthers understanding of workplace humiliation, oppression, caste and exploitation in organization studies

Market subjectivity and neoliberal governmentality in higher education

Using an interpretive case study in a business school in India, this research examines student behaviour and offers an understanding of a marketisation process in higher education. The study deploys Foucault\u27s conceptualisation of governmentality and uncovers processes through which market subjectivity is fostered among students as they strive to become responsible, active, and entrepreneurial subjects. The subject position is attributed to several governmental discourses of peer pressure, abnormality, uncritical pedagogy, loan repayment, and elitism that prevail in the business school. The study further highlights the roles of English language and preference for western corporations which are unique to postcolonial India. Market subjectivity results in the prevalence of instrumental rationality, failure to develop a critical academic perspective, subordination of social concerns, and disenchantment and exclusion among some students

Enacting Green Consumers: The Case of the Scandinavian Preppies

The aim of this paper is to develop and illustrate an analytic approach that brings the active making and makings of green consumer images to the fore. Efforts to “know” the green consumers have generated multiple representations. Enactments of the green consumer are not innocent but also play a role in shaping how we understand and approach sustainable consumption. Because of this it is important to examine and critically discuss how green consumers are enacted today. This paper develops an approach that allows us to examine how green consumers are enacted and discuss the consequences these constructions might have for sustainability. Theoretically, a performativity approach drawing on theories from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and economic sociology is used to discuss the enactment of green consumers. Empirically, focus is on Boomerang – a Swedish fashion retailer, brand, and producer – and its marketing practices. The analysis shows how the marketing work of the Boomerang Company leads to the enactment of the Green Scandinavian Preppy. This specific version of the green consumer is a combination of the knowledgeable green connoisseur – a consumer that knows quality when he/she sees it – and the green hedonist in search of the good life. The Green Scandinavian Preppy wants to enjoy nature, go sailing, and do so wearing fashionable quality clothes. This is a consumer that knows quality, appreciates design, and has the means to pay for both. While this is a version of the green consumer that might be appealing and thus have the potential to pro-mote a version of green consumption, it is also a green consumer image that has lost much of its political power as green consumption is framed as simply another source of pleasure and identity-making

Practitioner accounts and knowledge production: an analysis of three marketing discourses

Responding to repeated calls for marketing academicians to connect with marketing actors, we offer an empirically-sourced discourse analysis of the ways in which managers portray their practices. Focusing on the micro-discourses and narratives that marketing actors draw upon to represent their work we argue that dominant representations of marketing knowledge production present a number of critical concerns for marketing theory and marketing education. We also evidence that the often promoted idea of a need to close the gap between theory - as a dominant discourse - and practice, as a way of doing marketing, is problematic to pursue. We suggest that a more fruitful agenda resides in the development of a range of polyphonic and creative micro-discourses of management, promoting context, difference and individual meaning in marketing knowledge production

Military Training Mission in Iraq: An Exploratory Case Study Research

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how military training is being conducted by NATO coalition forces in Iraq. Thus, the intent of this paper is to discuss the implications of existing misalignments between the military forces that are providing the training and those receiving it. To that end, we have used an exploratory case study research, which included multiple sources of data collection for corroboration and triangulation purposes. The results that emerged from the content analysis showed two types of outcomes that may be relevant to improve the military training in Iraq. The first outcome is identified as the intangible actions, which were mainly focused on social relations, with the intent of narrowing the cultural gap between the international coalition and Iraqi forces. Without surprising, a second outcome is identified as tangible actions, which were associated with training programs and the establishment of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) relevant to small and medium military units. Future research should focus on programs of “training the trainers” in order to develop long-term teaching and move forward with sustainable Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GM-CSF regulates intimal cell proliferation in nascent atherosclerotic lesions

The contribution of intimal cell proliferation to the formation of early atherosclerotic lesions is poorly understood. We combined 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine pulse labeling with sensitive en face immunoconfocal microscopy analysis, and quantified intimal cell proliferation and Ly-6Chigh monocyte recruitment in low density lipoprotein receptor–null mice. Cell proliferation begins in nascent lesions preferentially at their periphery, and proliferating cells accumulate in lesions over time. Although intimal cell proliferation increases in parallel to monocyte recruitment as lesions grow, proliferation continues when monocyte recruitment is inhibited. The majority of proliferating intimal cells are dendritic cells expressing CD11c and major histocompatibility complex class II and 33D1, but not CD11b. Systemic injection of granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) markedly increased cell proliferation in early lesions, whereas function-blocking anti–GM-CSF antibody inhibited proliferation. These findings establish GM-CSF as a key regulator of intimal cell proliferation in lesions, and demonstrate that both proliferation and monocyte recruitment contribute to the inception of atherosclerosis

Proposal, project, practice, pause: developing a framework for evaluating smart domestic product engagement

Smart homes are fast becoming a reality, with smart TVs, smart meters and other such “smart” devices/systems already representing a substantial household presence. These, which we collectively term “smart domestic products” (SDPs), will need to be promoted, adopted, and normalized into daily routines. Despite this, the marketing canon lacks a substantive discourse on pertinent research. We look to help correct this by melding ideas from organizational sociology, innovation diffusion and appropriation studies, and service dominant logic. Consequently, we suggest a framework for research that responds directly to the specific characteristics of SDPs. Using the SDP eco-system as a context, our framework emphasizes the interplay of embeddedness, practice, value and engagement. It comprises a four-stage horizontal/ longitudinal axis we describe as proposal, project, practice and pause. Cross-sectionally we focus on value, and combine aspects of existing thought to suggest how this impacts each stage of our engagement continuum. We subsequently identify perceived personal advantage as the resultant of these two axes and propose this as the key for understanding consumer and SDP sociomaterial engagement. This article also advances a definition of SDPs and ends with an agenda for further research

Inhibition of T cell response to native low-density lipoprotein reduces atherosclerosis

Immune responses to oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) are proposed to be important in atherosclerosis. To identify the mechanisms of recognition that govern T cell responses to LDL particles, we generated T cell hybridomas from human ApoB100 transgenic (huB100tg) mice that were immunized with human oxLDL. Surprisingly, none of the hybridomas responded to oxidized LDL, only to native LDL and the purified LDL apolipoprotein ApoB100. However, sera from immunized mice contained IgG antibodies to oxLDL, suggesting that T cell responses to native ApoB100 help B cells making antibodies to oxLDL. ApoB100 responding CD4+ T cell hybridomas were MHC class II–restricted and expressed a single T cell receptor (TCR) variable (V) β chain, TRBV31, with different Vα chains. Immunization of huB100tgxLdlr−/− mice with a TRBV31-derived peptide induced anti-TRBV31 antibodies that blocked T cell recognition of ApoB100. This treatment significantly reduced atherosclerosis by 65%, with a concomitant reduction of macrophage infiltration and MHC class II expression in lesions. In conclusion, CD4+ T cells recognize epitopes on native ApoB100 protein, this response is associated with a limited set of clonotypic TCRs, and blocking TCR-dependent antigen recognition by these T cells protects against atherosclerosis