Heather Savigny

Women, Know Your Limits: Cultural Sexism in Academia.

Despite the considerable advances of the feminist movement across Western societies, in Universities women are less likely to be promoted, or paid as much as their male colleagues, or even get jobs in the first place. One way in which we can start to reflect on why this might be the case is through hearing the experiences of women academics themselves. Using feminist methodology, this article attempts to unpack and explore just some examples of ‘cultural sexism’ which characterises the working lives of many women in British academia. This article uses qualitative methods to describe and make sense of some of those experiences. In so doing, the argument is made that the activity of academia is profoundly gendered and this explicit acknowledgement may contribute to our understanding of the under-representation of women in senior positions.

Playing to the Crowd: The Role of Music and Musicians in Political Participation

Music and politics have long been connected. One of the most recent examples was Live 8 in July 2005, when a series of concerts was used to put pressure on G8 leaders to change their policy on third world debt. While the connection is often observed, it is rarely analysed in any detail. This article is an attempt to provide some of that detail. It begins by asking whether participating in music can also mean participating in politics. It goes on to explore the conditions that are necessary for this conjunction of politics and music. It does this by comparing two UK examples of music-based political movements, Jubilee 2000 (which culminated in Live 8) and Rock Against Racism. It ends by arguing that the link between politics and music has to be understood along three dimensions: the organisation of the link, its legitimation and its cultural performance.

Focus Groups and Political Marketing: Science and Democracy as Axiomatic?

Focus groups are an established and influential way of generating public opinion data. They have been extensively used by the British Labour Party and are more broadly associated with marketing. Focus groups, as referred to within much of the political marketing literature and used in political practice, are underpinned by two central but largely implicit claims: first, that the use of focus groups is scientific; second, this claim to science is conflated with the normative assertion that focus groups enhance the democratic process. This article renders explicit and disentangles these underlying assumptions that inform the theory and practice of focus groups. These theoretical concerns are illustrated by reference to the Labour Party, in particular its modernisation process during the build-up to the 1997 election. By separating and interrogating these basic premises two salient issues subsequently emerge. First, it is contended that the use of focus groups, in the political marketing literature and in political practice violates ‘scientific’ principles. Second, it is argued that over-reliance on focus groups challenges normative claims to democracy, by confining the potential for democratic debate to the few, rather than the many.

Political Marketing Models: The Curious Incident of the Dog that Doesn't Bark

Contemporary politics has become dominated by the use of marketing strategies, techniques and principles. An academic literature has emerged in response to these empirical trends. Much of this literature is grounded in management marketing theory, and the contention of this article is that while this may provide a useful heuristic device, the models of political behaviour it proposes are seriously flawed by their assumptions of a passive or neutral role for the media. The intention here is, first, to restore agency to the media. This is achieved by highlighting their influence in shaping the political message, rather than simply disseminating it as implied by the management marketing models. Second, we draw attention to some of the key democratic implications of applying marketing to the practice of politics and highlight the potential role of the media as agents providing a corrective function to the democratic deficits we identify.

Political Marketing: A Rational Choice?

ABSTRACT Political marketing is a relatively new approach to analysing political activity that draws upon management marketing assumptions to describe political behaviour. These assumptions are explicitly grounded in neoclassical economic assertions about behaviour. In political science these assumptions are utilised by orthodox rational choice theory. Thus, political marketing can be located within this perspective. Rational choice provides a series of analytic models through which ontological implications can be derived, and predictions made. Yet, the political marketing approach seeks to build upon orthodox rational choice accounts, by introducing a normative element to this perspective, prescribing the internalisation of these assumptions in order to achieve the desired objective. Further, this normative aspect claims that the adoption of marketing improves the democratic process. However, rational choice is an analytical ‘toolkit’ which does not seek to make normative claims. Indeed, normative arguments are inconsistent with rational choice, which seeks to provide a scientific, value-free approach to political analysis, and, consequently, the analytical and normative aspects of political marketing need to be rendered explicit and such normative aspects challenged.

Selling scandal or ideology? The politics of business crime coverage

Financial scandals and controversies have recently attracted much attention in the British press. The excesses of the bankers’ bonuses, MPs’ expenses scandals and those deemed ‘benefit cheats’ and welfare scroungers have been given prominence by the print news media, and the present Coalition government. The politicization of the current financial crisis has resulted in ‘the privatization of loss and the socialization of costs’. Yet how do we make sense of this? Or how are those responsible for financial wrongdoings able to ‘get away with it’? This article suggests that the interests of business as a class remain largely uncontested in contemporary political discourse. Just one way in which this is evident is through the coverage of financial crime, and this article offers as illustration a case study of the political construction of business crime (price fixing) in the pages of the British press. It is suggested that the way in which this crime is framed is reflective of a broader ideological discursive commitment which privileges business interests over the public interest.

Labour, Political Marketing and the 2005 Election: A Campaign of Two Halves

Labours 2005 election campaign was extensively underpinned by political marketing. This resulted in a campaign of unequal halves; generic and populist at national level; focused and individualised at local level. This article describes the text of Labours campaign, and its response to its environment, focusing upon its image management strategies in response to the political and media environment within which it operated. This also included the Conservatives and an increasing overlap between politics and celebrity culture. This campaign saw a continuation and sophistication of marketing strategies and technologies, enabling parties to target individual, strategically important, voters. A specific personalised message was presented to 2% of the electorate, while a broad image was promoted to the rest of the populace. With an election focused on a targeted minority of the electorate, it is argued that far from being a force to enhance democracy, marketing at the 2005 election challenges the ideals upon which the democratic process of politics is premised.

The Voice of the People? Musicians as political actors

This article explores the ways in which popular musicians, in particular Bob Geldof, have come to assume a central role in the campaign to alter economic and political relationships between the developed and developing worlds. It focuses on the example of Live 8, but traces this back through Make Poverty History, Jubilee 2000, and Live Aid; and it makes contrasts with another example of music’s use for political ends: Rock Against Racism. What we are concerned to show is how Geldof’s role was constituted both by the political and aesthetic ideology that he evolved and by the processes that legitimated him as a representative of, and expert on, the cause he espoused. We set this analysis against the background of the specific literature on music’s role in social movements; the general literature on post-democracy; and the rise of celebrity politics. While these literatures, we argue, provide a general framework for understanding the role of musicians in politics, they are vague on the detailed cultural politics of the processes involved.

Ontology and Epistemology in Political Marketing

Abstract Ontological and epistemological concerns, considerations about what is real and the status of the claims to knowledge that flow in relation to that reality, necessarily underpin all areas of political analysis. As such it is important to be clear about these positions in order that (1) rigorous analysis can be developed and (2) the extent to which models and frameworks that are used can be regarded as scientific or heuristic. While scientific models function to facilitate predictions and generalisations, heuristic frameworks have the capacity to describe and provide understanding. The mainstream political marketing literature is dominated by an implicit commitment to science and positivism. This entails the use of theories, models, and frameworks to generate predictions and a truth about the nature of political reality. However, these assumptions remain largely implicit and in places, this makes for inconsistency and contradictory claims within the literature. This article highlights the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the mainstream political marketing literature, and argues that while this literature provides a comprehensive description of political reality, thereby performing an important heuristic function, this should not be conflated with prescription for, or prediction of, political behaviour.

Women Politicians in the UK Press: Not seen and not heard?

Abstract This article asks questions about the ways in which female politicians are depicted in press coverage. Previous research has explored the ways in which female politicians are constructed as “other” from the male politician norm, where “men were taken to stand for the whole human population.” Other work has shown that coverage emphasises their appearance or femininity. However, there has been less research on the visibility of women in politics in our media: women not only need to be involved in politics, they need to be seen to be doing political work. Through a content analysis of British press coverage using samples from the last twenty years, we examine the relative visibility of women MPs compared to men, the extent to which their voice is heard, and the context of the coverage. We argue this may well contribute to deterring women from taking part in parliamentary politics.