Kirsi Eräranta

Psychological Regimes of Truth and Father Identity: Challenges for Work/Life Integration

Based on a case study, this paper elaborates on the psychological regimes of truth that organize and regulate male parenting and partly constitute the conditions of possibility for male identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the discursive-cultural constraints that Western managers and employees — males in particular — may face when trying to pursue a better work/life balance. Based on an empirical analysis of expert literature on male parenting, the paper argues that prevalent psychological regimes of truth about fathers and fathering do not necessarily render enactable the sorts of identities that enable both men and women to achieve a better work/life balance.

NARRATIVES OF SELF AND RELATEDNESS IN ECO-COMMUNES: Resistance against normalized individualization and the nuclear family

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on eco-communes as sites of resistance and political activism. Based on a post-structuralist narrative analysis of interview materials, this paper elaborates on the ways in which life in a commune is narrated and represented as an identity project with a mission to bring about social change. The environmentalists studied make sense of their choice to live in an eco-commune as something that was triggered and facilitated by important crossroads and fateful moments that they had encountered in their past life. They also work on their identity as eco-communards by discursively problematizing their personal relation to themselves (self) and to others (spouse and family), as well as by constructing new forms of subjectivity, intimacy, and relatedness through communal life. Life in the eco-commune thus represents a form of resistance and political struggle that Michel Foucault has referred to as politics of self; it represents not only direct opposition against the social order of contemporary Western consumer society but also more subtle resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity that it entails.

Finnish Policies for Reconciling Work and Family and the Usages of Europe

Drawing on the ‘usages of Europe’ approach, this paper examines the Europeanisation of work/family reconciliation policies in Finland, an EU member since 1995. More specifically, the paper analyses the ways in which EU resources have been used by national actors to shape reconciliation policies. The empirical materials consist of Finnish policy texts on the topic published between 1980 and 2009. It is argued that, while Europe has rarely been referred to in the revision of already-established reconciliation policies, i.e. childcare services and family leave benefits, Europe has played an important role in the emergence of new, labour market-oriented reconciliation policies. Although the cognitive and normative inspirations for the shifting of reconciliation to the domain of labour market policy may have come from various sources, the financial and legal resources of the EU have provided Finnish actors with a concrete means of introducing new policy instruments, such as work/family projects in organisations and incentives for the more equal use of parental leave, as well as new economic policy goals. Overall, the goals, domains, instruments, and timing of Finnish reconciliation policies have followed those of the EU.

Mechanisms of biopower and neoliberal governmentality in precarious work: Mobilizing the dependent self-employed as independent business owners

In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging ‘gig economy,’ standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy and self-worth as individuals. The article contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.

Introduction: theorising gender and gendering theory in marketing and consumer research

Gender permeates into the market in domains ranging from institutional practices to product design to advertising to mundane consumption patterns. It is also a challenging social and cultural category to inquire into, frequently reduced to a dichotomous variable such as male/female or masculine/feminine. In contemporary consumer culture, however, these dualist categorisations and essentialist conceptualisations often break down and become problematised (Holt & Thompson, 2004; Peñaloza, 1994; Zayer, Sredl, Parmentier, & Coleman, 2012). Moreover, from a feminist point of view, marketing strategies that unreflectively accept the dominant cultural distinctions between ‘male’ and ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’, and capitalise on social expectations and stereotypical sex roles, may be exploitative and thus ethically suspect: they perpetuate and reinforce the oppressive discourses and practices that are linked to social and gender inequality. In empirical research on marketing and consumer research, the concept of gender has been defined and used in a myriad of ways so as to contribute to a better and more self-reflective understanding of the gendered nature of consumer behaviour and of the role of marketing activities in the construction of gender (Bettany, Dobscha, O’Malley, & Prothero, 2010). Several scholars have explored and critically examined the gendered nature of not only consumer identity projects and cultural models (Eraranta & Moisander, 2011; Eräranta, Moisander, & Pesonen, 2009; Evans, Riley, & Shankar, 2010; Gentry & Harrison, 2010; Kjeldgaard & Nielsen, 2010; Littlefield, 2010; Maclaran & Catterall, 2000; Martin, Schouten, & McAlexander, 2006; Ourahmoune & Ozcaglar-Toulouse, 2012; Schroeder, 2003; Schroeder & Zwick, 2004; Thompson & Holt, 2004; Valtonen, 2012) but also marketing theory and practice (Beetles & Crane, 2005; Brace-Govan, 2010; Bristor & Fischer, 1993; Fischer & Bristor, 1994; Gentry & Harrison, 2010; Joy & Venkatesh, 1994; Meriläinen, Moisander, & Pesonen, 2000; Ostberg, 2010; Ourahmoune, Binninger, & Robert, 2014). While these works have significantly advanced our knowledge of the workings of gender in the marketplace, there is still room for further theoretical development in the field. For this special issue, therefore, we invited contributions that draw on gender as a theoretical concept and work towards theorising gender and gendering theory in the field of marketing and consumer research. We draw attention to the idea that gender is not a naïve category that merely reflects the social world. Gender is rather a cultural category that is underpinned by socially constructed and contested assumptions and norms about identity and sexuality. In contemporary society, these Journal of Marketing Management, 2015

Morality of Tax Avoidance as a Question of Sociopolitical Legitimacy and CSR

While much of the existing research has focused on articulating philosophical and theoretical arguments about whether or not tax avoidance is the right thing to do, this paper explores and examines...

Changing Conceptions of Citizenship and Care in Finnish Policy Discourse on Reconciliation of Work and Family Life

Since the 1990s ‘reconciliation of work and family life’ has been discussed as a central concern of social policy both in Finland and the European Union. In the EU, the concern for ageing populations and the resulting unsustainable dependency ratios has led to the advancement of policies that both encourage a more active participation of citizens, women in particular, in the labour market, and allow them to have children and raise a family (Duncan 2002). Being high on the policy agenda, the issue of work/family reconciliation represents an interesting case of European government (Walters and Haahr 2005) and the debate on social citizenship and care (Lister 1997) in the EU. It also provides a possibility to analyse and illustrate the ways in which European policies are articulated and negotiated in the local contexts of the member states — in this case in one of the Nordic countries, which are often considered as forerunners in the development of reconciliation policies.