Lauren Gurrieri

Women’s Bodies as Sites of Control: Inadvertent Stigma and Exclusion in Social Marketing

Responding to the call for critical examinations of the inadvertent effects of marketing (Dholakia 2012), this article offers an examination of the underexplored impacts of social marketing campaigns that derive from government-defined agendas of “healthism.” Specifically, we examine how efforts aimed at the management of women’s bodies can inadvertently render them sites of control. Drawing on embodiment theory, we consider how the neoliberal body project positions certain bodies as less acceptable, leaving women who engage in activities that run counter to prevailing health messages vulnerable to stigmatization and exclusion. Through three body control projects—breastfeeding, weight management, and physical activity—and a critical visual analysis of social marketing campaigns, we contend that the emerging field of critical social marketing must develop a broader social justice agenda along the lines of macromarketing. In doing so, consumers’ corporeal representations and lived experiences will be better addressed and improved evaluations of social marketing’s societal impacts can be developed.

Framing social marketing as a system of interaction: A neo-institutional approach to alcohol abstinence

Abstract We employ Giddens’ structuration theory to gain insights into the interaction between upstream/midstream and downstream social marketing perspectives. This is conducted through thirteen phenomenological interviews with informants who stand outside of the practice of alcohol consumption through their voluntary engagement in one month of sobriety. Our study identifies the ‘modalities’ located at the intersection between individual actions and the institutions of alcohol. By identifying these ‘modalities’, we conceptualise social marketing in interaction, which incorporates the institutional orders of domination, signification and legitimation, and the individual actions of power, communication and sanction. Specific domains of interventions are identified, namely marketplace offerings and promotional techniques, social grouping and positional status and rituals and traditions, through which social marketers can enact social change.

Queering beauty: fatshionistas in the fatosphere

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the representations and experiences of beauty amongst fat women to understand how females located outside of the normative ideal consume, express, challenge and resist “straight” beauty.Design/methodology/approach – A netnographic approach is taken to analyse 922 blog posts written by five female “fatshionistas” who play a significant role in the Australian fat activism movement.Findings – The research findings illustrate that fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions of beauty through three performative acts – coming out as fat, mobilising fat citizenship and flaunting fat.Research limitations/implications – The study demonstrates how beauty is negotiated as a mode of praxis, a performance in the interaction of day‐to‐day life, whereby the possibilities for multiple and provisional beauties are highlighted.Practical implications – Given the active participation of those outside of the idealised form in “mainstream” beauty consumption, practitioners sho...

Towards a reflexive turn: Social marketing assemblages

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate why the time is ripe for a reflexive turn in social marketing, in response to criticisms of social marketing as neo-liberal, positivist and lacking critical introspection. Design/methodology/approach: The paper traces the development of three paradigms in the field, highlighting the entrenchment of a traditionalist paradigm that heretofore has stifled critical debate and reflexive practice. However, the emergence of social ecologist and critical social marketing paradigms has stimulated the imperative for a reflexive turn. Insights into reflexivity, its relevance and applicability for researchers, participants and other stakeholders in social marketing are considered. Findings: The paper offers a conceptualisation of social marketing assemblages using the lens of actor-network theory and identifies how this can stimulate engagement and reflexive practice for researchers, participants and other stakeholders (such as non-governmental organisations and Government departments involved in delivering programmes). Originality/value: The article presents relevant theoretical and practical benefits from a reflexive turn in social marketing, highlighting how this will furthermore contribute to discipline building.

Anticonsumption Choices Performed in a Drinking Culture: Normative Struggles and Repairs

This article explores the normative barriers to anti-consumption practices and highlights that not-for-profit organizations have an important role to play in facilitating the rejection of consumption. The study is based on thirteen phenomenological interviews with individuals who engaged in one month of alcohol abstinence and illustrates three cultural barriers to rejecting alcohol consumption, namely: the collective obligation to participate in entrenched sharing practices, the collective expectation to reciprocate in gift-giving practices of alcoholic commodities, and the identification of abstinence as deviant nonconformity. The study also discusses the role of nonprofits as change agents within society, emphasizing their ability to mobilize disenfranchised groups, give voice to unpopular causes and facilitate community building that breeds trust and cooperation.This article explores the normative barriers to anti-consumption practices and highlights that not-for-profit organizations have an important role to play in facilitating the rejection of consumption. The study is based on thirteen phenomenological interviews with individuals who engaged in one month of alcohol abstinence and illustrates three cultural barriers to rejecting alcohol consumption, namely: the collective obligation to participate in entrenched sharing practices, the collective expectation to reciprocate in gift-giving practices of alcoholic commodities, and the identification of abstinence as deviant nonconformity. The study also discusses the role of nonprofits as change agents within society, emphasizing their ability to mobilize disenfranchised groups, give voice to unpopular causes and facilitate community building that breeds trust and cooperation.

Neoliberalism and Managed Health Fallacies, Façades and Inadvertent Effects

This response to Gould and Semaan’s (2014) commentary aims to both clarify misinterpretations of and extend the positions taken in our article, “Women’s Bodies as Sites of Control: Inadvertent Stigma and Exclusion in Social Marketing.” Specifically, our response focuses on four areas: the ruse of individual responsibility and choice; the disciplinary and normalizing effects of surveillance; moving beyond micro-level “hot” and “cold” tactics; and the marginalizing effects of healthism. We conclude with a call for greater ethical responsibility in social marketing scholarship and practice, particularly through macro-level engagements at the socio-cultural level as a means of addressing the inadvertent effects of overly simplified campaign messages and images framed through the prism of neo-liberalism that manage and control the bodies of women.

Who Is the Biggest Loser? Fat News Coverage Is a Barrier to Healthy Lifestyle Promotion

Through a textual and visual analysis of online news stories and public commentary about fat bodies, this article provides insights into the medias reporting on the “war on obesity.” It identifies the stigmatizing role that the media plays. Specifically, the media draws on five key discourses in constructing fat bodies: pathologized, gazed upon, marginalized, controlled, and gendered. As news media coverage influences how society views health and policy issues, we argue that social marketers need to take an active role in changing the publics antifat attitudes through healthy lifestyle promotion tactics and strategies that reduce weight stigma.

Controversial advertising: Transgressing the taboo of gender based violence

Purpose To date, the cultural and societal effects of controversial advertising have been insufficiently considered. This study aims to investigate how advertising that uses violent representations of women transgresses the taboo of gender-based violence. Design/methodology/approach This study encompasses a visual analysis of the subject positions of women in five violent advertising representations and a critical discourse analysis of the defensive statements provided by the client organisations subsequent to the public outrage generated by the campaigns. Findings The authors identify taboo transgression in the Tease, Piece of Meat and Conquered subject positions, wherein women are represented as suggestive, dehumanised and submissive. Client organisations seek to defend these taboo transgressions through the use of three discursive strategies – subverting interpretations, making authority claims and denying responsibility – which legitimise the control of the organisations but simultaneously work to obscure the power relations at play. Practical implications The representational authority that advertisers hold as cultural intermediaries in society highlights the need for greater consideration of the ethical responsibilities in producing controversial advertisements, especially those which undermine the status of women. Social implications Controversial advertising that transgresses the taboo of violence against women reinforces gender norms and promotes ambiguous and adverse understandings of women’s subjectivities by introducing pollution and disorder to gender politics. Originality/value This paper critically assesses the societal implications of controversial advertising practices, thus moving away from the extant focus on managerial implications. Through a conceptualisation of controversial advertising as transgressing taboo boundaries, the authors highlight how advertising plays an important role in shifting these boundaries whereby taboos come to be understood as generative and evolving. However, this carries moral implications which may have damaging societal effects.

Stocky Bodies: Fat Visual Activism

Through a participatory visual ethnography, nonstereotypical and life-affirming images of the lived experience of fat were cocreated between the author and six Australian fat activists. The images were used to establish the “Stocky Bodies” image library, a free resource available to the media, educators, health professionals, activists and general public. For the activists, the library serves three important functions—challenging stereotypes, rehumanizing fat bodies, and celebrating fat flesh. By challenging the representational conventions of fat and re-empowering the fat body, the author highlights the power of visual activism to inspire reflective engagement, contest dominant discourses, and support local advocacy.

The Don Draper complex: Consuming work, productive leisure and marketer boundary work

Abstract Although the identities of brands and consumers have been extensively explored, less is understood about the subjectivity of marketers themselves. In the ambiguous and dynamic exchange process of marketing, the articulation of identities is fundamental to demarcate the activities and actions that take place between market actors. In recent times, growing importance has been placed on a different breed of marketer in these exchanges – the cultural intermediary. For these marketing practitioners, knowledge about the interplay between culture and economy generates the cultural capital that legitimises their expertise and value. Yet, this simultaneously gives rise to the difficult navigation and accomplishment of boundaries between their work and pleasure. Through a case study of two coolhunting agencies, this paper examines how marketers discursively perform boundary work in the construction of their identities. The findings show that, for coolhunters, a tension exists in drawing on discourses of renegadism and professionalism to construct their identities, resulting in their engagement in chameleon-like identity work. The research proposes that the tensions pervading the construction of boundaries and identities for marketers can be usefully understood through a paradox lens, and offers the metaphor of the nomad as a theoretical representation of interwoven identity conflicts for marketers.