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This paper contributes to emerging discourse about social movements in social marketing by examining how tensions, issues and challenges may arise in areas of social change that have attracted social movements and the ways actors can come together to drive inclusive social change agendas.

Through the lens of new social movement theory, a case study of the interactions and dynamics between fat activists and obesity prevention public health actors is examined. This is undertaken through a multi-method qualitative analysis of interview and archival blog data of fat activists located in Australia, which was compared with the campaign materials and formative and evaluative research related to two high profile Australian Government funded anti-obesity campaigns.

The case analysis highlights the disconnect between public health actors and the marginalized voices of those they are meant to be representing. Whilst public health actors characterise obesity as a social issue of individual responsibility, disease and rational-decision making; fat activists frame a competing collective identity of well-being, support and self-acceptance that characterise their social change efforts.

This research highlights how complexities arise but can potentially be overcome in creating inclusive social change coalitions that incorporate the voices of citizen groups whom have mobilised into social movements. Specifically, we highlight the importance of generating a common language around obesity, the significance of collaborative and supportive relations and the need to create common unity through emotional investment and returns - a departure from the highly rational approaches taken by most social change programs.

Obesity is a complex social issue marked by conflict and contestation between those who are obese and the very actors working to support them. Our research contends that creating an inclusive social change coalition between these stakeholders will require a shift towards language anchored in well-being as opposed to disease, relations defined by support as opposed to an emphasis on individual responsibility and emotional investments that work to bolster self-acceptance in place of rational appeals as to the “correct” behaviours one should chose to engage in. Such steps will ensure social change program design is collaborative and incorporates the lived experiences of the very citizens such initiatives are targeted towards.

We contribute to wider discussions in social marketing about the development of holistic and progressive, multi-stakeholder, multi-level programs by advocating that inclusive social change coalitions united through the collective identity elements of cognitions and language, relational ties and emotional investment offer an important step forward in tackling the wicked problems that social marketers work to address.

This paper aims to argue that the limited success in addressing rising rates of obesity is underscored by health promotion practices and policies’ failure to consider the instrumental and symbolic functioning of food as part of identity formation, relationship construction and socio-cultural conditioning over consumers’ life course events. The aim of this paper is to ignite the power of critical approaches that seek social change through contextualising the subjectivities of obese individuals’ personal lived experiences with food.

Taking a transformative consumer research approach which recognises the range of theories and paradigms required to comprehend and positively influence well-being, this paper draws on the work of Foucault and Bourdieu to study the discourses of 21 obese adult consumers.

The research shows that food behaviours conducive to weight gain are enmeshed in participants’ biographies and everyday experiences across the arenas of identity, environment and the body. Transposable dispositions are formed across these arenas which often can be at odds with practices of self-care and frame how individuals use food in their responses to significant life occurrences.

The findings provide an avenue to potentially guide policymakers in shaping health-promotion programmes which assist consumers in self-regulation without compromising their relational identities, interests and self-knowledge.

This paper makes several important contributions to the managerial understanding of obesity, including the consideration of “obesogenecity” beyond its relativity to the temporal surroundings of “built” and social fields in the here and now, and more relative to the illimitable occasions, times, spaces or stages consumers traverse through their lives.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Given the active participation of those outside of the idealised form in “mainstream” beauty consumption, practitioners should make visible multiple bodily representations that are not reduced to an unhelpful construction of what is considered to be “real”.

By emphasising the lived experience of beauty as something subjective, communal and resistant, this research poses a challenge to mainstream marketing that constructs beauty as normative, singular and conformist. The paper further calls for a “queering” of the gender research agenda within marketing to better interrogate the linkages between an individual's fluid and contested identity work, consumption and marginalised or excluded status within the marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to use a case study of an online parenting forum to theorise how mothers’ everyday environmental and caring labour is a form of environmental and social activism in the home, that while not organised as such, is still collectivised in a “hybrid activist collective”.

Using ethnographic data and content analysis from an online parenting forum for the nappy-free infant hygiene practice known as “elimination communication”, the author compares the matters of key concern arising for this group of mothers with economic activist concerns as identified by Gibson-Graham et al. (2013) in their community economies work.

The paper finds a high degree of resonance between the key concerns of the elimination communication forum members with the key concerns of community economies. Furthermore, the author identifies the components of what might comprise a “hybrid activist collective” of mothers and others undertaking direct action for environmental and social change.

Mothers and others acting for social and environmental change through domestic practices should be recognised for their important environmental and caring labour.

The paper proposes the “hybrid activist collective” as a way of understanding the human and non-human elements that gather together to act for environmental and social change in a collectivised, but not formally organised manner.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the various proposals to regulate executive pay in the UK. Situated within a corporate governance context, it focuses on using shareholder empowerment as a mechanism to formulate a regulatory strategy to quell the continued furore that surrounds the issue.

Using an expansive array of different academic materials, the paper adopts the approach of using critical analysis to provide an original insight into the popular and contentious issue of executive remuneration.

The paper finds that the UK Government’s current proposal to regulate executive remuneration, via the shareholder empowerment device of a binding vote on remuneration, will primarily consist of symbolic rather than practical significance.

The paper provides important social implications, as it provides a new prospective and insight into the well-covered issue of executive remuneration.

The paper draws on a host of traditional and modern academic materials to create a new viewpoint on the issue of remuneration. Moreover, the paper is original insofar that it ties the issue of shareholder empowerment into the conceptual design and formulation of company law and corporate law theory.

This study investigate the impact of social activism on financial system stability.

Financial stability was analysed from two complementary perspectives: bank-led financial stability and financial system stability driven by sector-wide credit supply. Social activism was analysed from three perspectives: gender equality advocacy, environmental sustainability advocacy and social protection advocacy.

The findings reveal that gender equality and environmental sustainability advocacy have significant positive effects for financial stability, whereas social protection advocacy has a significant negative effect for financial stability. In addition, social activism has negative effects for financial stability in the post-2008 financial crisis era. Finally, there are differential effects for country-groups, for instance, social activism strongly improves bank-led financial stability in African countries and for BLEND countries (countries that are eligible for International Development Association (IDA) borrowing based on per capita income levels and are also creditworthy for some borrowing from the International Bank of Restructuring and Development). The findings are relevant for the on-going debate about whether social inclusivity and activism has any economic value for the stability of businesses and the financial system. The findings have implications.

The implication for policy-making is that the pressure on, or commitment of, financial institutions to be socially inclusive in all social matters such as gender equality, environmental sustainability and social protection does not guarantee stability in the financial system – whether bank-led financial stability or sector-wide financial stability. Therefore, regulators should ensure that financial institutions exercise careful discretion when adjusting their risk models to include all “social risk” factors amidst the recent pressure on corporations to be socially inclusive.

Another implication for business practice is that business leaders in financial institutions should identify the optimal level of social inclusivity that improves the stability of their corporations, because it would seem counterproductive if business leaders adopt full-scale social inclusion (or considerations) that subsequently make their corporations financially unstable which could lead to loss of shareholders wealth.

This study is the first attempt to investigate the impact of social activism on financial stability to determine whether greater social activism promotes stability or instability in the financial system.

This paper applies Bhabha’s concept of the third space to frame an understanding of Prem Sikka’s use of digital media to bridge the academic–activist binary. In doing this, the paper makes two contributions. First, it conceptualises Sikka’s engagement, and second, through the lens of the third space, it analyses it to establish whether, in the era of the neoliberal corporatised university, public intervention has the potential to generate new perspectives and new knowledge.

Sikka’s articles and blogs for the period 20 February 2002 to 15 April 2020 were analysed using Leximancer, a textual analysis software programme that displays the output visually. A discriminant analysis was used to identify where each year of the study is situated in the overall semantic analysis. Netnography, the examination of archived published texts, was then used to analyse the responses by members of the public, academics, accountants and auditors, tax experts, policy makers and regulators to Sikka’s digital media engagement.

As a third space practitioner, Sikka has overcome some of the shortcomings associated with academic research to challenge the activities of professional accounting firms, regulatory bodies and multinational corporations. Through extending the boundaries of accounting and accountability, he has facilitated new radical alliances aiming to create a just and equitable society. The paper also finds that by opening up a third space of engagement, academic activists’ work can play an essential part in social transformation and emancipatory change framed in terms of social justice and equity.

This is one of the few papers to provide an in-depth examination of the activities of an accounting activist over twenty years.

This paper examines how organic candies are marketed as healthy and ethical choices on commercial websites through the use of visual, rhetorical and promotional strategies.

The study uses social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis to identify the narratives and discursive traits that organic candy manufacturers reproduce on their websites as part of their ethical branding policy. The dataset is formed by 10 websites that commercialize organic confectionery.

The findings indicate that sellers try to associate organic candy to healthiness, simple and traditional lifestyles and social awareness to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Often the ethical claims that organic candy websites reproduce are not justified.

A major limitation of this study is that the investigation does not evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical and discursive strategies on real consumer decisions. Further research of an ethnographic or empirical nature would be required for this purpose.

This study recognizes the strategies that organic candy sellers reproduce can help consumers make more informed choices. From the point of view of marketers, understanding the multimodal, rhetorical and discursive strategies that organic candy brands employ can be useful to devise their own marketing approaches.

The investigation contributes to a growing body of research about multimodal critical discourse analysis within food marketing studies. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper that analyses organic candy branding from a multimodal perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to review current programmes and major issues surrounding preventive interventions for body image and obesity in schools.

A literature review was carried out by analysing papers cited in major literature databases from the last 50 years. This review describes and summarises activities from body image programmes and eating disorder prevention programmes in schools and outlines self esteem and media literacy approaches that have produced positive results in some large, randomised and controlled interventions.

A total of 21 programmes met the inclusion criteria. Of these, four included males and 17 reported at least one improvement in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. The most effective programmes were interactive, involved parents, built self esteem and provided media literacy.

Body image concerns, eating problems and obesity among children and adolescents are becoming increasingly targeted for preventive health education and health promotion programmes. The role of health educators is complicated because of legitimate concerns that we must “do no harm” in our efforts to ameliorate both issues in schools. Health educators need to be careful to ensure that the implementation of programmes for the prevention of child obesity do not inadvertently create food concerns, body image issues, weight stigma, prejudice or eating disorders. Similarly, eating disorder prevention programmes must take care both not to condone obesity nor to glamorise or normalise dieting or disordered eating.

This paper provides health educators with an overview of important issues and suitable strategies to consider when implementing programmes for body image improvement and the prevention of eating problems and childhood obesity.