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This paper aims to introduce to marketing a discourse analytical framework on which future qualitative marketing research can draw.

The methodology is to utilize Michel Foucault's works and the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

A discourse analytical framework for qualitative marketing research consisting of six central concepts – turning points, problematizations, articulations, nodal points, hegemony and deconstruction – is outlined.

The discourse analytical framework outlined can be used in future qualitative marketing research. It is mainly of value to marketing researchers.

This article evaluates critically the meta‐narrative that a powerful, expansive, hegemonic and totalising market sphere is penetrating deeper into each and every corner of everyday life in the ‘advanced market economies’. Drawing theoretical inspiration from an emerging corpus of post structuralist thought that has begun to re‐read the mean ing of work, this dom i nant dis course is here challenged by re‐evaluating the nature and trajectories of work. This will reveal that the organisation of work is grounded in a plurality of economic practices of which market work represents only one segment. Nor is any evidence identified of a uni‐dimensional and linear trajectory towards a hegemonic market. In the final section, therefore, it is shown to be now necessary to engage in a politics of re‐representation of work in these so‐called ‘market’ societies so as to open them up to re‐signification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate masculinity in Chinese social media marketing for global luxury fashion brands through two studies.

Study 1 compares physical characteristics of males in visually oriented US (Instagram) and Chinese (Weibo) social media posts promoting global luxury fashion magazine brands (e.g. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ and Esquire). Study 2 examines the prevalence of and Chinese consumers’ responses (reposts, comments and likes) to different masculinities depicted in luxury fashion brand-sponsored Weibo posts.

Male portrayals for Chinese audiences feature more characteristics associated with emerging East Asian hybrid masculinities – “Little Fresh Meat” (LFM) and “Old Grilled Meat” (OGM) – than associated with global or regional hegemonic masculinity (i.e. the scholarly Wén and action-oriented Wu). Wén remains common in social media posts for luxury fashion goods, but LFM and OGM engender more consumer responses.

Chinese luxury fashion marketing depicts masculinity more similarly to other East Asian marketing than to Western marketing. Some luxury fashion brands are struggling for acceptance among Chinese youth. Luxury fashion marketers should incorporate hybrid rather than hegemonic masculinities to prompt more favorable responses among Chinese consumers, especially younger female target markets.

Growing female occupational and consumer power and shifting male employment from blue-collar to white-collar jobs have influenced media portrayals of masculinity. Social media marketing for luxury fashion brands demonstrates the prevalence and appeal of hybrid masculinities in China.

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence on how and why a poor rural community is engaged in certain calculative practices, and how these are embedded in a “total institution” defined in terms of “relations of production” and “relations in production”.

Focusing on the traditional fishing industry in the Sri Lankan village of Kalamatiya, this study employs a qualitative, ethnographic methodology to collect and analyse data.

The underlying calculative practices are shown to resemble an articulated mode of production fabricated with some heterogeneous complexities, especially patronage relations, village cultures, and local capital and political power, rather than mere economic rationalities.

The paper argues that the notions of the “total institution” and the “articulated MOP” can inform accounting researchers to conceptualise research sites beyond the organisation as a novel “field” for empirical studies.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, under conditions of postmodernity, the market is too complex to be responded to with an IMC‐framework. While the desire of IMC scholars and practitioners to reinstate order and predictability in an increasingly disordered and fragmented world is understandable, such a mission may be misguided. The paper seeks to discuss the possibility that such attempts instead precipitate the production of complexity of an even more unpredictable nature.

The paper proceeds through a critical juxtaposition of postmodernity and IMC, arguing that the latter – with its ambition to impose order and control – fails to understand important dimensions of contemporary markets.

Rather than imposing a monological and hegemonic identity on markets and organizations – an identity that will unavoidably be challenged by consumers and employees – contemporary marketers and managers need to realize that organizational change and adaptability presuppose openness to variety, difference and polyphony.

Although organizations, just like individuals, need a coherent narrative, polyphony promotes shared understandings and involvement and permits a kind of collective ownership that cannot be attained through the simple application of one‐way managerial models that claim consistency and coherence without founding it in the life‐world of the receiver.

Postmodern communication cannot adhere tightly to principles of IMC. Instead, openness towards fluidity and a certain degree of indeterminacy must be nurtured if organizations wish to cope with the postmodern world. Along with tolerance toward variety, organizations need to develop a tolerance for meanings negotiated together with consumer communities, such as brand communities, in the market.

This paper aims to link the process of “transition”, which started in the former Soviet system about 20 years ago, to the recent global financial and economic crisis. The paper considers “transition” as a shift from one socio‐economic “dreamworld” to another, rather than as a real change towards freedom and democracy, as most mainstream commentators would have it. The argument is that this “transition” to a capitalist, free market society was bound up with a host of dream‐like imaginations of social and economic progress, which were also found on the imaginary horizon of the Soviet system. It is argued that the two systems, and hence also the recent global capitalist crisis, can be understood as being determined by complementary economies of desires, which, however, cannot be fulfilled.

The paper combines a critical theory perspective, influenced by Buck‐Morss and Benjamin, with a Lacanian analysis of subjectivity to critically analyze collective fantasies as the key organizational principle behind the workings and eventual demise of the socialist utopia as well as the more recent downfall of the neoliberal discourse.

The paper demonstrates why both socialism and capitalism can be understood as “real existing” systems where social processes, institutions, ideologies and identities are organized at the interface of political‐agonistic and symbolic‐imaginary dimensions.

The paper calls for assuming responsibility for our work as public intellectuals and academics, aiming at the continuous unmasking of illusions, fantasies and ideologies at work in society, which we see as politics proper.

The paper uses critical‐theoretic, psychoanalytic and post‐structuralist frames in order to unravel the fantasmatic kernel at work of both socialist and capitalist utopias. These fantasies do not only struggle to uphold their hegemonic grip on the economy but on the very production of subjectivity.

This paper aims to uncover links, overlaps and influence flows across two seemingly unrelated historical processes – the broadening of the marketing concept and the rapid rise of neoliberal ideology, and associated economic and social policies.

Historical examination of the pivotal points in marketing thought, especially since 1960s and 1970s, is juxtaposed with the historical rise of neoliberalism to uncover linkages between marketing and neoliberalism, with a particular reference to Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal transgression of classical liberalism.

While noble intentions were behind the broadening of the concept of marketing, the implicit assumptions reinforced neoliberal ideology and policies that led to rapid rise in inequality and to disastrous financial and economic crises.

This study, relying on extensive interdisciplinary theorizing, could benefit from empirical and practical extensions.

Globally pervasive marketing practices – based on the broadening of the marketing concept – have become imbricated in contemporary spiraling crises. To escape such spirals, radical rethinking of marketing theories and practices is required.

To reorient away from serving only the interests of centralized capital and to serve the needs of people the world over, marketing thought and practice need to reorient to innovative ideas that transcend the broadened and generic marketing concepts.

The paper develops the linkages between marketing theory and practices since the late 1960s and the neoliberal ideology politics and policies, with roots in the 1920s, that rose to prominence in the 1970s. A key contribution is an exploration of, in a marketing context, Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal eclipsing of classical liberalism.

Accompanying the casino liberalization in Macau has been the massive increase in the importation of migrant workers to drive the labour-intensive, service-oriented economic growth there. Nevertheless, the employment of migrant workers has become an intensely contentious issue. The traditional pluralist approach to migration policy has highlighted a mismatch between restrictive policy pronouncements and actual expansive outcomes. This mismatch has resonated strongly in Macau, where the number of migrant workers skyrocketed in the last decade in spite of repeated guarantees from the government of the adoption of a protectionist labour policy. The pluralist approach has attributed the mismatch to strong constituencies supporting more immigration. The purpose of this paper is to dispute this and maintain that the Macau Government is a capitalist state committed to increasing labour importation to facilitate wealth accumulation.

The paper uses a qualitative approach based on extensive research of news and media reports, facilitated by a close observation of political developments.

The Macau Government started, in 2005, to talk about reforming its labour importation programme by adding a migrant worker levy, a ratio mechanism and a six-month waiting period. This paper investigates how the capitalist state navigated the reform process by promising changes and building consent with the working classes. The author maintains that “a game of protection” has been constructed and played to secure the consent of the local working classes for the migrant worker programme.

Very little literature is available that has studied the changes made to the migrant worker system in Macau. This paper will help to close this gap.

This paper aims to introduce key concepts from practice theory (PT) to the social change agenda and draw on the unique contributions of the social marketing field. PT has underpinned a growing stream of research in pro-environmental studies seeking to reduce impacts of particular behaviours, but it remains theoretical. By drawing on social marketing’s applied roots, this paper introduces a practice-theoretical intervention planning process (P-TIPP) which frames the unique contribution of social marketing in behaviour change and foregrounds practice- not individual-level change.

The P-TIPP draws on the total process planning model, introducing the concept of “practice as entity” and “practice as performance” to frame intervention planning tasks. The process locates the contribution of social marketing within a transdisciplinary framework which emphasises transforming collective conventions.

This is a conceptual paper, but the possibility for PT to make a significant contribution to the world of social marketing is outlined.

P-TIPP is untested. Also, practices can be difficult to identify and somewhat abstract. Finally, it can be challenging to introduce the approach to policy, funding and practitioner procedures.

The implications of P-TIPP are that social change interventions are devised, underpinned and planned using insights from PT, such as the way behavioural patterns fit into broader understandings of practice. The subsequent social change agenda will be inherently transdisciplinary, sustainable and reduce focus on individual power to change.

This paper is a first attempt at exploring what PT, and social marketing can learn from each other for the future effectiveness of social change activity.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the narrative that the informal economy in Africa has no place within the framework of economic development. Considered as a sign of “backwardness”, “traditionalism” and “underdevelopment”, the informal economy in Africa has persistently grown notwithstanding Africa’s economic destabilisation through the adoption of neo-liberal economic interventions and free-market policies. This paper argues that the informal economy cannot be marginalised at the fringes of economic development, in the construction of a holistic development pathway.

The methodological basis is discourse analysis.

The outcome is a call to re-think and open up the feasibility, and possibilities for, alternative economic futures beyond free-market capitalism.

This paper makes a critical consideration on one of the multiple narratives that continue to inform economic policy making in Africa, by contesting and deconstructing its basis in order to encourage a pluralistic approach and understanding.