Power in Marketing:

A Broadly Dimensional Approach

© John Desmond

First published, October, 2025

Grianan Publishing,

John’s Brae,

Shrove, ROI, F93E7R9

Cover design, “Feeding Frenzy” © Jean Hall

Chapter Eight: Steven Lukes: The Third Dimension of Power

Introduction

In Power a Radical View (PRV), Steven Lukes (1974; 2005; 2021) argues for a third dimension of power which operates behind the scenes of liberal and reformist explanations. In this understanding the one-dimensional understanding of power focuses on who prevails in overt settings, while non-decisionmaking is two-dimensional, venturing deeper to consider questions such as who controls the agenda, possessing the power to decide what gets to be decided. For Lukes these explanations focus overmuch on observable conflict between individual actors such that, by tending to ignore the social context of conflicts, they fail to do justice to the role played by power in shaping and infusing the values, beliefs and wants of citizens and consumers.¹ In contrast, three-dimensional power involves, “the power to secure compliance with the interests of the powerful … power to secure willing consent by shaping and influencing desires and beliefs, a form of power whose operations or mechanisms are least accessible to direct observation by actors and observers”.²

In the latest edition of PRV, Lukes (2021) mentions that the period of the early 1970s, when he was working on the first incarnation of the text, was a time of social ferment and questioning of the legitimacy of the established order by anti-war protestors, feminists and civil rights activists. I might add that this was also a time of flux in marketing presented by the rise of consumerism amid growing disquiet with business and marketing, when the marketing academy was experiencing its own identity crisis. Lukes’ assertion in the latest edition of PRV, that the question of how willing compliance to domination is secured is even more relevant today, is understandable in light of rapid developments in technology involving social media and machine intelligence and of a new diagonalist politics that appears to move well beyond traditional markers between Left and Right .³

The question posed by Lukes is narrowly specified regarding how the willing compliance of those dominated by power is gained. While the first edition of PRV (Lukes, 1974) was slim, succeeding editions (Lukes, 2005; Lukes, 2021) expanded to include an extended discussion of domination and of Foucault’s theory of power. Given that the next chapter is devoted to discussion of Foucault, the latter’s contribution to Lukes’ thought is discussed here, while Lukes’ critique of Foucault appears in the next chapter. Below I first outline Lukes’ development of the concept of radical power and how this has changed over the years, before turning to briefly outlining the extent to which this might make a useful contribution to critical marketing theory.

Given that three-dimensional power is supposedly operative in situations involving the willing compliance of B to act in the interests of A, the question arises as to how to conceptualise and research such apparently pacific relations? Lukes recognizes the importance of developing robust criteria to determine what is really going on amid the swirl of conspiracy theories that invoke the twin spectres of “dark forces” and the “deep state” in any discussion of power today.

In succeeding editions Lukes revised the understanding of the concept of power described in the first edition of PRV. In its first incarnation Lukes (1974), subscribed to Dahl’s idea of power which conceives of it as the overt exercise of power by A over B. Lukes subsequently changed his stance to argue that power is a dispositional concept consisting of a potential and a capacity to gain the compliance of B that A may or may not call on. Moreover, he explained that ‘power-over’ or A/b relations involving the ability to have another person in one’s power is a sub-concept of the broader concept of potentia, ‘power-with’.⁴

This chapter is split into two main sections, of which the first discusses how Lukes builds his account of the third dimension of power over and above that presented by Bachrach and Baratz (1962). Lukes engages in a painstaking step-by-step process that builds from the concept of an authentic human nature developed by Spinoza and the early Marx to consider whether this should be based on identity or on interests. Concluding that real interests form the most secure basis on which to secure authentic human nature he next seeks to justify the need for an external observer in situations where interests conflict, to determine which interests should prevail. Moving onward to discuss domination, which in this instance involves the willing compliance of those whose interests are dominated, he argues that conceptually, this relates to situations where the “least visible forms of power’ are at work, so that the interests of those subjected to power are harmed, while those of the powerful are not. The analytic question concerns the mechanisms by which this comes about which are manifold and here he invokes involve arguments that the rational capacity of those who are dominated is blunted through false consciousness involving processes of mystification.

While this is conceptually dense terrain, I hope that the first part of this chapter conveys something of how Lukes justifies his argument for a third dimension of power. The second part discusses Lukes’ response to criticism of earlier editions of PRV by James Scott and Jon Elster and his justification of the need for a third dimension of power that is separate from the explanations offered by Bourdieu and Foucault.

Hegemony and Consent

Lukes’ key arguments are based on the existence of an authentic, human nature as posited Spinoza and Karl Marx. He was particularly drawn to the explanation developed by Antonio Gramsci to explain how the willing compliance to power can be obtained through the shaping of beliefs and preferences. While in prison Gramsci had grappled with the question of how the willing consent of those subjected to capitalist exploitation is secured in democratic societies, developing the concept of hegemony as an alternative to materialist arguments that one can read off the ideology of a person from their social class position in a similar way to identifying the numberplate on a car.

Like many lasting concepts, hegemony is sufficiently fuzzy to enable a variety of interpretations. Lukes differentiates a psychological (his italics) from a materialist conception of ideology. The psychological view involves some form of acceptance, ranging from full-blown incorporation of dominant values to partial compliance, the “idea that the current state of affairs, ‘while shamefully iniquitous’, is nevertheless the only viable form of society’.⁵ On the other hand, for Przeworski, ideological hegemony has a materialist basis which consists of the coordination of the real interests of dominant and subordinate groups. In this account the majority of individuals are not duped and so ideology must have some bearing on the expression of a person’s real interests. Przeworski had argued that relations between capitalists and workers are based on endless compromise based on limits that if broached will end in trouble. In this situation the “consent” of the workers is cognitive and behavioural, such that they, “consent when they choose particular courses of action and when they follow these choices in their practice.”⁶ Consent in this view thus corresponds to the real interests of those consenting and is always conditional.

In developing his idea of domination as a form of willing compliance, Lukes tends to adopt a psychological understanding of hegemony as the imposition of a coherent dominant consciousness that is tangible and hard-edged and is presented as “common-sense”, against its counterpart in experience that is largely incipient and inchoate. Those subjected to the third dimension of power are open to false consciousness, as their rationality has been compromised as to what constitutes their real interests.

From the Second to the Third Dimension of Power

Lukes criticizes Bachrach and Baratz as being too focused on overt behaviour such as the “concrete decisions” reflecting intentional conscious choices and insufficiently on how the system can operate in ways that are neither conscious nor intentional. Moreover to focus at the level of individual action is misplaced by ignoring the collective power of culture and of social institutions. For Lukes, to describe power as something that is “exercised” is “problematic” because it invites one to think of this in the context of conscious, intentional, action by an individual. In contrast, he argues that one ought to be able to speak of the “exercise” of power by individuals or groups, whether consciously or not.⁷ In the case of observable conflict between A and B, where A can gets B to do something that B would not otherwise do, this invites the counterfactual, that in the absence of A’s action, B have done something different. For instance, home-owner B signs a contract to replace their double-glazing, not because they themselves have spotted some defect, but because the persistent salesperson A, who has sat in their living room for three hours, has persuaded them that this is the case. In this situation the counterfactual is that if let alone, B would not otherwise have signed the contract to buy the windows. However, in situations where there is no observable conflict between A and B, this requires explanation of the counterfactual as to why B would have acted differently, and additionally, the need to specify the mechanisms at work that explain how this happened.

Lukes (2021) draws on Crenson’s (1972) study of Gary Indian to illustrate how the third dimension can extend beyond the second dimension of power. Crenson took East Chicago and Gary, two broadly comparable neighbouring cities in Indiana, as the focus for his study of legislation to restrict air pollution. He wondered why it had taken the authorities in Gary until 1962 to enact clean air legislation, fully thirteen years after its counterpart in East Chicago. Crenson argues that the reason for the long delay was because Gary was a “company town’ built by US Steel, which was the major local employer and which politically had a strong party organization, while in contrast, East Chicago had a number of steel companies and a diffuse political party structure.⁸ Crenson describes how although US Steel ostensibly stayed aloof from the political arena, it had effectively held up legislation on pollution for decades, describing for instance, how, when confronted by activists, company executives, “would agree that air pollution was terrible, then pat you on the head. But they never did anything one way or the other”.⁹ Lukes explains that US Steel smothered action without needing to enter the discussion, because it had built Gary and was responsible for its prosperity,

Its ‘mere reputation for power, unsupported by acts of power’ was ‘sufficient to inhibit the emergence of the dirty air issue.¹⁰

Crenson describes how, once it was threatened with action by Federal authorities, US Steel engaged more overtly to delay action to minimize the impact on its business, by arguing that the overt benefits of clean air were relatively weak when compared to the financial cost.¹¹

Building the Case for a Third Dimension of Power

Given that the above events at Gary, Indiana seem almost entirely in keeping with the second dimension of power as non-decision making, what if any is the need for a third dimension of power? Lukes describes the case of Gary as resting on the boundary between a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional level of power. He argues that Crenson’s account advances beyond the two-dimensional explanation in three ways; firstly, because it does not describe non-decisionmaking behaviourally, as consisting of decisions; secondly, it is more concerned with the institutional context than with individuals; and thirdly, it involved an ‘inarticulate’ ideology that can exist in political institutions to promote the selective perception of issues, so that some issues are not raised.¹²

In relation to institutional power, Lukes argues from Crenson, that the chance that pollution will be taken seriously will be low in the situation where an industry has a high reputation for power and appears to be unconcerned about pollution. Additionally, that Gary had a strong, influential political party system also fostered inaction on this matter because concern about pollution was a silent killer whose mention did not played well into party politics

In discussing the mechanisms of power at work in Gary, Lukes argues that although action to counter pollution would have been a collective good, because the costs of addressing it would have fallen onto the shoulders of US Steel, one would have expected that it would have reacted strongly to any move to counter pollution. Conversely, action against US Steel would have been weak, as the benefits of tackling pollution which accrue over the long run, would be considered vague by comparison to the up-front costs and to day-to-day tussles over “bread and butter” issues. Lukes homes in on Crenson’s argument that in the face of the ‘diffuse discontent’ expressed by citizens, ‘selective perception’ of important issues was availed of by local political leaders, who exercised considerable control over the issues people were concerned about and how forcefully they expressed their concern.¹³

Returning to a question raised earlier by Lukes, what counterfactual might be offered in the situation of Gary? Lukes argues that in this situation one can assert that power worked against the real interests of Gary’s citizens which lay firstly, in their not being poisoned and that it is plausible that if possessed of the right information, they would have opted for clean air legislation, given that this is what had happened in East Chicago thirteen years earlier.¹⁴

Acknowledging that not all situations are as clear-cut as those that pertained in Gary, Indiana Lukes continues that nonetheless, “it is not impossible to adduce evidence” that is necessarily indirect. He cities Gramsci, who counterposed the intellectual dominance of a subordinated group, by which it seems to willingly submit itself to a view of the world that is not its own, against its own fragmentary conception, which nonetheless has the potential to flare up against the dominant view. He thus argues that one should be alive to how people react to perceived opportunities to escape from subordination, which he discusses in relation to the Indian caste system.¹⁵

From the above, if the first dimension of power concerns overt situations where A prevails over B in relation to a particular decision, and the second dimension describes that where A prevails over B because the item never appears on the agenda, or the decision is delayed through endless deferral, the third dimension involves the power to secure the willing consent of B, “by shaping and influencing desires and beliefs, a form of power whose operations or mechanisms are least accessible to direct observation by actors and observers”.¹⁶ To secure his argument for the operation of a power that is more or less invisible requires Lukes to engage in some conceptual heavy-lifting, by discussing power in relation to domination, freedom, rationality, preferences interests, and capabilities.

Domination

In the most recent edition of PRV Lukes (2021) devotes a good deal of space to discuss domination which he acknowledges is an inherently controversial issue as it involves some form of judgement from outside.¹⁷ What is domination and how do we know when it is at work? Lukes’ position is similar to that espoused by civic republicans, such as Pettit and Skinner, who associate freedom with non-domination, although while they are concerned with domination of the will, Lukes is concerned with domination of a person’s interests. In his view domination occurs when ‘compliance is secured in conditions that put into question the freely given consent of the person or persons subject to it’.¹⁸ He also takes from civic republicanism the argument that power as domination is dispositional, consisting of a potential that may or may not be exercised and which does not have to be willed or intentional as it can be at work in everyday practices that are taken for granted as normal. Referring to C. Wright Mills he argues that viewed in this way power can involve agents who are trapped within exploitative structures such as that experienced by, the exploited worker, the submissive, the undocumented immigrant, the insecure tenant, the indebted wife and indebted student.¹⁹

For Lukes the judgement of domination requires making a judgement about how the power of some agents furthers their interests and/or adversely affects the interests of others. Some forms of domination are legitimate, such as that of parents over their children, whilst slavery, serfdom, bonded labour, and the promotion of content by social media algorithms that encourages self-harm and even suicide amongst children and vulnerable adults, are obviously not.²⁰ What of issues such as the constant self-surveillance and self-policing engaged in by women and increasingly of young men, who nonetheless experience a personal sense of empowerment from so doing? Or of those who voluntarily submit themselves to the perils of plastic surgery in the quest for the mythical “European nose”? Or, those who are subjected to pollution in traffic-ridden cities? Lukes argues the need to draw the line somewhere, suggesting that,

To speak of power as domination is to suggest the imposition of some significant constraint upon an agent or agents’ desires, purposes or interests, which it frustrates, prevents from fulfilment or even from being formulated”²¹

From this one might ask whether a person’s decision to opt to have their nose re-modelled might be understood as an effect of three-dimensional power? While this question is discussed further below, the decoy effect describes more straightforward situations where an inferior option is added to a choice set in order to make another option more favourable.²² In searching for an objective criterion from which to gauge this, Lukes adds, in addition to one having power over another, the claim that those subject to power are rendered less free, in Spinoza’s phrase, to live as their nature and judgment dictate.²³

Freedom

In previous chapters the concept of negative freedom as freedom-from, was contrasted to the positive idea of freedom as freedom-to, and negative freedom was further differentiated by contrasting liberal to civic republican understandings of the term. Lukes focuses on the civic republican conception of freedom as non-interference with the realization of one’s preferences such that the individual is considered free to the extent that no-one can prevent them from doing what they prefer to do. He describes this as a minimal understanding of freedom which, in relation to the third dimension of power simply won’t do, as it takes preferences as given rather than as subject to manipulation and as framed by power.

Lukes offers as an example, the situation of a fundamentalist Christian woman whose child is in hospital, whose daughter requires an immediate blood transfusion if she is to live. The mother’s strong preference is that this should not be allowed because it is forbidden by God, but the child’s father wants her to have the transfusion. What is the right thing to do? As I have discovered, this is not an abstract question but a real-life dilemma that has come before the courts. Éloise Dupuis, a 26-year-old Jehovah's Witness who died after refusing a transfusion, was an adult whom the judge said was "perfectly informed" about the risks involved. On the other hand, when his sixteen-year-old daughter Bethany refused a transfusion Lawrence Hughes claimed, successfully, that she had been subjected to years of indoctrination. ²⁴ In law parents have the right to make decisions on behalf of their children and civic republicans would argue that their preferences should not be interfered with. Bethany’s case was taken to court because husband and wife were on opposite sides of this crucial argument. The case of Bethany Hughes illustrates Lukes’ view of the insufficiency of holding to a notion of freedom as non-interference, as it pays no heed to the background conditions of how preferences are formed.

Rather than equating freedom with preferences, Lukes argues from Spinoza, that it is better to consider freedom in relation to authenticity, as being true to one’s nature or “self”, and to autonomy, or the ability to think independently for oneself. These are in turn linked to the ability to think rationally,

On Spinoza’s own account, living (authentically) according to the dictates of one’s nature and(autonomously) according to the dictates of one’s judgment is to be rational.²⁵

Spinoza links rationality to freedom, as, ‘to use reason correctly’: ‘those whose reason is most powerful, and who are most guided thereby, are also the most possessed of their own right’ (freedom).²⁶ If those who are most possessed of their own “right”, and so are best able to think for themselves autonomously are most free, then in situations involving power as domination the ability to reason correctly has been compromised by being blunted and so the individual is “less free, to live as their nature and judgement dictate”.

Constructing a Base for Human Nature, Identity vs. Interests

Returning to the above quote from Spinoza, given that the individual subject to power is “less free, to live as their nature and judgment dictate”, this raises the question as to how to define human nature? Influenced by Marx, when arguing the need for “humans to live in a truly human way²⁷, Lukes must settle on what specifically it is that constitutes a distinctively human ‘species being’ that can be out of kilter with the organisation of life in a capitalistic consumer society?²⁸ The two candidates he selects are discussed briefly below, comprising identity, or the ability for self-recognition, and secondly, real interests.

Identity

Self-identity might be argued as a strong contender to form the basis for a distinctively human nature because, as perspicaciously described by Alain deBotton (2004), beneath the demand for recognition of identity lies the fundamental requirement for love through recognition. To be recognised is to be loved, admired and included by others, against which lack of recognition, as in ostracism, signifies a state that is cut off from being or more precisely signifies non-being, such that at the extreme one does not recognize oneself as a being. In this context identity-related or recognitional domination discussed by Lukes can occur in situations where the dominant group renders those whom they dominate invisible by projecting their own image as the norm.²⁹

While Lukes points to domination by lack of recognition of a person’s ethnic, cultural, religious or geographical identity, Zygmunt Bauman (2017) asserts that in a society where to be someone is to be a consumer, the inadequate, or flawed consumer is constructed as an object for humiliation. In a society where shopping is accorded almost sacral status, the consumption of commodities provides resources for the construction of identity and for achieving social recognition and respect, feeding the fundamental need to be recognised as somebody. In contrast, non-shopping, “is the jarring and festering stigma of a life un-fulfilled – and of one’s own nonentity and good-for-nothingness”. Referring to the bout of looting and fire-raising of shops by youths who poured into British city-centres from ‘sink-estates’ in 2011, Bauman contended that this provided a means for the disaffected to express their humiliation and resentment, to destroy what they could not have.³⁰ Similar arguments have been made pertaining to the invisibility of minority group representation in advertising formats and the need for an ethics of representation to acknowledge and remedy this.³¹

Despite its apparent promise, Lukes rejects identity as a basis for three-dimensional power, firstly, on the grounds that the process of identity formation is ongoing and so is never complete, because those who are dominated never fully internalize the view that is imposed upon them from the outside. Moreover domination can also arise from excessive identification which occurs when those Lukes calls identifiers, who are “entrepreneurs and mobilizers of identity politics” come to dominate others who are less committed, indifferent or hostile; “the quasi-identifiers, semi- identifiers, non-identifiers, ex-identifiers, trans-identifiers, multi-identifiers and anti-identifiers”.³² Thus while acknowledging the importance of identity, for Lukes this cannot provide a sound basis for judging an objective human nature, as there is no basis for judgement that is independent of these “entrepreneurs and mobilizers” of identity. While some may argue that people come to embrace “distorted” identities, the question is “false, distorted and reduced as compared with what?³³

Real Interests

Lukes discusses interests as a second potential criterion on which to base human nature. He rejects the Benthamite view that the individual should automatically be considered as the best judge of her or his interests and that these can be revealed through our subjective preferences, for instance, by voting for a political party, or as displayed through our market behaviour. Reliance on preferences cannot be justified if one is to maintain the existence of three-dimensional power which holds that B’s compliance to domination by A is gained because their very wants have been shaped by A, as in the above case of the blood transfusion. There thus arises a latent conflict between B’s expressed interests (which operate in the interest of A) and B’s real interests, of which B may not be consciously aware.

Because power operates to gain the willing compliance of B, the third dimension described by Lukes is thus an eerily silent place that is free from the clamour of dissent and resistance. The apparent silence of B in such instances presents a smooth surface for the researcher, as there is nothing of substance to latch onto. Here power is better thought of as a potential that consists of A’s capacity to secure B’s compliance, which, ‘can operate unobserved and behind our backs and may be at its most effective when least observable to agents and observers alike.”³⁴ Indeed, while interests are often consciously expressed, “power as domination invites the idea of constraint upon interests and to speak of the third dimension of power is to speak of interests imputed to and unrecognized by the actors”.³⁵

When stating the need to think of interests ‘imputed’ to the actors, Lukes is arguing that the determination of a person’s real interest requires a view from the outside. However, given that real interests can be framed in different ways, there is no canonical set that will provide the last word on the matter. In searching for criteria on which to base real interests, he discusses the capabilities approach initiated by Amartya Sen (1985) as refined by Martha Nussbaum (2000), which holds that a person’s welfare interest is fundamentally important, as the capacity to lead a worthwhile life depends on a person’s access to welfare through their access to an adequate level of shelter, nourishment and health-care. Nussbaum borrowed from Aristotle, and from Marx, the notion that certain capabilities make us ‘truly human’, which Lukes paraphrases to assert that domination occurs where the power of some affects the interests of others by restricting their capabilities for “truly human” functioning, he maintains that such welfare interests are not preference-dependent and so can be thought of as real, objective freedoms.

From the above, welfare interests are the necessary conditions that need to be present to ensure human welfare, constituting what individuals generally need in order to live lives that are satisfactory, as ‘primary goods’ that serve ‘basic needs’.³⁶ These are all various ways of specifying conditions that enable a person to pursue their various purposes and conceptions of what makes life valuable, and without which that pursuit is frustrated or severely impeded.³⁷ Wellbeing interests are linked to welfare interests in that, if the latter provide the capacity to live a good life, then wellbeing interests pertain to the living of that life.³⁸

From Sen and Nussbaum³⁹ Lukes argues that when considering questions such as that of the Christian believer whose child is in need of a blood transfusion, one is on the territory of interests and of a conflict between two sets of interests comprising wellbeing and welfare interests. For Jehovah’s Witnesses wellbeing interests can be thought of as ‘meta-preferences’ linked to long-term goals involving faith and spiritual wellbeing and related to the need to live a life that is worthwhile. For these believers the religious beliefs that underscore their wellbeing interests are weighted more heavily than are their welfare interests which provide the necessary conditions for day-to-day survival that provide the capacity to lead a worthwhile life in the first place, such as health, adequate nourishment, bodily integrity, shelter, personal security, and an unpolluted environment.

Lukes acknowledges that there are many different ways for one to lead a life that is worthwhile and indeed that people can prefer to lead lives that are against what they may recognize to be their wellbeing. As discussed further below, rather than asking the individual subject about their preferences, he invokes the need for an external perspective, that considers what benefits or harms them.⁴⁰ Moreover, if one adopts a rational choice framework then one ought to be able to identify real interests where B has relative autonomy to make choices independent of A’s power.⁴¹ Such power is not necessarily detrimental to interests, as for instance, in the situation of authority, when a parent such as Lawrence Hughes has the right to determine whether or not his daughter should have a transfusion, or when passengers travelling in vehicles are ordered to wear a seatbelt.

Relative Autonomy and Real Interests

Lukes cites Perry Anderson’s (1976) reading of Gramsci, which describes the consciousness of the working class as contradictory, split between the ideology imposed on them by the ruling class and the fragmentary and incoherent ‘commonsense’ that comprises an alternative nascent consciousness.⁴² This notion of a contradictory consciousness can accommodate itself to other contexts such as that involving the fundamentalist Christians described earlier. However, as mentioned above, rather than conceive of a dual relation, Lukes acknowledges the complex nature of interests, that, ‘of course, social actors do not have unitary or dual, but multiple and conflicting interests of different kinds, and their identities are not confined to their imputed class positions and destinies.”⁴³

In Lukes’ framework judgements to establish the counterfactual as to whether or not B’s interests are real, of which interest from a conflicting set should count, and the extent to which B’s relative autonomy has been compromised, require the presence of an external perspective. How this squares with his argument that the determination of real interests is up to B, “exercising choice under conditions of relative autonomy’ is discussed next.⁴⁴

The Need for an External Standpoint

in the first edition of PRV Lukes had stated that, “When I say something is in your interest means that the individual has a “prima facie” claim to it” (Lukes, 1974, 34), describing how liberals, reformist and radicals would define such an interest in different ways. As noted by Stewart Clegg (1989), this formulation of interests leaves Lukes open to the charge of conventionalism, as in this “prima facie” understanding, the meaning of one’s interests will vary depending on the stance one adopts to define them and relatedly, will leave one open to the charge moral relativism. Lukes’ (2021) subsequent argument of the need for an external perspective might thus be seen as an attempt to provide a more secure basis for real interests.

If compliance to domination is obtained by shaping B’s beliefs and desires, then there is little point in asking B about their situation, because they are more or less immersed in the dominant ideology. Lukes (2021) contends that such compliance to domination requires an external perspective and the formation of criteria against which to judge the extent to which such compliance works against a person’s real interests,

the very idea of power’s third dimension requires an external standpoint. Power as domination, I have argued, invokes the idea of constraint upon interests, and to speak of the third dimension of such power is to speak of interests imputed to and unrecognized by the actors.⁴⁵

He refers to the study conducted by Martha Nussbaum (2000) and particularly to her account of the plight of women in Andhra Pradesh who had no property rights, no education, no legal right of divorce and who were likely be beaten if they sought work outside the home.⁴⁶ She noted that it was scarcely surprising to find that these women espoused traditional values of purity, modesty and self-abnegation. What is interesting to Lukes is Nussbaum’s argument that when these women were eventually persuaded to engage in development groups which provided physical and mental distance from their immediate situation, the women quickly lost their sense of deference.⁴⁷ Nussbaum concluded that just because people have no options, one should reflect before deciding that they unequivocally endorse the situation in which they find themselves.

One can see the attraction of this case as an illustration of Lukes’ argument from Spinoza, that those subjected to power are, “rendered less free… to live as their nature and judgment dictate.⁴⁸ Their case might stand as an instance when an embryonic subordinated ideology flares briefly to assert itself against the dictates of a dominant patriarchal ideology that has almost smothered it. Lukes invokes this as an example of relative autonomy, where the space afforded by the development groups enabled them to speak freely and thus to establish the counterfactual to the assertions that these normally quiescent women are content with their lot. In discussing the role played by the groups in consciousness-raising, Nussbaum and Lukes are implicitly referring to what psychologists call Theory of Mind, or the reflexive ability to view oneself from a third-person perspective as an object for self-reflection. By providing a separate space for collective discussion of their situation it is argued that the women were thus opened to the possibility of self-transformation.

In reaching towards a fuller concept of freedom, Lukes turns to Martha Nussbaum’s criticism of the minimalist conception of freedom as freedom from interference on the ground that it ignores “unjust background conditions” which can distort a person’s capacity to judge, thus inviting a more holistic and expansive understanding of freedom. He invokes Spinoza, for whom freedom relates to authenticity and to rationality, “living (authentically) according to the dictates of one’s nature and (autonomously) according to the dictates of one’s judgment is to be rational.”⁴⁹ Unperturbed by the palpable feeling of discomfiture that might be induced in those of a nominalist disposition, Lukes proceeds to define human nature and rationality. He turns to the concerns espoused by the young Marx in relation to how to live in a “truly human” manner. Described above, as framed by Nussbaum, the material and social necessities that must be in place for a person to live a life that is fit for a human being who is treated as an end in themselves and not as the means to the end of another; conceived of as being capable of forming their own opinions, making their own choices and developing their potential in relation to living amongst others. From the above, subjection to domination restricts the ability of the subject to reason correctly.

Gaining Willing Compliance to Domination

Domination plays a key role in the final instance as it, ‘can work against people’s interests by stunting, diminishing and undermining their powers of judgment and by falsifying, distorting and reducing their self-perceptions and self-understanding”⁵⁰. Lukes clarifies this by asserting that domination signifies that compliance is secured in conditions that put in question the freely given consent of the person or persons subject to it”.⁵¹ He differentiates domination from compliance, arguing that while domination can involve coercion, compliance may result from a person being confronted with an unfavourable set of options from which to choose, or by misleading them as to what their options are.

Lukes argues that when asking how the powerful secure the compliance (unwilling or willing) of those they dominate is actually to ask two questions, one conceptual and one analytic. The conceptual question is how one is to know that such power is at work?

And, since such power consists in the ability to bring about significant outcomes, that means that power as domination will be present wherever it furthers, or does not harm, the interests of the powerful and bears negatively upon the interests of those subject to it. ⁵²

The second, analytic, question concerns the mechanisms by which power achieves its effects? Lukes draws on Spinoza, who differentiates power over the body from that over the mind and regarding the latter, argues that the arbiter of human power or potentia is strength of mind, as those who are most guided by it are most fully possessed of their own right (freedom). Operating to curtail this freedom are the manifold means deployed by power to undermine rationality, given, again quoting Spinoza, ‘a man’s judgement can be influenced in many ways, some of them hardly credible’.⁵³

Having rejected what he calls the minimal understanding of freedom associated with liberal and civic republican thought, Lukes calls for an alternative that acknowledges internal constraints (his italics) imposed in relation to ‘the formation of preferences’, ‘internalization’ and ‘hegemony’.” To do so he avers can explain how, “domination can work against a person’s interests by stunting, diminishing and undermining their powers of judgment and by falsifying, distorting and reducing their self-perceptions and self-understanding.” ⁵⁴

Lukes distances himself from the “numberplates on back”⁵⁵ theory of ideology according to which the individual ought to be stamped with the ideology that is appropriate to their social class position.⁵⁶ He also refuses Foucault’s position argument as power is omnipresent, and we are all caught up in its web there is no escaping domination

Mystification and False Consciousness

While acknowledging the deep unpopularity of this ‘discredited notion’ which today appears patronising and presumptuous and for which he has frequently been criticised, Lukes doubles down on his argument for the role “false consciousness” in the third dimension of power.⁵⁷ He might scarcely have been surprised, given that this can summon the image of the individual as a brainwashed dupe, taking us back to Goebbels’ contention that ‘ people are just a gramophone recycling back public opinion’, or to Marcuse’s ‘one-dimensional man’.⁵⁸ On the other hand, the remarkable openness of individuals today to disinformation circulated through social media fora and the rapid spread of bizarre conspiracy theories such as QAnon can give one pause for thought.

In contrast to Marcuse, Lukes argues that false consciousness is limited, as the third dimension of power is always about particular domains of experience and is never entirely effective. Additionally, he argues that it is mistaken to crudely counterpose ‘willing’ against ‘unwilling’ compliance to power as.

…mutually exclusive: one can consent to power and resent the mode of its exercise. Furthermore, internalized illusions are entirely compatible with a highly rational and clear-eyed approach to living with them. ⁵⁹

He refers to Susan Bordo (2003) who argued that just because women buy into fitness and beauty regimes does not mean that they are somehow ‘cultural dopes’. Bordo is referring to the context of those who submit their bodies to the perils and rigours of plastic surgery in their quest for a “European Nose”. She mentions that whilst some are mystified by believing that the craze for fitness is purely about health or that “correcting” for one’s nose is just a matter of personal preference, others are highly conscious and are not dopes when they decide to embark on such as course of action because they “know the routes to success in this culture”.⁶⁰

In the context of three-dimensional power, rather than enhancing the freedom of the individual, marketing technology can be deployed to undermine that of the individual by interfering with their reason, by inducing failures of rationality leading to the individual becoming a dupe of the marketer. When Lukes speaks of false consciousness he has something specific in mind pertaining to how power can mislead by blunting the capacity for rational evaluation. Mechanisms that can act as blocks to effective reasoning can include the manipulation of language through the promotion of misleading ideas as to what is “natural”, or by promoting illusory ideas about the sort of life that is dictated by a subject’s ‘nature’.⁶¹ As recognised by Spinoza, a variety of means are at the disposal of an A who wants to interfere with the reasoning of a given B given that, ‘a man’s judgment can be influenced in many ways, some of them hardly credible’.⁶²

Reflecting briefly on this in the context of marketing, “natural’ must be one of the most widely abused signifiers that has been associated with some of the most unnatural products. Off the top of my head I can think of an advertisement for a brand of menthol cigarettes where the product was depicted against a background of waterfalls and another depicting an individual wearing Lynx deodorant who merges into a tree, never mind those all advertisements for water bottled in plastic containers that are promoted as pure and natural and ads for sugar-laden Naked and Innocent juice. Do consumers buy into such imagery? It seems we do.⁶³

Lukes very briefly alludes to mechanisms that lead to the failures of rationality that are at work in self-deception, such as wishful thinking, cognitive biases, fallacies and illusions, ignorance of the principle of statistical inference and so on. Thanks to the research of behavioural psychologists many biases are now well-known. He suggests that one can school oneself so as to be less susceptible to their blandishments, although in my understanding, as when viewing gestalt images, knowledge of their operation does not necessarily lead to one being less susceptible to their influence. On the other side, Lukes points to the ‘phalanxes’ of advertisers and PR specialists schooled in the arts of persuasion and dissimulation in their advancement of sectional interests.

Some Examples

Near the end of his book Lukes discusses Zuboff’s (2019) argument, that users of social media act as agents playing one game, while they simultaneously comprise the stakes in another game that is played out between companies.⁶⁴ One of Zuboff’s examples describes how Pokemon Go encouraged its online users to engage in a game that involved visiting real-life destinations.⁶⁵ She explains how participants provided the stakes in another game which involved being steered to locations won by operators engaged in a bidding war over business opportunities. As Lukes surmises, the idea of using a treasure hunt as a means to improve business is not novel. Anat Rosenberg (2022) describes the ruse devised by the Harmsworth brothers in 1904 to revive the fortunes of the flagging Weekly Dispatch newspaper they owned. They contrived to hide medallions of £10 to £50 across Britain, for which clues were listed in the newspaper every week. This resulted in such a massive upsurge in demand that the presses could not cope, such that the ensuing shortage of newspapers led to an angry mob besieging the publishing house and breaking its windows, with the rapid development of a secondary market where original papers were sold at a premium. In their clamour for the coveted treasure crowds overturned paving stones, destroyed fences and walls and dug up public parks, going so far as to invade hospitals and private property in their clamour for the coveted treasure.

Laying aside the social media context, a major difference between the actions of the Harmsworth brothers compared to Pokemon Go is that their aim, which was to increase sales of their flagging publication, was more transparent than in the latter. Rosenberg seems to disagree with such a conclusion, arguing that while financial reward was important to those who engaged in the hunt, this was fuelled by a sense of play and adventure, forming part of a wider process of enchantment by advertising, and that the imaginary worlds created by advertisers matched the desire of consumers to be enchanted.

In further exploring how willing compliance to domination was gained through instrumentarian power. Lukes compares the situation of a Czechoslovakian greengrocer in the Soviet era described in a story by Vaclav Havel, with Zuboff’s (2019) account of the situation of the consumer of technology today. Havel’s story compares those who spoke out against the totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia to the actions of a greengrocer who meekly acceded to requests to place pro-Party posters in his window. Lukes argues that although he had at first agreed, he later came to realise that Havel’s portrayal was unfair to the greengrocer, because everyone who lived in Czechoslovakia at the time was familiar with the “rules of the game that all were required to play.” He contrasts this with the situation of the consumer who knows very little about the digital world and the mechanisms by which power operates. Zuboff (2019) developed the concept of instrumentarian power to describe this power which involves, “the instrumentation and instrumentalization of behavior for the purposes of modification, prediction, monetization and control.”⁶⁶ Lukes takes up Zuboff’s theme to argue that this operates according to a logic of operant conditioning, which systematically and predictably shapes behaviour in the interest of profit and differs from totalitarianism as it forms an attempt to transform the market into, “a project of total certainty’.

Lukes is critical of some aspects of Zuboff’s description of instrumentarian power. As mentioned above, he does not agree that this is new and unprecedented. Secondly, he argues that Zuboff is unclear when describing how this shapes our behaviour while simultaneously evading our awareness. He suggests that what Zuboff really views as new and unprecedented is not the mechanism of power but rather its increasing scope and effectiveness. This is based on the growing accuracy of predictions based on the extraction and analysis of mega-data and secondly, on the scope of the mechanism that enables millions to be herded towards pre-ordained outcomes (Zuboff, 2019: 428). Additionally, AI algorithms that were initially modelled on behaviour during the “war on terror”, are now moving beyond the understanding and control of those who design them,⁶⁷

a new form of collectivism in which it is the market, not the state, which concentrates both knowledge and freedom within its domain’⁶⁸ …Now ‘[s]urveillance capitalists claim the freedom to order knowledge, and then they leverage that knowledge advantage in order to preserve and expand their freedom’.⁶⁹

Lukes argues that Zuboff’s explanation is limited in its scope in that this form of power has been present for some time in our everyday lives. While she focuses on the effects on individuals who are no longer sovereign consumers, Lukes argues that her account can be further “darkened and deepened” by seeing how far the development of targeting people with greater precision reaches into the daily lives of individuals. Like Zuboff who noted how AI predictions can far exceed human powers, what then of the inbuilt biases inscribed into AI models that can worsen the lives of many? Power for instance is at work in controlling access to credit and to healthcare and its effects on political campaigning have also been huge, as attested to by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In discussing the extent to which instrumentarian power can be described as three dimensional, Lukes asks how can the remarkable spread of neo-liberal values around the world be explained by hegemony? He argues that the actions of the powerful are largely invisible, opaque, inaccessible, or hidden from view. As with Pokemon Go consumers are engaged in a game, but not the game they think they are playing. However, while Zuboff says that this occurs by coercion, Lukes argues that it is actually secured by consent, offering itself as a form of benign reciprocity when one signs up for a “free” service in response to a friend’s invitation to join a community.⁷⁰ If this is robbery, Lukes suggests it is encased in a velvet glove, in relation to which he references Fourcade and Klutz, who describe this as a, ‘Maussian bargain” which masks the structural asymmetry between giver and gifted, where the “free service” is reciprocated by the user’s personal data which is then transformed into a new commodity which incorporates them into a new arena where they are locked in by the gift-like structure and have little control. Lukes takes this further, quoting William James to argue that there is a new “competition for attention through distraction”⁷¹ as a form of manipulation of the will”, which extends deeper than the behavioural modification Zuboff describes, as it impairs one’s capacity to engage in immediate tasks and to engage in longer term projects and higher goals.

Lukes’ Response to Criticism

Given that Lukes (2021) devotes a considerable amount of space to defending his argument from criticism and to differentiate it from others in this part, I first discuss his response to the criticism from James Scott, that individuals are found to covertly resist domination by others even in the most trying of situations and additionally, that Lukes’ arguments for “thick” mystification through ideology cannot be substantiated. I then outline and discuss John Elster’s argument that there is no imposition of power in the situations described by Lukes as these are better described as instances of sour grapes where individuals voluntarily refuse what they are refused. Following this I discuss Lukes’ discussion of Bourdieu and Foucault, where he finds much to admire, but nonetheless argues that each suffers from particular failings which can be compensated for by accepting his argument for a third dimension of power.

Lukes wants to know how beliefs and desires can be shaped by external factors,

A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires? (Lukes, 2021:30,140).

This invites the question as to whether consumers in affluent democracies ought to be considered as a contented mass that willingly acquiesces to the subordination of their interests? This begs the question whether people really are as quiescent as some might imagine? Lukes must counter arguments from James Scott, that individuals are constantly resisting and from John Elster, that they are not dominated.

James Scott: Thin and Thick Mystification

James Scott (1990), distinguishes ‘thin’ from ‘thick’ mystification in his argument that resistance is ubiquitous. Thin mystification involves situations where the suborned individual presents an enthusiastic public face to power whilst simultaneously dissenting from this in private, summed up in the adage, ‘When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts”.⁷² Scott concludes that the researcher who witnesses the overt public performance can fail to spot the covert private script and so can miss observing crucial acts of insubordination. I should mention that in this instance Scott is referring to contexts of slavery and indentured labour where the suborned individual is far removed from the situation of the citizen-consumer living in an affluent democracy. As Marx might well have noted, Scott’s descriptions of such extreme forms of servitude are better fitted to the situation of those who toil in the ultimate service of the consumer, labouring in the vast mines where mineral wealth is generated, or in the factories that produce consumer or phones and other products, or who moderate social media content.⁷³ Indeed many, if not most, of those who risk their lives to gain entry to affluent countries are motivated by concerns of security and material well-being that is sorely lacking in their home setting.⁷⁴

For Scott (1990), the thick version of mystification means that those who are dominated are persuaded actively to believe in the values that explain their subordination, a situation which he characterises as extremely unlikely. Scott based his “thick” form of false consciousness on the dominant ideology thesis (Althusser, 1971) and specifically on the role of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) such as family, educators, priests, journalists and politicians in inculcating the dominant ideology into the masses. Together these comprise a near monopoly over symbolic production which gains the willing consent of subordinate groups to the conditions of their subordination.

As examples of misrepresentation in liberal democracy Scott cites the promulgation of beliefs in equality of opportunity, of an open political system and ‘commodity fetishism’, which have the cumulative effect of masking economic inequality, stigmatizing the poor as being entirely responsible for their poverty and misrepresenting low wages and unemployment as caused by natural and not social forces.⁷⁵ Scott’s aim is to puncture this ideological balloon by referring to the influential paper by Abercrombie and Turner (1972), who argued that the dominant ideology is most effectively transmitted to members of the dominant class fraction and that there is no evidence that this is the case with members of subordinate classes where one or another form of resistance will be observed.⁷⁶ Scott dismisses both thin and thick forms of false consciousness in contexts of gross exploitation to argue that while the oppressed individual may avoid explicit insubordination in the face of power, an almost universal resistance is bubbling away just under the surface. Firstly, pointing to slave and peasant uprisings as evidence, he asserts that this is because it is always possible for an individual who is oppressed to imagine an alternative social order. Secondly, compliance is a matter of the rational deployment of strategy and tactics rather than consent or resignation. He concedes a ‘paper-thin’ notion of hegemony where an individual might accept or even justify the condition of their subordination if they are granted the prospect of upward mobility.

Lukes, while acknowledging that Scott’s analysis may be convincing in the context of peonism or slavery, is concerned by his generalisation to contexts of conformance to power that occur in the absence of coercion. In particular, he argues that Scott fails to answer the fundamental question he poses, which is the quiescence of those subjected to domination. Asking why subordinate groups comply with dominant interests and do not continuously rebel, he muses on several possibilities; either they get something in return for their subordination, or they actually do rebel covertly, alternatively, perhaps the costs of resistance are too high; or finally, they are mystified by the dominant ideology and so are consequently unaware of their true interests. ⁷⁷ He concludes that because the situation is complex, not least because individuals have multiple and sometimes conflicting interests, all of these explanations can be true to one extent or another. However, in relation to the radical explanation of power he singles out the role of mystification in shaping perceptions, beliefs and preferences as playing a central role.⁷⁸

Jon Elster: Adaptive Preferences

When making his argument for thin ideology as a form of fatalistic resignation to one’s lot, Scott cites luminaries such as Anthony Giddens, Paul Willis and Pierre Bourdieu who variously argue that arbitrary class divisions become naturalized so that in Bourdieu’s words, the individual learns, “to refuse what is refused and to love the inevitable” (Scott, 1990: 75). This point is taken up by John Elster who, in his critique of Lukes argues that adaptive preferences rather than domination may better explain what is going on in Lukes’ supposed third dimension. Elster employs the fable of the fox and the sour grapes to explain his point. A fox spies a vine with a delicious bunch of grapes hanging overhead, but no matter what ploy he resorts to in order to grasp them, the grapes remain tantalisingly just out of reach. Defeated, in a classic demonstration of cognitive dissonance, the fox concludes that the grapes are sour and so are of no use to anyone. Adaptive preferences thus describe how an individual or a group can adjust their preferences to their circumstances, or their aspirations to their possibilities. Elster sums this up as follows,

It is an effect not a cause of a restricted feasible set; from manipulation in that it is endogenous; from character planning in that it is causal; and from wishful thinking in that it concerns the evaluation rather than the perception of the situation.⁷⁹

Elster argues that we tailor our aspirations to their possibilities. Preferences may be the cause of a restricted set of options as in the decision to marry, or they may arise as the result of a restricted set. In the latter case adaptive preference formation takes place “behind one’s back” by a non-conscious causal mechanism he likens to cognitive dissonance,

The process then is regulated by something like a drive. To bring home the reality of the distinction between drives and second-order wants, consider counter-adaptive preferences. No one could choose such preferences, and so they can only be explained by some kind of perverse drive, of which it can be said, metaphorically speaking, that it has the person, rather than the other way around.⁸⁰

Whereas deliberate character planning involves a person upgrading the accessible options, in contrast, adaptive preference change consists of downgrading the inaccessible options (‘sour grapes”).

In his critique, Elster asks whether, in his discussion of domination, Lukes proposes a purposive, or a functional, explanation of wants? From a purposive perspective, do rulers really have the power to deliberately induce certain beliefs, or does Lukes mean that certain desires and beliefs have beneficial consequences for them, and if the latter, do these consequences explain their causes? Elster is sceptical about the purposive proposal that rulers can actually induce in others those beliefs and preferences that serve their interest. He acknowledges that they may do so through their behaviour, “but only on the condition that they do not deliberately try to induce this goal”. In relation to the functional explanation, he acknowledges that while adaptive preference formation may result in consequences that are beneficial to the rulers, these do not explain how the preferences came to be held in the first place. It is good for the rulers that the lower classes are content with little, “but what explains it is that it is good for the subjects”, as, “frustration would be psychologically intolerable to the ruled”.⁸¹

Elster locates something excessive in adaptive preferences that is apparent in the tendency for them to overshoot their mark, for instance, in the case of an excessive meekness. In the context of consumption this is captured by Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of amor fati, or the ‘taste of necessity’.⁸² Amor fati can be considered as a form of sour grapes, given Bourdieu’s description of the French working class, ‘taste for what they are already condemned to’, such that some exhibited a “pathological or morbid preference for (basic) essentials, a sort of class coarseness, the pretext for a class racism which associates the populace with everything heavy, thick and fat.⁸³ As an indication of excess, Bourdieu at one point vividly describes how the working class men he interviewed celebrated “champion chompers” such as Francois Bruat, who ate 2.7 kilos of beans in fifteen minutes, while denigrating what they perceived as the effete frippery of those occupying the higher social strata.⁸⁴

Pierre Bourdieu

An obvious difference between an adaptive preference and amor fati is that in the former the fox tries to get hold of the grapes in the here and now before forming the preference, whilst the naturalised tastes associated with amor fati are generational in nature. Bourdieu’s overall theory of distinction is also more expansive and not as clearcut as Elster’s concept of adaptive preferences. The habitus is at once a system of classification of practices and a ‘generative principle’ that works unconsciously to produces lifestyles and permanent bodily dispositions such as the style of one’s handwriting, or of comporting oneself, which Bourdieu contends are shared by all of the members of the same class.⁸⁵ Fields comprise the social strata within which individuals struggle to acquire economic, cultural and symbolic capital. One of the arresting observations reported by Lukes is of Bourdieu’s description of the self-depreciation and self-denigration of Kabyle women, who perceived their genitals as deficient and disgusting. Bourdieu argues that to understand this situation one must move beyond a dichotomy that opposes coercion on the one hand to calculated submission on the other. Rather he argues that symbolic violence is at work in shaping the habitus, or the embodied dispositions that organize perceptions of the world below the level of consciousness, in a manner resistant to articulation and is not difficult to resist.

Lukes rejects Elster’s assertion that willing compliance to domination simply cannot be brought about by something akin to three-dimensional power. He is more receptive to Bourdieu, arguing that his accounts “richly illustrate” aspects of the third dimension by accentuating how conventional class-based distinctions are disguised or rendered invisible by being naturalised and inscribed in bodily dispositions that are acquired during the earliest moments of life, in such a way that subjects misrecognize the sources and modes of the operation of power, none of which is intentionally given or achieved as the result of propaganda. (Lukes, 2021: 146).

Although he finds Bourdieu’s theory fascinating, especially in relation to the interplay between biology and culture, Lukes is concerned that this area is not understood and in particular, “where, when and how does tacit, practical embodied knowledge set limits to ‘discursive’ learning and self-transformation?”⁸⁶

Lukes (2021) also refers to Elster’s argument that the recourse to ‘unconscious strategies’ such as those described by Bourdieu is suspect, particularly because it is insufficient to be told that the ‘objective differentiation of conditions and dispositions’ produces ‘automatic, unconscious effects’.⁸⁷ Yet, as discussed further in the conclusion to this chapter, while much has yet to be understood about these processes and whilst the research remains controversial, there is some evidence for the existence of such automatic and unconscious effects. However the major problem, If one is to rely on Bourdieu’s account, is how is one to identify exactly when a person’s interests are being dominated by others? Lukes quotes from Charles Taylor who asks, if adults tend to like the foods they ate as children, does this imply domination? Taylor answers his question by arguing that ‘domination’ would lose all of its meaning if it were allowed such wide latitude.⁸⁸ How far is it permissible to insinuate that how one comports oneself, chews one’s food, or enjoys particular foods is a sign of domination? In respect of this Lukes makes an important point which he later builds on regarding the development of criteria by which to judge this question which is that the subject is less free, in Spinoza’s phrase, “to live as their nature and judgment dictate”.⁸⁹

Lukes also disagrees with Bourdieu’s criticism of consciousness-raising by Marxist and feminist scholars. In the latter’s view this fails to account for inertia caused by the tenacious hold of dispositions inculcated through the habitus.⁹⁰ As we have seen from Lukes’ discussion of Nussbaum, he fundamentally disagrees with what he takes to be the pessimism in Bourdieu’s account. Instead, Lukes argues that writers on consciousness-raising helped him to develop ideas around a third dimension of power, which secures willing compliance to domination by the shaping beliefs and desires. Lukes thus aligns his argument not to Bourdieu, but to Buroway’s reading of Gramsci, mentioning in a footnote the former’s argument that the manufacturing of consent of workers in capitalism involves exploitation and misrecognition through mystification, which conceals the truth of their situation. Buroway differentiated his explanation from Gramsci’s arguments for the conscious consent of subordinate groups, which he felt was overly optimistic, and from Bourdieu’s concept of misrecognition, situated deep in the dispositions inculcated in the habitus and so resistant to change, as too pessimistic.⁹¹

Lukes on Foucault

While professing admiration for Foucault, Lukes cautions the need for an objective criterion against which to judge the operation of power and so he is critical of the argument made by Foucault, particularly in his early work, that one cannot step outside of power to find an external point of reference. Moreover, he asserts that Foucault obscures the distinction between the direct imposition of power and other influences that may be at work. Whilst describing Foucault’s broad aim as similar to his own, in “seeking to uncover its least evident and least perceptible forms,⁹²

Lukes parts company with Foucault when it comes to specifying the mechanisms by which power achieves its ends. In particular, he objects to the claim by Foucault and his successors that power produces or ‘makes up’ subjects, which he finds ‘wildly overstated’.⁹³ He dismisses arguments that power is omnipresent as disallowing any perch for critical purchase from which to determine or to judge between different ways of life, since each imposes its own “regime of truth”. He finds much to admire in Flyvbjerg’s (1998) detailed account of the hidden power relations at work in the establishment of a new bus terminal at Aalborg and in particular, on the role played by market and technical consultants in providing surveys and technical information that was used to try to create consensus.⁹⁴ However, although he acknowledges that Flyvbjerg has provided valuable insights into the operation of power, where he parts company with this and similar explanations, is when they describe power as all-pervasive and omnipresent such that there is no ledge outside of power that enables one to perch in order to gain critical purchase. For him the dire consequence is the impossibility of differentiating different ways of life, as each imposes its own regime of truth, the implication being that rationality is itself caught up in the web of power relations. Lukes links such arguments and the notion that the subject is ‘made up’ by power to Foucault’s early work, which he argues was overly influenced by Nietzsche, resulted in claims that were ‘wildly overstated and exaggerated”.⁹⁵

Given such arguments, Lukes finds it unsurprising that many concluded that in his early work Foucault undermined the very idea of the autonomous moral agent and have thus been led to abandon the ideal of a society free from the negative effects of power, or that power can be based on the rational consent of its subjects.⁹⁶ He does not cast the entirety of Foucault’s oeuvre in this light, suggesting that the latter’s works on governmentality and technologies of the self are more amenable to his explanation as they are at a distance from the Nietzschean influence that permeated Foucault’s earlier work on discipline and sexuality.

Lukes is more positive about the contribution made by feminists influenced by Foucault such as Sandra Bartky and Susan Bordo, discussing Bartky’s (1990) employment of disciplinary power to explain the patriarchal subjection of women made anxious by constant scrutinising and self-policing of their appearance, and referring to Bordo’s (2003) account of the normative practices by which the female body is trained in docility and obedience, instantiated by an interiorised inspecting gaze. Noting the paradox that the female body, which is trained to be docile and submissive can at the same time be experienced in terms of power and control, Bordo reiterates Foucault’s argument that where there is power there is also resistance; for example, the woman who develops muscles as the result of entering a weight-training programme feels more empowered at work, “resistance is perpetual and hegemony precarious’.⁹⁷ That said, Lukes is critical of Foucault’s exposition of disciplinary power as presenting a ‘one-sided and monolithic image of unidirectional control’, whereby humanitarian interventions are portrayed as obeying the same logic of control as prisons.⁹⁸ This, he argues, was because Foucault did not investigate actual disciplinary practices but was rather concerned with the idealized form of their abstract design.

For Lukes, Foucault’s account of domination in The History of Sexuality while less reductive, remains highly abstract. He acknowledges the richness of Foucault’s explanation when arguing that power can operate through stimulation as well as repression, quoting the latter’s argument that, while the ‘revolt of the body’ that led to the sexually permissive society may induce a sense of freedom in the subject, this is illusory, because on a different register they are controlled by the economic exploitation of eroticization, “Get undressed – but be slim, be good-looking, tanned!”⁹⁹ Similarly, the experience of feeling powerful and in control does not guarantee that this feeling is not itself the product of power relations on a different level, as in Bordo’s argument that the woman who works out at the gym to look more stylish can feel that she can assert herself more forcefully at work, such that, “resistance is perpetual and hegemony precarious”.¹⁰⁰

To summarize, Lukes is receptive to the conceptual question addressed by Foucault and appreciates the richness and depth of insight gained by empirical researchers influenced by Foucault’s work. However, he criticizes Foucault’s emphasis on structural relations, strategies and techniques rather than actual situations and real people. Likewise, whilst Foucault talks of resistance, he never offers a detailed account of this and indeed only the dominating agents feature in his accounts.¹⁰¹ Lukes suggests that the later work on governmentality strikes a more voluntaristic tone, as does the idea that the individual constitutes himself in an active fashion through practices of the self. As Lukes sees it by the end, Foucault is simply stating some of the basic tenets of sociology, although in a ‘distinctly Foucauldian way’,

Individuals are socialized: they are oriented to roles and practices that are culturally and socially given; they internalize these and may experience them as freely chosen; indeed, their freedom may, as Durkheim liked to say, be the fruit of regulation – the outcome of disciplines and controls. (Lukes, 2021: 102).

Lukes contends that the later work of Foucault, which boils down to the classic sociological explanation that individuals are socialized through being oriented to cultural roles that they may experience as freely chosen, signals the end of the “ultra-radicalism” apparent in earlier works. He acknowledges that Foucault achieves more than this by seeing these practices as forms of government beyond the state,¹⁰²

“These non-state authorities propose, suggest and impose these roles and practices upon individuals – that is, agents with two-way powers – who, in turn, must interpret their requirements and will sometimes resist and sometimes reject them. But all of this means that criteria will be needed to decide where their power amounts to domination and, in general, to distinguish between dominating and non- dominating power and dependency. And, not surprisingly, the ‘Final Foucault’ reaches for just such a distinction and so ends up travelling down the path sketched in the conceptual map above”.

Discussion

In this final section I consider the extent to which the theories described above might be of use in describing power in the context of marketing and consumption, starting with resistance. Discussion turns in the first instance to James Scott’s (1990) arguments for thin and thick mystification.

Overt Resistance to Marketing and Consumption

By comparison to James Scott (1990) whose arguments are based on forms of extreme subjection, a cursory review of the literature on consumer research suggest that there is little need for consumers to resort to covert forms of resistance. Indeed, consumer goods and their meanings are often used as markers of distinction between groups whose rivalries are played out on the keyboard of brands. Consumption practices have long been employed by youth subcultures to symbolically mark their territory against rivals and upset the status quo. In the UK the “Teddy Boys” and “Beatniks” of the 1950s were succeeded in the 1960s by Mods and Rockers, in the 1970s, by skinheads and punks (Hebdige, 1979), then in the 1980s by Hip Hop and New Romantics. And from the 1970s onwards LGBTQ activists used consumer goods to mark their distinctive style (Kates & Belk, 2001).

As discussed in chapter six, direct action often involves a consumer boycott directed against a high-profile corporation such as Barclays Bank, or McDonald’s, which remain on the hot list of current targets.¹⁰³ Although high-profile organizations with a physical presence on the high street remain attractive, a number of boycotts have flared up against Amazon, Airbnb, Axa, Booking.com and many other online operations with purported links to Israel over the war in Gaza.¹⁰⁴ Interestingly, no such action seems to have been directed towards the platforms that host them such as Whatsapp or Facebook.

Resistance by consumers has been defined by Peñaloza and Price (1993: 123) as, ‘the way individuals and groups practice a strategy of appropriation in response to structures of domination”. Formed in the 1990s, Adbusters mixed acts of appropriation together with symbolic acts of destruction. Kalle Lasn stated the message clearly in the pamphlet, Smashing the Image Factory: A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion and Destruction, which offered tips on how to engage in ‘culture jamming’ by subverting the meaning of messages on billboards, or failing that, providing tips on how to efficiently chop a billboard down. Canadian concern about the media and mass culture can be traced back to Marshall McLuhan, and to later works by William Leiss and Naomi Klein, and is also manifest in popular culture in albums, “The Suburbs” (2010) and “Everything Now” (2017) by Arcade Fire, although as seems inevitable, purists have accused the band of ‘selling out’ to corporatism.

When Gail Bradbrook of Extinction Rebellion smashed the window of a Barclays bank branch, this could hardly be described as appropriative, although her action to publicize the, ‘revolving door between big banks, major oil companies and the government’ succeeded.¹⁰⁵ While Bradbrook was sentenced to pay a fine of £575, plus £678 in court costs and victim surcharge, Aleksandra Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a Russian penal colony for her simple symbolic act of appropriation involving the replacement of supermarket price-tags with anti-war messages as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.¹⁰⁶

Authors have sought to disentangle the various forms in which consumer resistance can occur. For instance, Fournier (1998) argued for a continuum from avoidance to hostile action. Although it can be unwise to label acts of ‘voluntary simplicity’ as resistance, the aim for a more sustainable lifestyle can involve the rejection, reduction or reuse of goods one disapproves of (Black & Cherrier, 2010). Researchers have also written of attempts to escape the anonymity of the market by sharing in the fantasy of rugged individualism with fellow “mountain-men,”¹⁰⁷ or the temporary and paradoxical form of anti-market community offered by attending the Burning Man festival.¹⁰⁸

Covert Resistance in Marketing and Consumption

Thin mystification (Scott, 1990) refers to covert acts of resistance that occur under the noses of the powerful by those subjected to their power. The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certau (1984), is directed mainly at Foucault’s ideas on the panoptic organisation and surveillance of space by arguing that the strategic intentions of those who organize such spaces are unravelled through the trajectories of those who traverse them. For instance, One Day in My Life by Bobby Sands (1983) details the myriad ways by which prisoners subverted the panoptic system of control that was employed in the H-Block prisons in Northern Ireland.

De Certau argues that as customers and consumers when we shop, read magazines or watch television, we do not simply fit into the pre-formed slots constructed for us by marketers but appropriate them to serve our own ends in the manner of “La Perruque”, the term he uses to describe the informal self-directed activity of employees who serve their own ends using the employer’s resources or time which they disguise as legitimate. As consumers we engage in a ‘tirelessly quiet’ and ‘invisible’ form of production that is consumption, ‘characterised by its ruses, poaching and fragmentation’ (de Certau, 1984, 31).

The most obvious form of physical appropriation is stealing, in relation to which some instantiations seem to rise and fall as fashions while others are long lasting. As examples of the former, public concern was raised in the UK in the 1980s over an ‘epidemic’ of “joyriding”, caused by youths stealing cars and driving them fast for kicks, and by the appropriation of public spaces by skateboarders.¹⁰⁹ Shoplifting, which is currently described in similar terms to an epidemic spiralling out of control’,¹¹⁰ is described by many as a curse that raises the price of goods for consumers, while lauded by Fiske (1998), as a form of resistance against capitalism and all its works. Bauman (2017), who commented that disaffected youth preferred to destroy what they could not have, might well have concurred with Fiske, as one should not underestimate the feelings of resentment and anger experienced by those who are marginalized against a system that they perceive to work in the interests of the rich.

It is not hard to find other instances of what Scott refers to as “thin” resistance in marketing contexts. Walking down a city street many are wise to the activities of ‘chuggers’ and ‘suggers’ and will cross over in advance to avoid them. And in this context, while Scott writes of the covert resistance of the slave before the master, on city streets today one can witness the curious reversal that occurs when shoppers cross over to avoid the angst of having to engage with a homeless beggar.¹¹¹ Home-owners have developed ploys to rebuff the aggressive sales techniques employed by companies that offer to fix their roof or to install double-glazing or solar panels. Informants contributing to Heath et al. (2010), expressed cynicism about the daily grind of subjection such aggressive sales strategies and to the deceptive and manipulative point-of-sale promotions encountered in supermarkets. People have also developed defences to counter “confusion marketing” strategies designed by marketers of mobile technologies and lookalike products to defeat the customer’s ability to make an informed comparison.¹¹² A number have also learned to shop around to avoid being locked into higher fees by insurance companies, utilities and broadband suppliers. However, judging from calls to consumer affairs programmes and from personal experience, a person can at times feel overwhelmed by the Sisyphean struggle involved in the demand for constant vigilance when reviewing and renewing utility and phone contracts, or wary of being scammed, trying in vain to speak to a human being.

Compared to the fuzziness of capitalism, marketing can be easier to pin down in the public imagination through being fixed to the stereotypical image of the advertiser as a magician or a huckster who dupes his mark by deflecting their attention like a three-card monte, or by creating a fictitious problem and then offering the product as a solution. Cynicism is often seen as a defensive psychological tool against the persuasive role of advertising by evincing constant suspicion toward advertising messages (Pollay, 1986), linked to wariness resulting from disappointment at unfulfilled promises (Heath et al., 2010, Odou & de Pechpeyrou, 2011). Additionally, most people are by now be past-masters on how to minimize the constant bombardment of advertisements pushed by Youtube and other platforms when accessing “free” content. That said, there is little prospect of ‘resistance’ when one is trying to book tickets for a concert online and finds oneself subjected to “dynamic”, “surge”, “drip”, or “personalized” pricing. The individual in the role of consumer can be overwhelmed by choice and at the same time aware that this effectively boils down to having no choice.

We may avoid some products on account of their functional properties, such as, in the case of food; the use of GMO technology; or pesticides; or perhaps because of manner of its production, as in industrial farming; or where it is grown, as in soya produced from cleared rainforest; or because of the air-miles involved in its transport. Or we may disapprove of it because it offends our sense of taste; or symbolically, because of its country of origin. Contributors to the study of everyday shopping by Nixon and Gabriel (2016), reported sensations of being overwhelmed or polluted, and experiencing anxiety and disgust at the amount of plastic used in the UK to package goods sold in supermarkets. According to one participant, Nora, ‘I picked up about four things [in the January sales]. . . probably for three quarters of an hour, and I looked at these things and thought ‘what am I doing?’ and I actually hung them on a rail and walked out the shop!’. Here there was no conscious premeditation or any overt attempt to “resist”, but rather a response to being overwhelmed.

One line of research has focused more narrowly to ask why people avoid brands. Lee et al., (2009) argue that avoidance, where an individual deliberately chooses to keep away from or reject a brand is mainly due to brands that fail to deliver on their promises. Alternatively, a brand may summon a “negative constellation” of attributes that are identified with an image of one’s ‘undesired self” (Hogg & Bannister, 2001). One may for instance disapprove of the owner of the brand so that in the case of Elon Musk one may decide not to buy a Tesla in favour of another brand, although for obvious reasons, one is probably much less likely to abandon Whatsapp or Facebook even though one is not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg. There is an option to ‘resist’ these in a more positive way by subscribing to Solid, designed by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee, with the professed aim, ‘to return the web to its original vision of empowering individuals and enabling collaboration”.¹¹³

Three-Dimensional Power in Marketing

In this final section I first revisit Lukes’ definition of three-dimensional power and then differentiate it more fully from James Scott’s (1990) concept of thick mystification. Next, I discuss Lukes’ suggestions as to how one might begin to investigate the third dimension of power and offer some illustrative examples in the context of marketing. I then expand on Lukes’ argument that real interests ought to be determined by adopting an external standpoint on one’s behaviour. This leads to discussion of Lukes’ advocacy of consciousness-raising as offering potential hope for those trapped by in the third dimension of power as a means to transcend their situation, in respect of which I briefly discuss how Lukes’ contrasts his activist stance from the quietism he detects in Bourdieu. The chapter then concludes with a tentative discussion of power in the marketing academy. To begin with, it helps to restate Lukes’ definition of three-dimensional power where,

he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have- – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?¹¹⁴

John Gaventa who synthesised the three dimensions of power into the Powercube puts this similarly when arguing that, ‘power, in its more insidious forms, may be internalised in terms of one’s values self-esteem and identities, such that, ‘voices in visible places are but echoes of what the power holders who shaped those places want to hear.’¹¹⁵

Determining Three Dimensional Power

Lukes develops a number of criteria by which to determine whether or not a particular instance is explicable by the third dimension of power; does it extend beyond the scope of first and second level explanations?; what are the effects on the interests of those involved?; what are the mechanisms by which it achieves its aims?¹¹⁶ For instance, he argues that Zuboff’s (2019), concept of instrumentarian power largely meets the first criterion, as it describes an opaque form of control based on background processing of huge amounts of information provided by unwitting users. Lukes demurs however, when stating that while Zuboff takes claims about the effectiveness of instrumentarian power at face value, more information is needed concerning the effectiveness of behaviour modification on the wider population. However overall he agrees that this form of power points to a real tendency at work in the world.¹¹⁷

The determination of the question of interests seems relatively straightforward, given that the interests of the individuals whose data is fed into algorithms are potentially harmed while those of the surveillance capitalists are enhanced, although Lukes does not discuss the counterfactual, that users of social media individuals might have behaved differently had they been made aware of their situation.¹¹⁸ Lukes suggests that Zuboff’s account could have been broadened beyond discussion of the effects of power on individuals who are no longer sovereign consumers, by considering the use of instrumentarian power in situations such as the rationing access to credit and health insurance, identifying immigrants for deportation, or most insidiously, its reach into electoral manipulation. Finally, he queries some the mechanisms identified by Zuboff to explain how instrumentarian power operates and suggests some potential alternatives. For instance, where Zuboff describes this as a form of dispossession of the user, Lukes contends that the process can better be described as a form of perverse gift relation or “Maussian bargain” where the consumer is tied in through the offer of a “free” service. He also argues that the frequent use of distraction has a major effect in blunting higher-order capacities to reason and evaluate.¹¹⁹

Distinguishing Three Dimensional Power from Thick Mystification

While the above rather crude summary is intended to illustrate the bare bones of Lukes’ approach, it is important to differentiate three dimensional power from Scott’s (1990) idea of “thick mystification”, as each describes the situation where the dominated come actively to believe in the values that explain their subordination. While Scott dismisses thick mystification as a fantasy held by middle-class intellectuals, Lukes holds onto this idea, not in the sense of a suffocating all-encompassing uniformity of consciousness that is impervious to change, but as contextual, contingent and open to change through consciousness-raising. Thus,

Power’s third dimension is always focused on particular domains of experience and is never, except in fictional dystopias, more than partially effective. It would be simplistic to suppose that ‘willing’ and ‘unwilling’ compliance to domination are mutually exclusive: one can consent to power and resent the mode of its exercise.¹²⁰

As an example of ‘thick mystification’ Jeff Murray (2002) describes Anna from the rural setting of Mountain Home, Arkansas, as an example of the willing engagement of an individual who succumbs to the false promises of advertising imagery. Murray describes Anna as seeking to compensate for the stigma of inequality arising from her origin in this rural backwater by modelling her appearance on, ‘a classy and sophisticated look’ based on her avid consumption of stylish images from fashion magazines. Murray’s argument, that the simulated identities constructed by the media are based on “false promises” is strikingly similar to that made by Horkheimer and Adorno who describe the situation of a lowly typist in the 1930s who was similarly lured by cinematic portrayals of “rags to riches success” such that, “ideology conceals itself in the calculation of probabilities. Not everyone will be so lucky” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2004: 25).

Consider also the unfortunate experience of dislocation and disorientation experienced as a consequence of their identification with western consumption lifestyles by the Turkish women described by Üstüner and Holt (2007; 2010). The young women they describe had been displaced with their families from rural villages to dwell in squatter camps in the cityscape. In the urban setting they were drawn to emulate the flashy “Baltici” lifestyle they observed around them and began to disparage the traditional skills of knitting and spinning practiced by their mothers. They then describe the failure of these young women to achieve their dream of the Baltici lifestyle as a thwarted or failed identity project, because they did not possess the social, economic or cultural capital necessary to realise their aspiration.  In a later study, Üstüner and Holt (2010) observed the disorientation experienced of Turkish women possessing high cultural capital who had vainly sought to accommodate to Western cultural codes, which the authors liken to learning a cryptic and complex foreign language. Despite their best effort, western style remained as a borrowed culture, with the women feeling like posers who tried to emulate others. 

Real Interests

In respect to the third dimension of power, further consideration of the situation of Anna from Mountain Home (Murray, 2002) and of the women described by Üstüner and Holt (2007, 2010) necessarily involves discussion of their real interests, because power is present, wherever it furthers, or does not harm, the interests of the powerful and bears negatively upon the interests of those subject to it.¹²¹. Lukes would thus have gone further than Murray (op. cit.) to determine whether or not Anna might be subject to domination on the basis that her real interests had been harmed; specifically, one might ask whether Anna is dominated by her identification with the images she so avidly consumes? For Lukes, the answer to such questions cannot simply be read off but requires consideration of the particular circumstances in which that a person finds themselves and why they have chosen to engage in this behaviour.

Referring to those who like Anna, aim for an image of sophistication, but at the considerable risks involved in undergoing plastic surgery, Lukes argues that this decision can sometimes be a ‘clear-eyed’ and ‘highly rational’ strategy, quoting Susan Bordo, that people know the routes to success in today’s dog-eat-dog world, “and they are not dopes to pursue them’. This reminds me of the documentary Body Snippers, made back in the 1990s which I used as a vehicle for teaching, that showcases four individuals of different ethnicities who each evince the desire for a “European nose” (I must admit to being baffled by the very idea that anything like a “European nose” existed). At one point Prince Valentino, a stripper and part-time model with rippling muscles, a six-pack and a chiselled face, who looks the very model of bodily perfection exclaims when quizzed, “I’m a man and I’m free to be who I want to be!” Deeply enamoured of his appearance, the Prince tells the camera that he decided to follow through on this rather drastic action against the vociferous objections of family and friends, for purely commercial reasons.

Given that Prince Valentino seemed to have a “clear-eyed” understanding of the risks and rewards of undergoing surgery, then following Lukes’ argument, the question of whether or not his decision was subject to domination requires consideration of the interests involved. Although when aggregated to many thousands, Prince’s decision progressively accommodates society to the “look” demanded by the marketplace, his decision most immediately benefitted the plastic surgeon and who knows, albeit at the risk to his health, may have gained the Prince more modelling contracts! We might similarly learn from Anna that her cultivation of a “sophisticated look’ from magazines was calculated as a strategic act with the ultimate aim to gain her the symbolic capital required for entry into the highly competitive job marketplace; who knows!.

While the two studies of Turkish women by Üstüner and Holt (2007; 2020) were informed by Bourdieu, the situation of the women they describe might also be understood as examples of the operation of the third dimension of power, as the women involved have clearly experienced problems from their identification with western ideals. While the authors discuss these cases in relation to questions of identity and status, from Lukes’ (2021) perspective, the key question to be determined should be based on a consideration of their real interests. Consequently one would need to learn more of their situation and if, and if so how, their interests were affected before reaching a conclusion.

An External Standpoint

I should mention that the determination of real interests did not feature in the first edition of PRV (Lukes, 1974), so it is likely that these were subsequently introduced to defend Lukes’s argument against  accusations of moral relativism.  Discussing Lukes (1974), Stewart Clegg (1989), considered whether the introduction of an external observer who can determine real interests objectively from the outside might solve the problem, but concluded that it would not, because, “(o)ne would thus be damned by others who did not share that observer’s value preferences (Clegg, 1989, 117)”. 

It is worth exploring the question of the external observer further, for Clegg’s wariness is understandable as it points to a conundrum at the heart of arguments for positive liberty, which presume a beneficent authority.  For instance, the “choice architecture’ devised by self-described ‘libertarian paternalists’ Thaler and Sunstein (2003), is presumed to operate under the auspices of ‘good governance’, underpinned by liberal-democratic values, whose aim is to coax individuals to engage in behaviour that is conducive to their “real” interest, as envisaged by experts. As an illustration, they offer the everyday example of a café manager who prominently displays a bowl of fruit in front of the pudding in the display as a means to “nudge” customers to eat healthier food. 

Zuboff (2019) devotes considerable space to discussing the very different idea of freedom to civic republicanism espoused by the behaviourist B.F. Skinner, whose theory informs “nudge” economics. For Skinner, human behaviour is eminently malleable and open to change through ”tuning”, involving manipulation of subtle subliminal cues and “herding”, by controlling cues in the immediate context. Skinner believed that humans are organisms for whom the idea of freedom is an illusion that is similar to the accidents that occur in physics, operating as a defence mechanism against ignorance that human behaviour is determined by environmental contingencies. In this understanding, “our ignorance of precisely how it does so is the void we fill with the fantasy of freedom’.

Compared to the beneficent application of positive freedom by those of a civic republican disposition such as Thaler and Sunstein (op. cit.), in the illiberal hands of the overlords of FAANG, despite their frequently strident calls for the protection of freedom of speech, (which equates freedom with freedom to lie, mislead and abuse with impunity), tuning and herding are the mechanisms utilised in social media algorithms designed to modify and drive behaviour purely for the purpose of maximising attention in order to maximise their profit.

From the above, there is no need to resort to “social credit” systems that operate in some autocracies to show that mechanisms aimed to benefit the consumer might equally work in the opposite direction. Additionally, as argued by Barry Hindess, the judgement of the observer might itself be flawed as they may be prone to wishful thinking. Hindess refers to the context of observers from the left he calls the “enlightened few’, who imputed ‘real interests’ to the ‘working-classes’, who then had to develop further explanations to account for what was missing in their explanation when workers failed to rise up and cast off their chains,

“(w)hat is missing here is enlightenment, and it is said to be missing because of rule by consent, bourgeois hegemony, three-dimensional power”.¹²²

Consciousness-Raising

The above raises the question as to how Lukes deals with the problem of the external identification of interests? Given that he is, “all too familiar from the history of communism: to call those dictates ‘objective’ or ‘real interests’ which are imputed, from the outside, by observers or activists”¹²³, his answer is that this requires an external standpoint.¹²⁴ How might one develop an external standpoint in the absence of an external observer? Although he does not mention this, it seems reasonable to surmise that by an external standpoint, Lukes is referring to the impartial spectator described by Adam Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiments.  This standpoint does not necessitate the presence of another person, but rather points to the reflexive ability to, “identify ourselves with the ideal man within the breast, and look at our own conduct with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator …and it is always from that spectator, from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence, that we are likely to learn the most complete lesson of self-control”.¹²⁵  This squares with Lukes’ references to  Spinoza’s argument that the individual who is most free (possessed of his own right), is the one with the greatest strength of mind.

Following Burns’ injunction, ‘to see ourselves as others see us”, then from Lukes (2021) a first step in responding to one’s behaviour being ‘tuned’ or ‘herded’ and driven by social media algorithms to fill the coffers of the “Tech Bros.” is to become reflexively aware of one’s situation.

The “Reflexively Defiant” Consumer

The idea that individuals in market societies are mystified and need to be emancipated is argued for by Murray and Ozanne (1991) and Ozanne and Murray (1995). The case of Anna from Mountain Home was discussed earlier and while Murray (2002) does not tell the reader precisely how Anna might become a “reflexively defiant” consumer, he hints that beneath the lure of simulated identity lies the possibility of an authentic existence. In his early years Marx might have argued that Anna possess a unique ‘species being’ and can find meaning, self-recognition, purpose and self-realization in the objects she freely produces, an authentic being that now seems lost, as she has become alienated from her own production by engaging in the fruitless sense for meaning and self-worth in the commodity marketplace. Lukes too is concerned with questions of authenticity and what is ‘truly human’, which from Spinoza and Marx, he ultimately ties down to the human capacity for rationality. In relation to power, the key issue for Lukes is specifically when a person’s rationality is blunted by domination so that they fail to see that which is clear and obvious to others.

Holt (2002) selected two individual cases, comprising Paul and Don respectively, such that Paul exemplified Murray and Ozanne’s (1991) reflexively defiant consumer, while Don fitted that of the ‘liberatory postmodern’ consumer described by Firat and Venkatesh (1995). Paul is described as an exemplar of the reflexively defiant consumer who ekes out a cavelike spartan existence in a basement apartment and is constantly on the alert to defend against marketing propaganda by subjecting every prospective purchase to intense scrutiny in seeking to avoid being duped. Paul focuses exclusively on functional utility at the expense of aesthetics, acting as a “shopping engineer” whose calculative style comes close to that of the mythical homo economicus, even when paying $300 for a pair of solid brass lamps, which he seeks to justify on the ground of their utility. Ultimately, as Holt explains it, Paul engages in a, ‘highly reflexive and focused defense against the market’s attempts to trick him also draws him to participate in the market, creating for him a meta-identity of a sovereign consumer’.¹²⁶ Don on the other hand can hardly be described as abstemious given that he owns one hundred kites, several bikes and assorted hubs, subscribes to, ‘every bike magazine he can find’, and owns more than one hundred western shirts. Holt describes Don as a classic bricoleur who is always on the lookout for innovations but appropriates what the market dictates.

Holt detects a paradox in the consumption styles of these men who on the one hand, are alert to the wiles of marketers, but who nonetheless centre their identity-work in relation to the marketplace rather than on family, friends, religion, or work. Indeed, Paul is described by Holt as an uber consumer for whom the market forms the locus of his life, whilst Don, who works creatively to make every commodity his own, is constantly seduced by market offerings. Consequently, although both men resist the cultural authority of marketing, neither has been emancipated from the market.¹²⁷

What difference might it make were one to apply Lukes’ criterion of real interests to the situations of Paul and Don? While it is the case that each is extensively involved in the marketplace, as described by Holt (2002), there is insufficient information provided to identify any interest in Paul other than a concern for utility and durability. Don on the other hand is extensively involved in the marketplace, although many of his purchases are employed productively as means for self-cultivation and development through his involvement in dancing and cycling (Csikzentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981). Looked at in this way is it either here nor there that these men are not entirely emancipated from the market, for who is in this day and age? In any event ‘the market’ and ‘capitalism’ are rather fuzzy and inchoate entities against which to be ‘reflexively defiant’, and it seems that in Paul's case, his wariness is not so much directed against ‘the market’, as directed against the claims made by big brand advertisers. Seen in this way, then perhaps Paul’s ‘reflexive defiance’ is motivated by a pervasive fear that seems to be particularly ingrained in the consciousness of the USA, where hostility is directed not so much against the market, but rather at the size and remoteness of the Federal state or “big government’, (generally, but not exclusively expressed by the political right) and of “big business’ (generally by those on the left), which in the case of the latter can easily be mistaken for a revolt against capitalism.¹²⁸

Other than “reflexively defiant” consumers are those who engage in self-cultivation by developing the capability to look after their own needs, fending for themselves where possible by growing some of their own vegetables, learning to cook, or ‘make do and mend’, who are also mindful of opportunities that arise to reduce their consumption. Gabriel and Lang (2015) describe consuming less as the ‘final frontier’ of the consumer rebel, given that the image of the frugal consumer is still haunted by the negative stereotype of the hippy who knits his own muesli.¹²⁹ These might be regarded as reasonable actions to take, not only as practical responses to the threat posed by global heating, but also in the face of the looming crisis faced by ‘developed’ countries whose populations approach the dystopian ideal depicted in Wall-E, given that 12% of the population in the USA and 8.6% of the UK population are now estimated to suffer from diabetes which is at an all-time high in each country, and additionally, that Artificial Intelligence which is sold as liberatory, threatens to remove the capability for one to think or to write for oneself.

Reflexive Defiance in Andhra Pradesh

Lukes (2021) cites Martha Nussbaum’s (2000) account of how their engagement in consciousness-raising groups enabled women who dwelled in small communities in Andhra Pradesh, India to gain a modicum of reflexive defiance. Nussbaum argues for a positive understanding of liberty which focuses on the need to develop of capabilities such as literacy and numeracy as real freedoms which equip a person with the means to achieve their goals by enabling them to acquire functionings, such as the ability to read and write and do arithmetic. From her visit to Andhra Pradesh, Nussbaum describes how the initially reluctant engagement of women in consciousness-raising groups afforded them a sense of agency and voice with local authorities that gained them the respect of their husbands and of the wider community. By such means argues Nussbaum, these women harnessed reflexive awareness, from which to view their situation with a degree of detachment. One example she provides of her visit to a village that had previously lacked a clean water supply is particularly striking,

Before the arrival of a government consciousness-raising program, these women apparently had no feeling of anger or protest about their physical situation. They knew no other way. They did not consider their conditions unhealthful or unsanitary, and they did not consider themselves to be malnourished. Now their level of discontent has gone way up: they protest to the local government, asking for clean water, for electricity, for a health visitor. They protect their food supplies from flies, they wash their bodies more often (Nussbaum, 2000, 113).

In the above case the counterfactual seems indisputable, as can be readily understood if a person in such a situation were to become conscious of what by any other standard was the dire condition of their life situation. Once emaciated, undernourished, women, who clung to the barest possible human existence are later described as transformed through consciousness-raising into vociferous and demanding consumers possessed, in Spinoza’s term, “of their own right”.

Project Shakti: A hard road?

It is fortuitous that we may be able to follow the fortunes of some of these women from Andhra Pradesh, given that they may well have joined Project Shakti, the joint venture formed in 2000 between Hindustan Unilever and the state government, which piggy-backed onto the existing network of women’s development groups described by Nussbaum, (2000).¹³⁰ This initiative was described by HUL as, “not a corporate social responsibility programme (but) a business initiative with social benefits”¹³¹, with the aim to enable women in poor rural communities in Andhra Pradesh to become entrepreneurs. The project set the ambitious goal to recruit one-hundred-thousand Shakti Amma (Empowerment Mothers) covering five-hundred-thousand villages, to reach six hundred million consumers by 2021. Each woman was asked to invest ten thousand rupees to buy stock from HUL, from which they could expect to make a profit of between nine and ten percent.

Although this network marketing initiative was initially targeted solely to housewives and teachers, it was objected to by shopkeepers, who were eventually allowed to join. Many of the Ammas subsequently reported that their ability to make money increased their self-confidence and the scheme had led to them being better respected in their local communities, for instance, through being addressed by their first name as opposed to their last, which identifies their caste. On the other hand, Thekuddan (2010) asserts that by 2006, many Shakti Ammas could not make a profit as the job demanded from two to eight hours a day and involved the collective effort of the entire household, such that it was only if one was already a shopkeeper that profitability was assured. Additionally, although the business was in the name of the woman, Thekuddan reports that many did not experience the projected freedom of choice and control over their lives as, given “communal expectations” on her ability to move freely outside the home, her husband or sons had assumed the role of taking orders and making deliveries or actually ran the business.

Thekuddan (2010) concludes that while HUL benefitted from the programme as it was able to establish itself in a previously untapped market, earning an estimated thousand million rupees in 2006, many of the Ammas experienced problems such as lack of credit and unsold stock and when they looked to the government for support, it drew back from involvement in the scheme. Given more support from government and the involvement from NGOs, she feels that the scheme might have been more successful,

Rather the result was making vulnerable salesgirls unable to empower themselves in the absence of state mediation and support from civil society.¹³²

This quote seems rather downbeat given Thekuddan also mentioned how many of the women involved in the project had felt that they were better respected as a consequence of their involvement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report authored by executives from Hindustan Unilever in 2008 struck a very different tone, contending that Project Shakti was a great success, as by 2007, forty-six thousand Shaktis had been recruited covering one-hundred thousand villages in fifteen states, reaching three million rural households. A subsequent report by market research firm Kantar (2024) found that by the end of 2021, the number had trebled to one hundred and sixty five thousand Shaktis in eighteen states¹³³, which although a significant increase, did not come close to achieving the initial aim of the programme.

Discussion

Project Shakti raises difficult questions in relation to consciousness-raising and “real interests”. It is a classic neoliberal enterprise on an unprecedented scale which illustrates the retreat of the state and in its aim to re-direct individuals from their traditional roles to become entrepreneurs and consumers of commodities. It also foregrounds the role of the consumer in the marketplace as the primary agent of social action and change. At a general level this raises the question of the inculcation of neoliberal ideology and practice into the lives of the inhabitants of rural India that aims to transform them into entrepreneurs and consumers of commodities; is this initiative like introducing a spider to catch a fly? More specifically, the dominance of one corporation, HUL, raises questions about influence and lack of choice. In relation to influence, the “Shakti Vani” (voice) initiative was another aspect of the programme that involved training local women to give talks on hygiene, disease prevention and prenatal care. While the aim of this programme seems laudable, given that Thukeddan (2010) mentions that one of the most popular purchases from Shakti Ammas was Fair and Lovely skin lightening cream, one wonders if these talks provided opportunities for promotions of other HUL products? Most striking is that in light of Nussbaum’s (2000) account, which highlights the role played by consciousness-raising in enabling these women to recognise their subjection to domination, if we are to take Thukeddan’s (2010) conclusion at face value, then this is the beginning of what for many will prove to be a long and hard road to follow.

Beyond Consciousness? Lukes vs. Bourdieu

The situation of the Amma’s can be read in different ways; for instance, as a cautionary tale of a largely failed attempt by vulnerable young women in seeking to move from the frying pan of patriarchal power to the fire of precarious capitalism; or more positively, as an uncertain step by them towards the achievement of freedom and respect that had hitherto been denied them. Given that consciousness plays a central role in Nussbaum’s (2000) account and in Lukes’ theory of power, it is no surprise to learn that Lukes strongly contests Bourdieu’s dismissal of consciousness-raising. While ‘misrecognition’ for Bourdieu is similar to Marxian ideas of 'false consciousness' he argues that it works at a deeper level which can transcend any intent at conscious manipulation by one group or another.¹³⁴ Lukes argues that Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus appears to, “express a generalized view of ‘internalization’ beyond reflexive critique”, thus ignores the individual’s capacity for change.¹³⁵. The following case enables discussion of this important question in the context of the choice by parents of a school for their children.

The conundrum faced by James (2015) was, given the importance of success in primary and secondary education to success in later life, why on earth would a small group of white middle-class parents decide to go ‘against the grain’ by deliberately choosing to send their children to under-performing state schools?

James describes typical middle-class parents as ‘ideal consumers’, who base their choice of school on extensive research based on access to school rankings and inspection reports, leading many to seek to game the system by moving house well in advance, some even choosing to rent another property in the school catchment area, or by attending church for a time in order to gain acceptance to a high-ranking school. In the context of such rampant competition, the decision by those who go “against the grain” by enrolling their child into a below par state school can seem inexplicable. The researchers found that the parents they interviewed often disputed the idea of one-dimensional school rankings according to which one can evaluate a school in the same way as a washing machine. Instead, they saw their choice of a state school as a radical means to broaden the habitus of their progeny. However, James argues from a Bourdieusean perspective, that there was much more to their decision, as misrecognition was involved, despite the professed attempt of these parents to act ethically.

In interviews, these middle-class parents constantly referred to the “brightness” of their children and the “brightness and ambition” of some ethnic children, whilst disparaging that of local working-class children. Indeed, some were so confident (his italics) of the brightness of their children that this justified their risky decision. James argues that comments made by some that children will ‘rise to their natural place’ are indicative of a form of misrecognition, where some dispositions are interpreted as natural rather than as socially maintained. He also describes the ‘mutual affinity” that developed between middle-class parents who were often members of school Boards, and head teachers. Their children, who tended to be in the top learning set, were relatively isolated, making few friends with their working-class counterparts. James describes the parents as often quite pushy, demanding a high level of engagement from teachers, which they often received, and that they benefited from extra public resources devoted to these generally underperforming schools such as the “Gifted and Talented” scheme.

James reflects that that it would be mistaken to see these middle-class parents’ rejection of school “league tables’ as enlightened. As the parents saw it, their children’s rise to the top set was ‘naturally’ explicable by differences between them and their working-class counterparts in motivation and intelligence. As James explains it from a Bourdieusian perspective, it would take a lot to ‘even disturb the intricate and convoluted processes by which…social difference is converted through educational action.’ Class-based inequality was not “cognised” but rather was mis-recognized as based on the assumed natural intelligence of middle-class children as set against their working-class peers who feel inferior at expressing themselves and are lacking in vocabulary and self-confidence.

Discussion

James (2015) feels no need to complicate his explanation by including the potentially problematic consideration of real interests, and I might add that neither do social movement researchers such as McAdam et al. (2001). However, for Lukes, real interests are important, as they help one to distinguish what really matters from what is inconclusive or incidental. Looking at the above case from Lukes’ perspective, one ought first determine if the real interests of the parties concerned have affected by power and if so, how this situation might be mitigated? This raises the difficulty if one takes Lukes at face value, that recognition of real interests should arise from the consciousness-raising of those involved and not from attributions made by an outside observer. John Gaventa also argues the need to be very careful of imputing real interests, for example by imputing that B would want X if only they were made aware of their real interest. For him the imputation of a real interest should be used as a methodological tool to discover whether or not existing power relations have excluded active and conscious choice by B about such interests.¹³⁶ Below, if only for illustrative purposes, I try to follow Lukes’ reasoning concerning real interests in relation to the above case developed from James, (2015).

Given Lukes’ argument that domination exists, wherever it furthers, or does not harm, the interests of the powerful and bears negatively upon the interests of those subject to it¹³⁷, then how might this apply to this case? The decision by middle-class parents to send their children to a state school seems to fulfil the first clause, in that their interests were not harmed, and indeed may have been furthered by their decision. At one level these parents are described as acting reflexively and responsibly against the dictates of the prevailing market-driven orientation of their peers in a manner that might be considered noble and even sacrificial, or irresponsible, were it not for the fact that their children prospered and indeed excelled in this setting. At another level, by assuming that their children are naturally gifted and thus by setting aside factors associated with their class privilege, one might argue that their reasoning has been blunted, not so much by an external power from above, but internally, through the operation of self-serving biases. On the other hand, James does not enquire whether or not the behaviour of these middle-class parents has had a negative effect on the interests of pupils from Asian backgrounds or on the prospects of pupils from the indigenous working-class (Lukes, 2021, 91). He might have been able to do so had he compared the performance of pupils at this school with that of a similar sized school whose pupils were drawn purely from the ‘native’ population.

From Lukes’ perspective, James’ “Bourdieusean” conclusion might be thought rather pessimistic, as one might argue that by the very fact of raising this previously hidden issue, the research findings might themselves have provided material for the middle-class parents involved to engage in consciousness-raising and through a process of reflection to become aware of the mechanisms of power that operated to ensure a favourable outcome for their children. Against this prospect is that the specific choice of these parents to send their children to a state school involved considerable investment of resources into a particular identity, as being more socially aware and principled than their peers, so that any attempt to problematise their choice of school would put this identity into question and increase dissonance. If this were the case it is likely that any attempt to raise their consciousness would be met with a negative response involving attempts to neutralise the claims made in the research report. On the other hand one does not need to resort to the classic but dated study by Willis (1977) to understand that working class children may not be inclined to have their consciousness raised. That this is indeed an intricate problem is apparent in the recognition by policymakers of an ‘attainment gap’ in schooling in the UK that is present at every level and which has grown wider, especially since the pandemic. Despite this it seems that there have been small signs of improvement as a consequence of initiatives such as the “Sure Start” programme, launched in 1998 and the more recent introduction of free school meals, Family Hubs and the Start for Life programme.¹³⁸

Real Interests and the Law

One might argue from the above that it is possible to identify real interests as the basis to inform government policies where they are framed as rights and are inscribed into law. For instance, revisiting the case of the employment of child labourers in Bangladesh discussed in chapter six, was framed as a choice between two welfare interests, sustenance or education? While it would be a gross over-simplification to describe the positions adopted by opposing groups on these as hard and fast, one side asserted the pre-eminent need for education as providing the only lasting means for exploited children to escape an otherwise relentless cycle of deprivation and a life of grinding poverty. On the other side, it was argued that the right to basic sustenance and the necessities obtained through being permitted to work is of even more importance for these children.

As mentioned in chapter six, Hertel (2006) describes how, in the case of children working in the RMG sector in Bangladesh, the determination of their real interests ultimately rested on interpretations of international law codified by ILO Convention No. 138. Those on one side of the argument cited Article 2 of the Convention which sets a minimum age for employment which should not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling. On the other side, an activist cited Article 7, which concedes that in special conditions of underdevelopment, children between the ages of 12-14 may be permitted to perform “light work” so long as they can avail themselves of schooling opportunities. It was this second interpretation based on Article 7 that formed the basis for the first Memorandum of Understanding.

The question thus raised as to who is to decide, points to a central concern about the potential for harm involved by subscribing to a view of positive freedom.

At the other end of the spectrum from international law is the rather unusual situation that arose when a number of British juries acquitted defendants who had been accused of acts of criminal damage, and who had freely admitted this. The rationale employed by the defence was based on the ground that the perpetrators had acted in the real interests of those whose property they damaged by seeking to prevent an even greater crime from being committed. In a case involving Extinction Rebellion, the defence used by protestors who smashed expensive plate glass windows of JP Morgan bank to draw attention to the climate crisis was based on ‘belief in consent’. Essentially the defence rested on the argument that the perpetrators had acted in the real interests of the property owner who would have condoned the damage caused to their building and indeed would have done the same damage themselves if they had been aware of their real interests.¹³⁹

Real Interests in Marketing

It is noteable that Philip Kotler (1972) once argued against the short term satisfaction of preferences and for business to focus instead on the satisfaction of long-term interests of the consumer; for instance, that firms should focus on thinking of ways of reformulating products such as tobacco, which provides pleasure and immediate satisfaction but is also highly addictive and harmful to the consumers’ long-run interests.¹⁴⁰ In retrospect, his argument seems rather naïve and unrealistic, given how even before his paper was published, executives in entire industries had circled their wagons against any attempt to limit their ability to market their harmful products.

Fifty years after Kotler published his paper on the societal concept, marketing luminary Shelby Hunt complained that marketers continued to avoid fundamental issues pertaining to the wellbeing of society, such as, ‘entrenched poverty, income inequality, food and health insecurity, pollution, climate change and environmental degradation.¹⁴¹ Fellow luminary George Day added his voice to Hunt’s plea, that he is troubled by the hostile climate against social initiatives now evident in the era of Trump-47, as corporations do a reverse ferret from previous expressions of their firm commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.¹⁴² Fitchett et al (2015) identified a similar issue in their critique of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) for its narrow neoliberal focus on the individual and for its lack of attention to the wider political and social context of consumption.

Real Interests and Inequality

Looking back to Jeff Murray’s discussion of Anna from Mountain Home, his principal concern about Anna and those like her concerns her unequal status which leaves her vulnerable and open to the ‘desperate desire for signs that are just out of reach’. Lukes, (2005) argues that inequality driven by the market plays a more direct role in the lives of individuals in a society where it is increasingly the norm for one to offer one’s kidney for sale or to sell their reproductive capacity. By comparison to Anna, such cases might be argued to be quite straightforward as in an egalitarian society, one might imagine that Prince Valentino might not have perceived the need to undergo invasive surgery, nor would Mary Beth Whitehead, the mother of “Baby M” he discusses, have needed to become a surrogate out of necessity, nor suffered the indignity of being informed by a judge that she was not a mother but a contractor with the sperm donor.

In relation to the above it is interesting that no-one picked up on Kotler’s (1972) distinction between real interests and short-term desires and his arguments in relation to pleasing but harmful products. Perhaps his argument was regarded as unrealistic, given it was aimed at the producers of harmful products such as tobacco and alcohol, which, as discussed in chapter seven have since fought tooth and nail to preserve their interests. From Lukes’ (2021) one way in which to define real interests is by following Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Nussbaum handily offers a set of ten capabilities which can each be specified as questions and below I modify the first two questions to fit the context of marketing,

To what extent do marketing practices enable the ability for an individual to live a human life of normal length, not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living?

Although some might point to rapid increases in life expectancy in the modern period this has recently plateaued and even gone into reverse. On the downside are questions pertaining to the marketing of harmful products, which cause lung cancer (tobacco), obesity and Type 2 diabetes (Ultra-Processed Foods) and cirrhosis of the liver (Alcohol). For instance, a recent report described the UK as the ‘sick man of Europe’ with almost three million people of working age listed as economically inactive due to long term sickness.¹⁴³ This was not evenly spread but was concentrated in fifty localities. The authors reported high correlations between economic inactivity, consumption of alcohol, junk food and tobacco, obesity and illness. These contributed to differences in life expectancy, of over twenty years between those living in such blackspots compared to more affluent areas¹⁴⁴. Additionally, Lukes (2005) discusses a number of harms caused by the market such as unequal access to healthcare and market failure in privatized healthcare.

Nussbaum’s second question on bodily health has been modified to ask;

to what extent do marketing practices enable the individual to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.

The chronic rise in obesity levels linked to consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) leading to type two diabetes and the prevalence of cancer brought on by smoking and alcohol abuse, many today live with chronic conditions such as obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction. Especially pernicious is the damage that is largely hidden from consumers that is caused by the extractive industries, the pesticides and chemicals, industrial pollution and the export of waste. While the dangers associated with products such as cigarettes and alcohol are ‘known-knowns’, ‘known-unknowns” comprise those risks that industry insiders may be concerned about but don’t fully understand which in an ideal world ought to be taken as subjects for research. These ‘unknown-knowns’ quite often relate to products that are produced by companies which maintain a ‘low-profile’ and may be present in entire ranges of goods.

Taking Action

Following Lukes’ prescription, the counterfactual applied to the above is that inequality works against the real interests of the individual, as given the choice, one would not expect a person to choose to die twenty years earlier than their neighbours who live a few short miles away, nor to grow obese, nor succumb to the malign consequences of Type 2 diabetes. The model followed by the UK food industry since the Second World War has been to manufacture cheap, ersatz foods such as “chocolate” that contains just 10% to 20% cocoa with the bulk consisting of sugar and fat. Some press for government action to increase taxation of products such as ice-cream, chocolate, pizza, burgers and other highly ultra-processed foods whose over-consumption can lead to serious harm for consumers. On the other side, the argument voiced by industry is that consumers enjoy these foods and that to attempt to limit their choice by making them more expensive would be to interfere with their sovereign right to choose. There may well be some truth to this as many economically disadvantaged people enjoy the cheap, highly processed food they are condemned to eat, and may well refuse the nourishing food, they are refused on account of its expense; indeed Bourdieu’s point in relation to amor fati is that they will refuse it no matter what!. That said, it is possible to gain the support of economically disadvantaged groups for initiatives that offer to directly affect their lives for the better. The successful implementation of the ‘Healthy Philadelphia Initiative’ in 2017 described in chapter six, which added 1.5 cents per ounce tax on all sweetened beverages sold in the city represented a small but significant advance by reducing the consumption of sugar, that also crucially gained the agreement of low-income parents if spent on support for education.

Expanding Marketing to Study Power and Real Interests

Reviewing the first three years of their tenure, in 2025 the editors of the Journal of Marketing proclaimed their bold intention to frame the journal as a, ‘catalyst…where diverse ideas could encounter one another to spark new insights that drive the field forward’, and later to, ‘propose new paradigms that confront established frameworks’.¹⁴⁵ These are laudable ambitions although they rather lack detail. And while, as mentioned in chapter three, journal editors have now broadened their scope to recognise the interests of stakeholders other than marketing management, this remains the dominant perspective adopted by the vast majority of publications Critics argue that taken in the round this research paints a picture of positive agency and ‘can do’ that reflects a neoliberal ideology which presents the ever-expanding market for commodities as the main, if not the sole locus, where the individual, conceptualised as an active agent, can realise their identity, discover a sense of self-worth and form communal bonds.

Marketers often complain about the lack of attention paid to their findings and arguments by their colleagues in sister disciplines, never mind politicians, policy makers and the general public. if my cursory review of articles published in the Journal of Marketing is anything to go by, this is understandable, as there has been little attempt to understand power or its operation beyond the confines of the organisation in a business-to-business context.¹⁴⁶. Yet, as argued by marketers over the years Kotler, 1972; Fitchett et al. 2015; Hunt et al., 2020; and Day, 2025) it is essential that marketing academics widen their remit to take the real interests of consumers and of those beyond the consumer into account.

Conclusion

The content of this chapter is rather dense and re-reading it has been heavy-going even for me. I am also reminded of how partial the above account is and the important to gain your own understanding of Lukes. When I started this chapter I knew that I would have to suspend my disbelief in relation to real interests if I was to get anywhere, and now I admit that over time my scepticism has faded and begun to turn towards endorsement, as the realisation has dawned that there is a difference between thinking of a power that is ubiquitous and can be seen everywhere and anywhere, and power involving real interests, comprising power that counts, that focuses on what really matters in a specific context.

Raising the question of real interests can help us to remove ourselves from the orbit of those who, by dint of their scintillating wit and extraordinary eloquence, can enchant us through the arts of rhetoric to subscribe to their unsubstantiated generalisations and to focus instead on evidence based on real cases. That said I am rather concerned by other aspects of Lukes’ argument, as for instance in relation to consciousness-raising by those subjected to power, where his argument ultimately relies on the imputation of real-interests from the outside and thereby lays it open to potential abuse. I remain uneasy too by talk about authenticity which can return us to the rather spurious arguments for a division between “physiological” and “psychological” needs that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. Although Nussbaum (2000) formulates this issue somewhat differently in terms of capabilities and functionings, does she really get away from this dichotomy at the end of the day?

Even if the conception of real interests is problematic, consideration of questions pertaining to interests asks us to think carefully about what power is and particularly, as mentioned above, when it matters to us most, in situations where our interests are trampled on by power. In this respect Lukes contribution has been to grapple with the fiendishly difficult job of building and then sustaining an argument for the operation of invisible power against critique coming from all sides, and in my view while wisely ceding some ground he has done a good job in trying to holding his general line.

Rationality, or rather failures of rationality, are key to Lukes’ argument for three-dimensional power. At one stage he provides a listing of such failures as comprising, 'self-deception and wishful thinking, succumbing to cognitive biases, fallacies and illusions, errors that depend on how issues and questions are framed, ignorance of the principles of statistical inference, and so on’.¹⁴⁷ He later mentions that although Bourdieu’s theory of a pre-discursive ‘inscription of social structure onto bodies’¹⁴⁸, is interesting as a ‘suggestive metaphor’, but ‘(w)here, when and how does tacit, practical embodied knowledge set limits to ‘discursive’ learning and self-transformation?.¹⁴⁹ In respect of this he argues that bodily dispositions change and that decades of feminism have made their mark on how young women view and hold their bodies.

The above list of failures of rationality is rather jumbled. References to cognitive biases and fallacies, Lukes implicitly acknowledge Kahneman’s (2011) distinction between the slow effortful processes of reflexive consciousness (System Two) and System One that works automatically and non-consciously to retrieve information. Lukes argues that we can be schooled to think reflexively, so as to avoid the traps posed by our proneness to bias. What then of perceptual processes such as illusions? When looking at Muller-Lyer lines “we” cannot help but see one line as longer than the other, even though “we” know that they are of the same length.¹⁵⁰ This invites the suggestion that one “me” is looking at the image while a different “me” judges it objectively. Images of the body are emotionally resonant and researchers have found that viewing images of the bodies of others provokes changes in the perception of one’s own body image.¹⁵¹ Body-image comparison thus has a mimetic aspect as it is shared within a group context and occurs in milliseconds.¹⁵²

There is support for Lukes’ (2021) contention that Bourdieu’s argument about the stickiness of dispositions is too deterministic. Although this was a small-scale interpretive study, Thompson and Haytko (1997) noted a changing body-image ideal in young female American college students. These young women had distanced themselves from advertising portrayals of the ‘waif look’, they described as disgusting, orienting themselves instead towards a new standard of attractiveness that was muscular, ‘fit and toned’. In particular, they disparaged Twiggy, whose thin demeanour was presented as an exemplar to adolescent girls in the 1960s and also Kate Moss, as “oppressive icons”. Importantly, Thompson and Haytko qualify their discussion by writing, “and yet”, to signify that despite their stated resistance to these idealised images which they found disgusting, the topic of body image was also evidently unsettling and aroused deep emotions in these young women.¹⁵³

It is noteworthy that while Lukes (2021) spends most of his time discussing how reflexive consciousness is undermined, he does not venture into much detail himself in specifying the mechanisms involved at what level of consciousness. Consideration of this complex question invites exploration of the role played by emotion, images and mimetic relation as in addition to reflexive and automatic consciousness in the formation of of the subject. With respect to the question posed by Lukes of the subject’s willing compliance to power, while this is speculative I find that the subject conceived of by neuro-psychoanalytic theory may ultimately offer a more adequate adequate account by recognising that personhood is layered, comprising three broad interconnecting regions. In this understanding the reflexive self, which houses the “subject”, is scaffolded on top of an ontologically more primitive formation described as the external body, which houses exteroceptive consciousness and mimetic processes, and this is in turn scaffolded on top of the internal body, which is ontologically more primitive than the external body, and is the seat of the basic emotions and of interoceptive awareness.¹⁵⁴. From this one might conjecture that it is possible that the young women described by Thompson and Haytko (1997) expressed disgust at viewing such images whilst unknown to “themselves” at a more primal level they desired to emulate them, thus provoking a powerful emotional reaction. From this perspective, to ask the question posed by Lukes of the subject’s willing compliance to power, requires another question, as to which of the three elements of consciousness had the upper hand in the exchange; was this the internal self, the external self, or the reflexive self?

Lukes contribution lives on in the work of John Gaventa (1980), whose work is not discussed here but whose Powercube should be relevant to questions of interest to marketers. In the Powercube Gaventa (1980) incorporates Lukes’ invisible power along with the first and second dimensions. In doing so his explanation moves beyond episodic towards cumulative relations, such that A’s repeated use of power in the first dimension enables A’s extend control through the mobilization of bias in the second dimension, extending in the third dimension by shaping B’s wants. Cumulatively, following each defeat, B’s feeling of powerlessness is further sedimented and the more that B withdraws, the more A can develop ideologies that further affect the conceptions of B which increases the susceptibility of B to introject A’s values.

The power of A to prevail in the first dimension increases the power to affect B’s actions in the second dimension and increases the power to affect B’s conceptions in the third.¹⁵⁵

There are also differences between Gaventa and Lukes. For instance, the former argues that false consciousness is an inappropriate term because, “if consciousness exists it is real to its holders”. His point is that one needs to be more specific in discussing consciousness, for instance, does it reflect awareness of certain interests and not others, or has it been developed under the undue influence of A?¹⁵⁶.

The Powercube is also useful in the context of marketing because it provides a span from the local to the global and through the idea of open, invited and closed spaces. When applied to cases such as that of child labour in Bangladesh discussed in chapter six; for instance, most of the publications based on interview material arose from ‘invitations’ from NGOs, whilst government and business remained closed spaces. Consequently, we still know virtually nothing regarding the viewpoints of, or the relevant interactions between those representing the BGMEA, the Bangladeshi government and global brands such as Wal-Mart and Levis-Strauss Corporation.

Coda

Gaventa’s notion of ‘closed’ spaces, invites the question as to what happens inside the ‘black box’ that drives forward the policy of a corporation or indeed that of an industry?  From the outside, a corporation can be conceived of as unitary rather than as a constellation of competing interests, foremost amongst which is supposedly the shareholder interest. Outsiders are most often entirely unaware of the tussles that occur within the ‘C-Suite’ and beyond, as even when some who are forced to leave following a dispute, information is hard to glean as they have usually been gagged by some form of ‘non-disclosure’ agreement. 

Imagine that you are the marketing director of a multi-billion-dollar corporation that produces a range of physical products that carry certain risks to human health, and as CMO have just arrived to appraise the CEO and the Board of Directors of the information you have just learned from your meeting with a product liability lawyer.  The lawyer has just informed you that, “a plaintiff would be greatly benefited by evidence which tended to establish actual knowledge on the part of your company that using your product can be dangerous to health, that certain ingredients are dangerous and should be removed, or that using it causes a particular disease”.¹⁵⁷  Moreover, if were to be proven that your corporation knew about this danger for some time, the jury could award punitive damages running to millions and in the case of a class-action suit, this could cost billions and even threaten the existence of this hundred-year old business.

The above italicised section is the actual advice given in secret in 1970 by David Hardy of product liability lawyers Shookman, Hardy, Ottoman, Mitchell and Bacon to Brown Williamson tobacco Corporation. According to the BBC Panorama, this advice had a “profound influence on the whole industry strategy” and played a major role in persuading the industry that to admit the truth about what it knew about the links between smoking, cancer and other diseases would be disastrous, resulting in millions of dollars in punitive damages. As the programme-makers explained, from then on the industry had to deceive in order to survive.

The covert action of the tobacco industry in 1970 to wilfully cover up what it knew by continuing to deceive the public, more properly accords with the second dimension of power. It is also an example of the power of the law and of the lawyers, that operated for good and for bad in the context of the ‘rules-based-order’ of the Pax Americana. It is notable that half of all of the Presidents of the USA were lawyers, including, Roosevelt, Nixon, Ford, Clinton, Obama and Biden.¹⁵⁸ Chapter five discussed the decisive role played by Robert Bork in persuading the Supreme Court to change the criteria on mergers and thus paving the way for the construction of the grossly distorted corporate landscape we inhabit today; while on the other hand, thousands seek redress through the law for harms done to them by the actions or products made by corporations; and as discussed in chapter six, international law provided the means to secure the Memorandum of Understanding to protect the interests of child labourers in Bangladesh. Perhaps for better but probably for worse, perhaps much worse, the rules of the game have changed as the rules-based order dominated by lawyers has been vanquished by a new order, where might is right.

References and Further Reading

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Andrijasevic, R., & Sacchetto, D. (2017). ‘Disappearing workers’: Foxconn in Europe and the changing role of temporary work agencies. Work, Employment and Society, 31(1), 54-70. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017015622918

Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Bryan S. Turner. The Dominant Ideology Thesis. The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 29, no. 2, 1978, pp. 149–70. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/589886. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Bartky, S. (1990). Foucault, femininity and the modernization of patriarchal power. Feminist Social Thought, London: Routledge.

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Belk, R. W., & Costa, J. A. (1998). The Mountain Man Myth: A Contemporary Consuming Fantasy. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(3), 218–240. https://doi.org/10.1086/209536

Berry L. L.; T.S. Danaher, T. Keiningham, L. Aksoy & T.W., Andreassen, (2025), Social Profit Orientation: Lessons from Organizations Committed to Building a Better World. Journal of Marketing, 89 (2), 1–19.

Black, I.R., & H. Cherrier, (2010). Anti-Consumption as Part of Living a Sustainable Lifestyle: Daily Practices, Contextual Motivations and Subjective Values. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9(6). DOI:10.1002/cb.337

Bordo, S., (2003). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, 10thAnniversary Edition with new preface by the author, new foreword by LeslieHeywood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Bourdieu, P., (1986). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste., Richard Nice (Trans.) London: Routledge.

Bruner, J.S. & C.C. Goodman, (1947). Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 42, 33-44.

Byron, C., (2016). Essence and Alienation: Marx’s Theory of Human Nature.” Science & Society, 80(3), 375–94. 

Carrington, M., Chatzidakis, A. and Shaw, D. (2020) Consuming worker exploitation? Accounts and justifications for consumer (in)action to modern slavery. Work, Employment and Society, doi: 10.1177/0950017020926372)

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¹ Lukes, (2021: 33).

² Lukes, (2021: 3).

³ Lukes, (2021: 14).

⁴ Lukes, (2021: 79).

⁵ Femia in (Lukes, 2021, 12).

⁶ Lukes, (2021: 13).

⁷ Lukes, (2021, 46-48).

⁸ Lukes, (2021: 52).

⁹ Crenson (1971:76-77 in Lukes, 2021: 52).

¹⁰ Crenson, (1971, 124), in Lukes, (2021 50).

¹¹ Although Lukes doesn’t mention this, I might add a psychological explanation to the above that one might conjecture may have played a role in the almost invisible exercise of power by US Steel in Gary, at least before the Federal authorities became involved. This is based on fear; fear of “sticking one’s head above the parapet”, of “rocking the boat” by speaking out in public about what is obvious to all in private; fear of losing one’s job and therefore one’s livelihood, and perhaps the need to locate to another city; and fear too of being ostracised and scapegoated as a pariah by one’s workmates, in the face of a concern about pollution that was possibly taken for granted by many as a fact of life, whose lethal effects took years or decades to fulfil. Consider for instance, the argument that collective fear explains the otherwise mystifying and almost universal corporate silence as a literal non-response to the blatant destruction of institutions by the Trump-47 regime.

¹² Lukes, (2021, 52).

¹³ Lukes, 2021, 52-53).

¹⁴ Lukes, (2021, 53-54).

¹⁵ Lukes, (2021, 55-57).

¹⁶ Lukes, (2021, 4).

¹⁷ Lukes, (2021: 116).

¹⁸ Lukes, (2021, 163).

¹⁹ Lukes, (2021, 164).

²⁰ Coleman, C. (2022). Social media harm to children. House of Lords library, 17th January.

²¹ Lukes, (2021: 118).

²² Arielly, (1997), Padamar & Dawra, (2024).

²³ Italics in original.

²⁴ Smith, S. (2016). Jehovah's Witnesses incapable of free, informed refusal of blood, former adherent says. CBC News, Montreal, 31st October.

²⁵ Lukes, (2021, 120).

²⁶ Spinoza in Lukes, (2021, 120).

²⁷ Lukes, (2021, 122).

²⁸ See for instance, Byron (2016).

²⁹ Lukes, (2021): 123).

³⁰ Bauman, (2017: 52). Fiske (1989) described shop-lifting as a form of resistance by the dispossessed against the capitalist system. During the early days of the Northern Ireland “troubles” I remember joyous accounts by youthful (middle-class) visitors to Derry of their consumption of food and alcohol “liberated” from “capitalists”. Scroll forward from 1970 to the mid-1990s by which time several of the small shopkeepers of the 1970s had given up and youths intent on attacking the new Foyleside centre populated by “British” stores were confronted by angry local women.

³¹ See for example, Borgerson, (2002), Schroeder & Borgerson, (2015). The situation began to change in the UK following the passage of the Equality Act (2010) and in particular since publication of the report by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on gender stereotyping, See ASA (2017). Depictions, deceptions, and harm, 18th July. See also, ASA, (2025). Celebrating diversity in advertising. CAP News, 10 Jul 2025.

³² Lukes, (2021: 125).

³³ Lukes, (2021: 126).

³⁴ Lukes, (2021: 2).

³⁵ Lukes, (2021, 152).

³⁶ Lukes, (2021, 86).

³⁷ Lukes, (2021, 86).

³⁸ Lukes, (2021, 87).

³⁹ See for instance, Nussbaum & Sen, (1993).

⁴⁰ Lukes, (2021: 85).

⁴¹ Lukes, (2021: 40-42).

⁴² Lukes, (2021, 149).

⁴³ Lukes, (2021, 150).

⁴⁴ Lukes, (2021, 152).

⁴⁵ Lukes, (2021, 151).

⁴⁶ Nussbaum, (2000: 43), in Lukes, (2021: 151).

⁴⁷ In Lukes (2021: 151).

⁴⁸ Lukes, (2021, 120).

⁴⁹ Lukes, (2021: 120).

⁵⁰ Lukes, (2021: 129).

⁵¹ Lukes, (2021): 163).

⁵² Lukes, (2021: 91).

⁵³ Lukes, (2021: 92).

⁵⁴ Lukes, (2021: 128-129).

⁵⁵ See discussion of Poulantzas in Eagleton’s (1994) chapter on Althusser (ch. 5).

⁵⁶ Lukes, (2021, 127).

⁵⁷ Lukes, (2021, 16).

⁵⁸ Quote from Pomerantsev, (2024, 198).

⁵⁹ Lukes, (2021, 155).

⁶⁰ Bordo, (2003, 30).

⁶¹ Lukes, (2021: 120).

⁶² Lukes, (2021, 92, 150).

⁶³ Rock, A. (2016). Consumer Reports Peeling Back the 'Natural' Food Label. Consumer Reports, 27th January.

⁶⁴ Lukes, (2021, 174-180).

⁶⁵ Zuboff, (2019: 314)

⁶⁶ Zuboff, (2019, 352).

⁶⁷ Zuboff, (2019, 484).

⁶⁸ Zuboff, (2019, 504).

⁶⁹ Zuboff, (2019, 498).

⁷⁰ Lukes, ( 2021: 179).

⁷¹ Lukes, 2021, 180).

⁷² Lukes, (2021: 130).

⁷³ For example, in relation to mobile technologies see for a selection, Greenfield, Nicole, (2022). Lithium Mining Is Leaving Chile’s Indigenous Communities High and Dry (Literally), NRDC. April 26th. Murgia, M. (2024), AI can do harm when people don’t have a voice”, LSE Blogs, March 25th. Murgia focuses on the effects on content moderators for Youtube and Facebook based in Kibera Nairobi. Although they are paid a living wage, their role is to remove extreme content featuring scenes of animal and human torture and child pornography for the benefit of affluent consumers. A further instance features Foxconn, notorious for its treatment of workers in China. See, Jutta Steinruck, (2013). Exploitation of workers in the company Foxconn in the Czech Republic, European Parliament, parliamentary question  E-010973/2013: Rule 117. Also, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-7-2013-010973_EN.html?redirect. Andrijasevic and Sacchetto, (2017) conducted an ethnography of the plight of Foxconn employees in Czechia (see end refs.). China Labor Watch (CLW), reported that half of the 200,000 Apple workforce at the Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou were ‘dispatch” workers lacking full employment rights and that, “despite apple’s pledges to improve conditions, our investigation finds that core labour issues remain’. (Olcott, E., (2025). Poor work conditions alleged at China’s mega iPhone factory, Financial Times, 27th-28th September, 14.

⁷⁴ See for example, European Parliament, (2024). Exploring migration causes: Why people migrate. Updated 16th April.

⁷⁵ Scott, (1990: footnote 3: 72).

⁷⁶ I might add two illustrative cases that suggest that the academic consensus on this question can be mistaken. Firstly, Theodore Roszak (1969) in his work on the 1960s counterculture mentions that academics in the late 1950s had no idea of what was going to hit them in the 1960s as they presumed that the youth of their day was conformist and docile. The second example relates to descriptions of population of the Soviet Union prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The overwhelming consensus amongst Western academics and intellectuals at the time was that the Soviet populace was passive and content, consisting of a mass of brainwashed atheists. Together these strongly suggest that intellectuals are not immune from the realms of bias, fantasy and groupthink that affect ordinary mortals See for example, Gaddis, J.L. (1992-3) International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War. International Security, vol. 17: 5-58 and Cox, M. (2008). 1989 and why we got it wrong. (Working Paper Series of the Research Network 1989, 1). Berlin. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-16282

⁷⁷ Ibid., 14.

⁷⁸ Ibid.,14

⁷⁹ Elster, 1981, 226).

⁸⁰ Elster, (1981, 224).

⁸¹ Elsiter, (1981, 223-224).

⁸² One wonders if Bourdieu may have influenced Elster’s development of the concept of adaptive preferences, given his mention of sour grapes at several points in his review of Bourdieu’s Distinction which was published a year earlier than Elster’s first piece on adaptive preferences (Elster, 1981).

⁸³ Bourdieu, (1988: 178 and plate on 383).

⁸⁴ Bourdieu, (1986: 383).

⁸⁵ Bourdieu, (1986|: 170-173).

⁸⁶ Lukes, (2021: 148).

⁸⁷ Lukes, (2021: 246).

⁸⁸ Lukes, (2021: 119).

⁸⁹ Lukes, (2021, 71, 90). My italics.

⁹⁰ Lukes, (2021: 148).

⁹¹ See note 1, Lukes (2021: 206).

⁹² Lukes, (2021: 95).

⁹³ Lukes, (2021: 95).

⁹⁴ Lukes, (2021: 108).

⁹⁵ Lukes, (2021: 96). I might add that in my understanding which differs slightly from Lukes, Foucault simply explains how, during the eighteenth century, identities such as the homosexual and the masturbating boy were constructed or “made up” by the emerging discourse of psychiatry, as subjects for concern in the context of the courts and in the home. However, just as in the discussion by Miller and Rose (1990) of how consumers were “made up” by marketing discourse in the 1950s, this abstract conception has little bearing on the experiences of the individuals nor of the extent to which they identified with, or disidentified or resisted such categorization.

⁹⁶ Lukes, (2021, 97).

⁹⁷ Lukes, (2021: 105).

⁹⁸ Lukes, (2021: 98).

⁹⁹ Foucault (1980: 57), in Lukes, (2021: 99).

¹⁰⁰ Bordo (2003: 28) quoted in Lukes, (2021: 105).

¹⁰¹ Lukes, (2021: 100).

¹⁰² Lukes, (2021, 102).

¹⁰³ The Ethical Consumer maintains a record. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts Others include those targeted because of their links to Israel and also, KFC, Starbucks, Pizza-Hut, Coca-Cola, Disney, KFC, L’Oreal, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks, Tesla, Twitter and Zara.

¹⁰⁴ Ethical Consumer, (2025). Boycotts list. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts

¹⁰⁵ de la Mare, T. & D. Limbu, (2023). Extinction Rebellion co-founder fined for smashing Barclays window. BBC News, 6th January.

¹⁰⁶ Amnesty International (2023). Russia: Activist who replaced supermarket price tags with anti war messages jailed. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/russia-activist-who-replaced-supermarket-price-tags-anti-war-messages-jailed. She was released in 2024 following a prisoner swap with Russians, including convicted assassins.

¹⁰⁷ Belk & Costa, (1998).

¹⁰⁸ Kozinets, (2002).

¹⁰⁹ Molloy, (2025).

¹¹⁰ Butler, Sarah, (2025). ‘Some steal to order’, On the frontline of UK shoplifting epidemic, The Guardian, 30th January.

¹¹¹ See for example, McIntosh & Erskine, (2000) and the blog post by Raghuraman, (2016) who writes, “I feel like some small part of me dies every time I ignore a homeless person’. https://studyinsweden.se/blogs/2016/04/01/regarding-beggars-in-stockholm/. Additionally, that begging is possibly one of the most ancient forms of marketing was evident on a visit to Rome near the Vatican where some true professionals were at work. What brought this home to me was when walking along West Nicholson Street in Edinburgh adjacent to the University I was passing a young man sitting by the side of the street, his eyes cast disconsolately downwards. A man passing to the inside of me bent down and exclaimed to him, “Ye need tae git yersel’ a dug!’

¹¹² Wayne, Mitchell & Papavassiliou, (1999).

¹¹³ Solid is still in its infancy but if its potential is realised it will undermine the ability of FAANG to appropriate and monetise user data. Solid is described as ,”being a bit like carrying all your data in a rucksack (backpack) with lots of pockets. To access the data, different apps can only open the pocket you allow them to open, rather than taking the whole rucksack”. https://solidproject.org/about

¹¹⁴ Lukes, (2021, 32).

¹¹⁵ Gaventa, (2006, 29). 

¹¹⁶ Lukes, (2021, 69). He argues that additionally, one should seek to falsify one’s explanation.

¹¹⁷ Lukes, (2021, 178).

¹¹⁸ Lukes, (2021, 178).

¹¹⁹ Lukes, (2021, 179).

¹²⁰ Lukes, (2021, 155).

¹²¹ Lukes, (2021, 91). Italics are mine

¹²² Hindess, (1982, 508).

¹²³ Lukes, (2021, 127).

¹²⁴ Lukes, (2021, 151).

¹²⁵ Quotes are from Smith, A., (2009). The influences and authority of conscience, in, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Amartya Sen (intro.), Ryan Patrick Hanley (ed.)  chapter three:, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

¹²⁶ Holt, (2002, 76).

¹²⁷ Holt, (2002, 79).

¹²⁸ This observation was prompted by my reading Kozinets (2002) research that was contemporaneous with Holt (2002) many of which expressed dislike and distrust of bigness and also by reading those on the right such as Murray Rothbard and H.L. Mencken who display a visceral hatred of big government and big corporations, as do member of “New Right’ youth movements today.

¹²⁹ Gabriel & Lang, (2015, 162)

¹³⁰ Neath & Sharma, (2008, 14). The Shakti Revolution: How the world’s largest home-to-home operation is changing lives and stimulating economic activity in rural India. World Bank Institute, June.

¹³¹ Ibid., 15.

¹³² Thekuddan, (2010, 92) 

¹³³ Kantar Republic, (2024). Summary on social and economic impact of Project Shakti, 2023-2024. https://www.hul.co.in/files/21d907e1-bff6-44c7-858b-7be7e7e749b4/project-shakti.pdf

¹³⁴ Gaventa (2003, 6),

¹³⁵ Lukes, (2021, 148).

¹³⁶ Gaventa, (2006, 276-277).

¹³⁷ Lukes, (2021, 91), my italics.

¹³⁸ UK Parliament, (2024). Education: inequalities and attainment gaps, 11th November.

¹³⁹ Extinction Rebellion, (2026). In case of medical emergency break glass, 19th February. See also various newspaper articles.

¹⁴⁰ It is noteworthy that at the time RJ Reynolds in the USA and Imperial Tobacco and ICI were investigating means to produce less harmful products.

¹⁴¹ Hunt et al., (2022, 20).

¹⁴² Day, (2025, 22).

¹⁴³ Commission on Health and Property, (2024). Cross-party Commission concludes three-year enquiry with bold plan for 21st century health, IPPR, 17th September.

¹⁴⁴ Other reports state that the majority of those living in the most deprived areas of England are overweight (71%) or obese (36%) and are physically inactive (35%) compared to 16% in the least deprived areas . While almost twenty percent of all ten-to-eleven, year-olds are described as obese, this was much higher amongst disadvantaged groups

¹⁴⁵ Lamberton et al., (2025).

¹⁴⁶ I stopped at fifty articles as “power” became less relevant from then onwards. Overall results were; Power in channel governance (8); purchase/ buying/market power (6); power of marketing in C-suite (2); Power of marketing department (2); Power of advertising/ research (2); Power of celebrity (2); sales management (1); power of names/scent/pack design (2); Power-distance, (2); monopoly power (2); Machiavellianism (1); bargaining power (1); discretionary spending (1); cognitive lock-in (1); intersectionality (1); agriculture (1). The article by Gielens et al., (2018), which discusses Wal-Mart Iis relevant to discussion of issues in chapter six.

¹⁴⁷ Lukes, (2021, 121).

¹⁴⁸ Lukes, (20212, 147).

¹⁴⁹ Lukes, 2021, 148).

¹⁵⁰ Segall et al., 1966; Henrich et al., (2010).

¹⁵¹ Hawkins et al. (2004); Grogan, (2005; 2021). Grogan also discusses marked changes in body image perception amongst young men.

¹⁵² Altough the setting used by Dixson et al. (2009) was artificial, men typically took 200 milliseconds to notice a woman’s waistline or breasts.

¹⁵³ From Thompson & Haytko, (1997: 31). Indeed at time of writing, in 2024 it appears that the ‘waif’ look is back with the editor of Vogue lamenting the employment of models of size 4 to size 8 (McIntosh, S. (2024).Vogue boss ‘concerned’ by return to skinny models. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1knp890nrno#:~:text=The%20fashion%20industry%20%22should%20be,rise%20in%20popularity%20of%20Ozempic.

¹⁵⁴ There is no space here to more fully describe this but see for neuropsychoanalysis, Solms & Turnbull, (2002); Solms & Panksepp, (2010) and for body image effects, Dixson et al., (2011); Grogan, (2017; 2021) and Hawkins et al., (2004).

¹⁵⁵ Gaventa, (1980, 22).

¹⁵⁶ Gaventa, (1980, 277).

¹⁵⁷ This quote is voiced by Tom Mangold in, Pack of Lies, (1993) BBC Panorama. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GcAhmbdBNM

¹⁵⁸ Lawline Staff Writer (2023). The long history of America’s lawyer presidents. Lawline, 2nd March. https://blog.lawline.com/the-long-history-of-americas-lawyer-presidents#:~:text=U.S. Presidents Who Were Lawyers,half of all U.S. presidents.