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

Power in Marketing: A broadly dimensional Approach

Dedicated to the memory of R.G.S.

Preface

The title of this book reflects my aim to explore the extent to which dimensional theories of power might contribute to the understanding of power in the context of marketing and consumption. I was drawn some time ago to the theory of power developed by the US political theorist Robert Dahl, the critique of Dahl mounted by Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz for neglecting consideration of a second, hidden, dimension of power, and finally, to Steven Lukes argument for a third dimension of ‘invisible’ power. Given that at that time discussion of power in the field of marketing was limited to research based on Dahl’s ideas to power relations in the supply chain, I thought there was scope to to apply his ideas and those of Bachrach and Baratz and Lukes more widely to the discussion of power in consumption.

I was drawn to the above authors for several reasons. Firstly, because they recognise that the economy and the polity are not separate spheres but rather are interpenetrated and mediated by law. The market, as Marx once noted, is the work of human hands, and the institutions in which it is manifested today have nor arisen by accident, (although unintended consequences are always at play), nor as some form of natural progression or evolution, but through the decisions made people in government and law who have been guided by an ideology that offered them a visions of what the world ought to be.

Perhaps Adam Smith’s greatest achievement was his argument that there is no need for Leviathan, but rather that spontaneous order will arise from the decisions made by a myriad of individuals acting freely in pursuit of their self-interest in the economy and in the polity. From this, if sovereign power is to be delegated into the hands of the citizen, then politicians ought to look to the interests of their electors and likewise, firms ought to serve the interests of the consumers who buy their goods. Given such equivalence, one might imagine that democracy and market capitalism would be like a marriage made in heaven, so a pertinent question that I try to answer, albeit in a roundabout way, is why things have turned out differently? Additionally, marketing today straddles the divide between personal life and global politics, from personal branding to nation branding, shaping how people see themselves and others.

A second reason for focusing on dimensional theories of power is that when applied singly they each shine a different light on a topic which illuminates some aspects. They can also combine to provide a more complex picture and so may be described rather like matryoshka dolls, given that the higher-level dimensions include the lower ones, as argued by John Gaventa (1980) in the Powercube, although the analogy doesn’t quite fit as it fails to describe the cumulative and dynamic relations involved. Looked at singly, Robert Dahl was wedded to positivism and empiricism in investigating overt instances of power in decision-making. Bachrach and Baratz on the other hand argued the need to look behind the scenes to enquire why pressing items never make it onto the agenda. In the context of marketing, while acknowledging some criticisms made by Trentmann, (2017), I thought it important to include J.K. Galbraith in this chapter because of the resonances of some of his arguments with those of Bachrach and Baratz and because some of the issues he put his finger on seventy years ago remain with us today, albeit in a greatly modified form.

Whilst the foregoing authors focused on the overt exercise of power, Steven Lukes argued that power is most effective in shaping the wants and desires of the individual. Where the concern of Dahl and Bachrach and Baratz was on the ‘community-power debate’ involving decisions in US city politics, Lukes discusses issues pertaining to pollution and the power of technology corporations which are conducive to discussion in the context of marketing and consumption. While all of these authors construct tight well-reasoned arguments, I found Lukes’ (2021) as perhaps the most useful because of the insights one can gain from his extensive rebuttal of criticism of his earlier work and from his discussion of Bourdieu and Foucault, amongst others. Lukes closely argues his case and when he changes his mind, he provides a well-reasoned rationale for doing so, as when deciding that power is better described as a potential rather than as something that is exercised.

You may well ask, if this is book supposed to be concerned with a broadly dimensional argument then why include a chapter on Foucault? There are of course others whose explanations could have equally have featured, for instance, Deleuze and Guattari and Canetti. However, such has been the general influence of Foucault, that in the most recent edition of PRV Lukes (2021), devoted the best bit of a chapter in discussing Foucault, accepting some arguments and refuting others. Given this and also that a good deal of scholarship in power in marketing is informed by Foucault, I felt it was essential to include a chapter on his work.

I should apologize to readers of Dahl, Bachrach and Baratz and Lukes, who might be misled from the title that this book will consist of a series tight well-reasoned arguments. That what follows is more of a meandertale rather than an academic treatise is largely down to my magpie sensibility. Let’s just say I find it hard to resist following an interesting thread or jumping from one topic to the next. So, for less flabby, more concise, and well-argued, discussions of power I suggest consulting amongst others, the research stream on consumer empowerment, including the contribution made by Gabriel & Lang, (2015), the perspective on power and culture by Janice Denegri-Knott and her co-authors, and the historical accounts developed by Mark Tadajewsk and colleagues. There are of course many others deserving of mention!

The title of this book ought perhaps to have been “A discussion of the potential usefulness of dimensional theories of power in the context of marketing by a guerrilla academic”. This started life as one chapter (three) Consuming Behaviour (2003) and then expanded to the three final chapters in the second edition of that hapless text by the time I eventually finished it a mere ten years after I had promised to deliver it to the publishers. When someone suggested that I submit the text to Bristol University Press, an editor kindly let me know some months later that the Board had liked it, but it was too long, so could I take out the last three chapters on power and make them into a separate book? Moral – don’t always take advice from publishers!

To cut a long story short, I started work on a book with the provisional title of Consuming Power based on those three chapters in 2022 and thought that I had got a good way down the road when I received the unwelcome news from Bristol that the editorial Board had judged my resubmitted proposal for the Consuming Behaviour text as still too long, despite that I had cut out the three chapters on power and the proposal had been favourably reviewed. In light of which I decided that rather than let Consuming Behaviour die from death by a thousand cuts and the prospect that the book on power would likely go the same way, things weren’t going to work out with Bristol. So I cut the painter, leaving me with not one, but two book projects to sort out. This was against the advice of my better half who thought I was mad and should have persevered with the publishers. As I saw it life was too short to hang around months or potentially years waiting for yet more rejections; I just wanted get on and get it off my plate. The project then took on a life of its own, probably for the worse, for one of the things I have noticed about my desire is that when I see a gap, I want to fill it. Consequently, chapter two, that should have been something like eighteen pages ended up five times that. The editor from Bristol had a point!

I may as well engage in some self-analysis to ask “myself” why I’ve bothered spending all this time on a doomed project that is cursed to lie added to the rest of the detritus that inhabits hyperspace for as long as the data centre allows, when I could have been living it up in Monte Carlo, swanned off to Tierra del Fuego, or even, God forbid, done something useful with my life? Those concerned with immortality argue that writing a book is a means to try to gain a sense of that security. That prospect fills me with a kind of horror as, although I “enjoy” writing, I can’t say I look back on anything I have written with any satisfaction. I prefer to think of it as a long act of self-reflection/ deflection/ deception / destruction, but at least now that it’s done there is a sense of completion.

I found some comfort in the piece by Jordan Ellenberg on the “Hawking Index”, which in a tongue-in-cheek way, reads as a cautionary tale for any aspiring author of non-fiction. According to his measure of the “un-readability” of books that have been abandoned (based on when people stop highlighting sections on e-readers), only 6.8% got to the end of classics such as Thinking Fast and Slow, the classic by the Nobel prize winning Daniel Kahneman, whilst a miserable 2.4%, finished Pikketty’s, Capital in the Twenty-First Century! Although Ellenberg was musing on the worthy titles that people decide to read on holiday beaches, if only to show off their gravitas, it seemed pretty clear to me that my only hope would be, as is the case for most academics, that it would be read mainly by those who wanted to rip it off, in which case they will be disappointed because there is not much original here. More likely perhaps is the engagement of those who are sufficiently aggrieved by its assertions or omissions.

This project has been like walking through a bog full of hidden holes. There is an arresting self-portrait by Salvator Rosa in the National Gallery in London which depicts him dressed in academic garb with a set face that glares directly out at you no matter where you are seated. Towards the bottom left of the painting he is clutching a board on which is inscribed in Latin, ‘Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence!’ On top of its most obvious meaning, Rosa’s injunction can be taken as a warning to be attentive, to try to avoid imposing one’s preconceptions by stamping the what is in the mould of one’s theoretical image of what ought to be.¹ While it is equally dangerous to believe that one can be objective, it is important at least to try to bracket one’s assumptions.

That it would be a good idea develop those last three chapters of Consuming Behaviour into a book was somewhat dimmed when I read the epitaph for liberalism written by John Gray, that contemporary capitalism promises its labourers a better life on earth in a mythical future in which no one any longer believes (Gray, 2024: 133). For Gray, the one million and more “deaths of despair” that have occurred in the USA since the millennium were caused by the long-term loss of a way of life for the white working class.² I agree that the causes of such hopelessness are manifold. Key indicators that were once assumed to show constant improvement in the West, such as life expectancy³ and social mobility, are now flat or decreasing. Hamstrung by debt, many of the young live a hand to mouth existence in a cycle of precarity, holding out little prospect of the security of house and home that their parents assumed as a right, whilst those lucky enough to belong to the ‘inheritocracy’⁴ hang around waiting for elders to die. With a fall in the working population, as more of the young declare themselves unfit for work⁵, coupled to a decline in fertility rates as the number of dependent senior citizens rises, civil society, whipped by a steady stream of dire comments from politicians and amplified daily by the media, appears fixated and enthralled by the ghastly prospect of a deluge of immigrants! Over all of this hangs the potential shroud of nuclear annihilation brought on by a series of “hot” regional conflicts and low-level engagements of sabotage in the West, and the once almost unimaginable but now increasingly certain prospect that the global climate balance will be further disrupted, as a number of ‘tipping points’ are breached in the near to medium future.

From the above, this is an unpropitious time to write about power and marketing. The dream of unending growth in the West was disrupted by the wave of globalisation that from the 1990s onward led to the mass relocation of industry to Asia and particularly to China. This has been accentuated by increasing income inequality in the middle classes, such that partners in rich law firms make millions, whilst inroads made by Artificial Intelligence lead graduates to struggle more than ever to find jobs, and those lucky enough to obtain an internship are paid little, if anything.⁶ As Gray sees it such inequality has provoked a populist reaction of a division between “the people” and the self-serving rich, metropolitan, expert “neoliberal elite”.

One of the privileges one enjoys as a paid-for academic is that one has – depending on funding – ready access to many, if not most of the journals one needs to consult if one is to do a half-decent job. When I retired from St Andrews University I was kindly offered a three- year honorary extension that provided me such access. When this expired and I sought to renew this with the ready assent of the Head of School, a rather dour ex-colleague who had been elevated to the post of Vice-Principal deigned that I was unworthy to be granted this facility. Consequently, since then I have had to go to rather extraordinary lengths to gain access to what ought to be freely available to enquiring scholars. For several years I have mostly not been able to access material published by Emerald or prestigious journals in the field such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising or Journal of Consumer Research etc. The search for material has been time-consuming and frustrating. On one occasion when visiting the library at the University of Glasgow to obtain a day ticket I was asked to provide a list of what I required and was then told that if the same material was held at the central public library then I would have to go there, which I did not think a very considerate way to treat an ex-employee.

Enough whinging for now, as I should thank my lucky stars that I still had access to St Andrews’ library (not online of course), to JSTOR which has been invaluable resource and the growing number of open-access papers that are published online, which have been a boon for me that I recognise is a trial for their authors who must pay to publish. Sincere thanks are due to Stephen, Aliette, Kerry, Donncha and to Fergus and Micky-Joe who were on hand to occasionally read drafts along the way and to Peter who seemingly takes note all of this, and of course to my better half for stepping in when I simply had to get hold of something that was otherwise impossible for me to access. Particular thanks are due to Alan Bradshaw and his colleagues at Royal Holloway for their offer to support the launch of this book at some stage.

Thanks also to those ex-colleagues and fellow travellers that I have met along the way who became friends and have made life so interesting and enjoyable for me and especially to my ex-students, from many of whom I learned so much.

JD, Oct. 2025

Chapter Outline

Part One: Sketching the Theoretical Landscape

Chapter One: Introduction

This chapter first discusses understandings of over as power-over something or someone, in the sense of having someone in your power. This is supplemented by Steven Lukes’ argument that over also refers more broadly to our capacity to effect an outcome or to receive it passively. Thus Potestas or ‘power-over’ as the ability to have others in your power is a sub-species that derives from potentia which is the capacity to act. There then follows a brief discussion of one-dimensional power which is illustrated through the example of Vladmir Putin and waiting time. The concept of power-over in marketing is discussed next followed by consideration of the relation between power and negative and positive ideas of freedom. Discussion then turns to capitalism and consumption and consideration as to whether the market might be understood as an unusual case of power-with.

Chapter Two: The Consuming Subject

Chapter two was written as a scoping device when I was still intending to write about the consuming subject of power. It is obviously not as relevant to consider relations between corporations, consumers, members of civil society and government as although the business corporation is regarded as a legal individual it is a very different individual to the human subject. The chapter ranges from a brief mention of homo economicus to explore psychological, sociological, psychoanalytic, mimetic and deconstructionist formulations of the subject which I try to illustrate with examples from consumption. More specifically discussion includes psychological theories from behavioural economics to behaviourism, social conformity and terror management; sociological theory which mainly focuses on Marx, to discuss his early argument for ‘species being’ and discussion of alienation and social character turning to consider his later work on ideology, fetishism and questions of value involving financialization and the machine, as a prelude to a brief discussion of social theorists of modernity and postmodernity; moving on to discuss Freud’s conception of the conflicted subject in relation to processes of identification and social character, and then Lacan’s revised theorisation of a subject consisting of real, imaginary and symbolic elements and the gap formed by the vital missing object a, concluding with a consideration of the Four Discourses; next, Girard’s conception of the mimetic subject; and finally, a brief discussion of deconstructionism.

Chapter Three: Marketing and Consumer Research

Chapter three uses Kuhn’s conception of paradigms as a (one-dimensional) device to consider aspects of power relations in the academic study of marketing. Power operates at different levels in the marketing academy and within the academy the study of marketing has been symbolically positioned close to the bottom rung on the ladder of management studies, which is in turn located at an equivalent point in relation to the social sciences. It thus comes as no surprise that like psychology, the academic study of marketing has sought to burnish its credentials by modelling itself on the image of the hard sciences and so on. Conceptual developments do not just serve the purpose of better helping the firm to attune its offering to its customers. Given the traditional lowly status of marketing, critiques of the ‘marketing myopia’ of businesses that are run by engineers, technologists, accountants, or sales managers, and developments such as the marketing concept and Service Dominant Logic not only emphasize the centrality of marketing ideas but lend ideological support to enable marketing managers to leverage their position in the ‘C-suite’. Discussion moves to discuss mainstream marketing and places special emphasis on responses to the trauma of the early 1960s through developments of the societal marketing concept and social marketing and followed by relationship marketing, macromarketing and Service Dominant Logic. This is followed by brief sections on interpretive and critical marketing prior to a narrower discussion on mainstream, interpretive and critical approaches to consumer research.

Part Two: The Neoliberal Landscape of Power

Chapter Four: From Liberalism to Neoliberalism and Beyond

This chapter provides the broadest description of the institutional context in which issues pertaining to power, marketing and consumption are contested in what today is a threatened species, comprising remaining liberal democratic states that continue to follow the ‘rules-based order’ that emerged from the destruction of the Second World War, such that the polity consists of polyarchy, or representative government, and as places where the rights of the individual are guaranteed, and the economy is organised along capitalist lines. Here "liberalism" carries a very specific meaning pertaining to the system of thought that sprang up in the eighteenth century to proclaim the principle of individual self-determination in economic and political life, that eventually came to advocate liberal democracy in the political realm and the market in the economic realm, as the best guarantors of individual freedom and the social good. Key to this was a shift in power, from the despotism of the absolute ruler of the medieval age to the sovereign individual.

There follows a brief history of liberalism and a description of Dahl and Lindblom’s argument for polyarchy, or representative democracy and of the institutional context a sphere populated by a range of actors in addition to homo economicus such as homo politicus, homo juridicus and homo civicus. This is followed by a discussion of economic liberalism, and the re-engagement of discussion of homo economicus. The question is then asked as to whether or not democracy and capitalism have been a marriage made in heaven? Discussion then moves to neoliberalism ordoliberalism and anarcho-capitalism and on to consider the neoliberal state and the policies followed under neoliberalism relating to the market, individual choice, the introduction of quasi-markets, meritocracy, quality assurance and outsourcing. Neolberalism is then discussed in relation to the changing face of the corporation and in relation to the transnational context in relation to changing conceptions of the human citizens and the emergence of the notion of the corporate citizen. The chapter closes with a discussion of neo-libertarianism.

Chapter Five: Some Consequences of Neoliberalism

The aim of this chapter is to consider some important issues arising from the previous chapter. An important question pertains to the extent to which the market has acted as an engine for prosperity, as the veritable goose that lays the golden eggs? Related to this, to what extent has the prosperity enjoyed by Europe and the USA relative to the rest of the world been down to the market? Additionally, what of the argument for ‘trickle-down’ used as the basis to justify the accumulation of vast wealth, on the basis that as the rich become ever richer, a proportion of their wealth will be transferred to the poor? Also, given the neoliberal focus on freedom, what meanings does this term have today and what has since happened to equality? Another question pertains to how the neoliberal conception of rationality has worked out in practice? Finally, it discusses how corporations were able to become so enormous in the neoliberal era as arguments for competition gave way to advocates of efficiency as the sole measure of consumer welfare.

Part III: Dimensional Theories of Power

Chapter Six: One-Dimensional Power

This chapter begins by describing Robert Dahl’s views on freedom, homo economicus and his arguments for worker democracy to counteract the rising power of corporations. Dahl’s theory of power is next outlined and then developed more broadly to consider relations between government, business and consumers, paying attention to the role of sectional and cause-related interest groups within a polyarchal system of governance. The McLibel case is used as a vehicle to illustrate the central importance of the law by means of SLAPP actions (Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation) to stifle dissent. The case also enables discussion of the treatment of the corporation as a legal individual and questions pertaining to its accountability of those who work for it. The case illustrates the difficulty of determining outcomes even in relatively simple situations. Finally, the case illustrates the limitations of the pluralist assumption that conflict will be represented within formal systems of representation. It is then argued that social movement theories, and particularly the variant developed by Doug McAdam provides an alternative that is broadly in keeping with Dahl’s aims.

Discussion shifts to address the tricky problem as to how to conduct research into power relations from this perspective, by outlining potential problems and offering some possible solutions. While arguing that there is scope for quantitative study of general questions, complexity is exemplified through discussion of the cases of Movimento Passo Libre (MPL) and of child labour in Bangladesh. Whilst complex, it is argued that event analysis, fact-checking and counterfactual reasoning can be helpful. A difficulty is that whilst activists and members of NGOs are often willing to cooperate with researchers corporate archives are not so readily available.

The chapter closes with a brief discussion of more diffuse social movements and of actions beyond the law.

Chapter Seven: The Second Dimension of Power

The two-dimensional understanding of power arose from the critique of Robert Dahl by Bachrach and Baratz (1975). Like Dahl they were troubled by the potential threat to democracy posed by the asymmetric influence of the rich on political decision making. While holding to Dahl’s focus on the overt exercise of power as a capacity that enables A to gain power over B, they identified how A can work behind the scenes in various ways to prevent issues being raised in the public square that are antithetical to A’s interest. A may achieve this in a number of ways, for instance, by creating and fostering values that are conducive to A’s cause. For instance, the argument that taxes are good because they contribute toward a society that is more equal and fairer, as the money can be used to secure the health of the nation into its old age, is countered by that which claims that to seek equality is undesirable as humans are naturally different, and everyone should be self-reliant and stand up for themselves. A may use non-decisionmaking as a means to hamper and to blunt B’s efforts to air arguments or opinions that are detrimental to A’s interest. A range of options are available to A ranging at the extreme, from overt threats of intimidation and force to more covert means, employing the mobilization of bias, through the establishment of norms or by ensuring that topics raised for discussion in the public square are innocuous to their them. J.K. Galbraith’s theory of power and his arguments about the revised sequence and the technostructure are discussed in this context.

Discussion then turns to research on non-decisionmaking in the context of marketing and consumption. There is no shortage of examples of corporations or of entire industries that have sought to divert attention from the damage caused to human and other sentient life and the environment by processes of extraction, production, distribution, use and disposal of their product; some keen to maintain a low profile, such as lead, asbestos and chemicals and others more attuned to the media spotlight such as tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and finance.

Over the years several aspects of the ‘playbook’ developed by PR agencies and product liability lawyers have come to light. Central to this is to seek to control the narrative by denying the ‘facticity’ of evidence that their product or service causes harm and by commissioning their own research which they can present as ‘independent’ to counteract this. Also discussed are the tactics used to suppress critics, which range from attempts to co-opt them by providing funds to more overt threats and intimidation. The discussion of the ‘playbook’ then folds into the concluding discussion on ‘post-truth’ and conspiracy theories.

Chapter Eight: Steven Lukes: the Third Dimension of Power

Steven Lukes (1974) applied the metaphor of faces to the explanations of power by Robert Dahl and Bachrach and Baratz, such that the latter revealed a previously hidden and more basic ‘face’ of power than Dahl, the power to ‘decide what is decided’.⁷ In the first edition of his book Lukes (1974) argued that by focusing on the overt exercise of power, one and two-dimensional explanations tell just half the story, and indeed to limit power to its exercise is misleading as this forecloses that power is a potential that need not be invoked for it to be effective, as power is at its most effective when it does not need to be exercised, especially when the willing compliance of others is gained through shaping their opinions and beliefs.

My intention in this chapter is not to rise to quickly to judgement but to summarize Lukes’ arguments as best I can and where possible to apply these in the context of marketing. Lukes addresses objections directly and is meticulous in rejecting some concepts in favour of others in his quest to pin down the elusive third dimension. Lukes clearly had his work cut out for him as the “face” of power he describes is conceptually as sheer and smooth as that of the most challenging rockface. Additionally, (to stretch the metaphor) his argument for a third dimension of power is squeezed between two rocks, considered too radical and nebulous by half by rational empiricists, whilst post-structuralists look askance at arguments for objectivity and mystification. For his third dimension to retain its grip Lukes, (2021) engages in detailed discussion of amongst others, James Scott, John Elster and Michel Foucault. Briefly, the challenge presented by Scott (1990) is that the third dimension does not exist because in reality suborned individuals are always resisting and indeed only intellectuals fall for the claim that they are somehow duped. Elster

Lukes (2021) must also deal with the critique by John Elster (1983) of an earlier version of PRV (Lukes, 1974), where the former argues that the behaviour Lukes identifies with the third dimension of power is better explained as an adaptive preference. In this explanation which is equally applicable to Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of power, adaptive preferences are a means to resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises from one’s inability to gain something generally considered desirable, perhaps through one’s lack of wealth or social standing. Dissonance is overcome by refusing what one is refused, by ‘ trimming of desires to circumstances’. Rather than saying, “I can’t afford it”, (an expensive watch, a sportscar, to eat at an expensive restaurant) one reasons that “I don’t want it because” (it’s pretentious, a waste of money). Elster also questions whether rulers actually have the power to inculcate such beliefs, which he finds implausible. Lukes’ response to Elster is that the third dimension of power does not involve direct manipulation and that beliefs and opinions can be influenced without “intelligent and intentional” action. Moreover, he cites evidence that such passive acceptance can be observed particularly amongst women in male-dominated societies. Although receptive to Bourdieu’s (1984) arguments, Lukes finds this understanding of power rather too nebulous and is critical of the latter’s attacks on Marxist arguments, aligns his argument for the third dimension of power more closely with Buroway’s reading of Gramsci rather than Bourdieu.

Lukes’ (2021) argument is meticulous, fortified by his responses to criticism of previous editions of PRV. Concepts are scaffolded into a structure so as to provide a firm basis for his argument for the third dimension of power as domination involving the willing compliance of those subjected to it. Thus domination will exist in situations where power is innocuous to the interests of the powerful that are extended or unharmed, whilst the interests of those subjected to power are harmed. (Lukes 2021, 91); from Spinoza, those who are dominated are ,“less free to live as their nature and judgment dictate”. How is one to explain the willing compliance of those who are dominated? This can only be brought about as a form of mystification, as a result of which judgement of the existence of the third dimension requires an objective viewpoint and a stable criterion on which to base this. Following discussion of identity and real interests as potential bases, he settles on real interests. There then arises the question of how to assess harm to an individual’s real interests, and here he turns to the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, who argued from Aristotle, and Marx, that certain capabilities make us ‘truly human’, such that for Lukes, domination occurs where the power of some affects the interests of others by restricting their capabilities for “truly human” functioning.

From the above, there is a lot to go through before one gets to discuss some that he has provided including that of ‘surveillance capitalism’ from Zuboff (2019) and in relation to the desire for a “European” nose which he mentions in Lukes, (2005).

Chapter Nine: Foucault on Power

Some suggest that Foucault opened a fourth dimension of power by exploring issues beyond those addressed by Dahl, Galbraith and Lukes.⁸ Whether or not that is so, his approach differs in that he delighted in challenging and subverting orthodoxy. For instance, in the series of seminars published as Society Must Be Defended, Foucault (2003) reversed Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means. By taking war, as opposed to the Philosophy of Right as the lens through which to view politics and power, Foucault argued that truth is not neutral, but is rather used as a weapon to justify an historically partisan victory; put plainly, the supposed “truth” of history is written by the victor (Foucault, 2004: 57). In so doing he wilfully placed himself on the margins, identifying himself with the sophists and against mainstream philosophy. That he did not trouble himself to discuss dimensional theories of power developed by American and British political theorists is to an extent understandable, given that his main point of reference was France. Even though he was elsewhere at the time, Foucault was deeply affected by the political upheaval that occurred in France in May 1968.⁹ His reflections on the events of May largely shaped his ideas on power as signalling a void in Marxist theory, pointing to the emptiness of abstract discussions of class, surplus value, consciousness and ideology, such that to focus narrowly on the sovereign power of the State misses out an entire nexus of power.

It can be somewhat confusing for the reader who like me is not fully conversant in French, that we have had to wait for translations of Foucault’s work. This is not just down to the exigencies of translation, but rather because while some appeared rather expeditiously, others appeared many years after the original was published, notably the lectures bundled as Society Must Be Defended, delivered in 1975-1976, (first published in English in 2003) and The Birth of Biopolitics, delivered in 1978-1979 (published in English in 2008). Discipline and Punish, on the other hand was published in French in 1975, and appeared English translation relatively quickly in 1977, while the first volume of The History of Sexuality was published in French in 1976, appearing in translation in 1978. This may help explain the preponderance of articles on discipline and the repressive hypothesis by anglophone authors in the intervening period.¹⁰

Foucault (1982) divided his work into three periods. In the early stage he explored how versions of the subject were created by science and economics. He then turned to study the period in the seventeenth century when the emergent field of psychiatry developing dividing practices to sequester the mad from the sane, the sick from the healthy and criminals from “good boys” (Foucault, 1982: 777). His subsequent work on the development of disciplinary power and biopower can be seen as complements to this project as they explain how, in the modern nation-state, these forms of power came to be exercised over juridically free subjects. Then the broader question of how the government of citizens changed in the transition from the ‘raison d’etat” of the police state, to the operation of power contemporary market societies. Foucault’s last project focused on ancient Greece and the early Christian period to illustrate how individuals turned themselves into subjects of sexuality (Foucault, 1982: 778). Hiss status as an historian was controversial, rejected by many conventional historians who took a jaundiced view of his genealogical approach, as an “antihistorical historian” (Poster, 1982), accused of playing fast and loose with historical facts.

I begin by reprising concepts such as genealogy, the subject, governmentality, pastoral power and disciplinary power and biopower and by briefly discussing Foucault’s critique of the philosophy of right. The next section discusses Foucault’s contribution to the understanding of the government of the neoliberal subject and in particular in relation to the development of ordoliberalism and neoliberalism. This forms the prelude to a discussion of how Foucault’s concepts have been deployed in relation to the government of the consumer and more generally in contributions to the field of marketing by providing revised accounts of the history of marketing thought, the ‘responsibilization’ of the consumer, consumer resistance. The chapter concludes by differentiating Foucault’s work from dimensional theories of power.

References

Casson, M., & Lee, J. S. (2011). The Origin and Development of Markets: A Business History Perspective. The Business History Review, 85(1), 9–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41301368

Ellenberg, J., (2014). The Summer's Most Unread Book Is… The Wall Street Journal, 4th July.

Gray, John, (2024). The New Leviathans, St. Martin’s Press.

Harvey, D. (2001), Spaces of Capital: A Critical Geography, New York: Taylor & Francis.

Trentmann, F. (2016). Empire of things: how we became a world of consumers from the 15th century to the 21st, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

¹ David Harvey (2001: 189) comments on how, “academic, intellectual and political interpretations of grassroots activism have ebbed, flowed and diverged without any clear or obvious relations to the activities themselves.

² He might also have mentioned that through Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family played a far from modest role in this through the egregious manner by which OxyContin was marketed (P.R. Keefe, (2017), The family that built an empire of pain. The New Yorker, 23rd October.

³ See, Buxton, J. (2024). National life tables – life expectancy in the UK: 2020 to 2022. UK Office for National Statistics, 11th January. See also, Vriend, M. & A. Gazzilo, (2024). Interpreting the latest life expectancy data. The Health Foundation, 15th February.

⁴ Filby, E. (2024). Inheritocracy: It’s time to talk about the bank of mum and dad. Biteback Publishing.

⁵ Inman, P. (2024). Number of people in UK out of work due to ill health growing by 300,000 a year. The Guardian, 3rd October.

⁶ David, J.E. (2015). Legal industry’s wealth gap: Rich lawyers get richer, CNBC, 27th April. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/27/legal-industrys-wealth-gap-rich-lawyers-get-richer.html

⁷ Lukes, (2021, 116).

⁸ See for instance Digesir (1992).

⁹ François Ewald in Becker, Ewald, Harcourt, (2012).

¹⁰ Raffnsøe et al., (2019) argue that articles on discipline formed the first wave of Foucault-inspired commentary and research in organization studies. This proved very influential, because of its ‘striking and graphic analysis and because of the potency of the image of the Panopticon. In the authors’ view this led to an over-emphasis on discipline that had a distending effect on the literature. The authors note that the focus of Discipline and Punish is from 1840 to 1860AD and that by the time the book was published in 1975, discipline “no longer seemed natural and inevitable”. They mention too that Foucault differentiated between the ideal of a disciplinarian society from the reality of a disciplined society.