A Bradshaw
Biographic Data
| ID | 53652 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Bradshaw |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Bradshaw |
| SIGNATURE | BRADSHAW A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Holloway University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0648-4459 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Could commodities themselves speak? An introduction to the agnotology of the spectacle
This article introduces the 'agnotology of spectacle'. While agnotology is a relatively recent term used to describe the production and use of ignorance, we argue that Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1992) is an early attempt to outline a global field of disinformation and secrecy. For Debord, such secrecy is required to maintain the political and moral authority of what he defined as 'spectacle', namely the images used by stat…
The assemblage of British politics’ breaking point
This paper investigates the UKIP Breaking Point advertisement, which appeared prominently during the Brexit referendum campaign and used a documentary photograph of Syrian refugees, implying that they were migrating to Britain. We chart the assemblage through which the transformation of the image occurred: starting as Jeffrey Mitchell’s documentary photograph, charting news of the journey of a group of refugees, but becoming appropriated as an ad…
Dystopia and quarantined markets - an interview with James Fitchett
We present an invited interview with Professor James Fitchett (University of Leicester) on the idea of dystopia and dystopic tendencies in the historical moment of the Covid-19 pandemic.(1) With his wonderfully nuanced background in psychoanalytic theory and a keen interest in understanding market phenomena critically through ideology, paradox, fantasy, simulation, narcissism and sadism among others, James provides a sweeping and sometimes surpri…
Blaming consumers
This study analyzes a particular ideology of austerity as it spreads across Europe and reappears across diverse discourses. This ideology mobilizes the figure of the feckless consumer, who has overspent, who must come to regard their consumption as stupid, and therefore will accept austerity; not just as an inevitable outcome of bad decisions, but as holding the potential for moral redemption. We argue that ideology correlates this micro-frame of…
Creating Worlds that Create Audiences
In this article, we draw on theories of biopolitical marketing to explore claims that personal data markets are contextualised by what Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism” and Jodi Dean calls “communicative capitalism”. Surveillance and communicative capitalism are characterised by a logic of accumulation based on networked captures of life that enable complex and incomprehensive processes of extraction, commodification, and control. E…
Foregrounding Management in Class Warfare from Above
The books The Mythology of Management by Peter Fleming and The Dark Side of Management by Gerard Hanlon are reviewed. Both books foreground the practices and ideologies of management as core elements of neoliberalism and provide both historical analysis as well as contemporary observation of management as a persistent form of de-skilling workers that leaves them utterly dependent on an antagonistic class of managers
Up Rising
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard intriguingly contains a pivotal character named Dr. Robert Laing, surely an allusion to the then influential psychiatric writer, Dr. R.D. Laing. Re-reading Ballard's classic text through the prism of Laing’s theories, with further explication of the role of flat affect via Lauren Berlant, this article presents a new interpretation of a classic text that argues that Ballard ingeniously misdirected his readers into making …
Know it while you have it
It is well known that advertising and branding co-opts counter culture to sell commodities, but in this article we uncover the ontological conditions for such an appropriation. We investigate a particular example of contemporary advertising, the Levis commercial “Legacy – Now is our Time“ (2011), which was subsequently pulled because of the British riots of that year, as a historical situated and saturated moment. This article employs Benjamin's …
Biopolitical Marketing and Social Media Brand Communities
This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the c…
Outsider's insights
Fuat Fırat has for a long time maintained a radical, outside and critical voice within marketing and consumption theory. He was one of the editors of the landmark book Radical and Philosophical Theory in Marketing, published in 1987, which sought to develop alternative modes of theorizing and conceptualizing both marketing practice and the consuming subject. The continuation of that wider project eventually lead to the foundation of Consumption M…
The production and consumption of music
Music is the water of life, whiskey of passion, it uplifts us, releases us, marks our joy and sadness, it is to live for and to die for, it caries the spirit of truth and freedom, it demands to be
Must we have Muzak wherever we go? A critical consideration of the consumer culture
This essay probes the critical dimensions of consumer‐culture theory (CCT) by investigating managerial tendencies toward integrating consumers from above or even imposing culture from on high, rather than viewing consumer culture as something that arises from the consumers themselves. Illustrations based on the use of background music or Muzak support concerns that culture is degraded by marketers as a means of social control. Attempts of an orga…
The Alienated Artist and the Political Economy of Organised Art
In an age where business literature is turning to artists for inspiration, we pause to remember the Romantic ideal of alienated artists resisting commerciality. Through interviewing professional musicians, we explore how artistic alienation remains relevant as part of a complex balancing act between art and commerce and reflect on the implications for the notional field of art and management
Exiled Music Herself, Pushed to the Edge of Existence
In reconsidering music in the background, the authors look to what Adorno said seventy years ago about music as aural wallpaper, as the Muzak corporation put it: “music is there to be listened to but Muzak is there to be heard”. Examining the history of listening, and in particular the influence of romanticism and bohemia, we explore through depth interviews the experiences of musicians who perform background music. This text is enlivened by an a…
The stable society
A Critique of Steven Lukes' 'Power
Steven Lukes' monograph Power: A Radical View (Lukes 1974) offers a critical analysis of pluralist and nondecision theories of power, leading on to a suggested 'three-dimensional view' of power. This view stresses exercises of power that (a) do not entail observable conflicts, but rather latent conflicts; (b) are a 'function of collective forces and social arrangements' (p. 22). In particular, Lukes advances the self-confessedly problematic ideas…
Biopolitical Marketing and Social Media Brand Communities
This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the c…
The production and consumption of music
Music is the water of life, whiskey of passion, it uplifts us, releases us, marks our joy and sadness, it is to live for and to die for, it caries the spirit of truth and freedom, it demands to be
Dystopia and quarantined markets - an interview with James Fitchett
We present an invited interview with Professor James Fitchett (University of Leicester) on the idea of dystopia and dystopic tendencies in the historical moment of the Covid-19 pandemic.(1) With his wonderfully nuanced background in psychoanalytic theory and a keen interest in understanding market phenomena critically through ideology, paradox, fantasy, simulation, narcissism and sadism among others, James provides a sweeping and sometimes surpri…
Must we have Muzak wherever we go? A critical consideration of the consumer culture
This essay probes the critical dimensions of consumer‐culture theory (CCT) by investigating managerial tendencies toward integrating consumers from above or even imposing culture from on high, rather than viewing consumer culture as something that arises from the consumers themselves. Illustrations based on the use of background music or Muzak support concerns that culture is degraded by marketers as a means of social control. Attempts of an orga…
Exiled Music Herself, Pushed to the Edge of Existence
In reconsidering music in the background, the authors look to what Adorno said seventy years ago about music as aural wallpaper, as the Muzak corporation put it: “music is there to be listened to but Muzak is there to be heard”. Examining the history of listening, and in particular the influence of romanticism and bohemia, we explore through depth interviews the experiences of musicians who perform background music. This text is enlivened by an a…
A Critique of Steven Lukes' 'Power
Steven Lukes' monograph Power: A Radical View (Lukes 1974) offers a critical analysis of pluralist and nondecision theories of power, leading on to a suggested 'three-dimensional view' of power. This view stresses exercises of power that (a) do not entail observable conflicts, but rather latent conflicts; (b) are a 'function of collective forces and social arrangements' (p. 22). In particular, Lukes advances the self-confessedly problematic ideas…
Could commodities themselves speak? An introduction to the agnotology of the spectacle
This article introduces the 'agnotology of spectacle'. While agnotology is a relatively recent term used to describe the production and use of ignorance, we argue that Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1992) is an early attempt to outline a global field of disinformation and secrecy. For Debord, such secrecy is required to maintain the political and moral authority of what he defined as 'spectacle', namely the images used by stat…
The assemblage of British politics’ breaking point
This paper investigates the UKIP Breaking Point advertisement, which appeared prominently during the Brexit referendum campaign and used a documentary photograph of Syrian refugees, implying that they were migrating to Britain. We chart the assemblage through which the transformation of the image occurred: starting as Jeffrey Mitchell’s documentary photograph, charting news of the journey of a group of refugees, but becoming appropriated as an ad…
Blaming consumers
This study analyzes a particular ideology of austerity as it spreads across Europe and reappears across diverse discourses. This ideology mobilizes the figure of the feckless consumer, who has overspent, who must come to regard their consumption as stupid, and therefore will accept austerity; not just as an inevitable outcome of bad decisions, but as holding the potential for moral redemption. We argue that ideology correlates this micro-frame of…
Up Rising
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard intriguingly contains a pivotal character named Dr. Robert Laing, surely an allusion to the then influential psychiatric writer, Dr. R.D. Laing. Re-reading Ballard's classic text through the prism of Laing’s theories, with further explication of the role of flat affect via Lauren Berlant, this article presents a new interpretation of a classic text that argues that Ballard ingeniously misdirected his readers into making …
Know it while you have it
It is well known that advertising and branding co-opts counter culture to sell commodities, but in this article we uncover the ontological conditions for such an appropriation. We investigate a particular example of contemporary advertising, the Levis commercial “Legacy – Now is our Time“ (2011), which was subsequently pulled because of the British riots of that year, as a historical situated and saturated moment. This article employs Benjamin's …
Outsider's insights
Fuat Fırat has for a long time maintained a radical, outside and critical voice within marketing and consumption theory. He was one of the editors of the landmark book Radical and Philosophical Theory in Marketing, published in 1987, which sought to develop alternative modes of theorizing and conceptualizing both marketing practice and the consuming subject. The continuation of that wider project eventually lead to the foundation of Consumption M…
The Alienated Artist and the Political Economy of Organised Art
In an age where business literature is turning to artists for inspiration, we pause to remember the Romantic ideal of alienated artists resisting commerciality. Through interviewing professional musicians, we explore how artistic alienation remains relevant as part of a complex balancing act between art and commerce and reflect on the implications for the notional field of art and management
A Critique of Steven Lukes' 'Power
Steven Lukes' monograph Power: A Radical View (Lukes 1974) offers a critical analysis of pluralist and nondecision theories of power, leading on to a suggested 'three-dimensional view' of power. This view stresses exercises of power that (a) do not entail observable conflicts, but rather latent conflicts; (b) are a 'function of collective forces and social arrangements' (p. 22). In particular, Lukes advances the self-confessedly problematic ideas…
The stable society
Exiled Music Herself, Pushed to the Edge of Existence
In reconsidering music in the background, the authors look to what Adorno said seventy years ago about music as aural wallpaper, as the Muzak corporation put it: “music is there to be listened to but Muzak is there to be heard”. Examining the history of listening, and in particular the influence of romanticism and bohemia, we explore through depth interviews the experiences of musicians who perform background music. This text is enlivened by an a…
The Alienated Artist and the Political Economy of Organised Art
In an age where business literature is turning to artists for inspiration, we pause to remember the Romantic ideal of alienated artists resisting commerciality. Through interviewing professional musicians, we explore how artistic alienation remains relevant as part of a complex balancing act between art and commerce and reflect on the implications for the notional field of art and management
The production and consumption of music
Music is the water of life, whiskey of passion, it uplifts us, releases us, marks our joy and sadness, it is to live for and to die for, it caries the spirit of truth and freedom, it demands to be
Must we have Muzak wherever we go? A critical consideration of the consumer culture
This essay probes the critical dimensions of consumer‐culture theory (CCT) by investigating managerial tendencies toward integrating consumers from above or even imposing culture from on high, rather than viewing consumer culture as something that arises from the consumers themselves. Illustrations based on the use of background music or Muzak support concerns that culture is degraded by marketers as a means of social control. Attempts of an orga…
Outsider's insights
Fuat Fırat has for a long time maintained a radical, outside and critical voice within marketing and consumption theory. He was one of the editors of the landmark book Radical and Philosophical Theory in Marketing, published in 1987, which sought to develop alternative modes of theorizing and conceptualizing both marketing practice and the consuming subject. The continuation of that wider project eventually lead to the foundation of Consumption M…
Know it while you have it
It is well known that advertising and branding co-opts counter culture to sell commodities, but in this article we uncover the ontological conditions for such an appropriation. We investigate a particular example of contemporary advertising, the Levis commercial “Legacy – Now is our Time“ (2011), which was subsequently pulled because of the British riots of that year, as a historical situated and saturated moment. This article employs Benjamin's …
Biopolitical Marketing and Social Media Brand Communities
This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the c…
Creating Worlds that Create Audiences
In this article, we draw on theories of biopolitical marketing to explore claims that personal data markets are contextualised by what Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism” and Jodi Dean calls “communicative capitalism”. Surveillance and communicative capitalism are characterised by a logic of accumulation based on networked captures of life that enable complex and incomprehensive processes of extraction, commodification, and control. E…
Foregrounding Management in Class Warfare from Above
The books The Mythology of Management by Peter Fleming and The Dark Side of Management by Gerard Hanlon are reviewed. Both books foreground the practices and ideologies of management as core elements of neoliberalism and provide both historical analysis as well as contemporary observation of management as a persistent form of de-skilling workers that leaves them utterly dependent on an antagonistic class of managers
Up Rising
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard intriguingly contains a pivotal character named Dr. Robert Laing, surely an allusion to the then influential psychiatric writer, Dr. R.D. Laing. Re-reading Ballard's classic text through the prism of Laing’s theories, with further explication of the role of flat affect via Lauren Berlant, this article presents a new interpretation of a classic text that argues that Ballard ingeniously misdirected his readers into making …
Blaming consumers
This study analyzes a particular ideology of austerity as it spreads across Europe and reappears across diverse discourses. This ideology mobilizes the figure of the feckless consumer, who has overspent, who must come to regard their consumption as stupid, and therefore will accept austerity; not just as an inevitable outcome of bad decisions, but as holding the potential for moral redemption. We argue that ideology correlates this micro-frame of…
Dystopia and quarantined markets - an interview with James Fitchett
We present an invited interview with Professor James Fitchett (University of Leicester) on the idea of dystopia and dystopic tendencies in the historical moment of the Covid-19 pandemic.(1) With his wonderfully nuanced background in psychoanalytic theory and a keen interest in understanding market phenomena critically through ideology, paradox, fantasy, simulation, narcissism and sadism among others, James provides a sweeping and sometimes surpri…
The assemblage of British politics’ breaking point
This paper investigates the UKIP Breaking Point advertisement, which appeared prominently during the Brexit referendum campaign and used a documentary photograph of Syrian refugees, implying that they were migrating to Britain. We chart the assemblage through which the transformation of the image occurred: starting as Jeffrey Mitchell’s documentary photograph, charting news of the journey of a group of refugees, but becoming appropriated as an ad…
Could commodities themselves speak? An introduction to the agnotology of the spectacle
This article introduces the 'agnotology of spectacle'. While agnotology is a relatively recent term used to describe the production and use of ignorance, we argue that Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1992) is an early attempt to outline a global field of disinformation and secrecy. For Debord, such secrecy is required to maintain the political and moral authority of what he defined as 'spectacle', namely the images used by stat…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Art (6 works) · Business (6 works) · Ideology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)