Marketing DiscourseContentsPrefacevii1Introduction12Critical marketing research93Power/knowledge, governmentality and government214Studying governmental discourse355Founding the power/knowledge of managerial marketing486Consolidating the power/knowledge of managerial marketing827Elaborating the power/knowledge of managerial marketing1178Customerism: a critique152Notes167References170Index183 PrefaceIn this book we analyse the development of the managerialism of academic marketing discourse. But this does not mean that the book is addressed to readers who have a narrow interest in marketing only. Our point of departure is that marketing has had important implications for defining how organizations are managed today, how organizational members perceive themselves and what role the customer plays for contemporary organizations. Our goal has been to write a critical history of marketing and we believe that such an analysis should be founded on a position outside mainstream marketing itself, since the managerial research ethos fostered inside the boundaries of marketing offers very limited possibilities to accomplish this. Therefore our position is founded on the works of Foucault and his followers, and particularly on the notion of governmentality. The book thus offers a critical discourse analysis of marketing. To us marketing is accordingly the object of study rather than our primary theoretical habitat. This position has implications for t