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Investigating severe forms of labour exploitation presents a series of particular methodological challenges to researchers in the field, including access to respondents, credibility of data, reliability of measures, researcher ethics and the practical and political dimensions of study design. For researchers embarking on qualitative approaches – whether it involves interviews, ethnography and/or documentary forms of analysis – this chapter seeks to illuminate the potential of a discursive approach to understanding severe forms of labour exploitation. It aims specifically to help understand how severe forms of labour exploitation are variously constructed as an object of knowledge/s, and how this construction is always contingent upon socio-political con/texts. To this end it recommends the investigation of texts as data, proceeding to discuss some interpretive work generated from an early-stage analysis of media, government and civil society discourses surrounding the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Abstract


This paper considers how a sociological perspective of morality can inform understandings of consumption. In light of recent research that identifies moral forms of consumption practice at a socio‐cultural level (e.g. 'ethical consumers' and 'voluntary simplifiers') it is apparent that an important relationship between consumption, society and morality continues to be of relevance and interest to consumer research. However, research into ethical consumption, fair trade, sustainability, green consumption and more recently consumer citizenship presuppose certain assumptions about the moral nature of the subject at the centre of their investigations whilst not evidencing an explicit or coherent understanding of the underlying sociological conception of morality itself. Accordingly, there is a need for consumer researchers framing their studies at a sociological level to be clearer about the conceptual nature of morality and, moreover, how it relates in a meaningful way to the theoretical claims made in their research. In response, this paper examines the dominant paradigmatic conceptualisations that constitute a sociological perspective of morality. Particularly, it considers (1) how a number of key sociological perspectives on morality can locate streams of consumer research better than is currently the case, (2) how these perspectives suggest that current research into fair trade and ethical consumption invoke a certain type of morality whereas a broader concept is available and finally (3) how a pluralist sociological conception of morality will allow consumer researchers to reframe the types of questions they can ask and so too the types of answers they may find.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractThis paper reviews the development of discourse‐based analysis in marketing and consumer research and outlines the application of various forms of discourse analysis (DA) as an approach. The paper locates this development alongside broader disciplinary movements and restates the potential for critical DA (CDA) in marketing and consumer behaviour research. We argue that discourse‐based approaches have considerable potential and application particularly in terms of supporting disciplinary reflexivity and research criticality. A discursive lens offers novel ways of understanding marketing as a subject/discipline as well as how marketing academics conceive and investigate objects of marketing inquiry. The objectives of this paper are fourfold: to outline the development of discourse and text‐based studies in marketing and consumer research; to reveal how this has shaped, framed and limited the application and utilisation of DA in particular ways; to synthesise the main principles of DA generally and CDA specifically; and highlight how these approaches could be applied to a range of marketing and consumer behaviour issues and contexts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Prototypes have long been acknowledged as playing a critical role in the emergence and consolidation of new organizational and market categories. However, the precise forms, characteristics, and effects of prototypes in the categorization process remain unclear. We address this gap by conducting a discourse analysis of different stakeholder contributions to the emergence of the new legal category of 'modern slavery' in the context of the UK's Modern Slavery Act, 2015. Drawing on a political agency view of categorization, our findings reveal that contrary to existing research, the role of prototypes in categorization is heterogeneous. Our analysis identifies four different general forms of prototype, namely typifying, mobilizing, familiarizing, and scoping prototypes, each of which are deployed by different actors to achieve specific goals in the emergence and consolidation of the new category.

The ideology of independence lies at the very core of the marketing agenda. For the free market to operate as a legitimate means of social organization, the right to be independent and to be free to enact ostensibly independent choices is to all intents and purposes sacred. Independence is an especially critical concept for marketing academics and practitioners to understand given the need to reconcile consumer demand for a sense of individuality, freedom and self, with an organization's need to commodify consumption activities in order to realize market growth. This paper examines the ways in which a sense of independence is successfully offered to consumers within paradoxically mass-market communications. The study investigates what it means to be an independent traveller by implementing a critical discourse analysis of alternative guidebooks. Findings suggest that guidebooks construct independence by reifying inaccessibility, interpreting value, and constructing inauthenticity for consumers. This promulgates a powerful myth of the independent traveller as someone who defies inaccessibility, hunts for bargains, and avoids inauthenticity. Crucially, each of these cultural practices also acts to engender an implicit relation of dependency between the text and the tourist that is found to contradict, but ultimately not threaten, the whole notion of independence that the consumption experience itself is predicated on.

Business, management and business ethics literature pay little attention to the topic of AI robots. The broad spectrum of potential ethical issues pertains to using driverless cars, AI robots in care homes, and in the military, such as Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems. However, there is a scarcity of in-depth theoretical, methodological or empirical studies that address these ethical issues, for instance, the impact of morality and where accountability resides in AI robots' use. To address this dearth, this study offers a conceptual framework that interpretively develops the ethical implications of AI robot applications, drawing on descriptive and normative ethical theory. The new framework elaborates on how the locus of morality (human to AI agency) and moral intensity combine within context-specific AI robot applications, and how this might influence accountability thinking. Our theorization indicates that in situations of escalating AI agency and situational moral intensity, accountability is widely dispersed between actors and institutions. 'Accountability clusters' are outlined to illustrate interrelationships between the locus of morality, moral intensity and accountability and how these invoke different categorical responses: (i) illegal, (ii) immoral, (iii) permissible and (iv) supererogatory pertaining to using AI robots. These enable discussion of the ethical implications of using AI robots, and associated accountability challenges for a constellation of actors – from designer, individual/organizational users to the normative and regulative approaches of industrial/governmental bodies and inter-governmental regimes.

'Modern slavery', a term used to describe severe forms of labour exploitation, is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research. As a novel phenomenon it offers potential for innovative theoretical and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research questions. And yet, development into what we might call a 'field' of modern slavery research in business and management remains significantly, and disappointingly, underdeveloped. To explore this, we elaborate on the developments to date, the potential drawbacks, and the possible future deviations that might evolve within six sub-disciplinary areas of business and management. We also examine the value that non-management disciplines can bring to research on modern slavery and business, examining the connections, critiques, and catalysts evident in research from political science, law, and history. These, we suggest, offer significant potential for building towards a more substantial sub-field of research.

This article develops a sociological understanding of consumer resilience across three national contexts during a prolonged, global health crisis – COVID-19. We asked 112 individuals from the UK, China and Malaysia to diarise their consumption during the initial lockdowns of 2020. We found that when social subjects were confronted with material, socio-relational and symbolic restrictions, two types of anxieties emerged – health, safety and wellbeing and social alienation – along with three coping-response strategies, consumer purification, consumer policing and consumer sociality. At this anxiety–coping interface, we identify reflexive, emotive and transformative narratives that are productive of consumer resilience. In this era of 'Permacrisis' relating to war, health, climate and cost-of-living, it is essential to examine consumer behaviour under conditions of deep uncertainty to comprehend how (resilient) social subjects use the (non-)market domain to cope with anxieties caused by multifaceted restrictions placed on everyday life.