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This article contributes to the debate on the relationship between marketing and propaganda through an analysis of social marketing as a mode of governing in permanent campaigning. The working hypothesis is that social marketing operations are agitational rather than propagandistic. The conceptual approach stems from a comparison of propaganda and marketing with Fordist and post-Fordist modes of production and governance. The research into the role of agitation involves an empirical study of the UK government campaign against benefit fraud, the most expensive of its kind. Using a combination of methodologies, the political context is framed through a discourse analysis that charts the historical emergence of the problem of benefit fraud and the material effects of this discourse on welfare spending allocation, content analysis is used to identify correspondences between different newspapers’ rhetoric and policy under different governments, and semiotic analysis helps to decode the message of the campaign against benefit fraud, as it relates to the overall government's strategy on this issue. The study offers insights into the political strategy of the government of New Labour between 1997 and 2010 and its resort to agitational techniques, exposing the limitations of government marketing and public relations in the context of an overall crisis of its political legitimacy, in both economic and political terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift 'from deficit to dialogue' in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commercial exploitation of scientific knowledge and increased public participation in democratic decision-making about science and technology have emerged as the two central themes of contemporary science policy in Britain. We argue that the prominence of participatory discourse in contemporary science policy is primarily due to the close fit of this discourse with the post-Fordist and post-industrial economic strategy of the British state. Participation is a form of immaterial labour which gains currency in this phase of capitalism, blurring the distinctions between production and consumption, and between the economy and the political or communicative public sphere. Participation is cognitive, interpretative, affective, and social work which enters into the construction of technologies as bundled material artefacts and cultural meanings. Participation operates both in the production and consumption of goods and in the legitimation of social and political relations. Public engagement exercises prepare the product for the market and the market for the product. Such exercises therefore instantiate the way in which immaterial labour is both productive and political. Participation activates, but also disciplines, the subjectivities of post-Fordist publics. Contrary to the rhetoric of democratization that has accompanied public engagement efforts, these programmes potentially operate as forms of control and co-optation, and promote the shaping of publics as markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines recent initiatives to reform the planning system in the UK. It adopts a Regulationist approach to locating the reform initiatives in a political-economic context and assessing their scale and nature. The main concepts and arguments of the Regulationist approach are summarized, then applied in interpreting three main phases of UK planning 'modernization'. It is concluded that planning reform has been conducted in a poorly understood context, whilst shackled to the legacy of its immediate post-war origins. Consequently, key elements of the UK planning system appear increasingly adrift from contemporary conditions, and outmoded in relation to new imperatives. The Regulationist approach offers a point of departure in the search for planning frameworks addressed to contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of skill has been the subject of much debate in academic literature, particularly in relation to the proposed shift between the Fordist and post-Fordist production paradigms. In the context of this debate, this article explores the perceptions of skill held by employees in three UK manufacturing organizations. It shows that, in some firms, the nature of work remains Taylorist, and that this can have implications for employees' perceptions of skill and firms training practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The culture of ‘culture’ in National Health Service policy implementation The widespread reference to ‘culture’ in UK NHS policy and organisational literature suggests that culture has, in itself, become a cultural phenomenon. This article draws on anthropological thought to explore this trend, and finds it stems from the way that the term ‘culture’ has become analytically empty. Lack of rigour in the way that culture is conceptualised allows it to be used both to suggest an evolved consensus among the workforce, and to validate the imposition of values and beliefs by management. Such manipulation of ‘culture’ is evident in recent NHS policy demanding cultural change to ensure a flexible, empowered and self-regulating workforce — the type of workforce not only valued by health services, but pivotal to a post-Fordist economy. The findings from an ethnographic study are drawn upon to consider the relationship between nurses’ cultural practices, corporate culture shaped by NHS policy, and the requirements of the economic domain. It is suggested that a commitment to post-Fordist priorities of flexibility, empowerment and self-regulation is not necessarily matched by any shift in the traditional location of power. The article concludes that greater analytical rigour is necessary to challenge the way in which ‘culture’ is manipulated by policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]