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EXPANDING DISCIPLINARY SPACE: ON THE POTENTIAL OF CRITICAL MARKETING
GUEST EDITORS: Douglas Brownlie (University of Stirling), Paul Hewer (University of Strathclyde) and Mark Tadajewski (University of Leicester)
Debate has been part of the evolving culture of the marketing academy as long as members of its invisible college have coveted scientific status. Historically such debate has been framed by naïve philosophy of science considerations, drawing on a limited and limiting understanding of science as a social practice. This has given us tiresome and often bad-tempered debates about the status of competing knowledge claims, typically expressed in terms of the combative rhetoric of overwrought epistemological imperative.
From an institutional perspective the content of those debates is of less importance than the conduct they make visible and the scholarly principles they embed, especially in terms of building the academic status of the discipline and the respect accorded its research and teaching activities. It has generated much-needed disciplinary capital while providing some academic practitioners of marketing with the basis of a long and lucrative career. And although those debates are no longer interesting or profitable, the function of debate remains central to the development of the discipline, even if the form it takes is morphing once again with the passing of postmoderism.
The emerging area of critical marketing claims that its contribution to this development lies in carrying forward the project of reflexive theory building and debate within the discipline. For instance, in seeking to problematize the status of knowledge claims, it is argued that critical reflection on theory and practice in the discipline would unpack the provisional and interested nature of knowledge claims: it would seek to reveal power relations embedded in such claims, unmasking the work of privilege and of geopolitical, cultural and sexual conventions that frame the conduct of research and teaching practice.
The point of embracing critical theorising is to foster sceptical reflexivity in our scholarly practice at a time when the interests of a culture of accountability are determining the character of knowledge production. We invite papers that contribute to such critical discourse through stimulating debate about how dominant logics, paradigms, models, frameworks, rhetoric and other totalising knowledge systems work within the academy. This special issue offers you the opportunity to debate critical perspectives and their potential to expand or constrain the disciplinary spaces of marketing and consumer research in an era of accountability. We invite contributions that examine how it might be that critical theorising could make it possible to see and say different things than we are accustomed to; to interrogate our understanding anew, perhaps revealing new insights, or reminding us of past insights now forgotten. In this way we explore critical marketing's claim to open up collective disciplinary space for new voices and new sources of disciplinary capital, encouraging pluralism within marketing and consumer research that not only draws on the wider social sciences and humanities, but also turns a sceptical gaze on institutional claims to power.
SUBMISSIONS
There is a double issue of JMM allocated for this Special Issue in November 2009. The submission deadline for papers is 1st September 2008. If you have any queries please consult the guest editors.
Submissions should be sent to: Professor Douglas Brownlie, Department of Marketing, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK. Email: [log in to unmask]
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Papers should be between 4000-6000 words in length.
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