Consumption and Identity at Work

The realms of consumption have typically been seen to be distinct from those of work and production. Consumption and Identity At Work examines how contemporary rhetoric and discourse of organizational change and reform are breaking down such distinctions--with significant implications for the construction of subjectivities and identities at work. Drawing on his own research, author Paul du Gay builds a cogent and sophisticated picture of how discourses of reform take hold in particular contexts, how they construct particular subject positions for employees to occupy, and how the latter negotiate these identities in their everyday working lives. In this intriguing study, du Gay shows how the capacities and predispositions required of customers and those required of employees are increasingly difficult to distinguish. Both customers and employees are represented as autonomous, responsible, and calculating individuals in society. They've been constituted as such in the language of consumer culture and the all-pervasive discourses of enterprise whereby persons are required to be entrepreneurs of the self, at work at play, and in all aspects of their life. Combining theoretical and empirical research on the new articulations that are emerging in the government of organizational life, and organizational and personal identity, Consumption and Identity at Work will be essential reading for academics and students in organization theory and behavior, management studies, sociology, and cultural studies.