In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging ‘gig economy,’ standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy and self-worth as individuals. The article contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.

Based on a case study, this paper elaborates on the psychological regimes of truth that organize and regulate male parenting and partly constitute the conditions of possibility for male identity and subjectivity both as fathers and employees. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the discursive-cultural constraints that Western managers and employees — males in particular — may face when trying to pursue a better work/life balance. Based on an empirical analysis of expert literature on male parenting, the paper argues that prevalent psychological regimes of truth about fathers and fathering do not necessarily render enactable the sorts of identities that enable both men and women to achieve a better work/life balance.

Drawing from the literature on the analytics of government, the paper discusses marketing as a form of government, elaborating and illustrating the many ways in which consumer choice is shaped, modified and directed in the market through practices and techniques of consumer marketing. The aim is to critically reflect upon and render problematic the individualistic ideas of the green consumer as a powerful market force and to provoke discussion on the conceptualization – and construction – of consumer subjectivity and social problems in marketing. Taking examples particularly from the fashion and clothing industry, the paper discusses the ways in which marketing activities come to shape consumer conduct by operating through the choice of individuals who freely pursue their needs and desires, and by working on the environment within which this freedom of choice is exercised. The paper contributes to the literature on green consumerism by systematically interrogating and elaborating on the modes and practices of marketing thought and expertise through which consumers and consumption are rendered intelligible and actionable in the market.

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This paper focuses on eco-communes as sites of resistance and political activism. Based on a post-structuralist narrative analysis of interview materials, this paper elaborates on the ways in which life in a commune is narrated and represented as an identity project with a mission to bring about social change. The environmentalists studied make sense of their choice to live in an eco-commune as something that was triggered and facilitated by important crossroads and fateful moments that they had encountered in their past life. They also work on their identity as ecocommunards by discursively problematizing their personal relation to themselves (self) and to others (spouse and family), as well as by constructing new forms of subjectivity, intimacy, and relatedness through communal life. Life in the eco-commune thus represents a form of resistance and political struggle that Michel Foucault has referred to as politics of self; it represents not only direct opposition against the social order of contemporary Western consumer society but also more subtle resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity that it entails.