This article evaluates the ethical implications of the practice of cause-related marketing (CRM). The authors note howCRMis consistent with a contemporary rhetoric that argues that consumers are displaying a developing interest in the social commitments of the corporate world. However, following the work of Zygmunt Bauman, the authors suggest that CRM actually threatens these sentiments. Of particular significance is its incorporation of a charitable act within an act of exchange that is mediated by marketing technique. This serves to prevent any encounter with Bauman’s “Other.” Instead, the pretense of engagement has to be preserved by increasingly vociferous avowals of concern. These become examples of the ecstatic, a seductive force that renders the extreme meaningless and amoral. Finally, the authors argue that the nature of ethical commitment produced by CRM cannot be divorced from the instrumental benefits that are generated.

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Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.This paper scrutinises the way in which ethics is taught in the modern marketing syllabus. Our intention is to open up a space within which to promote timely debate on contemporary marketing education. Specifically, we wish to ask whether the tutor's role as a conduit of apparent ethical knowledge to students has somehow failed to map with sufficient sensitivity the terrain of the moral impulse in business practice. Drawing on literature from educational philosophy and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, we argue that the conceptualisation of ethics in marketing cannot be divorced from the question of pedagogy and the responsibilities of the tutor. This reading of ethics in marketing leads us to suggest that the largely conventional model adopted for the teaching of marketing may be unsatisfactory. Whilst current approaches may provide students with a prescribed set of knowledge and skills, it may by the same token refuse us the moral education that seems to be necessary. The significance for the teaching of ethics in an atmosphere punctuated with the discourses of economic crisis is acknowledged. We call for a reappraisal of the tutor/student relationship such that we may facilitate a greater understanding of how marketing students can make sense of themselves and of 'the Other'. To begin the process of articulation, we offer an example drawn from nursing education. Through this, we consider the requirements of the capable moral educator and offer initial practical suggestions on how this could be incorporated within teachin

This paper explores the gendered experience of singleness in Britain through a theoretical and empirical understanding of the 'abject'. Drawing on the writings of Judith Butler, we argue that 'singleness' is culturally pathologised as an 'abject other', a liminal state which renders the legitimation of the 'single subject' unintelligible. Through 14 active interviews withBritish singles, we demonstrate how our participants negotiate their marginal status vis-à-vis the marketplace and the broader society that continue to uphold heterosexual partnership as a normative form of intimacy. Our data uncovers persistent and powerful stereotypes of how singles ought to organize their lives and conform both to social, as well as market-driven, pressures. We therefore highlight research gaps in the experience of singleness and critique the heteronormative framework that remains dominant, yet concealed, in gender research. Summary Statement of ContributionThis paper advances a theoretical and empirical understanding of the neglected experience of singleness and how singles understand and negotiate their gendered subjectivities in a coupleoriented marketplace. Theoretically, we have enhanced understanding of how the concept of 'abjection' can be developed to expose the 'naturalisation' of heterosexual relationships as a legitimate practice. We argue that the marketplace remains politically vested in the institution of heteronormativity. Our empirical study contributes to the understanding of how the circulation of the heterosexual imaginary in the marketplace shapes the experience of singleness. Most notably, our findings reveal that the experience of singleness is structured along gendered lines: a statein which single women are 'visibly' subjected to the disciplinary power that produces their 'abject' status. While single men have seemingly averted the disciplinary gaze, on the other hand, we also show that their singleness remains tenuously tethered to the heteronormative framework.