Papers by Elizabeth Nixon
Internet and Higher Education, 2021
Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourci... more Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourcing to internet services. The scale and buoyancy of this 'essay mill' industry has now been well documented, including its various marketing techniques for urging students to purchase bespoke academic work. However, the inherently suspect nature of such services demands that they adopt a particularly shrewd and empathic rhetoric to win custom from website visitors. In this paper, we investigate how such rhetoric currently constructs a critical version of the student's higher education experience. We present a thematic analysis of promotional text and images as found on a large sample of essay mill sites. Findings reveal how these sites promulgate a hostile and negative attitude towards higher educational practice. Yet these findings may also indicate where the higher education sector needs to reflect on its practice, not least in order to resist the toxic messages of essay mills.
British Educational Research Journal, Jan 10, 2019
This paper offers a conceptual analysis of collusion, the often overlooked relative of plagiarism... more This paper offers a conceptual analysis of collusion, the often overlooked relative of plagiarism in debates on academic integrity. Considered as an inherently social phenomenon, we present the results of a systematic effort to understand the anatomy of collusion. The term's meanings and associated governance practices are compared for contexts outside Higher Education (HE). These are considered alongside a thematic analysis of publicly available UK university academic integrity documentation that specifies for students what counts as collusion. We indicate how current guideline practice can (1) appear incomplete by concentrating on classroom peers, (2) create blurred boundaries around useful collaboration, peer review and dishonest practice and (3) may be so unrealistic as to have unwelcome, unintended consequences for students and staff. Taking an ecological perspective on the conditions of collusion emphasises how these guidelines-by seeking to constrain social interactions around assignment work-may create an uncomfortable incoherence between their prescriptions and well-established patterns of study.
Teaching in Higher Education, Jun 1, 2009
In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has acc... more In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has accompanied its expansion has resulted in some sections becoming pedagogically limited. We draw from Fromm's humanist philosophy based on having to argue that the current ...
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hum-10.1177_00187267211022270 for Academic labour as professiona... more Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hum-10.1177_00187267211022270 for Academic labour as professional service work? A psychosocial analysis of emotion in lecturer–student relations under marketization by Elizabeth Nixon and Richard Scullion in Human Relations
In UK HE where students are increasingly constructed as consumers, little is written about the co... more In UK HE where students are increasingly constructed as consumers, little is written about the corresponding academic conceptualisation; the lecturer as service provider. Whilst some authors embrace such metaphors, others identify negative behavioural consequences. This interpretivist study of academics seeks to examine the notion of academic as service worker by examining how academics experience interactions with students and how these influence their professional identities. Early data interpretation reveals themes of boundary setting in student encounters; the need to regulate emotions; and evidence of self-exploitation suggesting academics are complicit in extra responsibilities and how this contributes to new forms of academic labour. A final theme depicts an idealised version of academia as a coping mechanism. Market pressures are reshaping what it means to be an academic, forcing them to face the many paradoxes of maintaining professionalism characterised through their every...
Studies in Higher Education, Jun 28, 2016
Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical... more Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical commentary on the potentially devastating consequences of market logic for pedagogy. In this paper, we consider the student-consumer prominent in these debates as a contested yet under-analysed entity. In contrast to the dominance of homo economicus discursively constructed in policy, we offer a psychoanalytically-informed interpretation of undergraduate student narratives, in an educational culture in which the student is positioned as sovereign consumer. We report findings drawn from in-depth interviews that sought to investigate students' experiences of choice within their university experience. Our critical interpretation shows how market ideology in an HE context amplifies the expression of deeper narcissistic desires and aggressive instincts that appear to underpin some of the student 'satisfaction' and 'dissatisfaction' so crucial to the contemporary marketised HE institution. Our analysis suggests that narcissistic gratifications and frustrations may lie at the root of the damage to pedagogy inflicted by unreflective neoliberal agendas.
In this accessibly written book, Devinney, Augur and Eckhardt pool their differing disciplinary e... more In this accessibly written book, Devinney, Augur and Eckhardt pool their differing disciplinary expertise to deliver a slap of realism to research on ethical consumerism. As scholars of strategy, information systems and marketing, the authors take aim at the hysteria of research purporting to show evidence of ethical consumers and large-scale demand for socially responsible products and services. Since so-called ethical products – or at least those marketed as such – are generally seen to have failed in the marketplace, the book sets out to investigate this discrepancy at the level of the individual consumer and their product choices. The bulk of this seven-chapter book therefore investigates 'ordinary' consumers' consideration (or lack thereof) of the social features of products through a mixed methodology in different countries. The authors collate quantitative experimental investigation of individuals' decision-making processes with reports from interpretive resea...
Human Relations, 2021
The marketization of higher education entails a radical reshaping of the educational relationship... more The marketization of higher education entails a radical reshaping of the educational relationship as one in which the lecturer is recast as a professional service worker, implicitly or explicitly tasked with ensuring the satisfaction of fee-paying students as sovereign consumers. What does an organizational discourse of high customer satisfaction mean for the emotional experiences of lecturers on the frontline? In this article, we conduct a psychosocial analysis of academics’ experiences of interacting with students in a marketized higher education context. We illustrate how institutional imperatives readily align with lecturers’ internalized professional duty of care for students who are discursively constructed as highly anxious and vulnerable. At the same time, changing power differentials wrought by marketization heighten the likelihood of emotional responses in the relationship that are intense, spontaneous, and sometimes involuntary – and thus appear replete with unconscious m...
Marketing Theory, 2021
Imaginative pleasure through daydreaming has been theorized to be important in understanding the ... more Imaginative pleasure through daydreaming has been theorized to be important in understanding the experience of desire and as a factor in escalating consumption. However, there is a risk this underplays the range of potentially immersive and intense experiences of daydreaming, prior to and independent of the purchase or use of marketplace commodities. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant diaries and projective techniques, this study brings empirical data to extant conceptual work on the consumer imagination to examine the variety of consequences of elaborate daydreaming for commodity acquisition. We suggest that it need not necessarily perpetuate or expand ‘actual’ consumption but may instead engender a longer, more reflective, pleasurable and meaningful experience from which purchase or acquisition may never materialize. Our study challenges accepted theories that associate daydreaming with consumerism or see it as an inevitable precursor to consumer disappointment, while shi...
The Internet and Higher Education, 2021
Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourci... more Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourcing to internet services. The scale and buoyancy of this 'essay mill' industry has now been well documented, including its various marketing techniques for urging students to purchase bespoke academic work. However, the inherently suspect nature of such services demands that they adopt a particularly shrewd and empathic rhetoric to win custom from website visitors. In this paper, we investigate how such rhetoric currently constructs a critical version of the student's higher education experience. We present a thematic analysis of promotional text and images as found on a large sample of essay mill sites. Findings reveal how these sites promulgate a hostile and negative attitude towards higher educational practice. Yet these findings may also indicate where the higher education sector needs to reflect on its practice, not least in order to resist the toxic messages of essay mills.
Consumption Markets & Culture, 2018
One fruitful perspective with which to think differently about the consuming subject in affluent ... more One fruitful perspective with which to think differently about the consuming subject in affluent capitalist societies can be found in the field of non-consumption. Whilst 'choices' not to buy, own and use are often tacit in analyses of social class dynamics, identity expression, and consumer resistance, here we adopt the dramaturgical perspective of Erving Goffman to argue that forms of non-consumption may occur within expressions of role distance. Our interpretive analysis of interview narratives identifies three imagoesthe fool, the hero and the sage-that our informants reproduced to disaffiliate from a virtual self generated by participation in the shopping situations dominating many urban centres. We conclude that buying and consuming less in 'everyday' contexts may require the performance of alternative, culturally-available personas, and that role distance can signify alienation from a consumer role or, conversely, constitute a defence against actual attachment to it.
Marketing Theory, 2019
This article draws on a conceptual vocabulary developed in science and technology studies to adva... more This article draws on a conceptual vocabulary developed in science and technology studies to advance a sociological theory of objects in marketing. Analysing a single advertising medium, it shows that marketing objects can exist simultaneously in multiple forms as physical artefacts, political decisions, legal entities and economic values. Armed with this understanding, the article explores the ability of actors to manipulate these realities in their favour and investigates how it is possible to turn public space on a city street into an advertising object. Using John Law’s notion of fractional objects, the article proposes an analytic framework to open up new objects for critical intervention and reflection.
British Educational Research Journal, 2019
This article offers a conceptual analysis of collusion, the often overlooked relative of plagiari... more This article offers a conceptual analysis of collusion, the often overlooked relative of plagiarism in debates on academic integrity. Considered as an inherently social phenomenon, we present the results of a systematic effort to understand the anatomy of collusion. The term's meanings and associated governance practices are compared for contexts outside higher education. These are considered alongside a thematic analysis of publicly available UK university academic integrity documentation that specifies for students what counts as collusion. We indicate how current guideline practice can (1) appear incomplete by concentrating on classroom peers, (2) create blurred boundaries around useful collaboration, peer review and dishonest practice and (3) be so unrealistic as to have unwelcome, unintended consequences for students and staff. Taking an ecological perspective on the conditions of collusion emphasises how these guidelines-by seeking to constrain social interactions around assignment work-may create an uncomfortable incoherence between their prescriptions and well-established patterns of study.
Consumption Markets & Culture, 2018
This paper compares the effectiveness of social or cause related marketing by empirically investi... more This paper compares the effectiveness of social or cause related marketing by empirically investigating, from a consumer perspective, the nature of social and cause related marketing and its influence on purchase decisions at the individual level. Total 425 participated who are users of soap and oil in FMCG sector. These segment usages social and cause related marketing in emerging markets like India. Advertisements of three per brands are taken up for study. The study shows that between two products of same cost and quality, people prefer to purchase the one promoting through social marketing not cause related marketing. People like watching advertisements incorporating social marketing more compared to cause related marketing. Both social/cause related marketing motivates the consumer to purchase products from the same company and also recommend to others. The paper adds insight into how social or cause related marketing differ on brand alliance and subsequent effect on brand image, brand recommendation, brand loyalty, consumer perceptions, and purchase behaviour. A comparative study of two approaches has been done in emerging markets, which is destined for many global brands.. It also extends our understanding of theoretical mechanisms of congruity theory and theory of planned behaviour in emerging markets like India.
Studies in Higher Education, 2016
Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical... more Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical commentary on the potentially devastating consequences of market logic for pedagogy. In this paper, we consider the student-consumer prominent in these debates as a contested yet under-analysed entity. In contrast to the dominance of homo economicus discursively constructed in policy, we offer a psychoanalytically-informed interpretation of undergraduate student narratives, in an educational culture in which the student is positioned as sovereign consumer. We report findings drawn from in-depth interviews that sought to investigate students' experiences of choice within their university experience. Our critical interpretation shows how market ideology in an HE context amplifies the expression of deeper narcissistic desires and aggressive instincts that appear to underpin some of the student 'satisfaction' and 'dissatisfaction' so crucial to the contemporary marketised HE institution. Our analysis suggests that narcissistic gratifications and frustrations may lie at the root of the damage to pedagogy inflicted by unreflective neoliberal agendas.
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Journal of Consumer Culture, 2011
The imaginative aspects of consumption have been recognized as playing a key role in accounting f... more The imaginative aspects of consumption have been recognized as playing a key role in accounting for Western consumerism, yet there has been surprisingly little attention paid to the role of imagining in everyday life. Previous consumer research has tended to focus on goods and services within daydreams and fantasies so that goods seem to be central to, and key resources in, the construction of imagined scenarios. Here we argue that this methodological framing has restricted a broader understanding of the imagination and the contextualization of consumption within it. By analysing phenomenological accounts that placed imagining ahead of consumption as the focus of the study, we found that individuals readily envisioned common cultural desires for successful relationships, happiness and love in positive imagined futures, where goods may be merely assumed as part of the background, or dismissed in favour of preferred emotional experiences. As such this article uses Law’s (2004) concept...
The Marketisation of Higher …, 2010
... Perhaps unsur-prisingly, choice is repeatedly rated as favourable by students when evaluating... more ... Perhaps unsur-prisingly, choice is repeatedly rated as favourable by students when evaluating their academic environments (Ramsden 1992; Biggs 2003). ... In this context Natalie explains how she decided on her option choices: I'd known from the first year that the person who ...
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Papers by Elizabeth Nixon