Overt sexuality in advertising: A discourse analysis of gender responses

Recent developments in advertising imagery often involve the use of overt sexuality. Consumer responses to advertisements using a range of sexual explicitness are explored using a discourse analytic approach. The dominant negative themes articulated across sex and age groups concerned the use of sex-role stereotypes and the objectification of women. Dominant positive themes shared by both sexes involved equality in sexual representations and sexuality as art. Younger consumers' discourse concerned how advertising can add symbolic value to consumption by investing the products with a romantic style of sexuality which becomes a potent cultural form drawing its energy from the desires of the body. The shared dominant themes were supported by gendered interpretive repertoires. The unexpected gender consistency in dominant themes is discussed in relation to the cultural function of advertising as art in allowing women to speak more easily of their desires through consumption choices.

---

Zusammenfassung Offene Darstellung von Sexualität in der Werbung: Diskursanalyse geschlechtstypischer Reaktionen Die neuere Entwicklung werblicher Darstellungsformen ist gekennzeichnet durch hÄufigere Darstellung von Sexualität. Konsumentenreaktionen auf Werbeanzeigen mit variierender sexueller Deutlichkeit werden mit Hilfe eines diskursanalytischen Ansatzes untersucht. Dominante negative Themen, die bei beiden Geschlechtern und quer durch alle Altersgruppen zur Sprache kamen, betrafen die Verwendung von Geschlechterstereotypen und die Darstellung von Frauen als Objekten. Dominante positive Themen, die ebenfalls von beiden Geschlechtern genannt werden, sind die Gleichrangigkeit der Darstellung der Geschlechter und die Darstellung der Sexualität in künstlerischer Form. Jüngere Konsumenten beschÄftigten sich mit der Frage, wie Werbung den Konsum mit symbolischem Wert anreichern kann dadurch, da\ den Produkten eine romantische Sexualität angeheftet wird. Die eigentlich nicht erwartete übereinstimmung beider Geschlechter bei den dominanten Themen wird im Zusammenhang mit der kulturellen Funktion von Werbung als neue Kunstform diskutiert, die es Frauen erlaubt, ihre Bedürfnisse leichter durch Konsumakte zu Äu\ern.

     

ATTAINABLE CLAIMS IN A MARKOV MARKET1

It is shown how, even when the market is incomplete, certain contingent claims are attainable: that is, they can be represented as stochastic integrals with respect to the process which describes the evolution of the asset prices.     

What are the least developed countries and what benefits may result from the Paris conference?

This paper focuses on the category of the least developed countries in the particular context of the Paris Conference, 1–14 September 1981, sponsored by the United Nations to agree on the Substantial New Programme of Action for the 1980s on behalf of these countries. There is first an examination of the category of least developed countries, the adequacy of criteria used to establish the category, the general economic performance of these countries during the 1960s and 1970s, and the pre-conference results of the list's creation. There follows a preliminary assessment of the results of the Paris Conference. The economic justifications for inclusion in the category are subject to much valid criticism and the likely benefits from this UN Conference will be much less than what the least developed countries themselves calculated to be necessary. Nonetheless, the category is a useful policy tool; and the results of the Conference appear a qualified success, especially in light of the unpropitious international context.     

Economic evaluation of projects : A critical comparison of a new world bank methodology with the UNIDO and the revised OECD approach

The discussion on the evaluation of development projects which seemed more or less to have come to an end at the beginning of the 1970s, has experienced an unexpected revival. Following the publication of the revised version of the OECD Manual by Little and Mirrlees, a new methodology for project evaluation has been developed by the World Bank. The reason behind this is the growing need for differentiated but, at the same time standardized project evaluation methods which include distribution effects involving the poorest 3/5th of the population which have hardly been touched by 20 years of development policy and development assistance. The study focuses on this new World Bank approach by Bruce, van der Tak and Squire, the revised OECD approach by Little and Mirrlees, and the UNIDO guidelines by Dasgupta, Marglin and Sen. The three theoretical concepts are compared and their different methods approaches are then illustrated on the basis of a case study, a dam project in Nepal. Finally, the three approaches are subjected to a critical appraisal in the light of the demands of project evaluation in practice. The three approaches put different emphasis on the social value of consumption, of public and private investment, and distribution effects, and formulate correspondingly different formal evaluation criteria. As the case study shows, the evaluation results are similar. However, a number of crucial problems are not explicitly considered. The main reason for this is the denial of the multidimensionality of each evaluation problem by reducing it to the one-dimensional criterion of economic efficiency, which is defined differently in the three approaches. This has further technical implications as to the lack of clarity regarding the impact of value judgments on different stages of the calculation process on the final outcome. On the other hand, the tool of project evaluation is overburdened with policy decisions which must be taken at higher levels of political decision-making, such as basic decisions on priority sectors, export promotion versus import substitution, or private versus public investment and consumption.     

Schumpeter and the theory of capitalist economic development

This paper gives a centenary appreciation of the contributions to economic thought of Joseph A. Schumpeter, with special focus on his work, The Theory of Economic Development (TED) it proceeds, first, by providing (in section 1) an overview of Schumpeter's life and works; second, by giving an interpretative exposition of the main themes of TED (in section 2) and Schumpeter's broader ‘economic sociology’ (in section 3) in terms of the place of these ideas in the history of economic thought; third, by examining the reception to TED and the impact of it and Schumpeter's dynamic methodology on the discipline (in section 4).     

Can neoclassical economics become social economics?

This essay has both a general and a specific purpose. Its general purpose is to pose the question: Can neoclassical economics be social economics? Its answer to this general question is: Yes, but only if it abandons its methodological soul; that is, by abandoning methodological individualism, positivism, and ahistoricism, and expressly and systematically adopting a methodological perspective which is holistic, normative, and historical. Its specific purpose is to identify and examine the major elements in the economics of one leading figure in the historical development of neoclassical economics who self-consciously attempted to combine, to paraphrase Schumpeter, a neoclassical head with a social economics heart: Alfred Marshall.