This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Tyler, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Managing between the Sheets: Lifestyle Magazines and the Management of Sexuality in Everyday Life

Loughborough University, UK

Considering the intersection between managerial discourses, sexuality and contemporary cultural resources such as lifestyle magazines, this article reflects critically on the extent to which the discourses and techniques associated with the management of bureaucratic organizations have been incorporated into the (self-)management of sexuality and sexual relations. Locating its concern with sexuality within critical social theory, the article develops a critique of the work of those who emphasize the postmodernization of sexuality and the informalization of management. Drawing on recent research involving an analysis of management texts and lifestyle magazines, as well as a series of semi-structured interviews, it argues that contemporary cultural discourses on sexuality, permeated as they are by references to managerial imperatives such as efficiency and effectiveness, serve to arrest the inter-subjective aspects of eroticism (Bataille, 1962; Rose, 1995) and to reduce sexual relations in the contemporary era to yet another aspect of the ‘reflexive project of self’ (Giddens, 1992).

Key Words: everyday life • lifestyle magazines • management discourse • sexuality

Sexualities, Vol. 7, No. 1, 81-106 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1363460704040144


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				P. Hancock and M. Tyler Beyond the Confines: Management, Colonization and the Everyday Crit Sociol, January 1, 2008; 34(1): 29 - 49. [Abstract] [PDF]