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DOI: 10.1177/17499755093567542010 4: 45 originally published online 4 March 2010Cultural Sociology
Lionel Wee and Ann BrooksPersonal Branding and the Commodification of Reflexivity
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Personal Branding and the Commodificationof Reflexivity
I Lionel Wee
National University of Singapore
I Ann Brooks
University of Adelaide, Australia
ABSTRACT
Reflexivity as a concept has produced theoretical debates which have explored
the relationship of social actors to agency and identity. Less attention has been paidto reflexivity as a commodity, that is, to the forms of reflexivity that different actors
display and to the appropriateness of these forms. Actors who display appropri-
ate forms of reflexivity are likely to be treated differently from actors who do not
display such forms, thus resulting in a differential distribution of agency. It is increas-
ingly apparent that reflexivity is a desired commodity which is not available to
everyone. In other words, reflexivity as commodity implicates reflexivity as cultural
capital. This article explores these issues through an analysis of personal branding
and considers how reflexivity and personal branding are in fact emergent from cul-
tural production.
KEY WORDS
commodification / habitus / personal branding / reflexivity / commodity / identity
Introduction
The study of enterprise culture has focused primarily on its effects in pro-
moting a cultural reconstruction of work-based identities (Cameron,2000a, 2000b; Du Gay, 1996; Fairclough, 1995; Miller and Rose, 1990).
According to Du Gay (1996: 56), an enterprise culture is one in which certain
enterprising qualities such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, boldness
45
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and a willingness to take risks in the pursuit of goals are regarded as human
virtues and promoted as such. As applied to the workplace, Miller and Rose
(1990: 27) argue that the entrepreneurial self no longer sees work as a con-
straint upon the freedom of the individual [but rather as] an essential element
in the path to self-realization. The worker is thus re-imagined as a highly moti-vated individual who derives gratification from satisfying the needs of con-
sumers, by providing them with a range of desired goods or services (Fairclough,
1995: 11516).
The pervasiveness of enterprise culture, however, has also led to observa-
tions that it is coming to influence many different aspects of social life beyond
the workplace, with Rose (1990: 227) pointing out that:
The self is not merely enabled to choose, but obliged to construe a life in terms of
its choices, its powers, and its values Each of the attributes of the person is to be
realized through decisions, justified in terms of motives, needs and aspirations,made intelligible to the self and others in terms of the unique but universal search
to find meaning and satisfaction through the construction of a life for oneself.
This obligation of the self to choose wisely and to understand and justify
its own values points to the increasing importance of reflexivity in late modern
societies (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991), and is attested in the search for expert
advice on health and well-being through exercise, dieting, drugs, spiritual reg-
imens of various kinds, psychic self-help and psychiatry (Lasch, 1977: 140; see
also Giddens, 1992).
But it is also natural that, at some point, the search should become one foradvice on reflexivity itself, on how to be more self-aware, on the assumption
that this will enable the self to make better choices with regard to both itself
and to others. Expert advice on how to be more reflexive, then, points to the
commodification of reflexivity itself, where knowledge concerning reflexivity
skills is being marketed for consumption. A particularly good example of such
advice on reflexivity can be seen in strategies of personal branding.1 An actors
personal brand is the impression that others may have of him/her. Here is a
description from Gad (2001: 171, emphasis added):
Personal branding involves defining who you really are, clarifying yourself. Many
people dont like this, they prefer to hide they need a process of self-reflection,
which for most people will be the introduction to inner self-development. The ben-
efit of this process is that you have to explore and express your own view of your-
self and how you actually want to be perceived.
People are described as needing a process of self-reflection, which can
bring benefits. Personal branding strategies have thus become big business for
many firms specializing in image consultancy. They can easily be found in
books, as well as workshops and seminars conducted by branding gurus. In
this article, we draw on three such sources, to varying degrees of detail. Our
most detailed discussion focuses on the contents of a book entitled Be Your
Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd, by
David McNally and Karl D. Speak (a list of other similar books is given in the
notes).2 We also briefly mention extracts from the Personal Branding Group3
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and webgrrls international.4 The former is a coaching programme that teaches
top-level professionals how to position themselves as The Person to See (orig-
inal emphasis), and the latter is a business technology website for women.
Personal branding strategies are clearly aimed at developing reflexivity because
they encourage actors to engage in careful and critical self-assessment about theirrelative strengths and weaknesses. The ultimate goal is for an actor to make use of
this self-knowledge to better influence how he/she is perceived. The study of per-
sonal branding strategies, then, allows us an opportunity to investigate the cultural
dimensions of reflexivity,5 at least in this particular location of social life where it
has become commodified as a set of acquirable skills. Such a study can provide
insights into the kinds of social facts regarding reflexivity that are being circulated
for consumption and internalization by actors, notwithstanding the fact that any
internalization process is a complex one (Spiro, 1987). Our interest in this article
therefore lies in examining the prescribed strategies themselves, since these delineatethe normative parameters that are taken to constitute reflexive awareness by brand-
ing experts. In the next section, we briefly review various debates over the notion
of reflexivity followed by an analysis of personal branding.
Reflexivity Debates
Adams (2006) provides a useful guide to the debates over reflexivity when he
distinguishes between two dominant tropes, one claiming that reflexivityincreasingly constitutes self-identity in late-modern societies (2006: 512), and
another suggesting that reflexive awareness is necessarily rare (2006: 514).
The main contrast between these two positions lies in
1) the extent to which social actors can actually be said to be reflexive, and
2) whether from such reflexivity necessarily follows the possibility for actors
actively to fashion their identities.
In other words, the points of contention between these positions revolve around
the issues of scope (How widespread is reflexive awareness?) and agency (Does
reflexivity necessarily mean that individuals now have a greater opportunity to
shape their identities?).
The first position is associated prominently with the works of Beck (1992,
1994) and Giddens (1991, 1992). The core idea here is that individuals find it
increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to rely on institutional structures and
traditions to help make sense of social life. The consequent need for self-reliance
creates a reflexive awareness of the contingent relationship that individuals bear
to their surrounding material conditions. Kennedy usefully summarizes the
extended reflexivity thesis (Adams, 2003) as follows:
individuals are compelledto take greater control over the kinds of social identities
they wish to assume because once-powerful solidarities such as class, occupation,
church, gender and family are slowly declining in their ability to define our life expe-
riences. (Kennedy, 2001: 6, emphasis added)
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Because traditional sources of identity no longer define our life experiences,
the resulting vacuum creates not just the need for actors to become reflexively
aware, it also leaves open a host of possibilities and opportunities for actors to
take control of the kinds of identity work they wish to engage in. Hence, for
proponents of this extended reflexivity thesis, the increase in the scope of reflex-ivity is treated as simultaneously marking a concomitant increase in agency, as
seen in the claims (cited in Adams, 2006: 513) that people have to turn to their
own resources to decide what they value, to organize their priorities and to
make sense of their lives (Heelas, 1996: 5) and the self today is for everyone a
reflexive project (Giddens, 1992: 30).
The second position, in contrast, is much more skeptical about the ubiquity
of reflexivity. And even where reflexivity is acknowledged to be present, this
position tends to be also more skeptical about the possibility of actors actually
shaping their identities. This second position has been most widely exploredwith respect to the issue of gender, and takes its inspiration from Bourdieus
(1977, 1990) argument that actors in a social field carry with them a habitus
that predisposes them to respond in ways that tend to reproduce the existing
social structure. A good example comes from McNays (1999, 2000; see also
Skeggs, 1997) argument that even though ongoing social changes may have led
to a mismatch between (gendered) habitus and field, such mismatches and any
emergent reflexivity must always be understood in field specific terms. For
McNay, reflexivity is not an inherently universal capacity of subjects; it emerges
instead only with the experience of dissonance. Consequently, even as certainaspects of gender relations are destabilized, other aspects may yet be further
entrenched (McNay, 1999: 103). Also inspired by Bourdieu, Krais (1993: 173)
suggests that some kind of critical reflexivity is a conditio sine qua non for the
liberation of women. Nevertheless, she also suggests that constant redefinitions
of what counts as skilled work make it extremely difficult to envision any dis-
mantling of current gendered social arrangements in the labour market, since it
is the definition of skill, of who is skilled and who is not, of who is a profes-
sional and who is not, that creates the difference between mens and womens
jobs (1993: 166). Krais illustrates this in her discussion of the transformation
of job definitions in the French printing industry in the late 1960s (1993: 166):
When the first female typesetters were hired at the Clavier enchnan, the men went
on strike for three days. As a result, union and management came to an agreement
that fixed a new definition of skills: women would do the unskilled work that
is, type in a continuous flow whereas men would do the skilled work, that is,
type with corrections and margin justifications It was simply denied that the
work tasks of the women required skills similar to those of the men; this denial is
the normal mechanism of devaluing the work done by women.
While these two tropes or positions6
differ importantly in how theyapproach the issue of reflexivity, the differences internal to each should be noted
as well. Among theorists associated with the first position, the claim that reflexivity
is widespread has led, not surprisingly, to proposals for distinguishing between
different types of reflexivity. Lash (1994: 135; see also Lash and Urry, 1994)
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has, for example, made a distinction between cognitive and aesthetic reflexivity.
Cognitive reflexivity refers to agents monitoring of conceptual symbols (flows
of information) whereas aesthetic reflexivity refers to their monitoring of
mimetic symbols (images, sounds and narratives making up the other side of our
sign economics). In response to Lash, Giddens (1994: 197) has disputed this dis-tinction, suggesting that the cognitive-aesthetic separation is not quite as clear-
cut as Lash makes it out to be:
Is there such a thing as aesthetic reflexivity? I dont really think so or at least I
wouldnt put it this way. I am not at all sure that, as Lash puts it, there is an entire
other economy of signs in space that functions separately from cognitive symbols.
For social theorists coming from the second position, the concern is
with addressing the rather pricklier question of how the existence of a habi-
tus can be reconciled with reflexive awareness. This is because the
Bourdieusian habitus reflects an unconscious mastery (cf. Bourdieu, 1977:79) of how actors are expected to respond in relation to a specific field and,
as a result, cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation
(1977: 94). The unconscious nature of the habitus and the conscious delib-
eration associated with reflexive awareness together create a conceptual
conundrum since it is not clear how the former can (ever) give rise to the lat-
ter, or how the two can co-exist. One possibility is to start with the general
Bourdieusian picture of a fit between habitus and field, but to then argue
that as actors move across fields, this degree of fit is likely to vary. As noted
above, this is the tack taken by McNay, who suggests that where the lack offit is sufficiently strong, actors may then experience a sense of dissonance,
which rudely forces them to become reflexively aware of their relations to
their surrounding social structures. In this picture, the sufficiently wide dis-
juncture between field and habitus that prompts reflexive awareness is more
the exception than the rule.
However, McNays proposal has been countered by the argument that such
habitus-field disjunctures are in fact sufficiently common as to constitute a pre-
vailing characteristic of actors experiences this is arguably the case in a highly
mobile society or a society undergoing rapid social changes. But while it is con-ceded that this might mean that reflexive awareness is fairly widespread, any
assertions concerning a rise in agency are mitigated by the suggestion that it is
now appropriate to speak of reflexivity itself having become incorporated into
the habitus (Adkins, 2003; Sweetman, 2003). Thus, Adkins (2003: 35) makes
the point that even the presence of reflexivity may not be sufficient to warrant
any discussion of agency since it may be the case that reflexive practices are so
habituated that they are part of the very norms, rules and expectations that gov-
ern gender in later modernity, even as they may ostensibly appear to challenge
these very notions. At this point, it seems clear if any kind of agency is to berecovered from the concept of a habituated reflexivity, the understanding of the
habitus has to be changed in a fundamental way. Skeggs (2004a: 25, 29), in
fact, makes this clear when she argues that the habitus (contra Bourdieu) is
fundamentally characterized by ambivalence, since identities are a limited
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resource, a form of cultural capital that are worked and uncomfortably
inhabited. Skeggs (2004a: 25, 29) thus points out that:
Bourdieu cannot account for that ambivalence, as Adkins (2003) shows, because
he places ambivalence outside of the realm of practice, he understands norms to be
incorporated he assumes that the field is a precondition of the habitus and the
habitus will always submit to the field.
The suggestion that ambivalence is a critical feature of the habitus is useful.
But it is still insufficient to address the issue of reflexivity since ambivalence and
reflexivity are independent properties. One could be ambivalent without being
aware of being ambivalent. And one could adopt a meta-perspective on ones
social situation without necessarily feeling ambivalence. The latter is the case in
a social milieu that actively encourages a critical attitude towards the self.
Bonham suggests that there are clear historical precedents where, in the context
of particular communities or social movements, care for the self can open up a
cultural space for greater self-interpretation and deliberate choice (1999: 146).
Examples that he gives include the various aesthetic and moral disciplines pur-
sued by the Greeks, Buddhists and Jesuits.
Despite the different points of contention in the above debates, what seems
to be missing is attention to reflexivity as a commodity. This is because even if
proponents of the extended reflexivity thesis are correct in claiming that
widespread societal changes are making it ever more imperative for actors to be
reflexive, we need to pay greater attention to how reflexivity is recognized and
manifested. Actors who display appropriate forms of relexivity are likely to betreated differently than actors who do not, thus resulting in a differentiated dis-
tribution of agency. Skeggs (2002: 349) points out that the concept of a reflexive
self was a specific historical production that was produced through particular
methodologies and distributed along class lines. Understood as a desired com-
modity, reflexivity is a good that everyone wants but only a few are accorded.
Notice that this position does not require treating reflexivity as a function of habitus-
field mismatches. But neither does it automatically assume that reflexivity is avail-
able to everyone. Thus, even if proponents of the extended reflexivity thesis are
correct in claiming that widespread societal changes are making it ever moreimperative for actors to be reflexive, we need to pay greater attention to how
reflexivity is recognized and manifested. Actors who display appropriate forms of
reflexivity are likely to be treated differently than actors who do not, thus result-
ing in a differentiated distribution of agency. In other words, reflexivity as com-
modity implicates reflexivity as cultural capital. And as we hope to demonstrate
below, a sociological study of personal branding strategies can provide interest-
ing insights into the commodification of reflexivity.
Personal Branding
As mentioned earlier, while personal branding strategies come in the form of
seminars or books, for ease of illustration, we have decided to focus mainly on
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the strategies prescribed in McNally and Speaks (2002) Be Your Own Brand:
A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd as an example.
These strategies can be divided into two stages. The first concerns the develop-
ment of a personal brand. This involves an excavation of the self in order that
the actor can identify his/her true nature, including the kinds of values andrelationships that he/she considers important. Having done this, the actor is
then given advice on how to manage his/her personal brand, that is, how his/her
identified nature and values can be sustained and reflected in ongoing personal
and professional interactions. We begin by discussing the strategies for devel-
oping a personal brand.
Developing a Personal Brand
According to McNally and Speak (2002: 62): Defining your personal branddimensions and refining them into a personal brand platform involves identify-
ing the competencies, standards and style that go into each relationship people
have with you. McNally and Speak then propose the following three steps
(2002: 637):
Step One: Identify the Areas Where Your Competencies Matter;
Step Two: Examine Your Standards and Values;
Step Three: Define Your Style.
In Step One, the actor is asked to note down the important relationships in
his/her life (e.g. being a spouse, a friend, or a parent, etc.) since these are the
relationships where the personal brand will be tested (2002: 63). In Step Two,
the actor is asked to identify his/her brand standards by reflecting on [t]he
three to five characteristics that consistently come to the fore when you review
situations in which you performed well (2002: 64). Possibilities include the fol-
lowing (McNally and Speak, 2002: 64):
Was it your responsiveness? Your tenacity? Your clear thinking? Your high energy?
The thoughtfulness of your approach? Your willingness to take the lead or bea team player or supportive resource?
And finally, in Step Three, the actor is asked (2002: 65) to:
think of the unique parts of your personality that make an impact on other people
when you are at the top of your game. Do people consistently react to your positive
attitude? Your humorous demeanor? Your straightforward approach? Your sense
of calm? Your sincerity? Your sense of whimsy or your formal, no-nonsense
personality?
These steps assume that there are a limited number of definable roles thatan actor occupies, and furthermore, that a particular label such as friend or
spouse suffices to capture the specifics of what is important in a particular
relationship. These steps also assume that there exists a list of stable traits that
any actor consistently displays across a small variety of (important) situations.
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Each actor is assumed to possess a constellation of characteristics that uniquely
constitute his/her personality, thus denying the relational and emergent nature
of identity. And furthermore, the actor should be able to access the relevant
information, that is, identify the traits, the relevant situations and his/her
uniqueness, by a process of introspection.These assumptions may appear uncontroversial to many, and this is to be
expected since personal branding strategies draw on conceptions of personhood
and interpersonal relations popular in Western culture (cf. Quinn, 1992: 93;
Skeggs, 2004b: 75). The person is conceived as an autonomously existing entity
in possession of particular characteristics that define him/her even though
most scholars would agree that self-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a
collection of traits, possessed by the individual (Giddens, 1991: 53). As with
many forms of expert advice, personal branding strategies therefore presuppose
a fabrication of the autonomous self constituted through various practices ofpower, meaning and virtue (Rose, 1990: 217).
Also, an actor who actually displays his/her defining characteristics is
being true to himself/herself, and here we see that the assumptions of person-
hood involve a moral dimension, which is the injunction that one shouldin fact
be true to oneself. This moral dimension is explicit in the emphasis that per-
sonal branding strategies place on the notion of authenticity. Thus, it is claimed
that (McNally and Speak, 2002: 478): The most intimate relationship you
have is with yourself. Consequently, a strong personal brand is a powerful way
for the world to see and value the authentic you.The above problematically takes what is in actuality a culture-specific
conception of reflexivity and, by implication, of the self, and presents these as
universal facts about all humans, since personal branding is presented as an
essential goal for all individuals. Thus, according to the Personal Branding
Group: Personal branding is also not an option. Everyone has one; your cur-
rent personal brand is either positive, negative or neutral. The challenge for
more professionals is that they lack the discipline necessary to define their
personal brands.
There is therefore a cultural imperialism here that seeks to impose a set of
norms that might be problematic in cultures whose notions of personhood and
modes of social organization diverge markedly from the Western/Anglo mode
(Cameron, 2002: 80). Thus, there is a cultural bias embedded in the presuppo-
sition that traits such as tenacity, high energy or sense of whimsy are (nat-
urally!) positively valued.
Personal branding strategies also downplay the complexity of social inter-
action, yet ironically they also stress its importance since (it is claimed) if
interactions are not properly handled, then the goal of building a strong per-
sonal brand will, ultimately, be an unsuccessful one. Thus:
To build a strong personal brand, you need to make a conscious effort to manage
the relationships in your life so that their interactions are memorable for all the right
reasons: because they are a distinctive reflection of you, because they are relevantto
someone else, and because they are consistentenough that both parties develop a
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sense of stability and predictability on which to build future interactions. (McNally
and Speak, 2002: 72, original emphasis)
The management of a personal brand therefore fundamentally impacts on
the management of the actors interpersonal relationships. The actor is asked to
always leave an impression that is both memorable and distinctive. The possi-
bility that memorability and distinctiveness may at times conflict with each
other, or undermine the very interaction itself, is not seriously considered. And
significantly, as we see below, the actor is encouraged to think of himself/herself
as a service provider in all his/her interactions, where the service being provided
is the actor himself/herself.
There is a strong irony here regarding the phenomenon of synthetic per-
sonalization. Fairclough (1989: 62, original emphasis, as quoted in Cameron,
2000b: 62) observes that:
One finds techniques for efficiently and nonchalantly handling people wherever
one looks in the public institutions of the modern world. Equally, one finds what I
shall refer to as synthetic personalization, a compensatory tendency to give the
impression of treating each of the people handled en masse as an individual.
In professional interactions, the goal of synthetic personalization, then, is
to give the impression of attending to the needs of each customer as an indi-
vidual (Cameron, 2000b: 62). This is done by importing patterns of informal
interaction (cheerful greetings, vocatives) associated with personal relationships
into the workplace. But by calling for actors to project a consistently distinctivepersonality in all their interactions, personal branding strategies are effectively
promoting techniques of synthetic personalization back into personal relation-
ships. Someone whose personal brand involves being calm or humorous is thus
expected to consistently project calmness or humour in all their relationships if
their brand is to be a strong one. This backward projection of a service per-
spective into personal relationships is even clearer when we consider the next
stage in personal branding, managing a personal brand.
Managing a Personal BrandAccording to McNally and Speak (2002: 75), Every brand, including your per-
sonal brand, contains an implicit promise [and] a brand promise should reflect
the desire and ability to meet another specific persons needs and desires at a
particular time. They elaborate (2002: 8990):
The first time a personal relationship provides value for someone else, brand equity
starts to accrue You may never have thought of that as evidence of a strong per-
sonal brand before, but by now you should be beginning to see patterns You
know what you can turn to them for, and you have a pretty good idea of how theyll
respond. Thats a branded relationship.
These statements normalize, even celebrate, a service perspective on inter-
personal relationships, with actors being encouraged to view themselves in
terms of how well they (consistently and distinctively) meet the needs of others.
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Precisely because of this, it is not inaccurate to suggest that the actor himself/
herself is the service, as seen in the following advice on brand promises
(McNally and Speak, 2002: 78):
Your brand promise states how you will make a difference in relationships through-
out your life. The key is knowing how to apply your brand promise in the different
aspects of your life work, marriage, partnerships, parenting and more.
We are effectively encountering a commodification of the actor via his/her
brand promise, and this is possibly a logical extension of the pervasiveness
of consumer culture. Featherstone (1991) provides an extensive investigation
into various goods and sites of consumption, but there is an important sense
in which these consumption activities still exist in ways external to the self.
Thus Featherstone remarks:
Ones body, clothes, speech, leisure pastimes, eating and drinking preferences,home, car, choice of holidays, etc. are to be regarded as indicators of the individu-
ality of taste and sense of style of the owner/consumer. (1991: 83; see also 1991:
27, 63; Warde, 1982)
Under this view of consumption, actors consume goods of various sorts in
order to convey social signals about how they wish to be perceived. And there
is no doubt that such considerations are also relevant to personal branding
strategies, which is why McNally and Speak (2002: 1234) suggest that:
Your package should be an accurate reflection of whats inside: make sure the
impressions youre creating are the ones you want to be creating. Set an impeccable
standard for everything that adds up to how others perceive you. Your smile, your
facial expressions, your posture, the way you use your hands and your eyes, the
words you choose, your tone of voice, how youre dressed, and the environment in
which someone finds you all contribute to your brand identity.
However, what is interesting about personal branding is that the actor him-
self/herself is additionally constructed as a good or service to be consumed by
others. Because the actor is constructed as wantingto be commodified, the char-
acter of the entrepreneur can no longer be seen as just one among a plurality of
ethical personalities but must rather be seen as assuming an ontological priori-ty (Du Gay, 1996: 181, original emphasis). Social interaction consequently takes
on a distinctively instrumental perspective, with actors being asked to think of
themselves as eagerly and enthusiastically offering in each encounter aspects of
their selves that others will (hopefully) find useful and, hence valuable. As a
result, [w]hat counts as good or virtuous in this universe is judged by ref-
erence to the apparent needs, desires and projected preferences of the sovereign
consumer (Du Gay, 1996: 77).
And actors are encouraged to search for signals that their marketization of
the self is succeeding (or not). To monitor the level of success, actors areexhorted to do the following (McNally and Speak, 2002: 92, 94):
You must constantly measure your brand to understand what it stands for and how
it is impacting relationships in your life Pay attention to praise, compliments, and
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other positive feedback. They are evidence that people are giving you credit for a
brand strength, something they value and would like to see continue.
Interactions are thus viewed in terms of how successful they are, and any
such success is seen as contributing to the strengthening of the actors personal
brand. Successful interactions build the expectation that things will go right the
next time, too. If they do, brand equity continues to grow (McNally and
Speak, 2002: 87).
The reflexive strategies associated with personal branding therefore involve
a promotion of the self both to the self and to others. Wernick (1991: 184)
argues that promotion in contemporary society is a mode of communication
that is extremely widespread at all levels of social communication, and he
describes individuals who self-advertise as bothpromotional authors as well as
promotional products, suggesting that:
The subject that promotes itself constructs itself for others in line with the compet-
itive imaging needs of its market. Just like any other artificially imaged commodity,
then, the resultant construct a persona produced for public consumption is
marked by the transformative effects of the promotional supplement It is a self
which continually produces itself for competitive circulation. (1991: 193)
In the world of personal branding, the promotional imperative is in fact
constructed as an act of altruism, one that simultaneously benefits both the
self-promoting actor and others around him/her. As noted earlier, underlying
the personal branding strategies is the view that being authentic is a moral
injunction: an actor who is promoting a true vision of himself/herself is not
only a happier individual, but also one who is in a better position to help
others. Thus:
If you decide who you are and the kinds of relationships that are important to you,
and then act consistently on that vision and those values, you are being funda-
mentally true to yourself. Creating and living a strong personal brand is for others,
not just for yourself. Its one of the best investments youll ever make. The world
needs strong brands. It respects them. It relies on them. If you can be one, well all
be the richer for it. (McNally and Speak, 2002: 126)
Personal branding strategies clearly demand that actors be constantly vigi-
lant. This indicates that there is a strong performative element, since social
behaviour is regularly being assessed by the actor (Bauman and Briggs, 1990:
73). A comparison with studies on performances in the work environment is in
order. In the kinds of professional performances discussed by Hochschild
(1983) and Leidner (1993) of the airline, insurance and fast food industries,
workers are expected to engage in emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983: 7),
projecting specific emotions (such as sincerity, enthusiasm, or warmth). Thus,
workers may be trained in techniques for emotion management such as deep
acting, where the worker slowly comes to alter his/her own responses to
different situations (Hochschild, 1983: 33), or projecting, where workers
imaginatively create excuses for the behaviours of difficult others in order to
make interactions more bearable (Hochschild, 1983: 25). And industries may
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monitor the projection of highly specific emotions to the point where workers
interactions may be said to be styled or scripted (Cameron, 2000a, 2000b).
The issue of personal branding is somewhat different. While the popular-
ity of personal branding is clearly derived from the practice of corporate
branding, the main benefit claimed for developing a personal brand is that ithelps actors themselves rather than their employers. Thus, McNally and
Speak (2002: 61) claim:
When it comes to building a personal brand, your goal is the same as that of a business
positioning and managing your brand for long-term health and profitability.
And in a posting on webgrrls international, Jane Tabachnick suggests that
because individuals nowadays change jobs much more frequently than in the
past, it is imperative to create a familiar and consistent presence and so per-
sonal branding is an important part of your overall career strategy, as wellas your strategy for all your communications (Tabachnick, n.d.)
Consequently, strategies of personal branding do not prescribe the projec-
tion of specific personae or emotions. Such content-based decisions are sup-
posed to be up to individual actors since the focus in personal branding is on
helping actors to decide for themselves the kinds of personal brands they want
to cultivate and emphasizing that any such brand ought to be an authentic
reflection of who they truly are. Thus, Tabachnick describes her experience in
one such personal branding programme in the following manner: It was a
tough process at times, requiring me to be totally, brutally honest about both
my strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes (Tabachnick, n.d.).
In the case of personal branding strategies, the actor is expected to present
a self that is constantly working on itself, to better itself and its own relation-
ships with others, all the while demonstrating that its behaviours are reflections
of an authentically unique personality. Consequently, transgressions would
arise if actors showed themselves not to be autonomous, self-regulating, pro-
ductive individuals or to be lacking in energy, initiative, self-reliance and
personal responsibility (Du Gay, 1996: 60).
Reflexivity, Agency and Personal Branding:Intersections of Class and Gender
Both reflexivity and personal branding (as a strategy and an outgrowth of, or
from, reflexivity) are inevitably intersected by both gender and class. In addition
both Skeggs (1997) and Lawler (1999, 2000) have shown that class intersects
with gender, differentiating the concept of gendered capital to theorize classed
femininity and motherhood respectively (Adkins, 2004: 5). Thus both relexiv-
ity and personal branding are variable depending on the particular articulationof class and gender relations that defines an individuals habitus.
Reflexivity and personal branding are not static models but are constantly
evolving aspects of agency which are implicated by new cultural and structural
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arrangements but also have implications for new forms of classification and
agency. McRobbie (2004) maintains that the (post-feminist) production and
reproduction of social divisions is now increasingly feminized (Adkins, 2004:
7). McRobbie highlights two interrelated trends in this regard: first, the widen-
ing of class divisions between women (and the increasing articulation of classdivisions) and, second, the increasing significance of the media field for these
new forms of classification (Adkins, 2004: 7). This is illustrated in McRobbies
(2004) discussion of television programmes that focus on the makeover or
transformation of self with the help of experts in the hope of expectation of
improvement of status and life chances through the acquisition of forms of
social and cultural capital (2004: 99). While such programmes are ostensibly
attempts by grooming and fashion experts to help those lacking in taste,
McRobbie suggests that they actually serve to legitimize the denigration of
those who have somehow failed to improve themselves. Furthermore, the issueof class is implicated since the divide between those who have the right taste
and those who do not depends on successfully acquiring the relevant social and
cultural capital (McRobbie, 2004: 100101).
While such debates are not new, the re-appearance of class is an important
dimension in understanding gendered individualization. Whereas class divisions
for women had always been embedded in family, the full participation of women
in the workforce has made differences between women in different classes more
marked. There are significant disparities of income between women based on age,
with older women more disadvantaged. In addition, there are also inequalities inaccess to education and careers based on ethnicity and race. This is particularly
important at a point when, as McRobbie (2004: 106) notes, most young women
will no longer rely entirely on a male partner to look after them financially over a
lifetime (in post-feminist times this is recognized as a high risk strategy). Beyond
this, McRobbie argues that class differences are being revitalized within the media
and cultural field so as to reproduce social distinctions. Within the makeover pro-
gramme, as McRobbie (2004: 103) notes: The victim of the makeover TV pro-
gramme presents his or her class habitus (including home, family, friends and
neighbours and social milieu) for analysis and critique by the experts. As she
observes, these programmes would not work without the complicity of the vic-
tim. The transformation of habitus and the reproduction of social distinction are
operating within cultural and media fields and impact on agency.
To be sure, there are interesting differences between makeover programmes
and the personal branding strategies that we discussed in the earlier part of
the article. The former position the subject as a hapless individual in need of
drastic help, often to the point where the makeover is usually initiated by a
close friend or family member. The latter, in contrast, are more respectful in
tone, gently reminding those they seek to help of the importance of present-
ing oneself in a manner that creates a strongly positive impression. But thesedifferences go precisely to the issue of class. The targets of makeover pro-
grammes are usually middle or lower income ordinary folk, whereas the
clients of personal branding strategies are more often than not high-profile
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individuals and top-tier income earners as well as Fortune 500 companies and
professional firms.7 Differences of class aside, makeover programmes also
contribute to the commodification of reflexivity, by reinforcing to a wider tele-
vision audience the value of expert advice when attempting to cultivate a
socially presentable sense of self. While the targeted subject is ostensibly theone who benefits from the makeover, members of the viewing audience are also
expected to pick up relevant tips and, perhaps more importantly, make sure
that they avoid degenerating to the point where they, too, might find them-
selves in need of a makeover.
It is here that the intersection of reflexivity and personal branding is sig-
nificant. Vitellones (2004) work highlights the significance of the media for
new forms of social classification; in particular, she provides a convincing
argument to show how the habitus is increasingly the subject of cultural pro-
duction. Both reflexivity and personal branding are emergent from culturalproduction. From this perspective, the self that emerges from personal brand-
ing is a fairly predictable one, as is the kind of reflexivity which promotes an
interest in personal branding.
Conclusion
We noted at the beginning of the article that in enterprise culture, individuals
are expected to be reflexive, by taking responsibility for the choices theymake, including decisions about whether or not to seek appropriate advice on
improving the self. We also pointed out that reflexivity itself is also open to
commodification, so that the ability to make better choices is itself marketed
as an acquirable skill. We acknowledge that it is undoubtedly important to
treat reflexivity as a socio-psychological phenomenon, as can be seen in the
connections drawn between reflexivity and awareness, dissonance or mon-
itoring of conceptual and mimetic symbols, and so on. But by focusing on
personal branding strategies, we have in this article also highlighted the spe-
cific ways in which reflexivity is a commodity, access to which depends on
expert advice.
Attending to reflexivity as a commodity reminds us that there is also the
issue of the appropriate manifestation or display of reflexivity. The packaging8
of reflexivity means that people who do not display the requisite reflexivity are
seen to be lacking, not fully formed selves, and this lack is moralized and indi-
vidualized, a failure of the self to know its self (Skeggs, 2004b: 812, empha-
sis added). Thus, the popularity of personal branding books and seminars, and
makeover programmes, suggests that even as some institutional solidities are
dissolving, others are being created, some of which are directly aimed at (per-
haps even responding to) a perceived need for expert guidance vis-a-vis reflex-ivity. This is clearly due to the flexibility of the late capitalist economy where
anything and everything is potentially commodifiable so that even the need to
be reflexive can create a market opportunity where there is a demand for advice
from reflexivity experts. Such a situation obviously constitutes a form of symbolic
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domination, which, as Bourdieu (1991: 51) points out, is dependent not only
on the complicity of the dominated for its efficacy, but is further facilitated
when the search for causes of domination is shifted as is the case with enter-
prise culture into a search for responsibilities.
Notes
1 King (2006) provides a different, somewhat more restricted, example in her dis-cussion of how Australian activists were explicitly taught skills in self-reflection,in order that they were able to distance themselves from the world they live inand thus better able to identify hegemonic constructions (2006: 873).
2 A list of other relevant texts would include: The Brand You 50: Or: Fifty Waysto Transform Yourself from an Employee into a Brand that Shouts Distinction,
Commitment, and Passion! (by Tom Peters), The Brand Called You: TheUltimate Personal Branding Handbook to Transform Anyone into anIndispensable Brand (by Peter Montoya and Tim Vandehey), Make a Namefor Yourself: Eight Steps Every Woman Needs to Create a Personal BrandStrategy for Success (by Robin Fisher Roffer), and U R a Brand! How SmartPeople Brand Themselves for Business Success (by Catherine Kaputa).
3 See http://www.personalbrandinggroup.com, consulted 28 March 2008.4 See http://www.webgrrls.com, consulted 28 March 2008.5 Giddens (1991: 80) does touch on the cultural dimensions of reflexivity when he
observes that, in response to feelings of anxiety or the need for ontological security,
books on self-therapy have become especially popular, even if they invoke concep-tions that may be ideological. But his focus is not reflexivity as a commodity.
6 We emphasize that the distinction between these contrasting positions is a broadheuristic rather than a strict dichotomy. The work of Lash (1994), for example,on aesthetic reflexivity, while typically associated with the first position becauseit accepts the wide scope of reflexivity and its emancipatory/de-traditionalizingpotential (Skeggs, 2002: 365), is arguably categorizable as also belonging to thesecond position since it does attempt to draw on the social theory of Bourdieu.
7 According to http://www.personalbrandinggroup.com, consulted 28 March 2007.8 Lashs (1994: 130) account of reflexivity winners and losers has a different focus.
Lash is concerned with structural changes in modes of economic production thatreposition the middle class within the information and communication structures(winners), while excluding others (losers) from these structures. In our article,even within the group of winners, actors need to acquire the specific sets of skillsthat mark the individual as truly reflexive.
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Lionel Wee
Lionel Wee is an associate professor in the Department of English Language &
Literature at the National University of Singapore. He is the author ofLanguage Policy and
Modernity in Southeast Asia (with A. Rappa), Language Without Rights (forthcoming) and
Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore (with C. Stroud, forthcoming). His articles
have appeared in Sociology(with Ann Brooks),Applied Linguistics,Journal of Multilingual &
Multicultural Development,Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language Policy, Language in Societyand
World Englishes. He is associate editor of theJournal of Sociolinguistics, and sits on the edi-
torial boards ofApplied Linguistics and English World-Wide.
Address: Lionel Wee, Dept of English Language and Literature, National University of
Singapore, Block As 5, 7 Arts Link, S(117570) Singapore.
Email: [email protected]
Ann Brooks
Ann Brooks is Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at the University of
Adelaide, Australia. She is author ofAcademic Women (Open University Press, 1997);
Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (Routledge, 1997); Gendered
Work in Asian Cities: The New Economy and Changing Labour Markets (Ashgate, 2006), and,
with Alison Mackinnon, Gender and the Restructured University: Changing Management and
Culture in Higher Education (Open University Press, 2001). She has also published in The
British Journal of Sociology(2008), Sociology(with Lionel Wee, 2008), and Theory, Culture
and Society, among others. Her forthcoming books are Social Theory in Contemporary Asia:
Intimacy, Reflexivity and Identity(Routledge 2010) and Gender and Emotional Labour in Asia
(Women in Asia Series, Routledge 2010).
Address: Professor Ann Brooks, Sociology and Cultural Studies, School of Social
Sciences, Level 5, Ligertwood Building The University of Adelaide, Australia 5005.
Email: [email protected]
62 Cultural Sociology Volume 4 I Number 1 I March 2010