Title: The production of hegemonic policy discourses: ‘competitiveness’ as a knowledge brand and its (re-)contextualizations
Abstract: Abstract ‘Competitiveness’ has become a transnational policy buzzword in a globalized world and this invites us to examine critically ‘competitiveness’ discourses and their manifestations in the policy-consultancy circuit. This article adopts a ‘cultural political economy’ approach to the rise to hegemonic ‘knowledge brand’ status since the mid-1990s of the influential account of Michael E. Porter and his Harvard Business School associates. This account of competitiveness has since been recontextualized from the national to the urban, regional and global scales. The article interweaves theoretical and empirical arguments in five steps. Firstly, it outlines the bases of cultural political economy as a discursive as well as material account of the remaking and reproduction of social relations. Secondly, it presents three stages in the development of ‘competitiveness’ discourses from theoretical paradigm to knowledge brand. Thirdly, it explores how this knowledge brand has been recontextualized through knowledge apparatuses, such as indices and metaphors, as well as through related technologies of power at the global level and the regional-national scale of East Asia. Fourthly, and conversely, it shows how this hegemonic logic of competitiveness is being challenged and negotiated in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Fifthly, it offers some concluding comments on knowledge brands and on how cultural political economy can contribute to a critical understanding of policy-making. Keywords: hegemonycompetitivenessknowledge brandtechnologies of powerMichael Porter Acknowledgments This article derives in part from an ESRC seminar series on Changing Cultures of Competitiveness 2007–09 (No. RES-451-26-0439) and from research conducted with a British Academy Research Development Award 2008-2010 (No. BARDA-48854). The author also thanks Frank Fischer, Bob Jessop and two reviewers for their helpful comments and Lo Mo Kwan and Slamet Sawiyah for their domestic support during fieldwork. Notes 1. For example, whereas Gramsci concentrates on structured inequalities in social relations as the basis for attempts to build hegemony, Foucault focuses on transferable technologies of power and subjectivation in structuring subjectivities and experiences, framing truth regimes, and defining a ‘diagram’ of society. 2. On the three versions of competitiveness, see Harris and Watson (1993 Harris, R. and Watson, W. 1993. “Three versions of competitiveness: Porter, Reich and Thurow on economic growth and policy”. In Productivity, growth and Canada's international competitiveness, Edited by: Courchene, T. J. and Purris, D.D. Ontario: John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy, 233–280. [Google Scholar]). 3. 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