Adam Smith Business School

Dr Thomas Robinson, Bayes Business School

The Biopolitical Marketization of Sleep 
Thursday, 11 December 2025. 12:00-14:30
Room 141 A, Adam Smith Business School

Abstract

What is the role of biopolitics in marketization? Exploring how sleep, as a personal and private activity of the mindful body, went from being commercially non-existent in the 1990s to becoming a mainstream market for advanced offerings, we identify critical meso-linkages hitherto overlooked in market research on neoliberal governmentality. Through an in-depth analysis of public discourse in British newspapers from 1990 till 2025 (n=1235), phenomenological consumer interviews (n=30), and respondent photo diaries of bedrooms, we identify five stages in the evolution of the sleep market: 1) The Chemical Discourse (1990-2000); 2) Sleep Environment Discourse (2001-2005); 3) Self-Assessment Discourse (2006-2010); 4) Values Discourse (2011-2007); and finally 5) Market Assessment Discourse (2018-present). Our analysis of biopolitical marketization reveals how previously identified mechanisms of consumer responsibilization can run in reverse. While consumer responsibilization is traditionally assumed to begin with personalizing a common good, the biopolitical marketization of sleep rather involved the establishment of a shared, public discourse for the private and personal act of sleeping. Overall, we find a mirroring in biopolitics that also responsibilizes the market itself. These findings are significant, since previous efforts to mitigate the wellbeing deficit have themselves focused on yet more impositions of top-down, post hoc legal, political, and cultural rules by structural stakeholders.

 

Bio

Thomas Derek Robinson is a Senior Lecturer at Bayes Business School, City St.George , London. His research focuses on understanding the role of time and technology in marketing and consumer behavior. His research has explored the structuring effect of energy management in portable devices, legitimacy and institutions, sustainability, market crisis, sleep, nostalgia, and developing novel methods in marketing research. Often focusing on conceptual approaches, he has published in the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Advertising, Marketing Theory, and Organization Theory. Thomas is currently guest editor at the Journal of the Association of Consumer Research on an issue about "Time and Consumption." Thomas is the Associate Dean of Student Experience at Bayes Business School and has extensive experience managing student journey and designing service provision in Higher Education.

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First published: 18 November 2025