ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on the changing mechanisms of control in operation in the life assurance sales division of Lifelong Assurance. To examine the changes in progress at Lifelong, he begins with an analysis of the traditional identity of the salesman; and the links between this subjective construction and a number of related discourses with the intention of encouraging a self-disciplinary form of control in the individual. The specific construction of masculinity articulated in sales is based on the discourses of, on one side, autonomy and independence, and on the other, the careful development of the concept of the 'breadwinner'. The author then examines the use of surveillance within Lifelong as an attempt to intensity control of the salesforce in a more direct form than the self-disciplinary action of subjectivity affords. A link is therefore forged between sales performance and masculinity in the subjectivity of the Financial Consultant.
