Download or read book Inconspicuous Consumption written by Tatiana Schlossberg and published by Balance. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *First Place Winner of the Society of Environmental Journalists' Rachel Carson Environment Book Award* "If you're looking for something to cling to in what often feels like a hopeless conversation, Schlossberg's darkly humorous, knowledge-is-power, eyes-wide-open approach may be just the thing."--Vogue From a former New York Times science writer, this urgent call to action will empower you to stand up to climate change and environmental pollution by making simple but impactful everyday choices. With urgency and wit, Tatiana Schlossberg explains that far from being only a distant problem of the natural world created by the fossil fuel industry, climate change is all around us, all the time, lurking everywhere in our convenience-driven society, all without our realizing it. By examining the unseen and unconscious environmental impacts in four areas-the Internet and technology, food, fashion, and fuel - Schlossberg helps readers better understand why climate change is such a complicated issue, and how it connects all of us: How streaming a movie on Netflix in New York burns coal in Virginia; how eating a hamburger in California might contribute to pollution in the Gulf of Mexico; how buying an inexpensive cashmere sweater in Chicago expands the Mongolian desert; how destroying forests from North Carolina is necessary to generate electricity in England. Cataloging the complexities and frustrations of our carbon-intensive society with a dry sense of humor, Schlossberg makes the climate crisis and its solutions interesting and relevant to everyone who cares, even a little, about the planet. She empowers readers to think about their stuff and the environment in a new way, helping them make more informed choices when it comes to the future of our world. Most importantly, this is a book about the power we have as voters and consumers to make sure that the fight against climate change includes all of us and all of our stuff, not just industry groups and politicians. If we have any hope of solving the problem, we all have to do it together. "A compelling-and illuminating-look at how our daily habits impact the environment."--Vanity Fair "Shows how even the smallest decisions can have profound environmental consequences."--The New York Times
Download or read book Inconspicuous Consumption written by Paul Lukas and published by Three Rivers Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From kitschy novelties and wildly unappetizing food products to beautifully functional items such as garlic presses and toothpick dispensers, Inconspicuous Consumption is a delightful celebration of the sometimes elegant, sometimes ridiculous fringes of our late-20th-century culture. 50 photos. 192 pp. Author interviews & national radio campaign. National publicity. 15,000 print.
Download or read book The Sum of Small Things written by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.
Download or read book Building Consumer Brand Relationship in Luxury Brand Management written by Rodrigues, Paula and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-10-23 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luxury is no longer a privilege of the high-net-worth individuals. It is now accessible to all. This has become possible because the essence of luxury has changed: from something based upon materialism and conspicuous and hedonic consumption to one that embraces enrichment and experiences for the consumers. This evolution creates challenges for luxury brands and for the managers of luxury brands. Building Consumer-Brand Relationship in Luxury Brand Management is a collection of innovative research that focuses on the conception and marketing of luxury as an experience and explores more integrative and comprehensive approaches to modeling and understanding the consumer-brand relationship with luxury brands and their sustainability in a global and multicultural world. Highlighting a broad range of topics including digital marketing, consumer demand, and social responsibility, this book is ideally designed for marketers, brand managers, consumer analysts, advertisers, entrepreneurs, executives, researchers, academicians, and students.
Download or read book The Price of Prestige written by Lilach Gilady and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If wars are costly and risky to both sides, why do they occur? Why engage in an arms race when it’s clear that increasing one’s own defense expenditures will only trigger a similar reaction by the other side, leaving both countries just as insecure—and considerably poorer? Just as people buy expensive things precisely because they are more expensive, because they offer the possibility of improved social status or prestige, so too do countries, argues Lilach Gilady. In The Price of Prestige, Gilady shows how many seemingly wasteful government expenditures that appear to contradict the laws of demand actually follow the pattern for what are known as Veblen goods, or positional goods for which demand increases alongside price, even when cheaper substitutes are readily available. From flashy space programs to costly weapons systems a country does not need and cannot maintain to foreign aid programs that offer little benefit to recipients, these conspicuous and strategically timed expenditures are intended to instill awe in the observer through their wasteful might. And underestimating the important social role of excess has serious policy implications. Increasing the cost of war, for example, may not always be an effective tool for preventing it, Gilady argues, nor does decreasing the cost of weapons and other technologies of war necessarily increase the potential for conflict, as shown by the case of a cheap fighter plane whose price tag drove consumers away. In today’s changing world, where there are high levels of uncertainty about the distribution of power, Gilady also offers a valuable way to predict which countries are most likely to be concerned about their position and therefore adopt costly, excessive policies.
Download or read book Tune in Tomorrow written by Randee Dawn and published by Rebellion Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She’s just a small town girl, with big mythic dreams. Starr Weatherby came to New York to become… well, a star. But after ten years and no luck, she’s offered a big role – on a show no one has ever heard of. And there’s a reason for that. It’s a ‘reality’ show beyond the Veil, human drama, performed for the entertainment of the Fae. But as Starr shifts from astounded newcomer to rising fan favorite, she learns about the show’s dark underbelly – and mysterious disappearance of her predecessor. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep her dream job – though she might just bring down the show in the process.
Download or read book THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS written by THORSTEIN. VEBLEN and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Veblen written by Charles Camic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society’s productive men and women. Thorstein Veblen was one of America’s most penetrating analysts of modern capitalist society. But he was not, as is widely assumed, an outsider to the social world he acidly described. Veblen overturns the long-accepted view that Veblen’s ideas, including his insights about conspicuous consumption and the leisure class, derived from his position as a social outsider. In the hinterlands of America’s Midwest, Veblen’s schooling coincided with the late nineteenth-century revolution in higher education that occurred under the patronage of the titans of the new industrial age. The resulting educational opportunities carried Veblen from local Carleton College to centers of scholarship at Johns Hopkins, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, where he studied with leading philosophers, historians, and economists. Afterward, he joined the nation’s academic elite as a professional economist, producing his seminal books The Theory of the Leisure Class and The Theory of Business Enterprise. Until late in his career, Veblen was, Charles Camic argues, the consummate academic insider, engaged in debates about wealth distribution raging in the field of economics. Veblen demonstrates how Veblen’s education and subsequent involvement in those debates gave rise to his original ideas about the social institutions that enable wealthy Americans—a swarm of economically unproductive “parasites”—to amass vast fortunes on the backs of productive men and women. Today, when great wealth inequalities again command national attention, Camic helps us understand the historical roots and continuing reach of Veblen’s searing analysis of this “sclerosis of the American soul.”
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology written by Cait Lamberton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two years, consumers have experienced massive changes in consumption – whether due to shifts in habits; the changing information landscape; challenges to their identity, or new economic experiences of scarcity or abundance. What can we expect from these experiences? How are the world's leading thinkers applying both foundational knowledge and novel insights as we seek to understand consumer psychology in a constantly changing landscape? And how can informed readers both contribute to and evaluate our knowledge? This handbook offers a critical overview of both fundamental topics in consumer psychology and those that are of prominence in the contemporary marketplace, beginning with an examination of individual psychology and broadening to topics related to wider cultural and marketplace systems. The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology, 2nd edition, will act as a valuable guide for teachers and graduate and undergraduate students in psychology, marketing, management, economics, sociology, and anthropology.
Download or read book Free Ride written by Robert Levine and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the newspaper, music, and film industries go from raking in big bucks to scooping up digital dimes? Their customers were lured away by the free ride of technology. Now, business journalist Robert Levine shows how they can get back on track. On the Internet, “information wants to be free.” This memorable phrase shaped the online business model, but it is now driving the media companies on whom the digital industry feeds out of business. Today, newspaper stocks have fallen to all-time lows as papers are pressured to give away content, music sales have fallen by more than half since file sharing became common, TV ratings are plummeting as viewership migrates online, and publishers face off against Amazon over the price of digital books. In Free Ride, Robert Levine narrates an epic tale of value destruction that moves from the corridors of Congress, where the law was passed that legalized YouTube, to the dorm room of Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster; from the bargain-pricing dramas involving iTunes and Kindle to Google’s fateful decision to digitize first and ask questions later. Levine charts how the media industry lost control of its destiny and suggests innovative ways it can resist the pull of zero. Fearless in its reporting and analysis, Free Ride is the business history of the decade and a much-needed call to action.
Download or read book Leading a Worthy Life written by Leon R. Kass and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to live one. With a once confident culture no longer offering authoritative guidance, the young are now at sea—regarding work, family, religion, and civic identity. The true, the good, and the beautiful have few defenders, and the higher cynicism mocks any innocent love of wisdom or love of country. We are supercompetent regarding efficiency and convenience; we are at a loss regarding what it’s all for. Yet because the old orthodoxies have crumbled, our “interesting time” paradoxically offers genuine opportunities for renewal and growth. The old Socratic question “How to live?” suddenly commands serious attention. Young Americans, if liberated from the prevailing cynicism, will readily embrace weighty questions and undertake serious quests for a flourishing life. All they (and we) need is encouragement. This book provides that necessary encouragement by illuminating crucial—and still available—aspects of a worthy life, and by defending them against their enemies. With chapters on love, family, and friendship; human excellence and human dignity; teaching, learning, and truth; and the great human aspirations of Western civilization, it offers help to both secular and religious readers, to people who are looking on their own for meaning and to people who are looking to deepen what they have been taught or to square it with the spirit of our times.
Download or read book Dragon Age Adult Colouring Book written by Bioware and published by Dark Horse Comics. This book was released on 2017-02-25 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beautiful worlds of Dragon Age are yours to explore in this amazing new coloring book, including forty-five fantastic original black-and-white illustrations of unforgettable characters and iconic scenes from the entire award-winning trilogy--each specifically crafted to be colored in any way that you choose! Thrill to the exploits of Alistair, Morrigan, Varric, and the rest, and adventure alongside them on your own journey of creativity! Whether you're a casual fan of fantasy, or the Herald of Andraste themself, the Dragon Age Adult Coloring Book is not to be missed! The official Dragon Age coloring book! Color your favorite moments taken straight from the game! Includes forty-five pieces of beautifully detailed black and white artwork! A must-have for any Dragon Age fan! Printed on high-quality stock with a lay-flat binding!
Download or read book Luxury Fever written by Robert H. Frank and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-04-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new luxury fever has America in its grip. Independent of stock prices, recessions, and inflation rates, the past two decades have witnessed a spectacular and uninterrupted rise in luxury consumption. Ordinary, functional goods are no longer acceptable. Our cars have gotten larger, heavier, and far more expensive. Mansions larger than 30,000 square feet no longer seem extravagant. Wristwatches for the super-rich cost tens of thousands of dollars. We are living in an era of excess. Consider: The average house built in the United States today is nearly twice as large as its counterpart from the 1950s. Even as houses have gotten more expensive and farther from the workplace, there has been a sharp increase in second-home ownership. The average price of an automobile sold in the United States now exceeds $22,000, up more than 75 percent from a decade ago. Total U.S. spending on luxury goods increased 21 percent between 1995 and 1996 (typical of recent years), while overall merchandise sales increased only 5 percent. Robert Frank caused a national debate in 1995 when he and co-author Philip Cook described the poisonous spread of "winner-take-all" markets. Now he takes a thought-provoking look at the flip side of spreading inequality: as the super-rich set the pace, everyone else spends furiously in a competitive echo of wastefulness. The costs are enormous: We spend more time at work, leaving less time for family and friends, less time for exercise. Most of us have been forced to save less and spend and borrow much more. The annual rate at which American families file for personal bankruptcy has grown to one in seventy. Budgetary pressures have reduced our willingness to fund even essential public services: Our food and water are increasingly contaminated. Potholes proliferate, and traffic delays double every ten years. Frank offers the first comprehensive and accessible summary of scientific evidence that our spending choices are not making us as happy and healthy as they could. Furthermore, he argues that human frailty is not at fault. The good news is that we can do something about it. We can make it harder for the super-rich to overspend, and capture our own competitive energy for the public good. Luxury Fever boldly offers a way to curb the excess and restore the true value of money.
Download or read book Approaching Consumer Culture written by Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating collection analyzes the impact of Western consumer culture on local cultures and consumption in Southeast Europe and East Asia. Cultural, historical, economic and sociopolitical contexts are examined regarding buying behaviors, usage and customization practices and consumer activism, specifically in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania as cultures continue to evolve in the post-socialist era, and in China and Japan as a continuation of movements toward modernity and progress. Surprising and thought-provoking contrasts stand out as consumers balance the global with the local in terms of clothing, technology, luxury items, and food. All chapters feature a wealth of empirical and cross-cultural data, and the presentation is framed by Professor Mike Featherstone’s theoretical essay on the origins of consumer culture and the consequences of two hundred years of increasing consumption for the human condition and the future of the planet. Included in the coverage: “You are a socialist child like me”: Goods and Identity in Bulgaria Consumer Culture from Socialist Yugoslavia to Post-Socialist Serbia: Movements and Moments Preserves Exiting Socialism: Authenticity, Anti-Standardization, and Middle-Class Consumption in Post-Socialist Romania Modernization and the Department Store in Early 20th-Century Japan: Modern Girl and New Consumer Culture Lifestyles A Cultural Reading of Conspicuous Consumption in China Approaching Consumer Culture broadens the cultural anthropology literature and will be welcomed by Western and Eastern scholars and researchers alike. Its depth and accessibility make it useful to university courses in cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology.
Download or read book Tax Politics and Policy written by Michael Thom and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taxes are an inescapable part of life. They are perhaps the most economically consequential aspect of the relationship between individuals and their government. Understanding tax development and implementation, not to mention the political forces involved, is critical to fully appreciating and critiquing that relationship. Tax Politics and Policy offers a comprehensive survey of taxation in the United States. It explores competing theories of taxation’s role in civil society; investigates the evolution and impact of taxes on income, consumption, and assets; and highlights the role of interest groups in tax policy. This is the first book to include a separate look at "sin" taxes on tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and sugar. The book concludes with a look at tax reform ideas, both old and new. This book is written for a broad audience—from upper-level undergraduates to graduate students in public policy, public administration, political science, economics, and related fields—and anyone else that has ever paid taxes.
Download or read book The Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity written by David Kuchta and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-05-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1666 King Charles II introduced a fashion that developed into the three-piece suit. This text examines the inspiration behind this royal revolution in masculine attire.
Download or read book All We Can Save written by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and published by One World. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. “A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society. Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: Emily Atkin • Xiye Bastida • Ellen Bass • Colette Pichon Battle • Jainey K. Bavishi • Janine Benyus • adrienne maree brown • Régine Clément • Abigail Dillen • Camille T. Dungy • Rhiana Gunn-Wright • Joy Harjo • Katharine Hayhoe • Mary Annaïse Heglar • Jane Hirshfield • Mary Anne Hitt • Ailish Hopper • Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe • Emily N. Johnston • Joan Naviyuk Kane • Naomi Klein • Kate Knuth • Ada Limón • Louise Maher-Johnson • Kate Marvel • Gina McCarthy • Anne Haven McDonnell • Sarah Miller • Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset • Susanne C. Moser • Lynna Odel • Sharon Olds • Mary Oliver • Kate Orff • Jacqui Patterson • Leah Penniman • Catherine Pierce • Marge Piercy • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Varshini • Prakash • Janisse Ray • Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez • Favianna Rodriguez • Cameron Russell • Ash Sanders • Judith D. Schwartz • Patricia Smith • Emily Stengel • Sarah Stillman • Leah Cardamore Stokes • Amanda Sturgeon • Maggie Thomas • Heather McTeer Toney • Alexandria Villaseñor • Alice Walker • Amy Westervelt • Jane Zelikova
