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Book Power Balance in the Consumption Sphere

Download or read book Power Balance in the Consumption Sphere written by Roberta Sassatelli and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recoge: 1. Consumer society and the aggregation of consumer interests -- 2. Contemporary consumption practices: structural and subjective dimensions -- 3. The organization of consumers protection: from interest to rights -- 4. The state and the market: which role for consumer protection? -- 5. The collective action dimension. who pressures for whom? -- 6. Constructing a defendable actor. rethinking the consumer -- 7. Some conclusive remarks on the scope of consumer protection organizations.

Book Power Balance in the Competition Sphere

Download or read book Power Balance in the Competition Sphere written by Roberta Sassatelli and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Consumer Capitalism

Download or read book Consumer Capitalism written by Gunnar Trumbull and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The unfettered marketplace, in which uncertainty rules and the admonition caveat emptor ('let the buyer beware') dictates each consumer decision, has today virtually disappeared. Consumers have become the focus of intensive economic policymaking designed to protect them from the risks and disappointments of the market.... Today, arguably no other economic actor in the advanced industrial countries--not the investor, not the worker, not the welfare recipient--enjoys a more thorough set of legal and institutional protections than the modern consumer when he or she enters the corner store."--from the IntroductionGunnar Trumbull investigates the origins of national systems of consumer protection in France and Germany, where, in the early 1970s, consumer groups and producers organized to advance their own ideas about the identity and interests of the affluent consumer. Through a comparison of eight areas of policy--product liability law, product safety standards and recall, misleading advertising, comparative product tests, product labeling, quality standards, consumer contracts, and pricing--Trumbull shows that different conceptions of the consumer interest emerged in the two countries. The result was the development of distinctive national consumption regimes, which have in turn influenced the market strategies of domestic producers. Trumbull's findings help to clarify distinctive national approaches to recent product crises--including cases of BSE and genetically modified foods. His research suggests that, in the age of consumer capitalism, national competitiveness may hinge not only on endowments of labor and capital, but also on the institutional forms of national consumption.

Book Ordinary Consumption

Download or read book Ordinary Consumption written by Jukka Groncow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sociology of consumption has concentrated unduly on the more spectacular and visual aspects of contemporary consumer behaviour, thereby constructing an unbalanced and misleading view. This collection emphasises ordinary rather than extraordinary items, routine and repetitive behaviour rather than conscious decision-making. It studies practical contexts of use rather than decisions to purchase and analyses collective identification rather than personal identity. Each essay argues one or more of these points, for the most part using new empirical material from several different national contexts. The topics analysed include shopping in Taiwan, second-home ownership in France, environmental considerations concerning food choice in Denmark, the take up of new domestic technologies in Finland and kitchen design in England. Key concepts like tradition, routine and habit are clarified and new conceptual distinctions are made, with the book defending theoretical approaches deriving from Simmel, Weber, Durkheim and Bourdieu. Ordinary Consumption promotes a distinctive approach to the understanding of the central practices of consumer society, it is a book with a controversial message, one which will be a source of debate about the appropriate agenda for future research.

Book Strength in Numbers

Download or read book Strength in Numbers written by Gunnar Trumbull and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many consumers feel powerless in the face of big industry’s interests. And the dominant view of economic regulators (influenced by Mancur Olson’s book The Logic of Collective Action, published in 1965) agrees with them. According to this view, diffuse interests like those of consumers are too difficult to organize and too weak to influence public policy, which is determined by the concentrated interests of industrial-strength players. Gunnar Trumbull makes the case that this view represents a misreading of both the historical record and the core logic of interest representation. Weak interests, he reveals, quite often emerge the victors in policy battles. Based on a cross-national set of empirical case studies focused on the consumer, retail, credit, pharmaceutical, and agricultural sectors, Strength in Numbers develops an alternative model of interest representation. The central challenge in influencing public policy, Trumbull argues, is not organization but legitimation. How do diffuse consumer groups convince legislators that their aims are more legitimate than industry’s? By forging unlikely alliances among the main actors in the process: activists, industry, and regulators. Trumbull explains how these “legitimacy coalitions” form around narratives that tie their agenda to a broader public interest, such as expanded access to goods or protection against harm. Successful legitimizing tactics explain why industry has been less powerful than is commonly thought in shaping agricultural policy in Europe and pharmaceutical policy in the United States. In both instances, weak interests carried the day.

Book Consumer Culture

Download or read book Consumer Culture written by Roberta Sassatelli and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thorough and wide-ranging synthetic account of social scientific research on consumption which will set the standard for the second generation of textbooks on cultures of consumption." - Alan Warde, University of Manchester "The multi-disciplinary nature of the book provides new and revealing insights, and Sassatelli conveys brilliantly the heterogeneity and ambivalent nature of consumer identities, consumer practices and consumer cultures... Newcomers to consumer culture will find this an invaluable primer and introducton to the major concepts and ideas, while those familiar with the field will find Sassatelli′s sharp analysis and discussion both refreshing and inspiring." - James Skinner, Journal of Sociology "This is a model of what a text book ought to be. Over the past decade the original debates about consumption have been overlaid by a vast amount of detailed research, and it seems unimaginable that a single text couuld do justice to all of these. To do so would involve as much a commitment to depth as to breadth. I was quite astonished at how well Sassatelli succeeds in balancing the two... Ultimately, it′s the book that I would trust to help people digest what we now have discovered about consumption and start from a much more mature and reflective foundation to consider what more we might yet do." - Daniel Miller, Material World Showing the cultural and institutional processes that have brought the notion of the ′consumer′ to life, this book guides the reader on a comprehensive journey through the history of how we have come to understand ourselves as consumers in a consumer society and reveals the profound ambiguities and ambivalences inherent within. While rooted in sociology, Sassatelli draws on the traditions of history, anthropology, geography and economics to provide: a history of the rise of consumer culture around the world a richly illustrated analysis of theory from neo-classical economics, to critical theory, to theories of practice and ritual de-commoditization a compelling discussion of the politics underlying our consumption practices. An exemplary introduction to the history and theory of consumer culture, this book provides nuanced answers to some of the most central questions of our time.

Book The Oxford Handbook of Business and Government

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Business and Government written by David Coen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 804 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business is one of the major power centres in modern society. The state seeks to check and channel that power so as to serve broader public policy objectives. However, if the way in which business is governed is ineffective or over burdensome, it may become more difficult to achieve desired goals such as economic growth or higher levels of employment. In a period of international economic crisis, the study of how business and government relate to each other in different countries is of more central importance than ever. These relationships have been studied from a number of different disciplinary perspectives - business studies, economics, economic history, law, and political science - and all of these are represented in this handbook. The first part of the book provides an introduction to the ways in which five different disciplines have approached the study of business and government. The second section, on the firm and the state, looks at how these entities interact in different settings, emphasising such phenomena as the global firm and varieties of capitalism. The third section examines how business interacts with government in different parts of the world, including the United States, the EU, China, Japan and South America. The fourth section reviews changing patterns of market governance through a unifying theme of the role of regulation. Business-government relations can play out in divergent ways in different policy and the fifth section examines the contrasts between different key arenas such as competition policy, trade policy, training policy and environmental policy. The volume provides an authoritative overview with chapters by leading authorities on the current state of knowledge of business-government relations, but also points to ways in which this work might be developed in the future, e.g., through a political theory of the firm.

Book Sustainable Development and Planning VII

Download or read book Sustainable Development and Planning VII written by Ö. Özçevik and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 1147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the proceedings of the seventh in a series of biennial conferences on the topic of sustainable regional development that began in 2003. Organised by the Wessex Institute, the conference series provides a common forum for all scientists specialising in the range of subjects included within sustainable development and planning. In order to ensure that planning and development can meet our present needs without compromising future generations, planners, environmentalists, architects, engineers, policy makers, and economists must work together The use of modern technologies in planning gives us new potential to monitor and prevent environmental degradation. In recent years, in many countries an increase in spatial problems has led to planning crises. Planning problems are often associated with uneven development, deterioration of the quality of urban life, and destruction of the environment. The increasing urbanisation of the world, coupled with the global issues of environmental pollution, resource shortage, and economic restructuring, demand that we ensure a decent quality of life for our cities. Other environments, such as rural areas, forests, coastal regions, and mountains, face their own problems that urgently require solutions in order to avoid irreversible damage. Effective strategies for management should consider planning and regional development, two closely related disciplines, and emphasise the demand to handle these matters in an integrated way. The papers in the book cover such topics as: Regional Planning; City Planning; Sustainability and the Built Environment; Cultural Heritage; Environmental Management; Environmental Policies and Planning; Sustainable Tourism; Resources Management; Social and Political Issues; Rural Developments; Sustainable Solutions in Emerging Countries; Transportation; Energy Resources; Environmental Economics; Sustainable Assessment; Sustainable Development Indicators; Sustainability Modelling; Governance; Resilience; Community Planning; Planning for Equality; Quality of Life.

Book Irresistible Empire

    Book Details:
  • Author : Victoria De Grazia
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2006-10-31
  • ISBN : 0674260120
  • Pages : 609 pages

Download or read book Irresistible Empire written by Victoria De Grazia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most significant conquest of the twentieth century may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over Europe’s bourgeois civilization. It is this little-understood but world-shaking campaign that unfolds in Irresistible Empire, Victoria de Grazia’s brilliant account of how the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today. De Grazia describes how, as America’s market empire advanced with confidence through Europe, spreading consumer-oriented capitalism, all alternative strategies fell before it—first the bourgeois lifestyle, then the Third Reich’s command consumption, and finally the grand experiment of Soviet-style socialist planning. Tracing the peculiar alliance that arrayed New World salesmanship, statecraft, and standardized goods against the Old World’s values of status, craft, and good taste, Victoria de Grazia follows the United States’ market-driven imperialism through a vivid series of cross-Atlantic incursions by the great inventions of American consumer society. We see Rotarians from Duluth in the company of the high bourgeoisie of Dresden; working-class spectators in ramshackle French theaters conversing with Garbo and Bogart; Stetson-hatted entrepreneurs from Kansas in the midst of fussy Milanese shoppers; and, against the backdrop of Rome’s Spanish Steps and Paris’s Opera Comique, Fast Food in a showdown with advocates for Slow Food. Demonstrating the intricacies of America’s advance, de Grazia offers an intimate and historical dimension to debates over America’s exercise of soft power and the process known as Americanization. She raises provocative questions about the quality of the good life, democracy, and peace that issue from the vaunted victory of mass consumer culture.

Book Consumer Culture and Postmodernism

Download or read book Consumer Culture and Postmodernism written by Mike Featherstone and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2007-07-11 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this contemporary classic can claim to have put ′consumer culture′ on the map, certainly in relation to postmodernism. This expanded new edition includes: a fully revised preface that explores the developments in consumer culture since the first edition a major new chapter on ′Modernity and the Cultural Question′ an update on postmodernism and the development of contemporary theory after postmodernism an account of multiple and alternative modernities the challenges of consumer culture in Japan and China. The result is a book that shakes the boundaries of debate, from one of the foremost writers on culture and postmodernism of the present day.

Book Generation Y in Consumer and Labour Markets

Download or read book Generation Y in Consumer and Labour Markets written by Anders Parment and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generation Y in Consumer and Labour Markets explores the role of people born in the late 1970s and 1980s as consumers and coworkers in an emerging post-modernist society. Having grown up in a branded society overcrowded with commercial messages and a never-ending supply of choices and opportunities, Generation Y not only influences consumption patterns, they also bring their values to work life, thus changing the attitudes towards the employee-employer relationship and how work is being done. Generation Y particularly see work as a venue of self-realization and the boundaries between work and leisure time are becoming blurred—thus the consumer and labor markets converge in some critical dimensions. This book delves into the substantial research body on characteristics and behaviors of the Generation Y, including their relation to other generations and the role of understanding generations in developing effective and attractive organizations. It further outlines the experiences and best practice for attracting, recruiting, selling to, and communicating with Generation Y, based on the author’s experiences from hundreds of organizations where he has been involved as a consultant – offering the reader a better understanding of generations in marketing research, and the impact of generations in employee-employer relations.

Book Organizing and Organizations

Download or read book Organizing and Organizations written by Stephen Fineman and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-05-25 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fully revised and updated edition conveys the lived experience of being and working in organisations, while at the same time introducing students to key concepts, research and literature in organisational analysis.

Book Management of Civic Energy and the Green Transformation

Download or read book Management of Civic Energy and the Green Transformation written by Anna Brzozowska and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An increase in the global demand for energy, combined with an increase in the price of energy and energy products, has advanced the growing interest in renewable energy technologies and the wide implementation of renewable energy sources (RES). Member States of the European Union have been global leaders in the use of renewable energy and in the transition to new technologies. Management of Civic Energy and the Green Transformation: A Case Study of Poland examines the current issues of transitioning from traditional energy sources to newer, renewable energy sources, while balancing supplies, and working synergistically with existing, conventional sources. Features: Offers a balanced blend of theory and practice of development economics for renewable energy implementation Presents a case study of how Poland is working towards their energy transition, and provides other examples and recent statistical data from other European Union countries Analyses the legal and systemic conditions supporting the development of renewable energy systems and offers direction on the potential for the green development of the civic energy sector

Book Energy Sector  A Systemic Analysis of Economy  Foreign Trade and Legal Regulations

Download or read book Energy Sector A Systemic Analysis of Economy Foreign Trade and Legal Regulations written by Oleg V. Inshakov and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive economic and legal study of the theoretical and practical aspects of the problems of increasing energy efficiency; self-motivation of energy saving by business entities within the framework of their corporate responsibility; regulatory mechanisms to stimulate energy conservation in the economy; civil-law regulation of foreign trade turnover of energy resources between economic entities of the Russian Federation and companies of member states of international integration associations – the CIS, EEMP, the EU and BRICS. It argues that technological energy saving plays a key role in reducing the energy intensity and increasing the energy efficiency of the economy, and substantiates the need for institutional support – including legal support for the participation of the Russian Federation – in various forms of international cooperation. Lastly, based on an analysis of current legislation, programs and recommendations, judicial and contractual practices, customs and trade procedures, it offers proposals for the developing, improving and unifying civil law regulation of obligations in the sphere of international trade in energy resources, as well as methodological recommendations for drafting foreign trade contracts in the energy sector.

Book Bulletin

Download or read book Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Energy Research Abstracts

Download or read book Energy Research Abstracts written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: