Download or read book The Consumption Reader written by David B. Clarke and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consumption affects every aspect of the contemporary world, from the most intimate moments of everyday life to the great geopolitical struggles that have been set in train by the forces of globalization. Consumer culture has recast the world in its own image, and we are only just beginning to make sense of the enormous social, political, economic, moral, and environmental implications. By drawing from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, The Consumption Reader presents the history and geography of consumer societies, the social and political aspects of consumer culture, and the discourses and practices of consumption. It focuses in particular on the subjects, objects, spaces, and technologies of consumer societies, and provides an accessible insight into the theoretical debates that surround the interest in consumption and consumerism. This reader offers an essential selection of the best work on the Consumer Society. The material is arranged to develop the student's knowledge through a logical progression, but it may also be read selectively to aid understanding of key issues, ideas, and authors. Students will appreciate its scope, clarity and ease of use, and the engaging, surprising, and thought provoking manner in which it brings together a diverse range of topics and theoretical perspectives.
Download or read book The Consumption Reader written by David B. Clarke and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader offers an essential selection of the best work on the Consumer Society. It brings together in an engaging, surprising, and thought provoking way, a diverse range of topics and theoretical perspectives.
Download or read book The Consumer Society Reader written by Juliet Schor and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Consumer Society Reader features a range of key works on the nature and evolution of consumer society. Included here is much-discussed work by leading critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Susan Bordo, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, and Janice Radway. Also included is a full range of classics, such as Frankfurt School writers Adorno and Horkheimer on the Culture Industry; Thorstein Veblen's oft-cited writings on "conspicuous consumption"; Betty Friedan on the housewife's central role in consumer society; John Kenneth Galbraith's influential analysis of the "affluent society"; and Pierre Bourdieu on the notion of "taste." "Consumer society--the 'air we breathe,' as George Orwell has described it--disappears during economic downtruns and political crises. It becomes visible again when prosperity seems secure, cultural transformation is too rapid, or enviornmental disasters occur. Such is the time in which we now find ourselves. As the roads clog with gas-guzzling SUVs and McMansions proliferate in the suburbs, the nation is once again asking fundamental questions about lifestyle. Has 'luxury fever,' to use Robert Frank's phrase, gotten out of hand? Are we really comfortable with the 'Brand Is Me' mentality? Have we gone too far in pursuit of the almighty dollar, to the detriment of our families, communities, and natural enviornment? Even politicians, ordinarily impermeable to questions about consumerism, are voicing doubts... [and] polls suggest majorities of Americans feel the country has become too materialistic, too focused on getting and spending, and increasingly removed from long-standing non-materialist values." —From the introduction by Douglas B. Holt and Juliet B. Schor
Download or read book Beyond the Numbers written by Laurie Ann Mazur and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Numbers presents a thought-provoking series of essays by leading authorities on issues of population and consumption. The essays both define the poles of debate and explore common ground beyond the polarized rhetoric. Specific chapters consider each of the broad topics addressed at the International Conference on Population and Development held in September 1994 in Cairo, Egypt. The essays are supplemented by sidebars and short articles featuring more-impassioned voices that highlight issues of interest not fully explored in the overviews. As well as providing a sense of the difficulties involved in dealing with these issues, the essays make clear that constructive action is possible. Topics covered include: the interrelationships between population, economic growth, consumption, and development the history of population and family planning efforts gender equality and the empowerment of women reproductive rights, reproductive health, family planning, health and mortality
Download or read book The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader written by Jennifer Scanlon and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collection of readings and archival materials examining the gendered relationship between the home and consumer culture, identity through purchasing, the supply side of consumer culture and the ways in which consumers embrace, resist and manipulate the messages and activities of consumer culture. Topics include: shoplifting, racism in advertising, the Zoot suit, Esquire magazine, Dockers, lesbianism, narcissism.
Download or read book The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Consumption written by Tim Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Consumption of Culture 1600 1800 written by Ann Bermingham and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Culture and Consumption written by Grant David McCracken and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1990-11-22 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book compiles and integrates highly innovative work aimed at bridging the fields of anthropology and consumer behavior." —Journal of Consumer Affairs " . . . fascinating . . . ambitious and interesting . . . " —Canadian Advertising Foundation Newsletter " . . . an anthropological dig into consumerism brimming with original thought . . . " —The Globe and Mail "Grant McCracken has written a provocative book that puts consumerism in its place in Western society—at the centre." —Report on Business Magazine " . . . a stimulating addition to knowledge and theory about the interrelationship of culture and consumption." —Choice "[McCracken's] synthesis of anthropological and consumer studies material will give historians new ideas and methods to integrate into their thinking." —Maryland Historian "The book offers a fresh and much needed cultural interpretation of consumption." —Journal of Consumer Policy "The volume will help balance the prevailing cognitive and social psychological cast of consumer research and should stimulate more comprehensive investigation into consumer behavior." —Journal of Marketing Research " . . . broad scope, enthusiasm and imagination . . . a significant contribution to the literature on consumption history, consumer behavior, and American material culture." —Winterhur Portfolio "For this is a superb book, a definitive exploration of its subject that makes use of the full range of available literature." —American Journal of Sociology "McCracken's book is a fine synthesis of a new current of thought that strives to create an interdisciplinary social science of consumption behaviors, a current to which folklorists have much to contribute." —Journal of American Folklore This provocative book takes a refreshing new view of the culture of consumption. McCracken examines the interplay of culture and consumer behavior from the anthropologist's point of view and provides new insights into the way we view ourselves and our society.
Download or read book Obsessive Consumption written by Kate Bingaman-Burt and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since February 5, 2005 the author has drawn a picture of something she purchased each day. This is a selection of these items....
Download or read book Consumption written by Kevin Patterson and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-01-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consumption is a haunting story of a woman’s life marked by struggle and heartbreak, but it is also much more. It stunningly evokes life in the far north, both past and present, and offers a scathing dissection of the effects of consumer life on both north and south. It does so in an unadorned, elegiac style, moving between times, places and people in beautiful counterpoint. But it is also a gripping detective story, and features medical reportage of the highest order. In 1962 at the age of ten, Victoria is diagnosed with tuberculosis and must leave her home in the Arctic for a sanatorium in The Pas, Manitoba. Six years will pass before she returns to the north, years she spends learning English and Cree and becoming accustomed to life in the south. When she does move home, the sudden change in lifestyle leads sixteen-year-old Victoria to feel like a stranger in her own family. At the same time, Inuit culture is undergoing some equally bewildering changes: Cheetos are being eaten alongside walrus meat, and dog teams are slowly being replaced by snowmobiles. Victoria eventually settles back into the community and marries John Robertson, a Hudson’s Bay store manager, and they raise three children together. Although their marriage is initially close, Robertson will always be Kablunauk, a southerner, and this becomes a point of contention between them. When Robertson becomes involved in arrangements to open a diamond mine in Rankin Inlet, the family’s financial condition improves, but their emotional life becomes ever more fraught: their son, Pauloosie, draws ever closer to his hunter grandfather as their daughters, Marie and Justine, develop a taste for Guns N’ Roses. Several other richly imagined characters deepen Patterson’s unsentimental portrait of both north and south. They include Dr. Keith Balthazar, a flailing doctor from New York whose despairing affection for Victoria leads to tragedy, and Victoria’s brother, Tagak, who finds that the diamond mine allows him a success and maturity he could never attain within his traditional culture. The novel deftly tracks the meaning of “consumption” in both north and south. Consumption is tuberculosis, an illness previously unknown among the Inuit that wrenches Victoria from her home as a child, changing her family relationships, her outlook on the world and her entire future. As such consumption is a harbinger of the diseases of affluence, such as diabetes and heart disease that come to afflict the Inuit over the four-decade span of the novel. Consumption also defines the culture of post-industrial, urban North America, captured here through Keith Balthazar’s troubled relatives in New Jersey. And when the diamond mine opens in Rankin Inlet, its consumption of northern natural resources seems to symbolize Canada’s relationship with the Arctic and southern encroachments on the Inuit way of life. Consumption is a sweeping novel, of the kind one rarely encounters today: it is an essential book for Canadians to linger over, learn from, and remember.
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 Conspicuous Consumption written by Thorstein Veblen and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-08-25 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.
Download or read book The why of Consumption written by S. Ratneshwar and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, the authors draw from branches of psychology, decision theory, sociology and cultural anthropology to present a diverse selection of critical perspectives on consumer motivation.
Download or read book The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader written by Jennifer Scanlon and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this consumer culture studies anthology, 23 reprinted essays (1934-98) consider both the empowering and disempowering elements of consumerism. In her introduction, Scanlon (women's studies, Plattsburgh State U. of New York) views consumer culture as a collaborative process, not simply a matter of perpetrators and victims. The themes the essays address are: stretching the boundaries of the domestic sphere; you are what you buy; the message makers; and sexuality, pleasure and resistance in consumer culture. The book features bandw illustrations promoting the cults of domesticity and identity through proper consumption. It lacks an index. c. Book News Inc.
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 A Consumers Republic written by Lizabeth Cohen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.
Download or read book Consumption and Consumer Society written by Colin Campbell and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of high quality, largely previously published essays, analyses a range of controversies in the field of the sociology of culture and consumption. Campbell made a major contribution to the development of this field and he has a clear and coherent theoretical position which he employs to comment on interesting disputes among scholars seeking to understand consumer culture. Containing a brand new expansive essay reflecting on consumption in the age of a pandemic and drawing out some of the conceptual and practical implications of the relationship between wants and needs, science and norms, this synthesis will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers of consumption, consumer and cultural sociology.
