Download or read book The Politics and Pleasures of Consuming Differently written by Kate Soper and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing representations and practices of consumption in the Western world, this book offers a perspective on the themes of counter-consumerism, ecological crisis and sustainability. It is suitable for students in media, cultural, and literary studies as well as in sociology and environmental studies.
Download or read book The Politics of Pleasure written by Kate Soper, et al and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Efforts to green the economy and distribute wealth more equitably often sound like a program for joyless lives: make do with less and give up your pleasures. To philosopher Kate Soper, this gets it all wrong. Leading this issue’s forum, she urges that we see “post-growth living” as an opportunity for greater pleasure, not less. A simpler life of “alternative hedonism”—built around local community and abundant free time—could make us happier and healthier while giving our overextended planet a new lease on life. Forum respondents, including Green New Deal economist Robert Pollin and Kenyan activist Nanjala Nyabola, embrace Soper’s call to remake society but question her prescription. The result is a wide-ranging debate about the limitations of lifestyle critique, the value of economic growth, and the kinds of alternatives that are possible. Other contributions focus on the connections between pleasure and gender, including the joys of collective action and care work, the ordinary pleasures of Black motherhood, the misogyny of Positive Psychology, and the links between good sex and democracy. Together they imagine what it will take to make a pleasurable life possible for everyone.
Download or read book The Politics of Consumption written by Martin Daunton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects and commodities have frequently been studied to assess their position within consumer - or material - culture, but all too rarely have scholars examined the politics that lie behind that culture. This book fills the gap and explores the political and state structures that have shaped the consumer and the nature of his or her consumption. From medieval sumptuary laws to recent debates in governments about consumer protection, consumption has always been seen as a highly political act that must be regulated, directed or organized according to the political agendas of various groups. An internationally renowned group of experts looks at the emergence of the rational consuming individual in modern economic thought, the moral and ideological values consumers have attached to their relationships with commodities, and how the practices and theories of consumer citizenship have developed alongside and within the expanding state. How does consumer identity become available to people and how do they use it? How is consumption negotiated in a dictatorship? Are material politics about state politics, consumer politics, or the relationship between these and consumer practices?From the specifics of the politics of consumption in the French Revolution - what was the status of rum? How complicated did a vinegar recipe have to be before the resultant product qualified as 'luxury'? - to the highly contentious twentieth-century debates over American political economy, this original book traces the relationships among political cultures, consumers and citizenship from the eighteenth century to the present.
Download or read book Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology written by Hubert Zapf and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecocriticism has emerged as one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing fields of recent literary and cultural studies. From its regional origins in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American academia, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, which involves a decidedly transdisciplinary and transnational paradigm that promises to return a new sense of relevance to research and teaching in the humanities. A distinctive feature of the present handbook in comparison with other survey volumes is the combination of ecocriticism with cultural ecology, reflecting an emphasis on the cultural transformation of ecological processes and on the crucial role of literature, art, and other forms of cultural creativity for the evolution of societies towards sustainable futures. In state-of-the-art contributions by leading international scholars in the field, this handbook maps some of the most important developments in contemporary ecocritical thought. It introduces key theoretical concepts, issues, and directions of ecocriticism and cultural ecology and demonstrates their relevance for the analysis of texts and other cultural phenomena.
Download or read book Post Growth Living written by Kate Soper and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life. The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on? In Post-Growth Living, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.
Download or read book Beyond the Consumption Bubble written by Karin Ekström and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a diverse set of expert scholars to enliven and sharpen the debate about the ways in which consumption affects society today. Research on consumption can shed light on many fundamental questions, such as the character of society, including social and cultural dimensions; the relations between the generations; dependency of technology and the risks involved; the rise of Asia and its potential consumption preferences; the question of whether we must continuously increase our consumption to avoid a recession and whether this is ecologically sustainable.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Food History written by Jeffrey M. Pilcher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food matters, not only as a subject of study in its own right, but also as a medium for conveying critical messages about capitalism, the environment, and social inequality to diverse audiences. Recent scholarship on the subject draws from both a pathbreaking body of secondary literature and an inexhaustible wealth of primary sources--from ancient Chinese philosophical tracts to McDonald's menus--contributing new perspectives to the historical study of food, culture, and society, and challenging the limits of history itself. The Oxford Handbook of Food History places existing works in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological, and geographic boundaries while also suggesting new routes for future research. The twenty-seven essays in this book are organized into five sections: historiography, disciplinary approaches, production, circulation, and consumption of food. The first two sections examine the foundations of food history, not only in relation to key developments in the discipline of history itself--such as the French Annales school and the cultural turn--but also in anthropology, sociology, geography, pedagogy, and the emerging Critical Nutrition Studies. The following three sections sketch various trajectories of food as it travels from farm to table, factory to eatery, nature to society. Each section balances material, cultural, and intellectual concerns, whether juxtaposing questions of agriculture and the environment with the notion of cookbooks as historical documents; early human migrations with modern culinary tourism; or religious customs with social activism. In its vast, interdisciplinary scope, this handbook brings students and scholars an authoritative guide to a field with fresh insights into one of the most fundamental human concerns.
Download or read book Ethical Consumption Practices and Identities written by Yana Manyukhina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages with the topic of ethical consumption and applies a critical-realist approach to explore the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. By integrating Margaret Archer’s theory of identity formation and Christian Coff’s work on food ethics, it develops a theoretical account explicating the generative mechanism that gives rise to ethical consumer practices and identities. The second part of the book presents the findings from a qualitative study with self-perceived ethical food consumers to demonstrate the fit between the proposed theoretical mechanism and the actual experiences of ethically committed consumers. Through integrating agency-focused and socio-centric perspectives on consumer behaviour, the book develops a more comprehensive and balanced approach to conceptualising and studying consumption processes and phenomena.
Download or read book The Play of Political Culture Emotion and Identity written by Candida Yates and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a uniquely 'psycho-cultural' take on the emotional dynamics of UK political culture this book uses theories and research in psychoanalysis, cultural and media studies and political sociology. It explores the cultural and emotional processes that shape our relationship to politics in a media age, referencing Joanna Lumley to Nigel Farage.
Download or read book Reimagining Social Movements written by Henri Lustiger-Thaler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social scientific study of social movements remains largely shaped by categories, concepts and debates that emerged in North Atlantic societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, namely resource mobilization, framing, collective identity, and new social movements. It is now, however, increasingly clear that we are experiencing a profound period of social transformation associated with online interactivity, informationalization and globalization. Written by leading experts from around the world, the chapters in this book explore emerging forms of movement and action not only in terms of the industrialized countries of the North Atlantic, but recognizes the importance of globalizing forms of action and culture emerging from other continents and societies. This is the first book to bring together key authors exploring this transformation in terms of action, culture and movements. It not only engages with critical transformations in the nature of collective action, but also makes a significant contribution to the globalizing of sociology.
Download or read book Post Growth Living written by Kate Soper and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life. The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on? In Post-Growth Living, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.
Download or read book Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times written by Pamela Odih and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times traces daringly transgressive convergences between cultural politics and global advertising media. It engages with a range of interpolations between cultural politics and advertising technologies including: the governmental rationality of neoliberal vistas, transgressive aesthetics and the cultural politics of representation, the political sign-economy of citizen branding, techno-political convergences between the social and political, and the marking of a new exciting geo-political terrain for cultural politics in global times. Tracing global advertising practices to the cultural politics commonly manifested in the postmodern political caesura of advertising, this book makes use of extensive case studies, whilst drawing on the work of Baudrillard, Giroux, Foucault, Castells and Latour to illustrate the manner in which advertising continues to revolutionize the political sphere. As such, it will be of interest to a range of readers across media studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Download or read book Sustainable Consumption and the Good Life written by Karen Lykke Syse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to live a good life in a time when the planet is overheating, the human population continues to steadily reach new peaks, oceans are turning more acidic, and fertile soils the world over are eroding at unprecedented rates? These and other simultaneous harms and threats demand creative responses at several levels of consideration and action. Written by an international team of contributors, this book examines in-depth the relationship between sustainability and the good life. Drawing on wealth of theories, from social practice theory to architecture and design theory, and disciplines, such as anthropology and environmental philosophy, this volume promotes participatory action-research based approaches to encourage sustainability and wellbeing at local levels. It covers topical issues such the politics of prosperity, globalization, and indigenous notions of "the good life" and happiness". Finally it places a strong emphasis on food at the heart of the sustainability and good life debate, for instance binding the global south to the north through import and exports, or linking everyday lives to ideals within the dream of the good life, with cookbooks and shows. This interdisciplinary book provides invaluable insights for researchers and postgraduate students interested in the contribution of the environmental humanities to the sustainability debate.
Download or read book Cultural Studies and Anti Consumerism written by Sam Binkley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anti-consumerism has become a conspicuous part of contemporary activism and popular culture, from ‘culture jams’ and actions against Esso and Starbucks, through the downshifting and voluntary simplicity movements, the rise of ethical consumption and organic and the high profile of films and books like Supersize Me! and No Logo. A rising awareness of labor conditions in overseas plants, the environmental impact of intensified consumer lifestyles and the effects of neo-liberal privatization have all stimulated such popular cultural opposition. However, the subject of anti-consumerism has received relatively little theoretical attention – particularly from cultural studies, which is surprising given the discipline’s historical investments in extending radical politics and exploring the complexities of consumer desire. This book considers how the expanding resources of contemporary cultural theory might be drawn upon to understand anti-consumerist identifications and practices; how railing against the social and cultural effects of consumerism has a complex past as well as present; and it pays attention to the interplays between the different movements of anti-consumerism and the particular modes of consumer culture in which they exist. In addition, as well as ‘using’ cultural studies to analyse anti-consumerism, it also asks how such anti-consumerist practices and discourse challenges some of the presumptions and positions currently held in cultural studies. This book was previously published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.
Download or read book Culture of the Slow written by N. Osbaldiston and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the world, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the tempo of modern life. Described simply as the 'slow phenomenon', this volume explores this new brand of living that entails not simply slowing down but an embracing of alternative activities that promote meaning, thoughtfulness, engagement and authenticity.
Download or read book Managing Ethical Consumption in Tourism written by Clare Weeden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neither the tourism industry nor the tourist has responded convincingly to calls for more responsibility in tourism. Ethical consumption places pressure on travellers to manage a large number of decisions at a time when hedonic motivations threaten to override other priorities. Unsurprisingly, tensions occur and compromises are made. This book offers new insight into the motivations that influence tourists and their decision-making. It explores how consumers navigate the responsible tourism market place and provide a rich understanding of the challenges facing those seeking to encourage travellers to become responsible. Not only will the book provide an improved interpretation of the complexity of ethical consumption in tourism, but it will also offer a variety of stakeholders a deeper understanding of: the key challenges facing stakeholders in the production and consumption of responsible tourism how ethical consumers can be influenced to consume ethically the gaps in consumer knowledge and how to broaden the appeal for individuals to make more informed ethical decisions how tour operators can respond to this emerging market by innovative product development how to design informative marketing communications to encourage a greater uptake for responsible holidays how destinations can tailor their products to the ethical consumer market how destination communities and management organisations can target responsible tourists through the provision of sustainable alternatives to mass-market holiday products. Written by leading academics from all over the world, this timely and important volume will be valuable reading for ubdergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics interested in Tourism Ethics, Ethical Consumption and the global issue of Sustainability.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste written by Carl A. Zimring and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 1403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologists and anthropologists have long studied artifacts of refuse from the distant past as a portal into ancient civilizations, but examining what we throw away today tells a story in real time and becomes an important and useful tool for academic study. Trash is studied by behavioral scientists who use data compiled from the exploration of dumpsters to better understand our modern society and culture. Why does the average American household send 470 pounds of uneaten food to the garbage can on an annual basis? How do different societies around the world cope with their garbage in these troubled environmental times? How does our trash give insight into our attitudes about gender, class, religion, and art? The Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste explores the topic across multiple disciplines within the social sciences and ranges further to include business, consumerism, environmentalism, and marketing to comprise an outstanding reference for academic and public libraries.
