Download or read book The Hipster Economy written by Alessandro Gerosa and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-01-23 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most diverse contexts such as food and drinks, clothing, music, tourism and the digital sphere, even leading to the resurgence of apparently obsolescent modes of production such as craft. It also significantly transforms urban areas, their local economies and development. The Hipster Economy analyses this complex set of related phenomena to argue that the quest for authenticity has been a driver of Western societies from the emersion of capitalism and industrial society to today. From this premise, the book advances multiple original contributions. First, it explains why and how authenticity has become a fundamental value orienting consumers' taste in late modern capitalism; second, it proposes a novel conceptualisation of the aesthetic regime of consumption; third, the book constitutes the first detailed analysis of the resurgence of the neo-craft industries, their entrepreneurs, and the economic imaginary of consumption underpinning them, and fourth, it analyses how the hipster economy is impacting the urban space, favouring new logic of urban development with contrasting outcomes. Praise for The Hipster Economy ‘The term “hipster” usually evokes frivolity, while the concept of “authenticity” has been studied so extensively it’s getting hard to find a novel use for it. In this lovely new book, Gerosa has given hipsterism the serious analysis it deserves. Through clear, unforced writing, he convincingly reveals the importance of a distinct form of hipster aesthetics, one based on authentic experience, for today’s consumption-based economy. Gerosa has successfully enlivened the conversations around authenticity and started new ones around late capitalism’s regimes of accumulation. This book is a fine achievement.’ Richard E. Ocejo, CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College ‘The Hipster Economy is a very welcome addition to sociological discussions of authenticity and consumer culture. Ethnographic vignettes of “crafty capitalism” and passionate “taste dealers” enliven a theoretically rich argument that hipsterism should be treated not as a subculture, but as an aesthetic regime typifying contemporary life. Using the “hipster” as a lens, Gerosa provides a masterful tour of post-Fordist changes to modes of capitalism, patterns of urban development, and the material practices and subjective experiences of work, while charting the long-term development and contemporary expression of authenticity as a master narrative in consumer culture.’ Jennifer Smith Maguire, Sheffield Hallam University

Download or read book The Cultural Politics of Anti Elitism written by Moritz Ege and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on this theme as a cross-cutting entry point to provide transdisciplinary analysis of current conjunctures and their contradictions, drawing on examples from popular culture and media, politics, fashion, labour and spatial arrangements. Using the toolboxes of media and discourse analysis, hegemony theory, ethnography, critical social psychology and cultural studies more broadly, the book surveys and theorizes the forms, the implications and the ambiguities and limits of anti-elitist formations in different parts of the world. Anti-elitist sentiments colour the contemporary political conjuncture as much as they shape pop cultural and media trends. Populists, right-wing authoritarian ones and others, direct their anger at cultural, political and, sometimes, economic elites while supporting other elites and creating new ones. At the same time, "elitist" knowledge and expertise, decision-making power and taste regimes are being questioned in societal transformations that are discussed much more positively under headlines such as participation or democratization. The book brings together a group of international, interdisciplinary case studies in order to better understand the ways in which the battle cry "against the elites" shapes current conjunctures and possible future politics, focusing on themes such as nationalist political discourse in India, Austria, the UK and Hungary, labour struggles and anti-oligarchy rhetoric in Russia, tax-avoiding elites and fiscal imaginaries, working-class agency, Melania Trump as a celebrity narrative in Slovenia, aesthetic codes of the Alt-Right, football hooliganism in Germany, "hipster hate" in German political discourse or the politics of expertise and anti-elite iconography in high fashion internationally. The book is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Download or read book The Sacred and the Profane written by Jake Kinzey and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sacred and the Profane is a work that combines local and global analysis to examine our age's often-talked about, but mostly misunderstood, 'mainstream subculture': the hipster. This book seeks to answer questions like, 'Why don't hipsters want to be called hipsters?' and 'Why do they act like they are different when they are just like all the other hipsters?' If you can't stand hipsters, are a hipster, or don't know what a hipster is, this book is for you.

Download or read book Fully Automated Luxury Communism written by Aaron Bastani and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first decade of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of these disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream remains the same. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics, a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone. In his first book, radical political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of nine billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history. Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone.

Download or read book Hipster Culture written by Heike Steinhoff and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-first century popular culture has given birth to a peculiar cultural figure: the hipster. Stereotypically associated with nerd glasses, beards and buns, boho clothing, and ironic T-shirts, hipsters represent a (post-)postmodern (post-)subculture whose style, aesthetics, and practices have increasingly become mainstream. Hipster Culture is the first comprehensive collection of original studies that address the hipster and hipster culture from a range of cultural studies perspectives. Analyzing the cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications of a wide range of phenomena prominently associated with hipster culture, the contributors bring their expertise and own research perspectives to bear, thus shaping the volume's transnational and intersectional approach. Chapters address global and local manifestations of hipster culture, processes of urban gentrification and cultural appropriation, alternative foodways and eclectic fashion styles, the significance of nostalgia, retro technologies and social media, and the aesthetics and cultural politics of literature, film, art, and music marked by self-reflexivity, irony, and a simultaneous longing for an earnest authenticity. Hipster Culture explores the diversification of hipster culture, sheds light on popular constructions of the hipster as cultural Other, and critically investigates hipster culture's entanglements with and challenges to dominant cultural discourses of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality.

Download or read book Acid Communism written by Mark Fisher and published by Pattern Books. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A short zine collecting an introduction to the concept by Matt Colquhoun that appeared in 'krisis journal for contemporary philosophy Issue 2, 2018: Marx from the Margins' and the unfinished introduction to the unfinished book on Acid Communism that Mark Fisher was working on before his death in 2017. "In this way ‘Acid’ is desire, as corrosive and denaturalising multiplicity, flowing through the multiplicities of communism itself to create alinguistic feedback loops; an ideological accelerator through which the new and previously unknown might be found in the politics we mistakenly think we already know, reinstantiating a politics to come." —Matt Colquhoun

Download or read book Decolonize Hipsters written by Grégory Pierrot and published by Decolonize That!. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few urban critters are more reviled than the hipster. They are notoriously difficult to define, and yet we know one when we see one. No wonder: they were among the global cultural phenomena that ushered in the 21st century. They have become a bulwark of mainstream culture, cultural commodity, status, butt of all jokes and ready-made meme. But frightening as it is to imagine, for more than a century hipsters have been lurking among us. Defined by their appearances and the cloud of meaning attached to them--the cool vanguard of gentrification, the personification of capitalism with a conscience--hipsters are all looks, and these looks are a visual timeline to America's past and present. Underlining this timeline is the pattern of American popular culture's love/hate/theft relationship with Black culture. Yet the pattern of recycling has reached a chilling point: the 21st century hipster made all possible past fads into new trends, including and especially the old uncool. In Decolonize Hipsters, Grégory Pierrot gives us a field guide to the phenomenon, a symptom and vanguard of the wave of aggressive white supremacist sentiment now oozing from around the globe.

Download or read book Hipsterism written by Tara Semple and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-30 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Open-Access-book utilises Hipsterism to demonstrate modes of identity, collectivity, conceptions and a whole spectrum of activities with varying degrees of commitment in contemporary society. Analysed through the lens of Modernity, Consumerism, and the New Spirit of Capitalism, it draws on qualitative research from two subsequent field stays in Berlin and is complemented by self-reflexion within the field. Young adults and their conceptions within modernity, capitalism and consumerism constitute a fundamental building block to understanding society. Little sociological work has been done in the field of Hipsterism, although it can function as a paradigm for western, affluent societies. With tools such as conscious consumption, conversations and ethical or creative work within a politically intended lifestyle, Hipsterism emerges as an attempt to navigate between individualism and collectivity. Resulting from these circumstances are a variety of forms of action, while searching for better ways to contribute and engage at the same time. Attempts to dissolve milieus and try to construct spaces where different cultures, classes and ethnicities are welcome might fail in spatial practice, but the practices in sum still leave a trace in (consumer) culture. All these activities hint at the potential of transformative and negotiating power that Hipsterism could have. This is an open access book.

Download or read book Money Greed and God written by Jay W. Richards and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute Jay W. Richards and bestselling author of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late and Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes, defends capitalism within the context of the Christian faith, revealing how entrepreneurial enterprise, based on hard work, honesty, and trust, actually fosters creativity and growth. In doing so, Money, Greed, and God exposes eight myths about capitalism, and demonstrates that a good Christian can be a good capitalist.

Download or read book Barista in the City written by Geoffrey Moss and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-23 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barista in the City examines the impact of paid employment and the contemporary neoliberal context on the subcultural lives of hipsters who are employed as baristas. This book’s analysis of Philadelphia baristas employed within specialty coffee shops suggests that the existing literature on the relationship between neoliberalism and urban subcultures needs to be amended. The subcultural participants discussed within previous studies lived intensely subcultural lives that were ultimately diminished due to processes of gentrification and displacement. The subcultural lives of the baristas investigated by the authors were greatly diminished from the very beginning. Neoliberal policies, and structures of class, race, gender, and gentrification intersected with their employment in ways that diminished their ability to establish lives that constitute a full-fledged subcultural alternative. The book presents a new theoretical perspective that could aid researchers who study urban subcultures. It also discusses the implications of its analysis for urban policy. This book is an essential update on previous scholarship pertaining to urban subcultures. It also contributes to existing literatures on baristas, hipsters, gentrification, and service sector employment within the city. It is suitable for students and scholars in Urban Sociology, Urban Studies, Cultural Studies, and the Sociology of Work.

Download or read book DIY Style written by Brent Luvaas and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with cheap digital technologies and a fiercely independent spirit, millions of young people from around the world have taken cultural production into their own hands, crafting their own clothing lines, launching their own record labels, and forging a vast, collaborative network of impassioned amateurs more interested in making than consuming. DIY Style tells the story of this international do-it-yourself (DIY) movement through a major case study of one of its biggest, but least known contingents: the "indie" music and fashion scene of the predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian island nation of Indonesia. Through rich ethnographic detail, in-depth historical analysis, and cutting-edge social theory, the book chronicles the rise of DIY culture in Indonesia, and also explores the phenomenon in Europe and the United States, painting an evocative portrait of vibrant communities who are not only making and distributing popular culture on their own terms, but working to tear down the barriers between production and consumption, third and first world, global and local. What emerges from the book is a cautiously optimistic view of the future of global capitalism - a creative, collectivist alternative built from the ground up. This exciting and original study is essential reading for students and scholars of anthropology, fashion, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

Download or read book Hidden Cities Understanding Urban Popcultures written by Leonard Koos and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The richly varied phenomenon of urban popcultures, through distinctive practices and forms, has significantly marked the life of modern city.

Download or read book Re Imagining Creative Cities in Twenty First Century Asia written by Xin Gu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book responds to the lack of Asian representation in creative cities literature. It aims to use the creative cities paradigm as part of a wider process involving first, a rapid de-industrialisation in Asia that has left a void for new development models, resulting in a popular uptake of cultural economies in Asian cities; and second, the congruence and conflicts of traditional and modern cultural values leading to a necessary re-interpretation and re-imagination of cities as places for cultural production and cultural consumption. Focusing on the ‘Asian century’, it seeks to recognise and highlight the rapid rise of these cities and how they have stepped up to the challenge of transforming and regenerating themselves. The book aims to re-define what it means to be an Asian creative city and generate more dialogue and new debate around different urban issues.

Download or read book The Paradox Planet written by Larry Light and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the Age of We in the 1950s and moving to the Age of Me to todaythe Age of Ithis book examines how polarization and anger has changed how companies must manage their brands. Larry Light and Joan Kiddon, the leaders of Arcature LLC, consultants in brand management, examine societal changes and global, local, and personal forces through the lens of marketers. They explain how to: leverage paradox promises into brand-focused strategies and actions that create a pathway to profitability; create extraordinary brand experiences for individuals and communities; and build strong brands in a world of contradictory needs and benefits. In todays world, people want their individuality to be recognized, but they also want to belong to a group that shares their distinctiveness. People want to be independent and interconnected, which is the underlying paradox affecting how we make decisions today. Navigate how to satisfy conflicting needs, and look beyond single-minded solutions with the insights and guidance in The Paradox Planet.

Download or read book This Is a Picture and Not the World written by Joseph Natoli and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This Is a Picture and Not the World, Joseph Natoli employs the lingua franca of film itself—screenplay dialogue—as well as the more recent form of the political blog to present a hyperreal account of popular film as both a creator and a reflector of our post-9/11 mass psyche. Drawing on both classic and contemporary film examples, the book also offers a quasihistory of film genres, including science fiction, the western, film noir, and screwball comedy, emphasizing how these genres have been shaken up, recontextualized, recombined, turned self-reflexive, and parodied over the past couple of decades. Taken together, these satirical parodies of screenplays and blogs reveal and perform how our very gaze has shifted from modern to postmodern, from a direct view of the world to a filtered one.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe written by Agnes Gagyi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to dominant narratives which portray East European politics as a pendulum swing between democracy and authoritarianism, conventionally defined in terms of an ahistorical cultural geography of East vs. West, this book analyzes post-socialist transformation as part of the long downturn of the post-WWII global capitalist cycle. Based on an empirical comparison of two countries with significantly different political regimes throughout the period, Hungary and Romania, this study shows how different constellations of successive late socialist and post-socialist regimes have managed internal and external class relations throughout the same global crisis process, from very similar positions of semi-peripheral, post-socialist systemic integration. Within this context, the book follows the role of social movements since the 1970s, paying attention both to the level of differences between local integration regimes and to the level of structural similarities of global integration. The analysis maintains a special focus on movements’ class composition and inter-class relationships and the specific position of middle-class politics in movements.

Download or read book Handcrafted Careers written by Eli Revelle Yano Wilson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft breweries. As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, they face a labor landscape that is increasingly uncertain and stubbornly unequal. With Handcrafted Careers, sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson dives headfirst into the everyday lives of workers in the craft beer industry to address key questions facing American workers today: about what makes a good career, who gets to have one, and how careers progress without established models. Wilson argues that what ends up contributing to divergent career paths in craft beer is a complex interplay of social connections, personal tastes, and cultural ideas, as well as exclusionary industry structures. The culture of work in craft beer is based around “bearded white guy” ideals that are gendered and racialized in ways that limit the advancement of women and people of color. A fresh perspective on niche industries, Handcrafted Careers offers sharp insights into how people navigate worlds of work that promote ideas of authenticity and passion-filled careers even amid instability.