Download or read book The social construction of culture markets written by Jordi López-Sintas and published by OmniaScience. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social media and the proliferation of mobile and home electronic devices have led to dramatic changes in how consumers access cultural expressions (whether via purchase or sharing) and the way firms select, (re)produce and market cultural expressions. Technological innovation has driven changes that have profound implications for our society. The printing press converted manuscripts into tradeable goods and the gramophone did the same for musical performances. Both also introduced intermediaries into the market, namely, the publisher and the record label, who acquired sufficient power to influence governments and legislation regulating intellectual rights. In a similar way, the Internet and the digital technologies that ride on this highway have paved the way for yet another dramatic change. However, the balance of power has now shifted towards creators and consumers, who, as they socially construct the market for cultural expressions, are also reshaping legislative and economic aspects of the intellectual property regime. This book addresses questions of access to cultural expressions, the historical evolution of authors’ rights, the current Spanish intellectual property regime and the social construction of music markets. It also proposes a contextual theory regarding access to music and a social interpretation of music access patterns. It concludes with a discussion of the issues raised in the previous chapters, focusing particularly on the core issues of access to culture, incentives to creativity and the selection, (re)production and marketing of cultural expressions. The separation of the rights of creators and the rights of producers is suggested as a way to enhance incentives to creation while improving access to cultural expressions. This book will be of particular interest to social science researchers seeking interdisciplinary insights into the social construction of markets from the economics, management, marketing, law and sociology perspectives.

Download or read book Social Structure and Culture written by Hans Haferkamp and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Cultural Politics of Markets written by Katharine N. Rankin and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a neoliberal era, when the ideology of the free market governs community development as much as international trade, a conflict between capital and tradition is inevitable. Issues such as the value ascribed to honour and social prestige are difficult to negotiate with economic opportunity. Using the example of a 'traditional' Nepalese market town, Katharine Neilson Rankin explores how economic liberalization has blended with local cultures of value. Utilizing the ethnographic method of anthropology and the comparative and normative thrust of geography, Rankin undertakes a critique of neoliberal approaches to development. She demonstrates how market-led development does not expand opportunity, but rather deepens existing injustice and inequality, which is further exacerbated by planners – eager to implement market-led approaches – relying on naively idealistic notions of 'social capital' to expand poor people's access to the market. The Cultural Politics of Markets makes a clear case for a strategic merger between anthropological and planning perspectives in thinking about the issue of market transformation.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology written by Peter Hedström and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analytical sociology is a strategy for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining important social facts such as network structures, patterns of residential segregation, typical beliefs, cultural tastes, and common ways of acting. It explains such facts by detailing in clear and precise ways the mechanisms through which the social facts were brought about. Making sense of the relationship between micro and macro thus is one of the central concerns of analytical sociology. The approach is a contemporary incarnation of Robert K. Merton's notion of middle-range theory and presents a vision of sociological theory as a tool-box of semi-general theories each of which is adequate for explaining certain types of phenomena. The Handbook brings together some of the most prominent sociologists in the world. Some of the chapters focus on action and interaction as the cogs and wheels of social processes, while others consider the dynamic social processes that these actions and interactions bring about.

Download or read book Spatializing Culture written by Setha Low and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the value of ethnographic theory and methods in understanding space and place, and considers how ethnographically-based spatial analyses can yield insight into prejudices, inequalities and social exclusion as well as offering people the means for understanding the places where they live, work, shop and socialize. In developing the concept of spatializing culture, Setha Low draws on over twenty years of research to examine social production, social construction, embodied, discursive, emotive and affective, as well as translocal approaches. A global range of fieldwork examples are employed throughout the text to highlight not just the theoretical development of the idea of spatializing culture, but how it can be used in undertaking ethnographies of space and place. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars from a number of disciplines who are interested in the study of culture through the lens of space and place.

Download or read book Orderly Fashion written by Patrik Aspers and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For any market to work properly, certain key elements are necessary: competition, pricing, rules, clearly defined offers, and easy access to information. Without these components, there would be chaos. Orderly Fashion examines how order is maintained in the different interconnected consumer, producer, and credit markets of the global fashion industry. From retailers in Sweden and the United Kingdom to producers in India and Turkey, Patrik Aspers focuses on branded garment retailers--chains such as Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Topshop, and Zara. Aspers investigates these retailers' interactions and competition in the consumer market for fashion garments, traces connections between producer and consumer markets, and demonstrates why market order is best understood through an analysis of its different forms of social construction. Emphasizing consumption rather than production, Aspers considers the larger retailers' roles as buyers in the production market of garments, and as potential objects of investment in financial markets. He shows how markets overlap and intertwine and he defines two types of markets--status markets and standard markets. In status markets, market order is related to the identities of the participating actors more than the quality of the goods, whereas in standard markets the opposite holds true. Looking at how identities, products, and values create the ordered economic markets of the global fashion business, Orderly Fashion has wide implications for all modern markets, regardless of industry.

Download or read book Consumer Culture and Modernity written by Don Slater and published by Polity. This book was released on 1999-02-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues, concepts and theories through which people have tried to understand consumer culture throughout the modern period, and puts the current state of thinking into a broader context. Thematically organized, the book shows how the central aspects of consumer culture - such as needs, choice, identity, status, alienation, objects, culture - have been debated within modern theories, from those of earlier thinkers such as Marx and Simmel to contemporary forms of post-structuralism and postmodernism. This approach introduces consumer culture as a subject which - far from being of narrow or recent interest - is intimately tied to the central issues of modern times and modern social thought. With its reviews of major theorists set within a full account of the development of the subject, this book should be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the many disciplines which now study consumer culture, including communications and cultural studies, anthropology and history.

Download or read book Culture in Mind written by Karen A. Cerulo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is thought and how does one come to study and understand it? How does the mind work? Does cognitive science explain all the mysteries of the brain? This collection of fourteen original essays from some of the top sociologists in the country, including Eviatar Zerubavel, Diane Vaughan, Paul Dimaggio and Gary Alan Fine, among others, opens a dialogue between cognitive science and cultural sociology, encouraging a new network of scientific collaboration and stimulating new lines of social scientific research. Rather than considering thought as just an individual act, Culture in Mind considers it in a social and cultural context. Provocatively, this suggests that our thoughts do not function in a vacuum: our minds are not alone. Covering such diverse topics as the nature of evil, the process of storytelling, defining mental illness, and the conceptualizing of the premature baby, these essays offer fresh insights into the functioning of the mind. Leaving the MRI behind, Culture in Mind will uncover the mysteries of how we think.

Download or read book Managing situated creativity in cultural industries written by Fiorenza Belussi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creativity is the emergence of something novel and appropriate, from a person, a group, a society. A creative idea or product must be novel. Yet, novelty is not enough (a novel idea may be ridiculous or nonsensical). In addition to novelty, to be creative an idea or product must also attain some level of social recognition. The individualist approaches to creativity overestimate the role of the individual and of his/her abilities (the myth of the genius). On the contrary, the socio-cultural approach emphasizes the role played by contexts in the creation process: societies, cultures and historical periods. Accordingly, the individual is seen as a member of many overlapping social groups, each of them has its own network, with a specific structure and organization, which influences the creation of networks of—potentially creative—ideas. Each individual is also a member of a culture, which gives him/her the categories used to understand the world. Finally, each individual is representative of a specific historical period. From a managerial perspective it is important to deepen the knowledge of the contexts, both spatial and cognitive, which favor ‘‘situated creativity’’ in the realm of the cultural industries. This special book offers both theoretical and empirical contributions in an attempt to build such knowledge.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since sociologists returned to the study of culture in the past several decades, a pursuit all but anathema for a generation, cultural sociology has emerged as a vibrant field. Edited by three leading cultural sociologists, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology presents the full theoretical and methodological vitality of this critically significant new area.The Handbook gathers together works by authors confronting the crucial choices all cultural sociologists face today: about analytic priorities, methods, topics, epistemologies, ideologies, and even modes of writing. It is a vital collection of preeminent thinkers studying the ways in which culture, society, politics, and economy interact in the world.Organized by empirical areas of study rather than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the Handbook addresses power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Allowing the reader to observe tensions as well as convergences, the collection displays the value of cultural sociology not as a niche discipline but as a way to view and understand the many facets of contemporary society. The first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology offers comprehensive and immediate access to the real developments and disagreements taking place in the field, and deftly exemplifies how cultural sociology provides a new way of seeing and modeling social facts.

Download or read book Understanding the Culture of Markets written by Virgil Storr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does culture impact economic life? Is culture like a ball and chain that actors must lug around as they pursue their material interests? Or, is culture like a tool-kit from which entrepreneurs can draw resources to aid them in their efforts? Or, is being immersed in a culture like wearing a pair of blinders? Or, is culture like wearing a pair of glasses with tinted lenses? Understanding the Culture of Markets explores how culture shapes economic activity and describes how social scientists (especially economists) should incorporate considerations of culture into their analysis. Although most social scientists recognize that culture shapes economic behavior and outcomes, the majority of economists are not very interested in culture. Understanding the Culture of Markets begins with a discussion of the reasons why economists are reluctant to incorporate culture into economic analysis. It then goes on to describe how culture shapes economic life, and critiques those few efforts by economists to discuss the relationship between culture and markets. Finally, building on the work of Max Weber, it outlines and defends an approach to understanding the culture of markets. In order to understand real world markets, economists must pay attention to how culture shapes economic activity. If culture does indeed color economic life, economists cannot really avoid culture. Instead, the choice that they face is not whether or not to incorporate culture into their analysis but whether to employ culture implicitly or explicitly. Ignoring culture may be possible but avoiding culture is impossible. Understanding the Culture of Markets will appeal to economists interested in how culture impacts economic life, in addition to economic anthropologists and economic sociologists. It should be useful in graduate and undergraduate courses in all of those fields.

Download or read book Market and Society written by Milan Zafirovski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-11-30 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Treating the market as a complex social category, and not just as a purely economic phenomenon, this book presents two frameworks for analyzing the market in relation to society. After presenting first the economic framework and then the sociological framework, the author combines the two and, when feasible and sensible, integrates them. The result is an original and enlightening examination of such subjects as the nature of the market, market laws, equilibrium, and prices.

Download or read book Embedded Entrepreneurship Market Culture and Micro Business in Insular Southeast Asia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embedded Entrepreneurship examines the importance of cultural meaning in the creation and utilization of economic value. Based on case-studies from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the authors demonstrate that micro-scale entrepreneurship is intertwined with prevailing conceptions, moralities and habituations in the entrepreneurs’ social milieu. More specifically, the volume argues that meaning-making is integral to economic opportunity; that economic actors’ market agency is shaped by cultural experiences; that entrepreneurs' prototypical “individualism” is socially contingent; and that cultural meanings channel economic value among economic and social domains. Addressing core questions about “embedding”, the authors suggest theoretical convergences between economic anthropology and economic sociology. Contributors include: Signe Howell, Ingrid Rudie, Leif Manger, Olaf H. Smedal, Frode F. Jacobsen, Kristianne Ervik, Anette Fagertun, Lars Gjelstad, Nils Hidle, Anja Lillegraven, Solgunn Olsen and Ingvild Solvang.

Download or read book Culture and the Development of Children s Action written by Jaan Valsiner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1997-06-23 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this deeply probing, intellectually challenging work, Dr. JaanValsiner lays the groundwork for a dynamic new cultural-historicalapproach to developmental psychology. He begins by deconstructingtraditional developmental theory, exposing the conceptual confusionand epistemological blind spots that he believes continue toundermine the scientific validity of its methodologies. Hedescribes the ways in which embedded cultural biases shapeinterventional goals and influence both the direction researchtakes and the ways in which research data are interpreted. And hesuggests ways in which researchers and clinicians can become moreaware of and transcend those biases. Dr. Valsiner then develops a hierarchical, systemic model thatportrays development as an open-ended, dialectical process. Centralto Valsiner's approach is the premise that, since each child isunique--as are his or her life conditions--deviations in functionor the rate of development from a prescribed norm are just aslikely to be constructive adaptations to changing environmentalpressures as symptoms of psychological disorder. Drawing uponsources as varied as linguistic philosophy, structuralanthropology, thermodynamics, and systems theory, as well as thework of many of the leading figures in twentieth-centurydevelopmental theory, Valsiner argues convincingly for an approachto developmental psychology mature enough to recognize thedifference between healthy variability and dysfunction. In later chapters the focus shifts from development in the abstractto the everyday challenges encountered by the developing child.Case histories illustrate the subtle interplay of cultural,physiological, and psychological factors in shaping childhoodbehavior. Called an "intellectual tour de force" by the Bulletin of theMenninger Clinic, Culture and the Development of Children's Actionis important reading for developmental psychologists, childpsychologists, and all child clinicians. "Of course, no science progresses in a linear fashion. It movesinterdependently with the society in which it is embedded, makinguse of the narrative forms in describing itself to its insiders andoutsiders. The rhetoric of scientists about their science istherefore necessarily inconsistent. Sciences are both socialinstitutions within a society and social organizations that attemptto build universal knowledge. It is a complicated task forpsychology to be both knowledge-constructing and self-reflexive atthe same time. Nevertheless, it is the latter kind of reflexivitythat guides the actual construction of knowledge." -- JaanValsiner "[This book] is a fascinating and important work that challengesmuch of contemporary developmental psychology. The Second Editionhas changed in a number of respects, and much new material has beenadded, but at root, Valsiner grapples with the question 'how shallwe understand development?' He continues to struggle also with whathe describes rather vividly as the 'epistemological windmills ofpsychology.' His challenge is summed up succinctly in two linesfrom a poem by T. S. Eliot: * Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? * Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" -- -- fromthe Foreword by Kevin Connolly

Download or read book Consumer Culture Theory written by Russell W. Belk and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of Research in Consumer Behavior is made up from a selection of papers from the Eight Consumer Culture Theory Conference and represents the latest research on consumption and consumer culture from scholars around the world.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture written by Dale Southerton and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 1665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three-volume Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture covers consuming societies around the world, from the Age of Enlightenment to the present, and shows how consumption has become intrinsic to the world′s social, economic, political, and cultural landscapes. Offering an invaluable interdisciplinary approach, this reference work is a useful resource for researchers in sociology, political science, consumer science, global studies, comparative studies, business and management, human geography, economics, history, anthropology, and psychology. The first encyclopedia to outline the parameters of consumer culture, the Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture provides a critical, scholarly resource on consumption and consumerism over time. Some of the topics included are: Theories and concepts Socio-economic change (i.e. social mobility) Socio-demographic change (i.e. immigration, aging) Identity and social differentiation (i.e. social networks) Media (i.e. broadcast media) Style and taste (i.e. fashion, youth culture) Mass consumptions (i.e. retail culture) Ethical Consumption (i.e. social movements) Civil society (i.e. consumer advocacy) Environment (i.e. sustainability) Domestic consumption (i.e. childhood, supermarkets) Leisure (i.e. sport, tourism) Technology (i.e. planned obsolescence) Work (i.e. post industrial society) Production (i.e. post fordism, global economy) Markets (i.e. branding) Institutions (i.e. religion) Welfare (i.e. reform, distribution of resources) Urban life (i.e. suburbs)

Download or read book Markets from Culture written by Patricia H. Thornton and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Institutional logics, the underlying governing principles of societal sectors, strongly influence organizational decision making. Any shift in institutional logics results in a similar shift in attention to alternative problems and solutions and in new determinants for executive decisions. Examining changes in institutional logics in higher-education publishing, this book links cultural analysis with organizational decision making to develop a theory of attention and explain how executives concentrate on certain market characteristics to the exclusion of others. Analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data from the 1950s to the 1990s, the author shows how higher education publishing moved from a culture of independent domestic publishers focused on creating markets for books based on personal, relational networks to a culture of international conglomerates that create markets from corporate hierarchies. This book offers broader lessons beyond publishing--its theory is applicable to explaining institutional changes in organizational leadership, strategy, and structure occurring in all professional services industries.