This book provides an analysis of the politics of consumption and how the 'educated consumer' plays a vital role in advancing responsible market practices and consumption. Based on a comprehensive interdisciplinary perspective, it explores the extent, drives and links of boycotting, buycotting, labelling schemes and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in 20 European countries. A central question addressed is whether macro-societal patterns of orientation concerning the roles of the state, companies and citizens can explain individual and cross-national differences in boycotting and buycotting. As the book shows, there is not one type of 'political consumer', but several, and their occurrence is directly connected to national variations of labelling schemes and Corporate Social Responsibility. Consumers need reference points and information on the political backgrounds of purchases, and policy makers must address that need through political measures which fit to the national patterns in views about cooperation and market relationships.

This book develops a groundbreaking, novel approach to examining ethical consumer behaviour from the perspective of evolutionary theory, illustrating the deeply rooted potentials and limits within society for reducing environmental harm.

This text provides an overview of concepts, theories, and methods related to the study of household consumption. It summarizes the most recent data on consumption patterns and trends, together with factors that influence consumption--population trends, prices, and distribution of resources--and examines how consumption data are used by business, government, and other organizations.

The work will give the student a knowledge of household consumption patterns and an understanding of how to use such knowledge. Its three general purposes, which correspond to the three parts of the book, are: to provide the tools students need in order to use information about household consumption, including major concepts and theories used in the study of consumption, empirical methodologies, and sources of data; to describe current patterns, trends, and problems in household consumption in the United States and other countries; and to show how information about household consumption is used. This text is designed for upper-division courses in consumption economics, consumer science, and family resource management.

Beauty matters. Throughout the world, more and more people from all walks of life spend time and money to make themselves beautiful because beauty expresses identity and shapes status and success. Whether white or black, male or female, young or old, gay or straight, working- or middle-class, Western or non-Western, democratic or fascist, people everywhere have adopted a central maxim of the twentieth century: everyone can be beautiful, and everyone should become beautiful. This volume tracks the historical roots and meanings of modern beauty cultures in the twentieth century, drawing on examples from Europe, North America, the Near East, Asia, and Africa.

Consumers in eighteenth-century England were firmly embedded in an expanding world of goods, one that incorporated a range of novel foods (tobacco, chocolate, coffee, and tea) and new supplies of more established commodities, including sugar, spices, and dried fruits. Much has been written about the attraction of these goods, which went from being novelties or expensive luxuries in the mid-seventeenth century to central elements of the British diet a century or so later. They have been linked to the rise of Britain as a commercial and imperial power, whilst their consumption is seen as transforming many aspects of British society and culture, from mealtimes to gender identity. Despite this huge significance to ideas of consumer change, we know remarkably little about the everyday processes through which groceries were sold, bought, and consumed. In tracing the lines of supply that carried groceries from merchants to consumers, Sugar and Spice reveals how changes in retailing and shopping were central to the broader transformation of consumption and consumer practices, but also questions established ideas about the motivations underpinning consumer choices. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of eighteenth-century retailing; the importance of advertisements in promoting sales and shaping consumer perceptions, and the role of groceries in making shopping an everyday activity. At the same time, it shows how both retailers and their customers were influenced by the practicalities and pleasures of consumption. They were active agents in consumer change, shaping their own practices rather than caught up in a single socially-inclusive cultural project such as politeness or respectability.

In a politically uncertain and distrusted world, citizens appear to be seeking political expression in their everyday lives and quite prominently in their consumption practices. In advanced consumer societies, the politics of consumption have come to the centre stage.
This book elaborates on the grounded perceptions, practices and problematizations of the equation of political action and market action. It presents the opportunities and hindrances of alternative forms of partaking in civic life by exploring how coffee activism presents a fruitful opportunity for citizens to participate in political life, how cultural citizenship can offer insights into the operation of everyday politics and how neoliberal narratives are framing discourses of coffee activism. The politics behind products can illuminate global tensions and engage citizens in social justice, but at the same time can confine civic action in the marketplace and anesthetise political action.

Colonialism, globalization and consumerism have devastated large parts of our world. For the past five centuries, the West has nurtured self-worth through the accumulation of worldly goods, serving our own selfish interests and exploiting others. This has been disastrous not only to human beings but to the whole ecology of the planet. Consumerism drives trade, but consumer buying is now like an unchained beast with tooth and claw causing han (unjust suffering) for exploited peoples as well as for other species and even for planet Earth. This book will examine ways of rethinking and reimagining ourselves, helping us to work in more just directions for a safer, sustainable planet. Empowering ourselves to act more justly includes reimagining and renewing our inspiration from God who is the transformative Spirit who gives, sustains and empowers life to all.

This book looks at the recent emergence of "new ordinary consumption," in urban China and defines new ordinary consumption as a consumer practice in which people routinely integrate products and items, traditionally reserved for special occasions, into their daily lives, to accentuate their own well-being. The book, through the case study on the adoption of cut flowers and upscaling non-floral goods, provides insights on how deal proneness and high price sensitivity pose challenges to many market retailers. It also proposes how to go about resolving these challenging issues in retail through the alteration of perceived reasons to consume. The author also examined social media marketing narrative that two direct-to-consumer floral goods sellers used, to guide consumers away from the social and cultural baggage of consumption, thereby giving more consideration to products reshaping consumers' motivation, and driving the purchase. Heeding the findings of floral startups that awakened consumers' aspirations to redefine their everyday personal lives, and making such aspirations a profitable business, this interesting case study suggests that it is time to revisit the appeal of conspicuous consumption in the present-day Chinese markets. Anyone interested to learn more about the Chinese consumers and their novel consumption habits would find the book a useful reference.

Through in-depth analysis of advertisements, politics and group-based practices, this book analyses the complex local, regional, and national historical developments related to the making of the Indian consumer across a century of global involvement. In assessing the nationalist discourse, debates on the morality of consumption and public and private spheres, the book demonstrates how the Indian consumer was both imagined and informed and how the politics of consumption formed the consumer society in India. Shedding new light on consumer cultures in India, the book will be of interest to academics from interdisciplinary fields such as anthropology, history, geography, sociology, South Asian studies and area studies, popular and visual cultures.

Color is a visible technology that invisibly connects so many puzzling aspects of modern Western consumer societies-research and development, making and selling, predicting fashion trends, and more. Building on Regina Lee Blaszczyk's go-to history of the "color revolution" in the United States, this book explores further transatlantic and multidisciplinary dimensions of the topic. Covering history from the mid nineteenth century into the immediate past, it examines the relationship between color, commerce, and consumer societies in unfamiliar settings and in the company of new kinds of experts. Readers will learn about the early dye industry, the dynamic nomenclature for color, and efforts to standardize, understand, and educate the public about color. Readers will also encounter early food coloring, new consumer goods, technical and business innovations in print and on the silver screen, the interrelationship between gender and color, and color forecasting in the fashion industry.

"I wrote this book because I believe the road to financial freedom is a journey everyone can embark on. I wrote this book with you in mind. You, who perhaps have never been taught anything about how money works. You, who have been too intimidated to pick up and read a book about personal finance because you were too scared of the jargon. You, who want to #getyourmoneyright. I had you in mind when I wrote this book." – Mapalo Makhu

If you are a millennial who is trying to figure out how money works, this book is for you. With simple, relatable and sometimes amusing stories about how to manage money on a day-to-day basis, you will learn how to change your mindset about money, get out of debt and stay debt-free, invest your money and, ultimately, live your best life.

You’re Not Broke, You’re Pre-Rich will help you, the young professional, to think differently about money, while covering pertinent topics like black tax, savings, budgeting, emergency funds and financial scams, as well as estate and retirement planning (and why you should care right now!). It is the best class you never attended… in a book!

There is now a widespread interest in reuse in many domains, from opera houses built over old warehouses, to vintage clothes and everyday goods incorporating repurposed materials or parts. Despite its ubiquity, this extensive creative work is typically seen in narrowly environmental terms, as a means of reducing carbon, resource use or waste. However, as this volume shows, reuse also has aesthetic and cultural dimensions and a rich social currency, invoked to consciously subvert the accelerated consumer culture responsible for our unfolding environmental crisis. In three parts, the essays in this book consider reuse in terms of values, aesthetics and meaning, its application in contemporary urban and spatial settings, and the revival of social practices involving a more conscious recourse to reuse and repair. These are bookended by the editors' essays: the first, on the significant relationship between reuse and technological and social acceleration evident in the surrounding consumer society; and the last, on the multiple forms of reuse deployed in a contemporary alternative building practice, and their contributions to presenting alternative ways of living in the world. Challenging dominant understandings of 'waste' and 'consumption', Subverting Consumerism shows how reuse has become a means for many to creatively engage with the past, and to discover a continuity and sense of place eroded by the accelerative regimes of contemporary consumerism. Becoming a means of resistance, and offering a range of aesthetic, social and economic possibilities, reuse can be found to subvert and challenge the obsessive quest for the new found in contemporary consumerism.

Over-consumption is one of the key issues of our time, especially in the Western world. Over the past decade, in the face of historically unprecedented levels of consumer spending in the West - and the more recent impact of recession - a vigorous politics of anti-consumerism has emerged in a range of wealthy nations.

This timely and original new book provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of what has come to be called the 'new politics of consumption'; a politics embodied in movements such as culture jamming, simple living, slow food and fair trade. The book offers an examination of anti-consumerism at a time when the idea of 'consumer excess' is being re-framed by a global economic downturn, and crucially explores what this means for the future of political debate. Drawing on interviews with activists across three continents, and offering a refreshingly accessible discussion of contemporary commentary and theory, Kim Humphery sympathetically explores anti-consumerism as cultural interpretation, lifestyle change, and collective action.

Whilst analysing the positive advances of the anti-consumerist movement, "Excess "also challenges contemporary critical thinking on consumption, taking issue with the return to theories of mass culture in contemporary anti-consumerist polemic. Alternatively, Humphery begins to forge a politics of anti-consumerism that addresses the complexity of material acquisition and which avoids treating consumers as mere dupes in the logic of capitalism, viewing them instead as active participants in a culture which is capable of transformation.

Women are the world's most powerful consumers, yet they are largely marketed to erroneously through misconceptions and patriarchal views that distort the reality of women's lives, bodies, and work. This book examines the contradictions and mismatches between women's everyday experiences and market representations. It considers how women themselves exhibit paradoxical behaviour in both resisting and supporting conflicting messages. The volume emphasizes paradox as a form of agency and negotiation through which women develop dialogical meanings. The contributions highlight the ways in which women transform inconsistencies and contradictions in advertising and marketing, global consumption practices, and material consumption into positive practices for living. The rich range of ethnographic accounts, drawn from countries including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark, Japan, and China, provide readers with a valuable perspective on consumer behaviour.

The fads, fashions, and media in popular consumer culture frequently make recreational and ideological "fun" of poverty and lower class living. It is a phenomenon that puts poor whites, poor blacks, women, gays, handicapped people, and other traditional minorities back in "their place" by prioritizing self-aggrandizing materialism and individual desires over the collective good and constitutes a form of cultural denial. In this book, Halnon delineates how incarceration, segregation, stigmatization, cultural and social consecration, and carnivalization work in the production and consumption of inequality.

"Fanning the Flames examines the worlds of fans in the exuberant and commercialized popular culture of contemporary Japan.The works collected here profile denizens of all-night rap clubs; surno stable patrons; passionate fan clubs of a professional baseball team; enthusiasts of traditional "rakugo storytelling; a club of middle-aged female fans of a popular music star; youthful followers of Japan's longest-running rock band; vinyl record collectors; and a thriving community of girls and women who produce and devour amateur comics. Grounded in close, often extended fieldwork with the fans themselves, each case study is an effort to understand both the personal pleasures and political economies of fandoms. The contributors explore the many ways that fans in and of Japanese mass culture actively search for intimacy and identity amid the powerful corporate structures that produce the leisure and entertainment of today's Japan.

This book offers a genealogical account of the rise of consumer capitalism, tracing its origins in America between 1880 and 1930 and explaining how it emerged to become the dominant form of social organization of our time. Asking how it was that we came to be consumers who live in societies that revolve around an ever-spinning circle of production and consumption, not only of goods, but also of events, experiences, emotions and relations, The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America presents an extensive analysis of primary sources to demonstrate the conditions and forces from which consumer capitalism emerged and became victorious. Employing a Weberian approach that brings liminality to the fore as a master concept to make sense of historical change, the author links an in-depth empirical investigation to supple sociological theorizing to show how the encirclement of all aspects of life by the logic of consumer capitalism was a time-bound historical creation rather than a necessary one. A fascinating study of the appearance and triumph of the "ideology" of our age, this book will appeal to scholars of social and anthropological theory, historical sociology, cultural history and American studies.

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.

What determines where people shop? Why would shoppers visit one shopping centre rather than another? Developers, backers, planners and Government will wish to estimate the viability of proposed new centres. Developers wish to plan, build and/or improve shopping centres to maximize profitable retail sales and shopper satisfaction. This book explores a range of perspectives from the traditional to the latest thinking. These approaches are drawn together with a summary of the hypotheses for which the author has found support.

Luxury. The word alone conjures up visions of visions of attractive, desirable lifestyle choices, yet it also faces criticism as a moral vice harmful to both the self and society. Engaging with ideas from business, marketing, and economics, The Vice of Luxury takes on the challenging task of naming how much is too much in today's consumer-oriented society. David Cloutier's critique goes to the heart of a fundamental contradiction. Though overconsumption and materialism make us uneasy, they also seem inevitable in advanced economies. Current studies of economic ethics focus on the structural problems of poverty, of international trade, of workers' rights -- but rarely, if ever, do such studies speak directly to the excesses of the wealthy, including the middle classes of advanced economies. Cloutier proposes a new approach to economic ethics that focuses attention on our everyday economic choices. He shows why luxury is a problem, explains how to identify what counts as the vice of luxury today, and develops an ethic of consumption that is grounded in Christian moral convictions.

Why do affluent consumers almost automatically acquire new versions or variations of products already at their disposal? Even though most of us know that this novelty consumption poses a serious threat to an environmentally and socially sustainable future, we continue to do it. Why? Research shows that consumption of new automobiles, clothing, furniture, electronics, home furnishing, household apparel, mobile phones, etc., is motivated by a desire to feel more secure, less anxious and better mood-wise. Affluent consumers seem to engage in novelty consumption not to feel better but rather to avoid feeling bad. Stress, Affluence and Sustainable Consumption discusses sustainable consumption from a stress perspective, adding an embodied understanding to the sustainability-related consumption challenges that we face today. A stress perspective on affluent consumption differs from current understandings on consumption, as it fully acknowledges the consumer as having a body (including a mind) that reacts to the numerous product offerings and retail spaces, both physical and online. A stress perspective can explain how our bodies try to cope with an overload of perceptual input provided by advertising messages, product launches and even store structures. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of consumer psychology, sustainable consumption studies, sustainable marketing and markets as well as sustainable development more generally.

Death has never been more visible to consumers. From life insurance to burial plots to estate planning, we are constantly reminded of consumer choices to be made with our mortality in mind. Religious beliefs in the afterlife (or their absence) impact everyday consumption activities. Death in a Consumer Culture presents the broadest array of research on the topic of death and consumer behaviour across disciplinary boundaries. Organised into five sections covering: The Death Industry; Death Rituals; Death and Consumption; Death and the Body; and Alternate Endings, the book explores topics from celebrity death tourism, pet and online memorialization; family history research, to alternatives to traditional corpse disposal methods and patient-assisted suicide. Work from scholars in history, religious studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies sits alongside research in marketing and consumer culture. From eastern and western perspectives, spanning social groups and demographic categories, all explore the ubiquity of death as a physical, emotional, cultural, social, and cosmological inevitability. Offering a richly unique anthology on this challenging topic, this book will be of interest to researchers working at the intersections of consumer culture, marketing and mortality.

With growing awareness of environmental deterioration, atmospheric pollution and resource depletion, the last several decades have brought increased attention and scrutiny to global consumption levels. However, there are significant and well documented limitations associated with current efforts to encourage more sustainable consumption patterns, ranging from informational and time constraints to the highly individualizing effect of market-based participation. This volume, featuring essays solicited from experts engaged in sustainable consumption research from around the world, presents empirical and theoretical illustrations of the various means through which politics and power influence (un)sustainable consumption practices, policies and perspectives. With chapters on compelling topics including collective action, behaviour-change and the transition movement, the authors discuss why current efforts have largely failed to meet environmental targets and explore promising directions for research, policy and practice. Featuring contributions that will help the reader open up politics and power in ways that are accessible and productive and bridge the gaps with current approaches to sustainable consumption, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption and the politics of sustainability.