We can't stop shopping but we must stop shopping - the consumer dilemma that defines our lives and our future. What would happen if we did? We are using up the planet at almost double the rate it can regenerate. To support our economies, we're told we must shop now like we've never shopped before, yet the scale of our consumption remains the biggest factor in the ruination of the world. But what would life look like if we stopped? Visiting places where economies have experienced temporary shut-downs, artisan producers, zero-consumption societies and bringing together a host of expert views, this is both a history of our relationship with consumption and a story about the future. 'Lays out a wealth of knowledge and wisdom' Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress

Presenting a unique study of shopping, the life of shopping centres and the nature of shoppers, this book offers new understanding of the significance of place and the construction of identity. From an historical and thematic survey of the nature of consumer societies and their implications for identity, the authors examine the commercial and historical background of two London shopping centres. Drawing on their own primary research on shoppers from particular streets, focus groups and survey questionnaires, the authors examine particular issues that arise in the action of locating identity through shopping.

Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning examines the issues of jazz, consumption, and capitalism through advertising. On television, on the Internet, in radio, and in print, advertising is a critically important medium for the mass dissemination of music and musical meaning. This book is a study of the use of the jazz genre as a musical signifier in promotional efforts, exploring how the relationship between brand, jazz music, and jazz discourses come together to create meaning for the product and the consumer. At the same time, it examines how jazz offers an invaluable lens through which to examine the complex and often contradictory culture of consumption upon which capitalism is predicated.

Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers - from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. The wide reach and magnitude of ethical issues in society across individual and collective consumption has given rise to a series of important questions that are inspiring scholars from a range of disciplinary areas. These differing disciplinary lenses, however, tend to be contained in separate streams of research literature that are developing in parallel and in relative isolation. Ethics in Morality and Consumption takes an interdisciplinary perspective to provide multiple vantage points in creating a more holistic and integrated view of ethics in consumption. In this sense, interdisciplinary presupposes the consideration of multiple and distinct disciplines, which in this book are considered in delineated chapters. In addition, the Editors make an editorial contribution in the final chapter of the book by combining these separate disciplinary perspectives to develop a nascent interdisciplinary perspective that integrates these perspectives and presents platforms for further research.

A sophisticated and subversive guide on how to make a difference ... one day at a time. You watch the news every night. You turn off your television set, disturbed by what you've seen and wondering what, if anything, you can do to make a difference. This is the book you need to get started. You may think that the issues which confront us are so huge, so complicated, so difficult to deal with that it's hard to believe anything we can do will have a meaningful impact but Michael Norton will prove you wrong. A lot of people doing a lot of little things could have a huge impact. This book has an idea-a-day for changing the world. Most are quite simple, can be done from home, and will not take much time. You can make a start whenever you like. Just open the book at today's date, read, enjoy, be inspired to action - and do something!

Ethical consumption, fair trade, consumer protests, brand backlashes, green goods, boycotts and downshifting: these are all now familiar consumer activities - and in some cases, are almost mainstream. They are part of the expanding field of 'radical consumption' in a world where we are encouraged to shop for change.

. . But just how radical are these forms of consumption? This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to examining contemporary radical consumption, analyzing its possibilities and problems, moralities, methods of mediation and its connections to wider cultural formations of production and politics.

. . Jo Littler argues that we require a more expansive vocabulary and to open up new approaches of enquiry in order to understand the area's many contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on a number of contemporary theories, terms and debates in media and cultural studies, she uses a range of specific case studies to bring theory to life.

. . By analysing practices of radical consumption, the book explores a number of key questions: . . Is ethical consumption merely a sop for the middle classes?. What are the contradictions of green consumption?. Should we understand corporate social responsibility as a form of consumer-oriented greenwash? . Who benefits from the new forms of cosmopolitan caring consumption?. Can such forms of consumption ever move beyond their niche market status to become an effective political force? . Can we really buy our way to a better, more equitable or sustainable future? . . "Radical Consumption" is important reading for cultural, media and sociology students..

Digital Food Activism is a new edited volume that investigates how digital media technologies are transforming food activism and consumers' engagements with food, eating, and food systems. Bringing together critical food studies, economic anthropology, digital sociology, and science and technology studies, Digital Food Activism offers innovative multi-disciplinary analyses of food activist practices on social media, mobile apps, and hybrid online and offline alternative spaces. With chapters that focus on diverse digital platforms, food-related issues, and geographic locales, this volume reveals how platforms, programmers, and consumers are becoming key mediators of the mandate of food corporations and official governing actors. Digital Food Activism thereby suggests that emerging forms of activism in the digital era hold the potential to reshape the ethics, aesthetics, and patterns of food consumption.

The book argues that the Cuban Revolution warrants a closer look as a model of socialist human development. A re-reading of the Cuban Revolution from this angle engages unresolved issues in the theory of socialist humanism and the notion of human development popularized by the United Nations Development Programme (i.e., predicated on capitalism). UNDP economists and other agencies of international cooperation for development give a human face to a capitalist development process that is anything but humane. Socialism in Cuba has taken a very different form (socialist human development) than it did elsewhere in the twentieth century. The Cuban Revolution's unique characteristics enabled it to survive adverse conditions - a 'near-perfect storm' - that still threaten its evolution.

We now call it The Great Realisation and, yes, since then there have been many. But that's the story of how it started ... and why hindsight's 2020. First performed online in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Tomos Roberts' heartfelt poem, with its message of hope and resilience, has been viewed over 60 million times and translated into over 20 languages. Adapted by Ashley Banjo and Diversity into a BAFTA-winning dance performance for Britain's Got Talent! As featured in the official BBC New Years Eve fireworks spectacular! 'A beautiful book and beautifully illustrated' - Kate Garraway, Good Morning Britain Written in the form of a bedtime story, The Great Realisation is a celebration of the many things - from simple acts of kindness, to applauding the heroic efforts of our key workers - that have brought us together at a time of global crisis. It captures, with magical resonance, the thoughts and feelings of millions in lockdown, as we adapted to a new way of life, found joy in unexpected places, cast aside old habits and reflected on what truly matters to us. The Great Realisation is a timely reminder that, even during our most challenging moments, there is always hope. Tomos's second book, The World Awaits, was published in July 2021 and he was commissioned by the Royal British Legion to write an Armistice Day poem, Alive With Poppies, which he performed at the Royal Albert Hall in commemoration of 100 years of the poppy. He wrote a Christmas poem, 'I Actually, Love London' for BBC London in December 2021. 'This fairytale-style story provides a springboard for discussion of current events with children, and presents a more optimistic view of the future in a time where the outlook often seems bleak' - School Library Journal, US

We live in a society that defines us by what we consume and how. Every day we make purchasing decisions that express our sense of belonging, our commitments to the environment and our systems of belief. We often choose to buy things, not necessarily because we need them, but because we believe that these things will help us express who we are - in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Whether we like it or not, consumerism is the prevalent ideology of our time. Led by Gjoko Muratovski, Consumer Culture is the ideal starting point for an investigation into the social construction of the global economy.

Sustainable Consumption: Key Issues provides a concise introduction to the field of sustainable consumption, outlining the contribution of the key disciplines in this multi-disciplinary area, and detailing the way in which both the problem and the potential for solutions are understood. Divided into three parts, the book begins by introducing the concept of sustainable consumption, outlining the environmental impacts of current consumption trends, and placing these impacts in social context. The central section looks at six contrasting explanations of sustainable consumption in the public domain, detailing the stories that are told about why people act in the way they do. This section also explores the theory and evidence around each of these stories, linking them to a range of disciplines and approaches in the social sciences. The final section takes a broader look at the solutions proposed by sustainable consumption scholars and practitioners, outlining the visions of the future that are put forward to counteract damage to environment and society. Each chapter highlights key authors and real-world examples to encourage students to broaden their understanding of the topic and to think critically about how their daily lives intersect with environmental and ethical issues. Exploring the ways in which critical thinking and an understanding of sustainable consumption can be used in daily life as well as in professional practice, this book is essential reading for students, academics, professionals and policy-makers with an interest in this growing field.

Holidays with Hitler tells the story of German leisure time and state-sponsored fun under the Nazi regime. Nathan Morley looks at consumerism, entertainment and travel in German society, and offers a vivid portrait of what it was like to visit as a foreign tourist seeking fun in a totalitarian state. An important part of Nazi policy was the vast Strength through Joy programme, headed by Dr Robert Ley - a brash and fanatical party member. Although Strength through Joy is best remembered for introducing the Volkswagen Beetle, it also allowed fourteen million people to enjoy annual vacations at bargain basement prices while improving the health of the population by encouraging running, hiking, swimming, and active family holidays. With millions of working people paying monthly dues, the organization amassed a hefty fortune. On the island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea, a vast resort capable of accommodating 22,000 holidaymakers began construction in 1937 - the same year the Wilhelm Gustloff, the first Strength Through Joy vessel, was launched in Hamburg. With the arrival of the Second World War, the organisation adapted, the goal being the 'cultural caretaking of the bomb-battered population and our soldiers'. Nathan Morley, employing meticulous research, tells the story not only of the Strength through Joy programme but also the efforts to organise the Olympics and disguise anti-Jewish sentiments from the thousands of visitors; the way millions of Germans spent their free time; and what it was like to be a foreign tourist as the thin veneer of a disintegrating Reich peeled away to reveal an ugly and evil interior.

We think we know everything about our smartphones. We use them constantly. We depend on them for every conceivable purpose. We are familiar with every inch of their compact frames. But there is more to the smartphone than meets the eye.
How have smartphones shaped the way we socialize and interact? Who tracks our actions, our preferences, our movements as recorded by our smartphones? These are just some of the questions that journalist Elizabeth Woyke answers in this muckraking expose of the $241 billion industry that produces more than 700 million devices each year.
In the tradition of "The Coffee Book," "The Sneaker Book," "Oil," and "Cigarettes," "The Smartphone" offers not only a step-by-step guide to how smartphones are designed and manufactured but also a bold exploration of the darker side of this massive industry, including the exploitation of labor, the disposal of electronic waste, and the underground networks that hack and smuggle smartphones.
Featuring interviews with key figures in the development of the smartphone and expert assessments of the industry's main players--Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung--"The Smartphone" is the perfect introduction to this most personal of gadgets. Your smartphone will never look the same again.

Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

One of the chief concerns regarding the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies is that they are owned and monopolised by advanced capitalist countries. Both between countries and within countries we find ‘the digital divide’. Most of humanity, having little or no access to widespread means of communication and access to information via the internet, will not benefit from the 4IR.

The promotion and adoption of these technologies without a plan to address this will lead to a more unequal world. The talk about people changing careers or learning new skills in the face of technologically driven job losses does not consider the differential skills and potentialities among people. Importantly, countries are told to do everything in their power not to be left behind by the 4IR. They are told that they must adopt these technologies come what may, without properly assessing country-specific and class-specific implications, threats and needs.

Is there any guarantee that agreeing to and adoption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies by, say, African countries, will not have the same result – leaving them exploited and dominated by those who wield and own the new technologies?

This book explores the development in Japan throughout the twentieth century of marketing and consumerism. It shows how Japan had a long established indigenous traditional approach to marketing, separate from Western approaches to marketing, and discusses how the Japanese approach to marketing was applied in the form of new marketing activities, which, responding to changing patterns of consumption, contributed considerably to Japan's economic success. The book concludes with a discussion of how Japanese approach to marketing is likely to develop at a time when globalisation and international marketing are having an increasing impact in Japan.

Now more than ever, we live in a society where we covet new and shiny things. Not only has consumption risen dramatically over the last 60 years, but we are damaging the environment at the same time. That is why buying quality and why Tara Button's Buy Me Once brand has such popular appeal. Tara Button has become a champion of a lifestyle called 'mindful curation' - a way of living in which we carefully choose each object in our lives, making sure we have the best, most classic, most pleasing and longest lasting - kettles, desks, pots & pans, scissors, coats and dresses, instead of surrounding ourselves with throwaway stuff and appliances with built-in obsolescence. Tara advocates a life that celebrates what lasts, what is classic and what really suits a person. There are 10 steps to master mindful curation and each is explained in this book, from understanding and using techniques to freeing yourself from external manipulations. Finding your purpose and priorities and identifying your core tastes and style. Learning how to let go of the superfluous and how to make wise choices going forwards. Mindful curation is a lifestyle choice that will make you happier, healthier and more fulfilled spiritual as well as helping save the planet.

Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers - from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. The wide reach and magnitude of ethical issues in society across individual and collective consumption has given rise to a series of important questions that are inspiring scholars from a range of disciplinary areas. These differing disciplinary lenses, however, tend to be contained in separate streams of research literature that are developing in parallel and in relative isolation. Ethics in Morality and Consumption takes an interdisciplinary perspective to provide multiple vantage points in creating a more holistic and integrated view of ethics in consumption. In this sense, interdisciplinary presupposes the consideration of multiple and distinct disciplines, which in this book are considered in delineated chapters. In addition, the Editors make an editorial contribution in the final chapter of the book by combining these separate disciplinary perspectives to develop a nascent interdisciplinary perspective that integrates these perspectives and presents platforms for further research.

These two volumes, bound together, represent the papers, comments, and rejoinders presented at the Conference on Consumption and Saving held 30-31 March 1959 at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. The first volume is devoted to an analysis of consumption behavior with a primary focus of attention on the determinants of the major categories of consumption. The second volume is devoted to an analysis of saving behavior.

In recent years, a critically oriented sub-stream of research on Muslim consumers and businesses has begun to emerge. This scholarship, located both within and outside the marketing field, adopts a socio-culturally situated approach to Islam and investigates the complex and multifaceted intersections between Islam and markets. This book seeks to reflect various unheard and emerging critical voices from within the Muslim world, and provide a series of critical insights on how, if and why Islam matters to marketing theory and practice. It questions the existing assumptions and polarising discussions which underpin the portrayal of Islam as the 'other' of Modernity, while acknowledging that Muslims themselves are partially responsible for creating stereotyped representations of Islam and 'the Muslim'. This wide-ranging and insightful collection will advance emerging critical perspectives, and provide new insights that will influence the generation and application of knowledge in the context of Muslim societies. It will open up fresh conversations for scholars in marketing as well as the broader humanities and social sciences.

In today's world, considerable time and effort is devoted to appearance, both for individuals and organizations; the right look, an impressive title, a favourable connection. The focus is on the surface, with considerations of substance often overlooked. In this book, Mats Alvesson demystifies some popular and upbeat claims about a range of phenomena, including the knowledge society, consumption, branding, higher education, organizational change, professionalization, and leadership. He contends that a culture of 'grandiosity' is leading to numerous inflated claims. We no longer talk about plans but 'strategies'. Supervisors have been replaced by 'managers', and managers are referred to as 'executives'. Management itself is about 'leadership'. Giving advice is 'coaching'. Companies become 'knowledge-intensive firms'. This book views the contemporary economy as an economy of persuasion, where firms and other institutions increasingly assign talent, energy, and resources to rhetoric, image, branding, reputation, and visibility. This second edition uses a wide range of empirical examples to illuminate the realms of consumption, higher education, organization, and leadership in the 21st century. Exploring new areas such as strategic management in higher education, title inflation, and the increasing imbalance between knowledge, manual, and care work, this provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.

In a world of finite resources, expanding populations and widening structural inequalities, the ownership of things is increasingly contested. Not only are the commons being rapidly enclosed and privatized, but the very idea of what can be owned is expanding, generating conflicts over the ownership of resources, ideas, culture, people, and even parts of people. Understanding processes of ownership and appropriation is not only central to anthropological theorizing but also has major practical applications, for policy, legislative development and conflict resolution.Ownership and Appropriation significantly extends anthropology's long-term concern with property by focusing on everyday notions and acts of owning and appropriating. The chapters document the relationship between ownership, subjectivities and personhood; they demonstrate the critical consequences of materiality and immateriality on what is owned; and they examine the social relations of property. By approaching ownership as social communication and negotiation, the text points to a more dynamic and processual understanding of property, ownership and appropriation.

The lead editor, Russell Belk is an internationally renowned scholar in consumer behaviour Follow up to the first authorative assessment of digital consumption, arguably a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour Leading collection of international contributors

Retail is going through difficult times and is suffering the consequences of both the economic crisis and the digitization of society. Fundamentally, there is a bigger problem: stores cannot keep up with the changing behavior of customers who are connected 24/7, customers for whom there is no distinction between online and offline.The End of Online Shopping: The Future of New Retail in an Always Connected World describes how the smart, the sharing, the circular, and the platform economy are shaping a new era of always connected retail. Retailers urgently need to innovate if they want to stay relevant in a world dominated by marketplaces and sharing platforms. The book contains inspiring examples from different industries - which include the usual suspects such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Google, but also local startups - and covers all aspects of the customer journey, from orientation and selection to delivery.The End of Online Shopping provides an excellent overview of shopping trends and developments worldwide, and offers readers indispensable insights into the future of retail.