A multi-disciplinary overview providing new theories, critical analyses and the latest reasearch on this very fashionable topic. Includes chapters on consumption studies in anthropology, economics, history, sociology and many more areas.

This book is the first of its kind to bring together a collection of critical scholarly work on consumer culture in South Africa, exploring the cultural, political, economic, and social aspects of consumption in post-Apartheid society. From sushi and Japanese diplomacy to Queen Sophie's writhing gown, from middle class Sowetan golfers to an indebted working class citizenry, from wedding websites to wedding nostalgia, from the liberation of consuming to the low wage labour of selling, the chapters in this book demonstrate a variety of themes, showing that to start with consumption, rather than ending with it, allows for new insights into long-standing areas of social research. By mapping, exploring and theorizing the diverse aspects of consumption and consumer culture, the volume collectively works towards a fresh set of empirically rooted conceptual commentaries on the politics, economics, and social dynamics of modern South Africa. This effort, in turn, can serve as a foundation for thinking less parochially about neoliberal power and consumer culture. On a global scale, studying consumption in South Africa matters because in some ways the country serves as a microcosm for global patterns of income inequality, race-based economic oppression, and hopes for the material betterment of life. By exploring what consumption means on the 'local' scale in South Africa, the possibility arises to trace new global links and dissonances. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.

Lead in lipstick? 1,4 dioxane in baby soap? Coal tar in shampoo? How is this possible? Simple. The $35 billion cosmetics industry is so powerful they've kept themselves unregulated for decades. Not Just a Pretty Face chronicles the quest that led a group of health and environmental activists to the world's largest cosmetics companies to ask some tough questions: * Why do companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals that may contribute to that very disease?* Why do products used by men and women of childbearing age contain chemicals linked to birth defects and infertility? As doors slammed in their faces and the beauty myth peeled away, the industry's toxic secrets began to emerge. This scathing investigation peels away less-than-lovely layers to expose an industry in dire need of an extreme makeover. The good news is that while the major multinational companies fight for their right to use hazardous chemicals, entrepreneurs are developing safer non-toxic technologies and building businesses on the values of health, justice and personal empowerment.

Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as 'memories' and deliver them back to us. But how does that change the way we remember? Drawing on original qualitative research as well as industry documents and reports, this book critically explores the process behind this new form of memory making. In asking how social media are beginning to change the way we remember, it will be essential reading for scholars and students who are interested in understanding the algorithmically defined spaces of our lives.

Exploring the ambiguous relationship between fandom and consumer culture, this book provides a critical overview of fans, fan cultures and fan experiences in relation to the broader experience and transformation economy. Fans and Fan Cultures discusses key theoretical concepts concerning celebrity, fandoms, subculture, consumerism and marketing through a range of examples in film, travel and tourism, football and music. With an emphasis on social media, and how various online platforms are utilised by brands, artists and fans, the authors explore how this type of communication often contributes to trivialising authentic expressions of cultural and social values and identities.

How did Americans come to quantify their society's progress and well-being in units of money? In today's GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the "health" of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.

The chapters in this volume are selected from the best papers presented at the 10th Annual Consumer Culture Theory Conference held at the University of Arkansas, USA in June 2015. The diverse interpretive research and theory represented in this volume provides the reader with intellectually stimulating opportunities to examine the intersections between a variety of topics that represent the cutting edge in consumer research. These studies draw on an array of qualitative methodologies and the substantive topics represent crucial issues for our times.

Many of the environmental and social problems we face today are symptoms of a deeper systemic failing: a dominant cultural paradigm that encourages living in ways that are often directly counter to the realities of a finite planet. This paradigm, typically referred to as 'consumerism, ' has already spread to cultures around the world and has led to consumption levels that are vastly unsustainable. If this pattern spreads further there will be little possibility of solving climate change or other environmental problems that are poised to dramatically disrupt human civilization.It will take a sustained, long-term effort to redirect the traditions, social movements and institutions that shape consumer cultures towards becoming cultures of sustainability. These institutions include schools, the media, businesses and governments. Bringing about a cultural shift that makes living sustainably as 'natural' as a consumer lifestyle is today will not only address urgent crises like climate change, it could also tackle other symptoms like extreme income inequity, obesity and social isolation that are not typically seen as environmental problems. State of the World 2010 paints a picture of what this sustainability culture could look like, and how we can - and already are - making the shift.

Translated by DANIEL ROSS

Bernard Stiegler is one of the most original philosophers writing today about new technologies and their implications for social, political and personal life. Drawing on sources ranging from Plato and Marx to Freud, Heidegger and Derrida, he develops a highly original account of technology as grammatology, as a technics of writing that constitutes our experience of time, memory and desire, even of life itself. Society and our place within it are shaped by technical reproduction which can both expand and restrict the horizons and possibilities of human agency and experience.

In the three volumes of "Disbelief and Discredit" Stiegler argues that this process of technical reproduction has become dangerously divorced from its role in the constitution of human experience. Radically challenging the optimistic view of new technologies as facilitators of learning and progress, he argues new marketing techniques shortcircuit thought and disenfranchise consumers, programming them to seek short-term gratification. These practices of 'libidinal economics' have profound consequences for nature of human desire and they underpin the social and psychological malaise of contemporaty industrial society.

In this opening volume Stiegler argues that the industrial model implemented since the beginning of the twentieth century has become obsolete, leading capitalist democracies to an impasse. A sign of this impasse and of the decadence to which it leads is the banalization of consumers who become ensnared in a perpetual cycle of consumption. This is the new proletarianization of the technologically infused, hyper-industrial capitalism of today. It produces a society cut off from its past and its future, stultifying human development and turning democracy into a farce in which disbelief and discredit inevitably arise.

This book critically reviews recent social scientific investigations of consumption, a controversial topic with moral overtones, and of popular public interest and political and economic significance. The author explores how consumption affects personal identity and social position, developing a sociological analysis using theories of practice to account for everyday consumption, its role in the social order, and its consequences for environmental sustainability. The book offers a controversial analysis which explains consumption not in terms of the purchasing of commodities but of the organization and coordination of daily practices. Consumption will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies, consumer research, business studies and social theory.

Evaluating the ways in which we construe consumer choice, this book examines the psychology, methods and realities of the role it plays for today's consumer. Confronted by competing brands and products, services, and e-tailed opportunities that are but a click away, how does the consumer choose among them to achieve the particular array of goods to suit their lifestyle? Consumer researchers often seek to explain consumer choice by attributing it to beliefs, desires, attitudes, and intentions in the absence of any theoretical justification. Perspectives on Consumer Choice is the outcome of a research program that employs cognitive explanations in a responsible and disciplined way to genuinely elucidate consumer choice in social scientific terms. Employing a reasoned approach to understanding consumption, this book builds upon theoretical and empirical research in economic psychology, behavioral economics and philosophy as well as marketing and consumer research.

How did we arrive at our contemporary consumer media economy? Why are we now fixated on screens, imbibing information that constantly expires, and longing for more direct or authentic kinds of experience? The Mediated Mind answers these questions by revisiting a previous media revolution, the nineteenth-century explosion of mass print. Like our own smartphone screens, printed paper and imprinted objects touched the most intimate regions of nineteenth-century life. The rise of this printed ephemera, and its new information economy, generated modern consumer experiences such as voracious collecting and curating, fantasies of disembodied mental travel, and information addiction. Susan Zieger demonstrates how the nineteenth century established affective, psychological, social, and cultural habits of media consumption that we still experience, even as pixels supersede paper. Revealing the history of our own moment, The Mediated Mind challenges the commonplace assumption that our own new media lack a past, or that our own experiences are unprecedented.

A unique insight into the decision-making and food consumption of the European consumer. The volume is essential reading for those involved in product development, market research and consumer science in food and agro industries and academic research. It brings together experts from different disciplines in order to address the fundamental issues related to predicting food choice, consumer behavior and societal trust in quality and safety regulatory systems. The importance of the social and psychological context and the cross-cultural differences and how they influence food choice are also covered in great detail.

Drawing from decades of research, Genes, Climate, and Consumption Culture: Connecting the Dots demonstrates how climate dictates culture and consumption. The author shows that human genes are climatic adaptations over thousands of years of evolution, which has resulted in the dramatic differences between people's food, clothing, and shelter choices. Most importantly, the book discusses how many of the fundamental differences between cultures, with respect to time, space, friendship, and technology, are responses to their particular climate. Readers will learn how to challenge their assumptions about what types of products and services foreign markets want. They will learn how to examine local markets vis-a-vis climate and culture, either changing their products accordingly or delivering entirely new offerings.

Picture a familiar scene: long lines of shoppers waiting to check out at the grocery store, carts filled to the brim with the week's food. While many might wonder what is in each cart, Andrew Warnes implores us to consider the symbolism of the cart itself. In his inventive new book, Warnes examines how the everyday shopping cart is connected to a complex web of food production and consumption that has spread from the United States throughout the world. Today, shopping carts represent choice and autonomy for consumers, a recognizable American way of life that has become a global phenomenon. This succinct and and accessible book provides an excellent overview of consumerism and the globalization of American culture.

Julia Weindel provides novel implications for researchers and managers by first identifying the sector-specific main levers of retail brand equity. Second, she shows that retail brand equity and perceived value have a reciprocal relationship. The author analyzes which one of these has stronger effects on loyalty. Third, she addresses the interdependencies between brand beliefs, retail brand equity, and loyalty within multichannel retail structures. The study is forced through the knowledge that management of retail brands is highly valuable for scholars and managers, because retail brand equity is known to strongly influence consumer behavior in various contexts. The retail brand represents a valuable asset for retailers which need to know the levers of retail brand equity.

The term 'consumption' covers the desire for goods and services, their acquisition, use, and disposal. The study of consumption has grown enormously in recent years, and it has been the subject of major historiographical debates: did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption offers a timely overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in the last generation, taking the reader from the ancient period to the twenty-first century. It includes chapters on Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America, brings together new perspectives, highlights cutting-edge areas of research, and offers a guide through the main historiographical developments. Contributions from leading historians examine the spaces of consumption, consumer politics, luxury and waste, nationalism and empire, the body, well-being, youth cultures, and fashion. The Handbook also showcases the different ways in which recent historians have approached the subject, from cultural and economic history to political history and technology studies, including areas where multidisciplinary approaches have been especially fruitful.

In this book, Mats Alvesson aims to demystify 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. Goods have become brands. Wealthy countries try to show that they are knowledge societies through mass higher education but with limited effect on real qualifications or qualified job opportunities for graduates. The 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. Using a wide range of empirical examples to illuminate the realms of consumption, higher education, organization, and leadership, this provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.

Consumer interests and concerns reveal themselves in different forms of consumer organisation. In this book, the agenda of affluent consumers in post-1945 Western societies is investigated through a collection of essays on the consumer movement in Britain, the USA, France and Norway. These contributions challenge a stereotype of the consumer as passive and individualistic by demonstrating how citizens have continued to organise on matters relating to consumption in the post-war era. Coming from the fields of history and the social sciences, the contributors offer fresh insights into questions of how and why consumers have chosen to organise in a context of increasing affluence. The book should appeal to students, scholars and others interested in the history of consumption and social movements.

In an unprecedented phenomenon that swept across Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century, writers, advertisers, and architects began to create and sell images of an authentic cultural realm paradoxically considered outside the marketplace. Such images were located in nostalgic pictures of an idyllic, pre-industrial past, in supposedly original objects not derived from previous traditions, and in the ideal of a purified aesthetic that might be separated from the mass market. Presenting a lively, unique study of what she terms the "commodified authentic," Elizabeth Outka explores this crucial but overlooked development in the history of modernity with a piercing look at consumer culture and the marketing of authenticity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. The book brings together a wide range of cultural sources, from the model towns of Bournville, Port Sunlight, and Letchworth; to the architecture of Edwin Lutyens and Selfridges department store; to work by authors such as Bernard Shaw, E. M. Forster, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

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.

Buying (RED) products-from Gap T-shirts to Apple-to fight AIDS. Drinking a "Caring Cup" of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to support fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by buying something. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case studies of "commodity activism." Drawing from television, film, consumer activist campaigns, and cultures of celebrity and corporate patronage, the essays take up examples such as the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign, sex positive retail activism, ABC's Extreme Home Makeover, and Angelina Jolie as multinational celebrity missionary. Exploring the complexities embedded in contemporary political activism, Commodity Activism reveals the workings of power and resistance as well as citizenship and subjectivity in the neoliberal era. Refusing to simply position politics in opposition to consumerism, this collection teases out the relationships between material cultures and political subjectivities, arguing that activism may itself be transforming into a branded commodity.

Studies have found that the purchasing power of American women is potentially the greatest in the world. So why not support the rights of women while you shop? Fun to read, easy to use, and packed with the latest information available, The Feminist Dollar gives you the basic facts about gender fairness and equity as it is - or is not - practiced by corporations and governments, so that you can make informed decisions about the policies you want to support when buying merchandise and traveling abroad. Among the almost 400 companies covered here that make and market the products you buy and use every day, you will discover which promote women, have generous childcare or family leave policies, or contribute to organizations that benefit women, so that you can apply economic pressure where it can make a difference. Also, you will find the FEM - feminist evaluation measure - ratings of some of the states and countries to which you might travel.

In recent years children have become an increasingly important consumer market, and there is growing concern about the 'commercialisation' of childhood. This book sheds light on these debates, offering new empirical data and challenging critical perspectives on children's engagement with consumer culture from a wide range of international settings.

Tasty, convenient, and cheap, instant noodles are one of the most remarkable industrial foods ever. Consumed around the world by millions, they appeal to young and old, affluent and impoverished alike. The authors examine the history, manufacturing, marketing, and consumption of instant noodles. By focusing on three specific markets, they reveal various ways in which these noodles enable diverse populations to manage their lives. The first market is in Japan, where instant noodles have facilitated a major transformation of post-war society, while undergoing a seemingly endless tweaking in flavors, toppings, and packaging in order to entice consumers. The second is in the United States, where instant noodles have become important to many groups including college students, their nostalgic parents, and prison inmates. The authors also take note of "heavy users," a category of the chronically hard-pressed targeted by U.S. purveyors. The third is in Papua New Guinea, where instant noodles arrived only recently and are providing cheap food options to the urban poor, all the while transforming them into aspiring consumers. Finally, this study examines the global "Big Food" industry. As one of the food system's singular achievements, the phenomenon of instant noodles provides insight into the pros and cons of global capitalist provisioning.