Food trucks announcing "halal" proliferate in many urban areas but how many non-Muslims know what this means, other than cheap lunch? Here Middle Eastern historians Febe Armanios and Bogac Ergene provide an accessible introduction to halal (permissible) food in the Islamic tradition, exploring what halal food means to Muslims and how its legal and cultural interpretations have changed in different geographies up to the present day. Historically, Muslims used food to define their identities in relation to co-believers and non-Muslims. Food taboos are rooted in the Quran and prophetic customs, as well as writings from various periods and geographical settings. As in Judaism and among certain Christian sects, Islamic food traditions make distinctions between clean and impure, and dietary choices and food preparation reflect how believers think about broader issues. Traditionally, most halal interpretations focused on animal slaughter and the consumption of intoxicants. Muslims today, however, must also contend with an array of manufactured food products - yogurts, chocolates, cheeses, candies, and sodas - filled with unknown additives and fillers. To help consumers navigate the new halal marketplace, certifying agencies, government and non-government bodies, and global businesses vie to meet increased demands fofor food piety. At the same time, blogs, cookbooks, restaurants, and social media apps have proliferated, while animal rights and eco-conscious activists seek to recover halal's more wholesome and ethical inclinations. Covering practices from the Middle East and North Africa to South Asia, Europe, and North America, this timely book is for anyone curious about the history of halal food and its place in the modern world.

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.

Unconventional and provocative, My Life with Things is Elizabeth Chin's meditation on her relationship with consumer goods and a critical statement on the politics and method of anthropology. Chin centers the book on diary entries that focus on everyday items-kitchen cabinet knobs, shoes, a piano-and uses them to intimately examine the ways consumption resonates with personal and social meaning: from writing love haikus about her favorite nail polish and discussing the racial implications of her tooth cap, to revealing how she used shopping to cope with a miscarriage and contemplating how her young daughter came to think that she needed Lunesta. Throughout, Chin keeps Karl Marx and his family's relationship to their possessions in mind, drawing parallels between Marx's napkins, the production of late nineteenth-century table linens, and Chin's own vintage linen collection. Unflinchingly and refreshingly honest, Chin unlocks the complexities of her attachments to, reliance on, and complicated relationships with her things. In so doing, she prompts readers to reconsider their own consumption, as well as their assumptions about the possibilities for creative scholarship.

From food products to fashions and cosmetics to children's toys, a wide range of commodities today are being marketed as "halal" (permitted, lawful) or "Islamic" to Muslim consumers both in the West and in Muslim-majority nations. However, many of these products are not authentically Islamic or halal, and their producers have not necessarily created them to honor religious practice or sentiment. Instead, most "halal" commodities are profit-driven, and they exploit the rise of a new Islamic economic paradigm, "Brand Islam," as a clever marketing tool. Brand Islam investigates the rise of this highly lucrative marketing strategy and the resulting growth in consumer loyalty to goods and services identified as Islamic. Faegheh Shirazi explores the reasons why consumers buy Islam-branded products, including conspicuous piety or a longing to identify with a larger Muslim community, especially for those Muslims who live in Western countries, and how this phenomenon is affecting the religious, cultural, and economic lives of Muslim consumers. She demonstrates that Brand Islam has actually enabled a new type of global networking, joining product and service sectors together in a huge conglomerate that some are referring to as the Interland. A timely and original contribution to Muslim cultural studies, Brand Islam reveals how and why the growth of consumerism, global communications, and the Westernization of many Islamic countries are all driving the commercialization of Islam.

The study of pilgrimage often centres itself around miracles and spontaneous populist activities. While some of these activities and stories may play an important role in the emergence of potential pilgrimage sites and in helping create wider interest in them, this book demonstrates that the dynamics of the marketplace, including marketing and promotional activities by priests and secular interest groups, create the very consumerist markets through which pilgrimages become established and successful - and through which the 'sacred' as a category can be sustained. By drawing on examples from several contexts, including Japan, India, China, Vietnam, Europe, and the Muslim world, author Ian Reader evaluates how pilgrimages may be invented, shaped, and promoted by various interest groups. In so doing he draws attention to the competitive nature of the pilgrimage market, revealing that there are rivalries, borrowed ideas, and alliances with commercial and civil agencies to promote pilgrimages. The importance of consumerism is demonstrated, both in terms of consumer goods/souvenirs and pilgrimage site selection, rather than the usual depictions of consumerism as tawdry disjunctions on the 'sacred.' As such this book reorients studies of pilgrimage by highlighting not just the pilgrims who so often dominate the literature, but also the various other interest groups and agencies without whom pilgrimage as a phenomenon would not exist.

Social Opulence and Private Restraint is a study of the place of the consumer and consumption in the political economy of British socialism, from its early-nineteenth-century origins, through 'New Times' Marxism, to the consumer-focused New Labourism and political economies critical of consumerism that can be found in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century Left. Noel Thompson identifies and explicates recurrent themes which cross the boundaries of the conventional periodisation of the history of British socialist thought; themes which illustrate the sustained nature of the multifaceted ideological challenge presented by the accommodation of the consumer within socialist political economy. This challenge necessitates an engagement with the character and priorities of a future socialist society. As such it touches on some of the key issues which socialists have confronted in pursuit of their vision of a good society: issues with a strong contemporary relevance such as the desirability of private as against social opulence; the relationship between consumption and happiness; the need to educate and/or to liberate desire; and, in particular, the environmental and social consequences of rising levels of consumer expectation and consumption. The study also throws light on how the disparate ways in which these issues were addressed reflected and shaped the socialist political economies that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while also engendering tensions between them.

Consumer Theory brings together in one volume the most significant contributions to the subject by leading scholars. Ranging over the period from 1915 to the present, the articles explore the foundations of neoclassical theory and discuss preference and the structure of preferences. The book investigates extensions and modifications to the basic neoclassical theory, including consumption as production, intertemporal choice and the problems of uncertainty and risk. This authoritative anthology gives a comprehensive overview and will be an essential reference source for consumer theory.

'An amazing portrait of how grifters came to be called visionaries and high finance lost its mind.' Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and the company's epic unravelling from the journalists who first broke the story wide open. In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the six-foot-five Neumann looked the part of a messianic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The vision he offered was mesmerizing: a radical reimagining of work space for a new generation. He called it WeWork. As billions of funding dollars poured in, Neumann's ambitions grew limitless. WeWork wasn't just an office space provider; it would build schools, create cities, even colonize Mars. In pursuit of its founder's vision, the company spent money faster than it could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, the CEO scoured the globe for more capital but in late 2019, just weeks before WeWork's highly publicized IPO, everything fell apart. Neumann was ousted from his company, but still was poised to walk away a billionaire. Calling to mind the recent demise of Theranos and the hubris of the dotcom era bust, WeWork's extraordinary rise and staggering implosion were fueled by disparate characters in a financial system blind to its risks. Why did some of the biggest names in banking and venture capital buy the hype? And what does the future hold for Silicon Valley 'unicorns'? Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell explore these questions in this definitive, rollicking account of WeWork's boom and bust.

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.

'Magnificent ... groundbreaking ... a triumph' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 'A masterpiece, a delight to read ... a rare and beautiful thing' Gerard DeGroot, The Times What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers, and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British empire to the present. Astonishingly wide-ranging and richly detailed, Empire of Things explores how we have come to live with so much more, how this changed the course of history, and the global challenges we face as a result. 'I read Empire Of Things with unflagging fascination ... elegant, adventurous and colourful ... gleefully provocative' John Preston, Daily Mail 'Such a pleasure to read ... From Victorian department stores to modernist kitchens, his book revels in the things that most historians tend to overlook' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

Christmas is a time of seasonal cheer, family get-togethers, holiday parties, and-gift giving. Lots and lots--and lots--of gift giving. It's hard to imagine any Christmas without this time-honored custom. But let's stop to consider the gifts we receive--the rooster sweater from Grandma or the singing fish from Uncle Mike. How many of us get gifts we like? How many of us give gifts not knowing what recipients want? Did your cousin really look excited about that jumping alarm clock? Lively and informed, "Scroogenomics" illustrates how our consumer spending generates vast amounts of economic waste--to the shocking tune of eighty-five billion dollars each winter. Economist Joel Waldfogel provides solid explanations to show us why it's time to stop the madness and think twice before buying gifts for the holidays.

When we buy for ourselves, every dollar we spend produces at least a dollar in satisfaction, because we shop carefully and purchase items that are worth more than they cost. Gift giving is different. We make less-informed choices, max out on credit to buy gifts worth less than the money spent, and leave recipients less than satisfied, creating what Waldfogel calls "deadweight loss." Waldfogel indicates that this waste isn't confined to Americans--most major economies share in this orgy of wealth destruction. While recognizing the difficulties of altering current trends, Waldfogel offers viable gift-giving alternatives.

By reprioritizing our gift-giving habits, "Scroogenomics" proves that we can still maintain the economy without gouging our wallets, and reclaim the true spirit of the holiday season.

A definitive history of consumer activism, "Buying Power" traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation's founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word "boycott" even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists' relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.

Offering a deeper understanding of today's internet media and the management theory behind it Platforms are everywhere. From social media to chat, streaming, credit cards, and even bookstores, it seems like almost everything can be described as a platform. In The Platform Economy, Marc Steinberg argues that the "platformization" of capitalism has transformed everything, and it is imperative that we have a historically precise, robust understanding of this widespread concept. Taking Japan as the key site for global platformization, Steinberg delves into that nation's unique technological and managerial trajectory, in the process systematically examining every facet of the elusive word platform. Among the untold stories revealed here is that of the 1999 iPhone precursor, the i-mode: the world's first widespread mobile internet platform, which became a blueprint for Apple and Google's later dominance of the mobile market. Steinberg also charts the rise of social gaming giants GREE and Mobage, chat tools KakaoTalk, WeChat, and LINE, and video streaming site Niconico Video, as well as the development of platform theory in Japan, as part of a wider transformation of managerial theory to account for platforms as mediators of cultural life. Analyzing platforms' immense impact on contemporary media such as video streaming, music, and gaming, The Platform Economy fills in neglected parts of the platform story. In narrating the rise and fall of Japanese platforms, and the enduring legacy of Japanese platform theory, this book sheds light on contemporary tech titans like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Netflix, and their platform-mediated transformation of contemporary life-it is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand what capitalism is today and where it is headed.

Contents:
1. Introduction: The Why of Consumption S. Ratneshwar, David G. Mick and Cynthia Huffman 2. Consumer Goal Structures and Goal Determination Processes: An Integrative Framework Cynthia Huffman, S. Ratneshwar and David G. Mick 3. The Role of Emotions in Goal-Directed Behaviour Richard P. Bagozzi, Hans Bumgartner, Rik Pieters and Marcel Zeelenberg 4. Minimizing Negative Emotions as a Decision Goal: Investigating Emotional Trade-Off Difficulty Mary Frances Luce, James R. Bettman and John W. Payne 5. The Role of Approach/Avoidance Asymmetries in Motivated Belief Formation and Change Frank R. Kardes and Maria L. Cronley 6. The Missing Streetcare Named Desire Russell W. Belk, Guliz Ger and Soren Askegaard 7. Postmodern Consumer Goals Made Easy! Craig J. Thompson 8. Authenticating Acts and Authoritative Performances: Questing for Self and Community Eric J. Arnould and Linda L. Price 9. Representations of Women's Identities and Goals: The Past Fifty Years in Film and Television Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Barbara C. Stern 10. The Urge to Buy: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective on Compulsive Buying Ronald J. Faber 11. On Selling Brotherhood Like Soap: Influencing Everyday Disposal Decisions Luk Warlop, Dirk Smeesters and Piet anden Abeele 12. Timestyle and Consuming Time: Why We Do What We Do With Our Time June Cotte and S. Ratneshwar 13. Using Narratives to Discern Self-Identity Related Consumer Goals and Motivations Jennifer Edson Escalas and James R. Bettman 14. The Power of Metaphor Robin Coulter and Gerald Zaltman

A powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers-and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Disturbing, provocative, and compelling, this book examines phenomena as seemingly disparate as adolescent fashion trends for adults, megachurches, declining voter participation, the privatization of the public sphere, branding, and the rise of online shopping to show how the freedoms of the free market have undermined the freedoms of the deliberative adult citizen. Barber brings together extensive empirical research with an original theoretical framework for understanding our contemporary predicament.

This book is aimed at readers interested in advanced consumer behavior theories both graduate students in their final year and practitioners with an MBA or similar background. Emotions, Advertising and Consumer Choice focuses on recent neurological or psychological insights originating from brain scanning or neurological experiments on basic emotional processes in the brain and their role in controlling human behavior. These insights are translated by the authors to cover the behavior of ordinary individuals in every-day life. The book looks at these developments in the light of traditional cognitive theories of consumer choice and it discusses the implications for advertising and other communication testing. The book offers a first-time thorough review of contemporary thinking in the field of consumer behavior and an exhaustive amount of empirical evidence to support the authors' notion of an emerging paradigm of emotionally-based consumer choice where mental brand equity becomes a central phenomenon.

An expose on how the rise of China will affect the American way of life

"The End of Cheap China" is a fun, riveting, must-read book not only for people doing business in China but for anyone interested in understanding the forces that are changing the world.

Many Americans know China for manufacturing cheap products, thanks largely to the country's vast supply of low-cost workers. But China is changing, and the glut of cheap labor that has made everyday low prices possible is drying up as the Chinese people seek not to make iPhones, but to buy them. Shaun Rein, Founder of the China Market Research Group, puts China's continuing transformation from producer to large-scale consumer - a process that is farther along than most economists think - under the microscope, examining eight megatrends that are catalyzing change in China and posing threats to Americans' consumption-driven way of life.

Rein takes an engaging and informative approach to examining the extraordinary changes taking place across all levels of Chinese society, talking to everyone from Chinese billionaires and senior government officials to poor migrant workers and even prostitutes. He draws on personal stories and experiences from living in China since the 1990s as well as hard economic data. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of China's transformation, from fast-improving Chinese companies to confident, optimistic Chinese women to the role of China's government, and at the end breaks down key lessons for readers to take away.

"The End of Cheap China" shows: How rising labor and real estate costs are forcing manufacturers of cheap Chinese products to close, relocate, or move up the value streamHow a restructuring economy moving away from exports to domestic consumption, and rising incomes will create opportunities for foreign brands to sell products in China rather than just producing thereHow Chinese consumption will build pressure on the global commodities markets, causing both inflation and friction with other nationsHow China's economic transformation spells the end of cheap consumption for Americans

China's days as a low cost production center are numbered. "The End of Cheap China" exposes the end of America's consumerist way of life and gives clear advice on how companies can succeed in the new world order.

In this impressively researched, alarming book, Rosaleen Duffy investigates the world of nature conservation, arguing that the West's attitude to endangered wildlife is shallow, self-contradictory, and ultimately very damaging. Analyzing the workings of the black-market wildlife industry, Duffy points out that illegal trading is often the direct result of Western consumer desires, from coltan for cellular phones to exotic meats sold in London street markets. She looks at the role of ecotourism, showing how Western travelers contribute--often unwittingly--to the destruction of natural environments. Most strikingly, she argues that the imperatives of Western-style conservation often result in serious injustice to local people, who are branded as "problems" and subject to severe restrictions on their way of life and even extrajudicial killings.

Knowledge of consumer psychology and consumer behaviour in relation to tourism is valuable in determining the success of tourism and hospitality ventures. The book is an edited collection of papers from the 3rd Symposium on Consumer Psychology of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, held in Melbourne, Australia in January 2003. Themes covered by the papers include attitudes, emotions and information processing; motivation and learning; consumption systems; decision and choice; experience and satisfaction; market segmentation; attraction and loyalty; and image and interpretation.

Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai, a cutting-edge text/ethnography, reports on the rapidly expanding field of global, urban studies through a unique pairing of six teams of urban researchers from around the world. The authors present shopping streets from each city - New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto, and Tokyo - how they have changed over the years, and how they illustrate globalization embedded in local communities. This is an ideal addition to courses in urbanization, consumption, and globalization.. The book's companion website, www.globalcitieslocalstreets.org, has additional videos, images, and maps, alongside a forum where students and instructors can post their own shopping street experiences.

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.

Life in the west is lived within a culture awash with the advertising, brand-names and labels of conspicuous consumerism. Accordingly, consumerism and consumer culture have become central to critical discussions of identity, postmodernity and culture as never before. And yet critiques of consumerism are largely confined to those who argue either for or against notions of elitism or manipulation. In the main, theorists such as Bauman, Giddens and Hall do not offer alternatives to consumerism, but argue that it is an all-enveloping and inescapable imperative, and a dominant motivation in contemporary life. This book challenges the assumptions behind these discussions of consumerism, and to broaden our understanding of the true nature of contemporary society. Lodziak argues that all-encompassing visions of consumerism are useful only as an ideology. They are not a realistic representation of modern culture and society, and, therefore, the understanding of identity that they offer is limited. In The Myth of Consumerism Lodziak opens up the debate, offering a cogent critique of consumer culture and analysing the role it really plays in our lives.

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.

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.