Major changes have recently taken place in the value attached to components of milk. Although approximately half the energy in milk is contained in fat, fat is rapidly decreasing in value relative to protein. This has come about because of the increased availability of competitively-priced, plant-derived edible oils and because of the perceived health problems associated with animal fat in the human diet. Such changes have major implications for the dairy sector, particularly in developed countries. Against this background, this book presents a timely review of developments in milk production and consumption, of changes in milk component values, and of the opportunities that biotechnology provides to alter the composition of and add value to milk on the farm. The subject coverage is very broad, ranging from nutritional aspects of pastures and forages, to rumen microbiology, genetics and reproductive technologies, milk biochemistry and environmental implications. It is based on a conference held in Wellington, New Zealand, in February 1996, and sponsored by the OECD and AgResearch. Contributors include leading research workers from North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It provides an invaluable overview of the subject, suitable as a reference book for advanced students, researchers and advisers in dairy science as well as related disciplines such as grassland, nutritional and food sciences.

If the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that Americans save too little, spend too much, and borrow excessively. What can we learn from East Asian and European countries that have fostered enduring cultures of thrift over the past two centuries? "Beyond Our Means" tells for the first time how other nations aggressively encouraged their citizens to save by means of special savings institutions and savings campaigns. The U.S. government, meanwhile, promoted mass consumption and reliance on credit, culminating in the global financial meltdown.

Many economists believe people save according to universally rational calculations, saving the most in their middle years as they plan for retirement, and saving the least in welfare states. In reality, Europeans save at high rates despite generous welfare programs and aging populations. Americans save little, despite weaker social safety nets and a younger population. Tracing the development of such behaviors across three continents from the nineteenth century to today, this book highlights the role of institutions and moral suasion in shaping habits of saving and spending. It shows how the encouragement of thrift was not a relic of indigenous traditions but a modern movement to confront rising consumption. Around the world, messages to save and spend wisely confronted citizens everywhere--in schools, magazines, and novels. At the same time, in America, businesses and government normalized practices of living beyond one's means.

Transnational history at its most compelling, "Beyond Our Means" reveals why some nations save so much and others so little.

A book that taps into the current debate around resource rentals in South Africa, and outlines practical steps that can be taken to a different tax regime.

Land rent can provide jobs for all if we just collect it instead of taxing those who create wealth or seek merely to survive. This rent, or the locational advantage of each piece of land, is owed to the community, whose grant of security of tenure enables the owner to enjoy its man-made and natural advantages. Rent has been a phenomenon since the time of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, but its potential has been ignored and the world has got lost in an economic jungle of its own making.

This book is based on a very simple proposal: replace most taxation with collection of land and other natural resource rentals. It shows the way to the broad uplands of prosperity for all, and explains why it is time for us to talk about rent! It taps into the current debate in the media and economic and political circles around resource rentals in South Africa, and outlines practical steps that can be taken to a different tax regime. This book is highly relevant and topical, and offers much to stimulate further debate whilst offering something positive and workable.

'Lots of ideas for making gifts and decorations but not spending tons of money buying them' Jenni Murray Celebrating midwinter is not about what you buy or how much you spend - it's about your attitude to life. Turn away from the frenetic consumerism of Christmas and rediscover the authentic and meaningful realities of this, the oldest and most precious celebration of the year. The true significance of midwinter is not found in any individual spiritual or religious belief or practice. Instead, the winter solstice provides an opportunity to celebrate what we as humans share; to set aside our differences and come together with a sense of community and cheer. Merry Midwinter is a cornucopia of ideas for how to make your own decorations (kissing boughs, advent wreaths, crackers, stockings and more); your own alternative gifts which cost nothing except your time and thought; your own entertainments and games; and simple, seasonal recipes from years gone by.

In this compelling history, Peter Chapman shows how the United Fruit Company took bananas from the jungles of Costa Rica to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., with not just clever marketing, but covert CIA operations, bloody coups and brutalised workforces. And how along the way they turned the banana into a blueprint for a new model of unfettered global capitalism: one that serves corporate power at any cost.

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.

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 not only 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.

For all the political branding and rebranding of healthcare in the United States, its fundamental unit of currency remains the doctor-patient relationship. This relationship has undergone seismic changes during the twenty-first century, including the introduction of new players (the so-called healthcare "team") and care delivery in settings like big-box stores and bureaucratic health systems. But are any of us better off? Next in Line is the first book to examine the doctor-patient relationship in the context of its new environs, in particular the impact of efficiency-driven innovation and retail-care models on physician mindsets and the patient experience. The overall picture is one of lowered expectations-a transactional, impersonal, and institutionally-limited incarnation of the medical bedside that leaves all parties underwhelmed and overstressed. By first conducting a macro-analysis of key industry trends (including the widespread use of performance metrics and retail principles), then measuring these trends' impacts through interviews with physicians and patients, Next in Line is both an examination and a critique of a care system at a crossroads. It is essential reading for understanding why relational care matters - and why it must be saved in a corporatized health system bent on using retail approaches to deliver care.

Dana Thomas's Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre goes deep inside the workings of today's world of profit margins and market share to discover the real meaning of 'luxury'. Fashion may be fabulous, but what's the true price of luxury? From the importance of fashion owners, to red carpet stars and the seasonal 'must-have' handbags, Dana Thomas shows how far illustrious houses have moved from their roots. Thomas witnesses how these 'luxury' handbags are no longer one in a million, discovers why luxury brand clothing doesn't last as long, and finds out just who is making your perfume. From terrifying raids on the Chinese sweat shops to the daunting chic of Paris workshops, from the handcrafting and economics of early-twentieth century designers to the violent truth behind the 'harmless' fakes, Deluxe goes deep into the world of extravagance, and asks: where can true luxury go now? 'Definitive' Daily Telegraph 'Thomas's message is relevant to shoppers of every stripe' The New York Times 'Thomas explores what luxury meant before the word was both inflated and devalued' Guardian 'Great aversion therapy ... we suspect we're being fleeced, but we don't know with what cynical dedication' The Times Dana Thomas is now European Editor for Portfolio following twelve years as the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris. She has written about style for the New York Times Magazine since 1994, and has contributed to various publications including the New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and the Financial Times.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Chinese advertising as an industry, a discourse and profession in China s search for modernity and cultural globalization. It compares and contrasts the advertising practices of Chinese advertising agencies and foreign advertising agencies, and Chinese brands and foreign brands, with a particular focus on the newest digital advertising practices in the post WTO era. Based on extensive interviews, participant observation, and a critical analysis of secondary data, Li offers an engaging analysis of the transformation of Chinese advertising in the past three decades in Post-Mao China. Drawing upon theories of political economy, media, and cultural studies, her analysis offers most significant insights in advertising and consumer culture as well as the economic, social, political, and cultural transformations in China. The book is essential for students and scholars of communication, media, cultural studies and international business, and all those interested in cultural globalization and China.

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.

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.

First published in 2005, Economics and Social Interaction is a fresh attempt to overcome the traditional inability of economics to deal with interpersonal phenomena that occur within the sphere of markets and productive organizations. It makes use of traditional economic concepts for understanding interpersonal events, while venturing beyond those concepts to give a better account of personalised interactions. In contrast to other books, Economics and Social Interaction offers the reader a rigorous effort at extending economic analysis to a difficult field in a consistent manner, sensitive to insights from other behavioural and social sciences. This collection represents an important contribution to a growing research agenda in the social sciences.

In 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt identified "four essential human freedoms." Three of these-freedom from fear, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion-had long been understood as defining principles of liberalism. Roosevelt's fourth freedom-freedom from want-was not. Indeed, classic liberals had argued that the only way to guarantee this freedom would be through an illiberal redistribution of wealth. In Freedom from Want, Kathleen G. Donohue describes how, between the 1880s and the 1940s, American intellectuals transformed classical liberalism into its modern American counterpart by emphasizing consumers over producers and consumption over production. Donohue first examines this conceptual shift through the writings of a wide range of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social critics-among them William Graham Sumner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Richard T. Ely, Edward Bellamy, and Thorstein Veblen-who rethought not only the negative connotations of consumerism but also the connection between one's right to consume and one's role in the production process. She then turns to the politicization of these ideas beginning with the establishment of a more consumer-oriented liberalism by Walter Lippmann and Walter Weyl and ending in the New Deal era, when this debate evolved from intellectual discourse into public policy with the creation of such bodies as the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Deftly combining intellectual, cultural, and political history, Freedom from Want sheds new light on the ways in which Americans reconceptualized the place of the consumer in society and the implications of these shifting attitudes for the philosophy ofliberalism and the role of government in safeguarding the material welfare of the people.

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.

Credit and Community examines the history of consumer credit and debt in working class communities. Concentrating on forms of credit that were traditionally very dependent on personal relationships and social networks, such as mail-order catalogues and co-operatives, it demonstrates how community-based arrangements declined as more impersonal forms of borrowing emerged during the twentieth century.
Tallymen and check traders moved into doorstep money-lending during the 1960s, but in subsequent decades the loss of their best working class customers, owing to increased spending power and the emergence of a broader range of credit alternatives, forced them to focus on the 'financially excluded'. This 'sub-prime' market was open for exploitation by unlicensed lenders, and Sean O'Connell offers the first detailed historical investigation of illegal money-lending in the UK, encompassing the 'she usurers' of Edwardian Liverpool and the violent loan sharks of Blair's Britain.
O'Connell contrasts such commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as "diddlum clubs," "partners," and mutuality clubs. He provides the first history of the UK credit unions, revealing the importance of Irish and Caribbean immigrant volunteers, and explains the relative failure of the movement compared with Ireland.
Drawing on a wide range of neglected sources, including the archives of consumer credit companies, the records of the co-operative and credit union movements, and government papers, Credit and Community makes a strong contribution to historical understandings of credit and debt. Oral history testimony from both sides of the credit divide is used totelling effect, offering key insights into the complex nature of the relationship between borrowers and lenders.

Edited by Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, this volume features early work on the theory and measurement of consumer behaviour. Featuring contributions from leading economists such as Anthony Atkinson, Nicholas Stern, John Muellbauer and Deaton himself, the book offers papers on a wide range of topics. Topics covered range from theory to econometrics, from Engel curves to labour supply and fertility, and from consumer demand in England to consumer behaviour in the USSR. These papers were written and collected for this volume to honour Sir Richard Stone on the occasion of his retirement from his chair at the University of Cambridge.

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.

Most of us who live in the North and the West consume far too much - too much meat, too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt. We are more likely to put on too much weight than to go hungry. We live in a society that is heading for a crash. We are aware of what is happening and yet we refuse to take it fully into account. Above all we refuse to address the issue that lies at the heart of our problems - namely, the fact that our societies are based on an economy whose only goal is growth for growth's sake.

Serge Latouche argues that we need to rethink from the very foundations the idea that our societies should be based on growth. He offers a radical alternative - a society of 'de-growth'. De-growth is not the same thing as negative growth. We should be talking about 'a-growth', in the sense in which we speak of 'a-theism'. And we do indeed have to abandon a faith or religion - that of the economy, progress and development--and reject the irrational and quasi-idolatrous cult of growth for growth's sake.

While many realize that that the never-ending pursuit of growth is incompatible with a finite planet, we have yet to come to terms with the implications of this - the need to produce less and consume less. But if we do not change course, we are heading for an ecological and human disaster. There is still time to imagine, quite calmly, a system based upon a different logic, and to plan for a 'de-growth society'.

In this book, Maxine Berg explores the invention, making, and buying of new, semi-luxury, and fashionable consumer goods during the eighteenth century. It follows these goods, from china tea ware to all sorts of metal ornaments such as candlesticks, cutlery, buckles, and buttons, as they were made and shopped for, then displayed in the private domestic settings of Britain's urban middling classes. It tells the stories and analyses the developments that led from a global trade in Eastern luxuries beginning in the sixteenth century to the new global trade in British-made consumer goods by the end of the eighteenth century. These new products, regarded as luxuries by the rapidly growing urban and middling-class people of the eighteenth century, played an important part in helping to proclaim personal identities,and guide social interaction. Customers enjoyed shopping for them; they took pleasure in their beauty, ingenuity or convenience. All manner of new products appeared in shop windows; sophisticated mixed-media advertising seduced customers and created new wants. This unparalleled 'product revolution' provoked philosophers and pundits to proclaim a 'new luxury', one that reached out to the middling and trading classes, unlike the elite and corrupt luxury of old. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth Century Britain is cultural history at its best, built on a fresh empirical base drawn directly from customs accounts, advertising material, company papers, and contemporary correspondence. Maxine Berg traces how this new consumer society of the eighteenth century and the products first traded, then invented to satisfy it, stimulated industrialization itself. Global markets for the consumer goods of private and domestic life inspired the industrial revolution and British products 'won the world'.

The BSE epidemic, GM foods, avian flu, the growth of supermarkets and the crisis in obesity have shaken consumer trust in food. Uncovering surprising differences between countries, Trust in Food examines this and challenges the idea of the consumer as a sovereign individual, demonstrating how consumption is institutionalized within society.

'I'm 79 years old. So why on earth should I concern myself with speaking about youth?' This is the question with which renowned French philosopher Alain Badiou begins his passionate plea to the young. Today young people, at least in the West, are on the brink of a new world. With the decline of old traditions, they now face more choices than ever before. Yet powerful forces are pushing them in dangerous directions, into the vortex of consumerism or into reactive forms of traditionalism. This is a time when young people must be particularly attentive to the signs of the new and have the courage to venture forth and find out what they're capable of, without being constrained by the old prejudices and hierarchical ideas of the past. And if the aim of philosophy is to corrupt youth, as Socrates was accused of doing, this can mean only one thing: to help young people see that they don't have to go down the paths already mapped out for them, that they are not just condemned to obey social customs, that they can create something new and propose a different direction as regards the true life.

Who knows more about a business's shady practices than the people who work there? In this pioneering study, Paul Blumberg examines a wide variety of evidence, including over 600 accounts written by workers who disclose in elaborate detail the deceptions their employers practiced on the public. Employed in a wide variety of business enterprises--supermarkets, restaurants, fish markets, department stores, gas stations, drug stores, pet stores, and many more--these workers pull back the curtain and reveal the hidden recesses of the American marketplace.
Blumberg documents these deceptions in numerous vivid stories, providing readers with a trenchant handbook on survival in America. He tells of stores that routinely mark prices up before a sale; gas stations that sell regular gas as high test; auto mechanics who spray-paint customers' old car parts and then charge them for new parts (in one gas stations, the workers claimed that the mechanic's best tool was his paint can); and pharmacists who sell generic drugs and charge name-brand prices.
But equally important, he provides an insightful analysis of why deception pervades the American marketplace. Though at times amusing, The Predatory Society is also frequently disturbing for what it says about private capitalism: how dishonesty is all but built into the American marketplace, and how this dishonesty has potentially disastrous effects on trust and community in our society.

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.