Today's marketers are confronted with a spate of differing opinions and conflicting information about the changing consumer in the era of globalization. This book, Consumer Cosmopolitism in the Age of Globalization offers authoritative answers to the following questions: "What marketing opportunities are associated with consumer cosmopolitanism?" How do trends in consumer cosmopolitanism affect long-range planning?" "What are the best communications strategies for reaching the cosmopolitan consumer?" "What are the best means of understanding and engagement with these consumers?" "What retail environments and channels work best with this market segment?" "How does marketing to cosmopolitan consumers fit into overall marketing strategies?" "In which directions must organizations change to adapt to consumer cosmopolitanism?" The book analyzes cosmopolitan consumers in considerable depth and is a rich source of ideas for relevant marketing strategies. It shows how to re-formulate traditional marketing principles that no longer work in the shifting global environment. The book is written under the editorship of Melvin Prince in collaboration with notable experts in the field.

In this revelatory examination of the most overlooked force that is changing the face of China, the Oxford historian and scholar of modern Asia Karl Gerth shows that as the Chinese consumer goes, so goes the world. While Americans and Europeans have become increasingly worried about China's competition for manufacturing jobs and energy resources, they have overlooked an even bigger story: China's rapid development of an American-style consumer culture, which is revolutionizing the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese and has the potential to reshape the world. This change is already well under way. China has become the world's largest consumer of everything from automobiles to beer and has begun to adopt such consumer habits as living in large single-occupancy homes, shopping in gigantic malls, and eating meat-based diets served in fast-food outlets. Even rural Chinese, long the laggards of consumerism, have been buying refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, and larger houses in unprecedented numbers. "As China Goes, So Goes the World "reveals why we should all care about the everyday choices made by ordinary Chinese. Taken together, these seemingly small changes are deeper and more profound than the headline-grabbing stories on military budgets, carbon emissions, or trade disputes.

The book highlights research undertaken by marketers, social researchers and anthropologists who have an interest in this field. Anti consumption is of relevance to practitioners and academics as it is important to understand consumer trends and values. The book has a particular relevance to professionals employed in marketing, retail and associated industries, who need to consider anti consumption as an influence on their target markets. The study of anti consumption can be seen as the 'flip side' to marketing which aims to understand promotion of consumption.

Consider the culture of the twenty-first century: Each morning, you hear a half-dozen ads on the radio before your feet touch the floor. By the end of the day, hundreds--perhaps thousands--of marketing messages have targeted you. And yet little is understood about how marketing affects our lives and society. Enter Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant, the ad men behind "The Age of Persuasion," the popular radio show broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Sirius Radio. They have made it their mission to share the back-room story of modern marketing, entertaining asides and all: "Think of advertisers as millions of ants in a colony, each working hard and each with its own objective. Except that in this colony, every single ant is competing against the others. That's the ad business. Almost every ad you see, hear, and otherwise experience is competing for a piece of your imagination. And like any cross-section of humanity, the vast, worldwide advertising community is diverse: composed of geniuses and idiots, saints and buffoons, and everything in between." From the early players to the Mad Men of the 1960s and beyond, "The Age of Persuasion" provides an entertaining--and eye-opening--look at a world driven by marketing.

What does shopping mean to American women? This question is the focus of our book. We profile the American woman and examine how life has changed since her grandmother was young. Women have many choices about when and where to shop; thus retailers need to understand her needs and wants to attract and maintain her business.We provide a brief history of retailing in the United States to show how the retail industry has changed as women's lives have changed. Malls have contributed to the development of contemporary society, particularly as a site for relaxation and social connections outside of the home. We examine shopping as a life skill and a craft that is taught, both indirectly and deliberately by parents, particularly mothers.Our research identified five distinct types of shoppers. Most women tended toward or were clearly identifiable as one of these five types. We delve into each shopping typology and discuss the underlying motivations for the shopping behavior in each group. We discuss identity and creativity, power and independence, seeking solitude, emotional release, and companionship as motivations for shopping and what these mean to the retailer.Some women love and others loathe shopping. Our goal in this book is to alert retailers, merchandisers, property developers, and manufacturers about the major dos and don'ts to appeal to women. Retail is detail and it is easy to get the simple elements wrong, leading to unhappy customers. For example, we analyze what women want from retail sales staff and explore the customer and sales assistant relationship and its importance to women.Will shopping remain a female activity or will a new gender balance develop? What are the two consumers segments that present huge opportunities to the retail industry? Insights to these questions are provided in the last chapter.

An "Atlantic" correspondent uncovers the true cost[in economic, political, and psychic terms[of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible
From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt[and almost everywhere in between[America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time[the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.
Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for [to sell[), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post[Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship.
The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That's a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields[history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself[to upend the conventional wisdom. "Cheap" also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned, and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of cheap.

Description: Who's Responsible Here? Media, Audience, Ethics presents essays that challenge readers to examine and take responsibility for their role as media consumers. While there are undeniable ethical responsibilities placed upon a medium or media outlet and the content it creates, the media cycle that the audience participates in also requires a level of awareness and active participation of the consumer. The articles in Who's Responsible Here? first acclimate the reader to the language of media and audience studies with essays on communication, media, and audience theory. They then guide readers through contemporary ethical issues and concerns within the media before finally turning attention to the audience and their role. Ultimately, the articles create a discussion on defining the relationship and responsibilities between media and society. This is especially important at a time when the democratization of media has allowed audiences to become content producers themselves. Bio Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a digital documentary filmmaker. His films include: Enthusiast: The 9th Art, Wolf at the Door, Yardsale , Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranz, and De Luxe: The Tale of the Blue Comet. In 2009 he received Mexico's Lindbergh-Carranza International Goodwill Award as a "Messenger of Peace" for his work on Goodwill. His published work focuses on electronic media, documentary film, and comic books and includes The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (Routledge, 2005) and Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Univ. of Minn. 2007). Emmons teaches film, media, and comics history at Rutgers University-Camden where he is also the Associate Director of the Honors College.

For society to thrive long into the future, we must move beyond our unsustainable consumer culture to one that respects environmental realities. In State of the World 2010, the Worldwatch Institute s award-winning research team reveals not only how human societies can make this shift but also how people around the world have already started to nurture a new culture of sustainability. Chapters present innovative solutions to global environmental problems, focusing on institutions that are the principal engineers of culture, such as governments, the media, and religious organizations. Written in clear, concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of the World presents a view of our changing world that we, and our leaders, cannot afford to ignore."

Garifuna live in Central America, primarily Honduras, and the United States. Identified as Black by others and by themselves, they also claim indigenous status and rights in Latin America. Examining this set of paradoxes, Mark Anderson shows how, on the one hand, Garifuna embrace discourses of tradition, roots, and a paradigm of ethnic political struggle. On the other hand, Garifuna often affirm blackness through assertions of African roots and affiliations with Blacks elsewhere, drawing particularly on popular images of U.S. blackness embodied by hip-hop music and culture.

"Black and Indigenous" explores the politics of race and culture among Garifuna in Honduras as a window into the active relations among multiculturalism, consumption, and neoliberalism in the Americas. Based on ethnographic work, Anderson questions perspectives that view indigeneity and blackness, nativist attachments and diasporic affiliations, as mutually exclusive paradigms of representation, being, and belonging.

As Anderson reveals, within contemporary struggles of race, ethnicity, and culture, indigeneity serves as a normative model for collective rights, while blackness confers a status of subaltern cosmopolitanism. Indigeneity and blackness, he concludes, operate as unstable, often ambivalent, and sometimes overlapping modes through which people both represent themselves and negotiate oppression.

The history of consumerism is about much more than just shopping. Ever since the eighteenth century, citizen-consumers have protested against the abuses of the market by boycotting products and promoting fair instead of free trade. In recent decades, consumer activism has responded to the challenges of affluence by helping to guide consumers through an increasingly complex and alien marketplace. In doing so, it has challenged the very meaning of consumer society and tackled some of the key economic, social, and political issues associated with the era of globalization.

In Prosperity for All, the first international history of consumer activism, Matthew Hilton shows that modern consumer advocacy reached the peak of its influence in the decades after World War II. Growing out of the product-testing activities of Consumer Reports and its international counterparts (including Which? in the United Kingdom, Que Choisir in France, and Test in Germany), consumerism evolved into a truly global social movement. Consumer unions, NGOs, and individual activists like Ralph Nader emerged in countries around the world including developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America concerned with creating a more equitable marketplace and articulating a politics of consumption that addressed the needs of both individuals and society as a whole.

Consumer activists achieved many victories, from making cars safer to highlighting the dangers of using baby formula instead of breast milk in countries with no access to clean water. The 1980s saw a reversal in the consumer movement's fortunes, thanks in large part to the rise of an antiregulatory agenda both in the United States and internationally. In the process, the definition of consumerism changed, focusing more on choice than on access. As Hilton shows, this change reflects more broadly on the dilemmas we all face as consumers: Do we want more stuff and more prosperity for ourselves, or do we want others less fortunate to be able to enjoy the same opportunities and standard of living that we do?

Prosperity for All makes clear that by abandoning a more idealistic vision for consumer society we reduce consumers to little more than shoppers, and we deny the vast majority of the world's population the fruits of affluence."

Praise for Sharon Beder's previous book Global Spin: 'Sharon Beder has taken the taboo subjects of propaganda and censorship in free societies and exposed their insidious threat.' John Pilger 'Beder's analysis is comprehensive, steely and clinical. She lifts the lid on an elaborate tapestry of lies, deceit, intimidation and destruction.' Harold Pinter This book investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be under-aged hyperconsumers as well as the submissive employees and uncritical citizens of the future. Sharon Beder shows how marketers and advertisers are targeting ever younger children in a relentless campaign, transforming children's play into a commercial opportunity and taking advantage of childish anxieties. Beder investigates the corporate relations and ideals that infiltrate every aspect of our lives. She presents an alarming picture of how a child's social development -- through education, health care and nutrition -- has become an ordered conveyor belt of consumerist conditioning. Focusing on education in particular, Beder explains how businesses are taking control of more and more aspects of schooling, not only for profit but to erode state schooling and promote business values. Similarly, she shows how 'difficult' children are taught from an early age that pharmaceuticals can be used to discipline them or to make them 'happy'.

Bananas are the most-consumed fruit in the world. In the United States alone, the public eats about twenty-eight pounds of bananas per person every year. The total value of the international banana trade is nearly five billion dollars annually, with 80 percent of all exported bananas originating in Latin America. There are as many as ten million people involved in growing, packing, and shipping bananas, but American consumers have only recently begun to think about them and about their working conditions. Although European nations have helped create a "fair trade" system for bananas grown in Mediterranean and Caribbean regions, the United States as a country has not developed a similar system for bananas grown in Latin America, where large corporations have dominated trade for more than a century.
"Fair Bananas " is one of the first books to examine the issue of "fair-trade bananas." Specifically, Henry Frundt analyzes whether a farmer-worker-consumer alliance can collaborate to promote a fair-trade label for bananas--much like those for fair-trade coffee and chocolate--that will appeal to North American shoppers. Researching the issue for more than ten years, Henry Frundt has elicited surprising and nuanced insights from banana workers, Latin American labor officials, company representatives, and fair-trade advocates.
Frundt writes with admirable clarity throughout the book, which he has designed for college students who are being introduced to the subject of international trade and for consumers who are interested in issues of development. Frankly, though, "Fair Bananas " will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about bananas, including where they come from and how they get from there to here.

This book will shock you. Consumer Kids shows how, more than ever before, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, our children are being tracked and targeted by big business, which sells them back their dreams, packages their childhood and exploits their vulnerabilities. It looks at why children torture their Barbies, how boys feel about David Beckham, why mums are cooler than dads, why children in the toughest families make the most ardent consumers and why, above all, too much marketing makes you unhappy. This hard-hitting expose is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the deeper implications of the runaway commercial world we live in.

The history of consumerism is about much more than just shopping. Ever since the eighteenth century, citizen-consumers have protested against the abuses of the market by boycotting products and promoting fair instead of free trade. In recent decades, consumer activism has responded to the challenges of affluence by helping to guide consumers through an increasingly complex and alien marketplace. In doing so, it has challenged the very meaning of consumer society and tackled some of the key economic, social, and political issues associated with the era of globalization.

In Prosperity for All, the first international history of consumer activism, Matthew Hilton shows that modern consumer advocacy reached the peak of its influence in the decades after World War II. Growing out of the product-testing activities of Consumer Reports and its international counterparts (including Which? in the United Kingdom, Que Choisir in France, and Test in Germany), consumerism evolved into a truly global social movement. Consumer unions, NGOs, and individual activists like Ralph Nader emerged in countries around the world including developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America concerned with creating a more equitable marketplace and articulating a politics of consumption that addressed the needs of both individuals and society as a whole.

Consumer activists achieved many victories, from making cars safer to highlighting the dangers of using baby formula instead of breast milk in countries with no access to clean water. The 1980s saw a reversal in the consumer movement's fortunes, thanks in large part to the rise of an antiregulatory agenda both in the United States and internationally. In the process, the definition of consumerism changed, focusing more on choice than on access. As Hilton shows, this change reflects more broadly on the dilemmas we all face as consumers: Do we want more stuff and more prosperity for ourselves, or do we want others less fortunate to be able to enjoy the same opportunities and standard of living that we do?

Prosperity for All makes clear that by abandoning a more idealistic vision for consumer society we reduce consumers to little more than shoppers, and we deny the vast majority of the world's population the fruits of affluence."

What does it mean to be cheap? When is it mature to stow money away and when is it miserly, even Scrooge-like? And how might Americans navigate the economic downturn in an era when everything seems disposable and when credit has felt dangerously unlimited?

In answering these questions, In Cheap We Trust combines a consideration of cheapness as it relates to personality, lifestyle, and philosophy with a colorful ride through the history of thrift in America, from Ben Franklin and his famous maxims to Hetty Green, the 19th-century millionaire named by Guinness as "the world's most miserly person," to the branding of Jews, Chinese, and other ethnic groups as cheap in order to neutralize the economic competition they represented.

Weber also explores contemporary expressions and dilemmas of thrift, from Dumpster-diving to Keynes's "Paradox of Thrift" to today's recession-driven enthusiasm for frugal living.

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'.

What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits - the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve - but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers.He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that's already here.

You can shop anywhere you like -- as long as it's Tesco The inexorable rise of supermarkets is big news but have we really taken on board what this means for our daily lives, and those of our children? In this searing analysis Andrew Simms, director of the acclaimed think-and-do-tank the New Economics Foundation and the person responsible for introducing 'Clone Towns' into our vernacular, tackles a subject none of us can afford to ignore. The book shows how the supermarkets -- and Tesco in particular -- have brought: " Banality -- homogenized high streets full of clone stores " Ghost towns -- superstores have drained the life from our town centres and communities " A Supermarket State -- this new commercial nanny state that knows more about you than you think " Profits from poverty -- shelves full of global plunder, produced for a pittance " Global food domination -- as the superstores expand overseas But there's change afoot, with evidence of the tide turning and consumer campaigns gaining ground. Simms ends with suggestions for change and coporate reformation to safeguard our communities and environment -- all over the world. This book has been written and published independently from the Tescopoly Alliance and is not endorsed by them.

We constantly hear about 'the consumer'. The 'consumer' has become a ubiquitous person in public discourse and academic research, but who is this person? The Making of the Consumer is the first interdisciplinary study that follows the evolution of the consumer in the modern world, ranging from imperial Britain to contemporary Papua New Guinea, and from the European Union to China. It makes a novel contribution by broadening the study of consumption from a focus on goods and symbols to the changing role and identity of consumers. Offering a historically informed picture of the rise of the consumer to its current prominence, authors discuss the consumer in relation to citizenship and ethics, law and economics, media, work and retailing.Contributors include:Donald Winch (University of Sussex)Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London)Vanessa Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London)Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel (CNRS: Centre de Recherches Historiques, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)Michelle Everson (Birkbeck College, University of London)Erika Rappaport (University of California, Santa Barbara)Uwe Spiekermann (Georg-August University, Gttingen)Jos Gamble (Royal Holloway University)Stephen Kline (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada)Frank Mort (University of Manchester)Ina Merkel (Philipps-Universitt, Marburg, Germany)James G. Carrier (Indiana University and Oxford Brookes University)Ben Fine (SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

When Dr. Duane Graveline, former astronaut, aerospace medical research scientist, flight surgeon, and family doctor is given Lipitor to lower his cholesterol, he temporarily loses his short-term memory. Urged a year later to resume the drug at half dose, he lost both short-term and retrograde memory and was finally diagnosed in a hospital ER as having transient global amnesia (TGA). This is the "scary, appealingly written" account of his search for answers that his medical community didn't have -- the how and why of his traumatic experience, and what needs to be done to prevent the devastating side effects to body and mind from the escalating use of the statin drugs.

In The Ambivalent Consumer, Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan bring together an array of scholars who explore the ambivalence provoked, especially in East and Southeast Asia, by the global spread of "American" consumer culture. As the world's second-largest economy, Japan has long engaged in a vibrant consumerism tempered by deeply held beliefs about morality, thrift, community, and national identity. Its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia-South Korea, China, Malaysia, and Singapore-have likewise anxiously balanced consumption and saving.

The first comparative volume to examine global phenomena of consumer culture from the perspective of East Asia, this book analyzes not only the attractions of mass consumption but also the many discontents and dilemmas that arise from consumerism. Placing Japan and the United States in a transnational context, the book's contributors find that European countries more closely resemble Japan than they do the United States in their saving rates, consumption levels, environmental concerns, and discomfort with consumer credit.

The Ambivalent Consumer offers a useful perspective on the political economies of consumption to address such pressing topics as movements against genetically modified foods; shifting relations among consumers, producers, and states; the differential influence of gender on consumption; and conflicting consumer attitudes toward globalization.

Contributors: Takatsugu Akaishi, Nagasaki University;Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University;Deborah S. Davis, Yale University;Sheldon Garon, Princeton University;Andrew Gordon, Harvard University;Charles Yuji Horioka, Osaka University;Patricia L. Maclachlan, University of Texas at Austin;Laura C. Nelson, California State University, East Bay;Takao Nishimura, Yokohama National University;Jordan Sand, Georgetown University;Sven Steinmo, University of Colorado at Boulder;Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck College, University of London;Shunya Yoshimi, Tokyo University"

In The Ambivalent Consumer, Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan bring together an array of scholars who explore the ambivalence provoked, especially in East and Southeast Asia, by the global spread of "American" consumer culture. As the world's second-largest economy, Japan has long engaged in a vibrant consumerism tempered by deeply held beliefs about morality, thrift, community, and national identity. Its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia-South Korea, China, Malaysia, and Singapore-have likewise anxiously balanced consumption and saving.

The first comparative volume to examine global phenomena of consumer culture from the perspective of East Asia, this book analyzes not only the attractions of mass consumption but also the many discontents and dilemmas that arise from consumerism. Placing Japan and the United States in a transnational context, the book's contributors find that European countries more closely resemble Japan than they do the United States in their saving rates, consumption levels, environmental concerns, and discomfort with consumer credit.

The Ambivalent Consumer offers a useful perspective on the political economies of consumption to address such pressing topics as movements against genetically modified foods; shifting relations among consumers, producers, and states; the differential influence of gender on consumption; and conflicting consumer attitudes toward globalization.

Contributors: Takatsugu Akaishi, Nagasaki University;Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University;Deborah S. Davis, Yale University;Sheldon Garon, Princeton University;Andrew Gordon, Harvard University;Charles Yuji Horioka, Osaka University;Patricia L. Maclachlan, University of Texas at Austin;Laura C. Nelson, California State University, East Bay;Takao Nishimura, Yokohama National University;Jordan Sand, Georgetown University;Sven Steinmo, University of Colorado at Boulder;Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck College, University of London;Shunya Yoshimi, Tokyo University"

Talks about sugar workers before and after emancipation. The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed, Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guyana, one of Puerto Rico's three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation, and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico. Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico, as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South, former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico, however, this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro - Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class, gender, and race, his account of how these libertos joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.

Today, we live in an age where consumption and consuming have become dominant practices - so dominant they allow little room for alternatives. Consumption has become a global phenomenon. This expansion of consumption has occurred at the same time as notions of information and digitization have become all-pervasive in our media culture . As ever greater aspects of the world have come to be seen as data, information has increasingly become the very currency of consumption.Consumption in an Age of Information analyses this new relationship between information and consumption. Leading theorists and critics map this new terrain, ranging across high theory and popular culture - from E-Bay auctions to smart homes, from the everyday consumption of MP3 files and DVDs to the rituals of media violence, from internet-surfing to the role of speed in contemporary culture.