Why do fashion houses pay exorbitant rents for retail space in London and New York from which they sell very few clothes? Why are some mothers happy to buy and sell children's clothes from charity shops and thrift stores while others insist on the latest brand names for their children? What does the commercial success of men's lifestyle magazines tell us about contemporary gender relations and identities? This book provides answers to these and other questions about contemporary commercial culture through historically specific, theoretically informed, empirically grounded interdisciplinary research.
From shopping malls, supermarkets, and fashion retailers, through the marketing and consumption of food, books and magazines, to sex pics on the internet, contributors overturn the assumption that it is commerce that works by logical economic models while 'culture' is invoked to explain the behaviour of the irrational consumer. In proposing a new agenda for understanding the complex relationship between commerce and culture, the book focuses on the point of articulation between commercial enterprises, which are designed to sell goods, and consumers, who purchase goods, to arrive at a broader understanding of the commercial cultures within which both enterprises and consumers operate.
Spanning history, geography, business studies, sociology and anthropology, contributors work in a positive and complementary fashion to give the kinds of insights into the economies, practices and spaces of commercial culture that single disciplines rarely achieve.

Investigates how our ideas of health and disease are linked to moral and immoral notions of sex. Beginning in the 1830s Frank Mort relates historical narratives to the sexual choices and possibilities facing us now.

Dangerous Sexualities investigates how our ideas of health and disease are linked to moral and immoral notions of sex. Beginning in the 1830s, Frank Mort relates his social historical narratives to the sexual choices and possibilities facing us now.
The long-awaited second edition of this work takes on board modern scholarship in particular applying the methods and techniques of cultural history and the increasingly important formations of race and ethnicity in this field. Consequently issues of eugenics, race hygiene and social imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are covered. With a new and extended bibliography, introduction and illustrations, this second edition brings this classic into the nineties.

Consumption occupied a privileged place in the fabric of British society during the 1980s. From the lifestyle theories of market analysts to the spectacular changes in the high street, the world of goods became a critical factor in determining identity. The text explores popular and commercial culture of the period, showing how the marketplace dramatized a series of pressing questions about sexual politics and the meaning of masculinity. The habits and behaviours of young men lay at the heart of the so-called consumer revolution of the decade. The rise of a distinctive breed of entrepreneurs drove this expansion of gendered commerce. Figures such as the fashion stylist Ray Petri, journalists Julie Burchill and Robert Elms and graphic designer Neville Brody joined forces with innovators from the spheres of advertising and marketing to create a plurality of identities for men. The text sets these competing versions of the male consumer in the context of longer-term transformations in masculinity since the 1950s: from the persona of the gentleman to the figures of the yuppie and the gay flaneur. It was the new landscape of London's consumer society which opened the space for the emerg

Examines the construction of images of masculinity and the effect they have on identity, sexuality and sexual politics. Influences from black and white culture are explored as well as the ironies of class, colour and sexuality.

An arresting history of sex and politics in London during the 1950s and '60s that charts the course of modern British society and the birth of the so-called permissive society A series of spectacular scandals profoundly disturbed London life during the 1950s in ways that had major national consequences. High and low society collided in a city of social and sexual extremes. Patrician men-about-town, young independent women, go-ahead entrepreneurs, Westminster politicians, queer men, and West Indian newcomers played a conspicuous part in dramatic encounters that signaled a new phase of post-Victorian sexual morality. These dramas of pleasure and danger occurred not only in the glamorous and shady entertainment spaces of the West End but also in Whitehall, as well as the twilight zones of the inner city. Frank Mort uncovers the ways in which they transformed national culture. Soho and Notting Hill became beacons for anxieties over the changing character of sex in the city and the cultural impact of decolonization. The "old" European migrants and the "new" Caribbean presence were significant factors in the readjustment of urban sexual mores. Mort's arresting history of sex and politics in London illustrates a key moment in the making of modern British society.

Why do fashion houses pay exorbitant rents for retail space in London and New York from which they sell very few clothes? Why are some mothers happy to buy and sell children's clothes from charity shops and thrift stores while others insist on the latest brand names for their children? What does the commercial success of men's lifestyle magazines tell us about contemporary gender relations and identities? This book provides answers to these and other questions about contemporary commercial culture through historically specific, theoretically informed, empirically grounded interdisciplinary research.
From shopping malls, supermarkets, and fashion retailers, through the marketing and consumption of food, books and magazines, to sex pics on the internet, contributors overturn the assumption that it is commerce that works by logical economic models while 'culture' is invoked to explain the behaviour of the irrational consumer. In proposing a new agenda for understanding the complex relationship between commerce and culture, the book focuses on the point of articulation between commercial enterprises, which are designed to sell goods, and consumers, who purchase goods, to arrive at a broader understanding of the commercial cultures within which both enterprises and consumers operate.
Spanning history, geography, business studies, sociology and anthropology, contributors work in a positive and complementary fashion to give the kinds of insights into the economies, practices and spaces of commercial culture that single disciplines rarely achieve.