From the rise of the Fashion Cafe to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered.

With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act."

From the rise of the Fashion Cafe to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered.

With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act."

Public spaces have become platforms for the invention and display of self-identity, especially in the affluent West where the restaurant, from local cafe to Michelin-starred establishment, deftly stages these performances. In this follow-up to her classic Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, Joanne Finkelstein takes a fragment of social life-restaurant dining-and uses it to examine the dramatic effect our public behavior and social habits have on our private desires and sense of identity. In Fashioning Appetite, the restaurant becomes a liminal space in which public and private boundaries are constantly renegotiated, where our personal celebrations and seductions are conducted within full view of the next table, and where eating alone has become a perilous social minefield. When food is fetishized and identity becomes a capitalist commodity, the experience of the restaurant transforms appetite into both a pleasure and a torment in which being satisfied with one's meal is linked to being satisfied with oneself. Applying new research in emotional capitalism to popular culture's pervasive images of conspicuous consumption, Finkelstein builds a cultural portrait in which every forkful is weighted with meaning.

The Sociological Bent: Inside Metro Culture is an engaging introduction to sociology and to some exciting, illuminating and powerful ways of thinking about society. Written in a clear and accessible style, and drawing on the work of both contemporary and classical sociologists, this innovative text explores the relationships between various cultural forms, institutional sites and the practices of everyday life. The text is divided into thirty-seven short, digestible modules that address issues and topics of interest to contemporary students, ranging from passports and car advertising to personal hygiene and sex re-assignment surgery. Core concepts such as modernity, hegemony, ideology, discourse and culture are discussed in order to provide intellectual frameworks for the reading of diverse cultural forms and practices. Students are encouraged to move beyond commonsense assumptions about social experience and to theorise many naturalised and familiar aspects of their everyday lives, such as: • celebrity and the social functions of fame • fashions in food, clothing and consumer goods • globalisation, corporate collapse and crime • the nature of ‘belonging’ to nations, groups or subcultures • transformations in intimacy, and in sex and gender relations. The text also introduces students to a range of methods for comprehending contemporary life – including social semiotics, discourse analysis, field immersion and ethnography – equipping them with the most sophisticated tools of analysis that current scholarship can provide. The Sociological Bent demonstrates the diversity of sociological thinking and research, and explains the historical background and meaning of the key concepts applied in each area of focus. It provides students with an excellent foundation for developing a sociological understanding of the contemporary world, as well as the sociological framework or infrastructure required for them to undertake further sociological studies.