Consuming Life

Consuming Life PDF Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745655823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book

Book Description
With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the term the market. The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value preferences. The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.

Consuming Life

Consuming Life PDF Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745655823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book

Book Description
With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the term the market. The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value preferences. The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.

Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan

Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan PDF Author: Katarzyna J. Cwiertka
Publisher: Consumption and Sustainability in Asia
ISBN: 9789462980631
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
The bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s shook the very foundation of the post-war economic 'miracle' and marked the beginning of a gradual shift in the environmental consciousness of the Japanese. Yet, it by no means removed consumption from the pivotal position it occupied within Japanese society. Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan argues that consumption in Japan today is no longer simply a component of everyday economic activities, but rather a reflection of a society guided by the 'logic of late capitalism'. The volume pins down the contradictory nature of the setting in which consuming occurs in Japan today: the veneration of material comfort and convenience on the one hand, and the new rhetoric of recycling and energy conservation on the other. Theoretical insights developed as part of an art-historical enquiry, such as notions of socially engaged art and its critique, offer a new paradigm for investigating this dilemma. By combining case studies analysing the production and consumption of contemporary art with ethnographic material related to ordinary commodities and shopping, this volume provides a novel, transdisciplinary approach to exploring how a 'society of consumers' operates in post-bubble Japan and how contemporary life is a 'consuming project'.

Consuming Families

Consuming Families PDF Author: Jo Lindsay
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136775153
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores contemporary families as sites of consumption, examining the changing contexts of family life, where new forms of family are altering how family life is practised and produced, and addressing key social issues – childhood obesity, alchohol and drug addiction, social networking, viral marketing – that put pressure on families as the social, economic and regulatory environments of consumption change.

Entangled Life

Entangled Life PDF Author: Merlin Sheldrake
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 052551032X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

Consuming Football in Late Modern Life

Consuming Football in Late Modern Life PDF Author: Kevin Dixon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317161130
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book

Book Description
Consuming Football in Late Modern Life explores the phenomenon of football (soccer) fandom as consumption in the age of late modernity. By centralising fandom within the sociology of consumption, the book examines how this phenomenon equates to a fluid series of consumption activities that are practiced in the course of everyday life. In turn, the work departs from much of the existing literature that features exceptional properties of fanatical fans, in order to emphasise the position that seemingly trivial acts of consumption can have a profound influence on the construction, maintenance and evolution of football fandom cultures. Containing up to date research findings derived from a programme of interviews with a sample of football fans, Kevin Dixon examines the social, emotional, economic and technological implications of consumption as fans participate in and respond to the demands of consumer life.

Consuming Football in Late Modern Life

Consuming Football in Late Modern Life PDF Author: Mr Kevin Dixon
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472401107
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
Consuming Football in Late Modern Life explores the phenomenon of football (soccer) fandom as consumption in the age of late modernity. By centralising fandom within the sociology of consumption, the book examines how this phenomenon equates to a fluid series of consumption activities that are practiced in the course of everyday life. In turn, the work departs from much of the existing literature that features exceptional properties of fanatical fans, in order to emphasise the position that seemingly trivial acts of consumption can have a profound influence on the construction, maintenance and evolution of football fandom cultures. Containing up to date research findings derived from a programme of interviews with a sample of football fans, Kevin Dixon examines the social, emotional, economic and technological implications of consumption as fans participate in and respond to the demands of consumer life.

Consuming Religion

Consuming Religion PDF Author: Kathryn Lofton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022648209X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book

Book Description
Introduction: being consumed -- Practicing commodity. Binge religion: social life in extremity ; The spirit in the cubicle: a religious history of the American office -- Revising ritual. Ritualism revived: from scientia ritus to consumer rites ; Purifying America: rites of salvation in the soap campaign -- Imagining celebrity. Sacrificing Britney: celebrity and religion in America ; The celebrification of religion in the age of infotainment -- Valuing family. Religion and the authority in American parenting ; Kardashian nation: work in America's klan ; Rethinking corporate freedom -- Corporation as sect. On the origins of corporate culture ; Do not tamper with the clues: notes on Goldman Sachs -- Conclusion: family matters

Of Consuming Interests

Of Consuming Interests PDF Author: Cary Carson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813914138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 721

Get Book

Book Description


Consuming Music in the Digital Age

Consuming Music in the Digital Age PDF Author: Raphaël Nowak
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137492562
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book

Book Description
This book addresses the issue of music consumption in the digital era of technologies. It explores how individuals use music in the context of their everyday lives and how, in return, music acquires certain roles within everyday contexts and more broadly in their life narratives.

Eating Wildly

Eating Wildly PDF Author: Ava Chin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451656203
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Chin, who writes the "Wild Edibles" column for the New York Times, goes looking for love, blackberries, and wild garlic in this wildly uneven, yet warmly exhilarating memoir. Trekking through Central Park and other urban beaten paths and backyards, Chin leads us on a journey of discovery as she searches for the tender shoots poking through cement cracks and hardy wild plants resisting winter's bite.--