New Forms of Consumption

New Forms of Consumption PDF Author: Mark Gottdiener
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847695706
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Consumption as a field of cultural studies overlaps with theories of postmodernism, the social construction of self, commodification in late capitalism, and the role of mass media in daily life. New forms of consumption such as those facilitated by cyberspace, themed environments, the commodification of sex, and the increasing role of leisure in society all play new and interesting roles in daily life that combine consumerism with the most contemporary social forms. This collection of essays examines the recent ways in which consumerism has been approached by cultural studies with special emphasis given to these and other newly emerging topics. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides a theoretical overview of consumption studies dealing with classical and more contemporary approaches in light of the debate between advocates and critics of postmodernism. In this section there are papers on McDonaldization, tourism and cultural studies, and the Theory of Shopping. The second part emphasizes empirical studies of the commodification process. Papers address the transformation of women's bodies and the mass commodification of milk, the creation of the toddler as a subject and the commodification of childhood, the commodification of sports, and the commodification of rock music. The third section of the book explores new forms of consumption on a more detailed and concentrated level. Papers in this section include the rise of sex tourism as a global industry, the commodification of the sacred, and the emergence of new consumer spaces in the city. An introduction by the editor delineates the advantages of his approach to new forms of consumption based squarely in the emerging issues of cultural studies, debates transcending postmodernism, and the society of the spectacle.

New Forms of Consumption

New Forms of Consumption PDF Author: Mark Gottdiener
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847695706
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book

Book Description
Consumption as a field of cultural studies overlaps with theories of postmodernism, the social construction of self, commodification in late capitalism, and the role of mass media in daily life. New forms of consumption such as those facilitated by cyberspace, themed environments, the commodification of sex, and the increasing role of leisure in society all play new and interesting roles in daily life that combine consumerism with the most contemporary social forms. This collection of essays examines the recent ways in which consumerism has been approached by cultural studies with special emphasis given to these and other newly emerging topics. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides a theoretical overview of consumption studies dealing with classical and more contemporary approaches in light of the debate between advocates and critics of postmodernism. In this section there are papers on McDonaldization, tourism and cultural studies, and the Theory of Shopping. The second part emphasizes empirical studies of the commodification process. Papers address the transformation of women's bodies and the mass commodification of milk, the creation of the toddler as a subject and the commodification of childhood, the commodification of sports, and the commodification of rock music. The third section of the book explores new forms of consumption on a more detailed and concentrated level. Papers in this section include the rise of sex tourism as a global industry, the commodification of the sacred, and the emergence of new consumer spaces in the city. An introduction by the editor delineates the advantages of his approach to new forms of consumption based squarely in the emerging issues of cultural studies, debates transcending postmodernism, and the society of the spectacle.

The Sociology of Consumption

The Sociology of Consumption PDF Author: Joel Stillerman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745696910
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach offers college students, scholars, and interested readers a state-of-the-art overview of consumption the desire for, purchase, use, display, exchange, and disposal of goods and services. The book’s global focus, emphasis on social inequality, and analysis of consumer citizenship offer a timely, exciting, and original approach to the topic. Looking beyond the U.S. and Europe, Stillerman engages examples from his and others’ research in Chile and other Latin American countries, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and East and South Asia to explore the interaction between global and local forces in consumption. The text explores the lived experience of being a consumer, demonstrating how social inequalities based on class, gender, sexuality, race, and age shape consumer practices and identities. Finally, the book uncovers the important role consumption has played in fueling local and international activism. This welcome new book will be ideal for classes on consumer culture across the social sciences, humanities, and marketing.

India's Middle Class

India's Middle Class PDF Author: Christiane Brosius
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136704833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This book examines the complexities of lifestyles of the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the context of economic liberalisation in the new millennium, by analysing new social formations and aspirations, modes of consumption and ways of being in contemporary urban India. Rich in ethnographic material, the work is based on empirical case-studies, research material, and illustrations. Offering a model of how urban cosmopolitan India might be studied and understood in a transnational and transcultural context, the book takes the reader through three panoramic landscapes: new ‘world-class’ real estate advertising, a unique religious leisure site — the Akshardham Cultural Complex, and the world of themed weddings and beauty/wellness, all responses to India’s new middle classes’ tryst with cosmopolitanism. The work will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in sociology, South Asian studies, media studies, anthropology and urban studies as also those interested in religion, performance and rituals, diaspora, globalisation and transnational migration.

Addictive Consumption

Addictive Consumption PDF Author: Gerda Reith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429875649
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In this engaging new book, Gerda Reith explores key theoretical concepts in the sociology of consumption. Drawing on the ideas of Foucault, Marx and Bataille, amongst others, she investigates the ways that understandings of ‘the problems of consumption’ change over time, and asks what these changes can tell us about their wider social and political contexts. Through this, she uses ideas about both consumption and addiction to explore issues around identity and desire, excess and control and reason and disorder. She also assesses how our concept of 'normal' consumption has grown out of efforts to regulate behaviour historically considered as disruptive or deviant, and how in the contemporary world the 'dark side' of consumption has been medicalised in terms of addiction, pathology and irrationality. By drawing on case studies of drugs, food and gambling, the volume demonstrates the ways in which modern practices of consumption are rooted in historical processes and embedded in geopolitical structures of power. It not only asks how modern consumer culture came to be in the form it is today, but also questions what its various manifestations can tell us about wider issues in capitalist modernity. Addictive Consumption offers a compelling new perspective on the origins, development and problems of consumption in modern society. The volume’s interdisciplinary profile will appeal to scholars and students in sociology, psychology, history, philosophy and anthropology.

Car Cultures

Car Cultures PDF Author: Daniel Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100018143X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Anyone who assumes that a car is simply a means to get from point A to point B, or who even thinks that they know what a car is, should read this book. Profoundly shaped by culture, the car gives rise to a wide range of emotions, from guilt about the environment in the UK to aboriginal concerns with car corpses, to struggles to keep the creatures alive with everything but the proper spare parts in West Africa. Cars and their landscapes prove central to human life from its most intimate to the widest sense of global crisis, and are capable of inspiring epic passions. From road rage in Western Europe to the struggles of cab driving in Africa to the emergence of Black identity in the US, this book examines the essential humanity of the car, which includes the jealousies, gender differences, fears and moralities that cars give rise to. Firmly grounded in detailed ethnographic and historical scholarship, this is the first book to provide an informed sense of cars as one of the most familiar and significant forms of material culture.

Tourism and Agriculture

Tourism and Agriculture PDF Author: Rebecca Maria Torres
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136849238
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Shifting global consumption patterns, tastes and attitudes towards food, leisure, travel and place have opened new opportunities for rural producers in the form of agritourism, ecotourism, wine, food and rural tourism and specialized niche market agricultural production for tourism. Agriculture is one of the oldest and most basic parts of the global economy, while tourism is one of the newest and most rapidly spreading. In the face of current problems of climate change, rising food prices, poverty and a global financial crisis, linkages between agriculture and tourism may provide the basis for new solutions in many countries. A number of challenges, nevertheless, confront the realization of synergies between tourism and agriculture. Tourism and Agriculture examines regional specific cases at the interface between tourism and agriculture, looking at the impacts of rural restructuring, and new geographies of consumption and production. To meet the need for a more comprehensive appreciation of the relationships and interactions between the tourism and agricultural economic sectors, this book consider the factors that influence the nature of these relationships; and explore avenues for facilitating synergistic relationships between tourism and agriculture. These relationships are examined in thirteen chapters through case studies from eastern and western Europe, Japan and the United States and from the developing countries of the Pacific, the Caribbean and Ghana and Mexico. Themes of diversification, economic development, and emerging new forms of production and consumption, are integrated throughout the entire book. This essential volume, built on original research, generates new insights into the relationships between tourism and agriculture and future economic rural development. Edited by leading researchers and academics in the field, this book will be of value to students, researchers and academics interested in tourism, agriculture and rural development.

Concepts in Action

Concepts in Action PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004314202
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Concepts in Action focuses on what to do with theoretical concepts, rather than providing conveyed definitions. The book covers a variety of examples what to do, how to think, in order to develop and use concepts in the social sciences.

Consuming People

Consuming People PDF Author: Nikhilesh Dholakia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134706332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Consumption is widely regarded as one of the most important phenomena in contemporary society, but, till now, there has been very little analysis of how consumption patterns evolve, transform and proliferate. This revealing book provides an incisive treatment of consumption on a global scale from a cultural, philosophical and business perspective. Beginning with an analysis of how a dominant form of consumption pattern took hold in modern, capitalist, market economies, this book explores the contemporary changes and paradoxes in our consumption patterns during the transitional period from the modern to the postmodern. The text focuses on the forces shaping American consumption patterns, from corporations to Hollywood, and concludes with an analysis of the emerging trans-modern possibilities of the new 'theatre of consumption' where communities with a variety of consumption styles will flourish. This is an original and radical analysis in which its first-rate authors structure this key topic in a multi-disciplinary and forward-thinking way. As such, it will be of great interest to students and researchers of consumer behaviour in business and the social sciences, as well as those concerned with contemporary cultural transformations.

Information 2.0

Information 2.0 PDF Author: Martin De Saulles
Publisher: Facet Publishing
ISBN: 1783300094
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This textbook provides an overview of the digital information landscape and explains the implications of the technological changes for the information industry, from publishers and broadcasters to the information professionals who manage information in all its forms. This fully-updated second edition includes examples of organizations and individuals who are seizing on the opportunities thrown up by this once-in-a-generation technological shift providing a cutting-edge guide to where we are going both as information consumers and in terms of broader societal changes. Each chapter explores aspects of the information lifecycle, including production, distribution, storage and consumption and contains case studies chosen to illustrate particular issues and challenges facing the information industry. One of the key themes of the book is the way that organizations, public and commercial, are blurring their traditional lines of responsibility. Amazon is moving from simply selling books to offering the hardware and software for reading them. Apple still makes computer hardware but also manages one of the world’s leading marketplaces for music and software applications. Google maintains its position as the most popular internet search engine but has also digitized millions of copies of books from leading academic libraries and backed the development of the world’s most popular computing platform, Android. At the heart of these changes are the emergence of cheap computing devices for decoding and presenting digital information and a network which allows the bits and bytes to flow freely, for the moment at least, from producer to consumer. While the digital revolution is impacting on everyone who works with information, sometimes negatively, the second edition of Information 2.0 shows that the opportunities outweigh the risks for those who take the time to understand what is going on. Information has never been more abundant and accessible so those who know how to manage it for the benefit of others in the digital age will be in great demand. Readership: Students taking courses in library and information science, publishing and communication studies, with particular relevance to core modules exploring the information society and digital information. Academics and practitioners who need to get to grips with the new information environment.

Handbook of Research on Consumption, Media, and Popular Culture in the Global Age

Handbook of Research on Consumption, Media, and Popular Culture in the Global Age PDF Author: Ozgen, Ozlen
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1522584927
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The mass production and diversification of media have accelerated the development of popular culture. This has started a new trend in consumerism of desiring new consumption objects and devaluing those consumption objects once acquired, thus creating a constant demand for new items. Pop culture now canalizes consumerism both with advertising and the marketing of consumerist lifestyles, which are disseminated in the mass media. The Handbook of Research on Consumption, Media, and Popular Culture in the Global Age discusses interdisciplinary perspectives on media influence and consumer impacts in a globalizing world due to modern communication technology. Featuring research on topics such as consumer culture, communication ethics, and social media, this book is ideally designed for managers, marketers, researchers, academicians, and students.