Consumption and lifestyles in the world's richest countries are a significant cause of global environmental problems. Consumerism is increasingly recognized as a major drain on global resources and the search for sustainable consumption is emerging as a key policy issue. In this…
From the Publisher: 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…
From the Publisher: 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…
"A timely, broadly revisionist, essential book by one of our foremost economic observers takes down one of the most cherished tenets of contemporary financial thinking: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government--"austerity"--Is a solution to the curr…
Absorbing and incisive, Land of Desire tells the story of a fundamental transformation in the culture and economy of America - the rise of mass-market consumerism and the attendant shift to a society "preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury,…
"By focusing on the consumer behavior of Midwestern farmers, Sowing the American Dream provides illustrative examples of how Americans came to terms with the economic and ideological changes that swirled around them. From the formation of the Grange to the advent of mail-order c…
"By focusing on the consumer behavior of Midwestern farmers, Sowing the American Dream provides illustrative examples of how Americans came to terms with the economic and ideological changes that swirled around them. From the formation of the Grange to the advent of mail-order c…
The Consumer Society Reader features a range of key works on the nature and evolution of consumer society. Included here is much-discussed work by leading critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Susan Bordo, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, and Janice Radway. Also included is a full range of…
Pressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, The System of Objects offers a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society. Baudrillard classifies the everyday objects of the 'new technical order' as functional, nonfunc…
Pressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, The System of Objects offers a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society. Baudrillard classifies the everyday objects of the 'new technical order' as functional, nonfunc…
"Communism Unwrapped reveals the complex world of consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, exploring the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, assessed, and exchanged goods. These everyday experiences, the editors and contributors argue, were central to the w…
"Ethnography of Trinidad focuses on processes of mass consumption. Asserts that Trinidadians confront problems of 'modernity' (focus on the present as divorced from the past, concomitant need to recreate moral premises, sense of 'compression of space-time,' sense of instability,…
"Ethnography of Trinidad focuses on processes of mass consumption. Asserts that Trinidadians confront problems of 'modernity' (focus on the present as divorced from the past, concomitant need to recreate moral premises, sense of 'compression of space-time,' sense of instability,…
"A Living Wage," the rallying cry of union activists, is a concept with a revealing history, here documented by Lawrence B. Glickman. The labor movement's response to wages shows how American workers negotiated the transition from artisan to consumer, opening up new political po…