Consumer Culture and Postmodernism

Front Cover
SAGE, 2007 M07 11 - 232 pages
The first edition of this contemporary classic can claim to have put ′consumer culture′ on the map, certainly in relation to postmodernism. This expanded new edition includes:
  • a fully revised preface that explores the developments in consumer culture since the first edition
  • a major new chapter on ′Modernity and the Cultural Question′
  • an update on postmodernism and the development of contemporary theory after postmodernism
  • an account of multiple and alternative modernities
  • the challenges of consumer culture in Japan and China.

The result is a book that shakes the boundaries of debate, from one of the foremost writers on culture and postmodernism of the present day.

 

Contents

Definitions and Interpretations
1
2 Theories of Consumer Culture
13
3 Towards a Sociology of Postmodern Culture
28
4 Cultural Change and Social Practice
50
5 The Aestheticization of Everyday Life
64
6 Lifestyle and Consumer Culture
81
7 City Cultures and Postmodern Lifestyles
93
8 Consumer Culture and Global Disorder
110
9 Common Culture or Uncommon Cultures?
127
10 The Globalization of Diversity
142
11 Modernity and the Cultural Question
147
Bibliography
182
Index
198
Copyright

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Page 7 - ... a prodigious expansion of culture throughout the social realm, to the point at which everything in our social life - from economic value and state power to practices and to the very structure of the psyche itself - can be said to have become 'cultural' in some original and as yet untheorized sense.
Page 18 - culture industry' is a targeted rather than an undifferentiated field, and lifestyle practices reflect the divisions of class and culture: . . . knowledge becomes important: knowledge of new goods, their social and cultural value, and how to use them appropriately. This is particularly the case with aspiring groups who adopt a learning mode towards consumption and the cultivation of a lifestyle. It is for groups such as the new middle class, the new working class and the new rich or upper class,...

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About the author (2007)

Mike Featherstone is Professor of Communications and Sociology at Nottingham Trent University.CONTRIBUTORS OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA :Zygmunt Bauman University of LeedsHenning Bech University of CopenhagenElizabeth Beck-Gernsheim Universtiy of ErlangenMary Evans University of Kent at CanterburyDavid Frisby University of GlasgowMike Hepworth University of AberdeenEva Illouz Tel-Aviv UniversityMaria Esther Maciel Universidade Federal de Minas GeraisMichael Richardson SOAS, University of LondonLaura Rival University of Kent at CanterburyAndrew Travers SomersetJeffrey Weeks South Bank UniversitySasha Weitman Tel-Aviv UniversitySam Whimster London Guildhall UniversityElizabeth Wilson University of North LondonCas Wouters University of Utrecht

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