ABSTRACT

With an emphasis on everyday life, this respected text offers a lively and perceptive account of the key theories and ideas which dominate the field of consumption and consumer culture. Engaging case studies describe forms of consumption familiar to the student, provide some historical context, and illustrate how a range of theoretical perspectives – from theories of practice, to semiotics, to psychoanalysis – apply. Written by an experienced teacher, the book offers a comprehensive grounding drawing on the literature in sociology, geography, cultural studies, and anthropology. This new revised and expanded edition includes more extended discussion of gender, the senses, sustainability, globalization, and the environment, as well as a brand new chapter on the ethics of consumption.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

We are all consumers

chapter 1|23 pages

How we became consumers

Theories of consumption

chapter 2|23 pages

You are what you buy?

Consumption and identity

chapter 3|33 pages

Globalization and McDisneyfication

Producing the global consumer

chapter 4|25 pages

Bodyshopping

The commodification of experience and sensation

chapter 5|27 pages

Nature, Inc.

chapter 6|28 pages

The ‘knowing’ consumer

The science of shopping and the arts of appropriation

chapter 7|23 pages

Cathedrals, palaces, and paradises

Modernity and the spaces of consumption

chapter 9|32 pages

‘Just do it’

The poetics and politics of brands and logos

chapter 10|26 pages

The ethics of consumption