ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book contextualizes the phenomenon of celebrity in terms of culture, communications and media more generally, and examines the rise of the interdisciplinary field of celebrity studies. It focuses on the intricate connections between globalization, modernity and capitalism, and reflects on how celebrity cultures are produced, reproduced and transformed across time and space in the wider frame of complex institutional systems and transnational corporations. The book considers an array of debates on celebrity culture, everyday life and processes of identity-formation in social media age of endless reinvention, do-it-yourself makeovers and short-term identity projects. It also considers a kind of proto-postmodernist. The book explains numerous points of affinity between the operational logics and industrial mechanics of the celebrity cultural economy of the twenty-first century. It deals with the complexities and complications that arise when taking a regional, rather than national, frame of reference.
