ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the book, including a summary of key points raised in the first half of the book, which establishes the theoretical and contextual groundwork, as well as the second half, which considers three different modalities by which brands and branding intersect with urban environments and everyday life. Key debates regarding the social and cultural implications of brands for metropolitan life are reviewed here. The chapter also summarizes the main arguments presented in the analysis, highlighting the different ways in which various chapters forward particular claims about brands and their entanglements with people, places, and practices in complex, interlinked processes of cultural production and consumption. The messy, contradictory, and contested nature of brands and branding is reiterated, with a discussion of possibilities for counter-branding to forward alternative visions for urban space and practices of place belonging. The chapter points to further areas for future research on brands and the city, including the need for more work on mobile brand techniques, as well as empirical investigation of the broad range of modalities by which brands are implicated in and shape urban life. It concludes by outlining the key contributions of the book to a growing sociology of brands and branding.
