ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how the preoccupation with the novelty of lifestyle limits the possibilities for thinking through the continuities, as well as the discontinuities, in people's consumption and lifestyle practices. It also shows that processes and practices that are frequently seen as late twentieth-century phenomena in fact have a much longer and more complex history. The book maintains a dialogue with theories of modernity and postmodernity but also offer a concrete analysis of the specific ways in which ideas about lifestyle have been mediated at particular moments in specific contexts. It considers the more specific role of advertising and marketing in mediating ideas about lifestyle and educating their audiences in specific dispositions towards consumption. The book demonstrates how Ebony magazine constructed lifestyles through consumption, but that these were also sites for mediating, and rendering visible, the lifestyles of a black middle class.
