Consuming Nature

Consuming Nature PDF Author: Gregory Summers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Takes readers to Wisconsin's Fox River Valley more than fifty years ago to recount how technological and economic progress contributed to residents' growing opposition to the industrial pollution of the river.

Consuming Nature

Consuming Nature PDF Author: Gregory Summers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Takes readers to Wisconsin's Fox River Valley more than fifty years ago to recount how technological and economic progress contributed to residents' growing opposition to the industrial pollution of the river.

The Consuming Instinct

The Consuming Instinct PDF Author: Gad Saad
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616144300
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In this highly informative and entertaining book, the founder of the vibrant new field of evolutionary consumption illuminates the relevance of our biological heritage to our daily lives as consumers. While culture is important, the author shows that innate evolutionary forces deeply influence the foods we eat, the gifts we offer, the cosmetics and clothing styles we choose to make ourselves more attractive to potential mates, and even the cultural products that stimulate our imaginations (such as art, music, and religion). The book demonstrates that most acts of consumption can be mapped onto four key Darwinian drives—namely, survival (we prefer foods high in calories); reproduction (we use products as sexual signals); kin selection (we naturally exchange gifts with family members); and reciprocal altruism (we enjoy offering gifts to close friends). The author further highlights the analogous behaviors that exist between human consumers and a wide range of animals. For anyone interested in the biological basis of human behavior or simply in what makes consumers tick—marketing professionals, advertisers, psychology mavens, and consumers themselves—this is a fascinating read.

Consuming Desires

Consuming Desires PDF Author: Roger Rosenblatt
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781610913874
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Consider this paradox: Ecologists estimate that it would take three planets Earth to provide an American standard of living to the entire world. Yet it is that standard of living to which the whole world aspires.In Consuming Desires, award-winning writer and social commentator Roger Rosenblatt brings together a brilliant collection of thinkers and writers to shed light on the triumphs and tragedies of that disturbing paradox. The book represents a captivating salon, offering a rich and varied dialogue on the underlying roots of consumer culture and its pervasive impact on ourselves and the world around us. Each author offers a unique perspective, their layers of thoughts and insights building together to create a striking, multifaceted picture of our society and culture.Jane Smiley probes the roots of consumerism in the emancipation of women from household drudgery afforded by labor-saving devices and technological innovation; Alex Kotlowitz describes the mutual reinforcement of fashion trends as poor inner-city kids and rich suburban kids strive to imitate each other; Bill McKibben discusses the significance, and the irony, of defining yourself not by what you buy, but by what you don't buy.The essays range widely, but two ideas are central to nearly all of them: that consumption is driven by yearning and desire -- often unspoken, seemingly insatiable -- and that what prevents us from keeping our consumptive impulse in check is the western concept of self, the solitary and restless self, entitled to all it can pay for.As Rosenblatt explains in his insightful introduction: "Individualism and desire are what makes us great and what makes us small. Freedom is our dream and our enemy. The essays touch on these paradoxes, and while all are too nuanced and graceful to preach easy reform, they give an idea of what reform means, where it is possible, and, in some cases, where it may not be as desirable as it appears."

Consuming Places

Consuming Places PDF Author: JOHN Urry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113482968X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
In Consuming Places, Urry explores the concept of 'society', the nature of 'locality', the significance of 'economic restructuring', and how the concept of the 'rural' are examined in relationship to place.

The Botany of Desire

The Botany of Desire PDF Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375760393
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

Consuming the Romantic Utopia

Consuming the Romantic Utopia PDF Author: Eva Illouz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917995
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.

Consuming Cities

Consuming Cities PDF Author: Nicholas Low
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415187680
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment. It examines these issues through the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference.

Consuming Cities

Consuming Cities PDF Author: Ingemar Elander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134661118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment, and the spread of policies to reduce their impact. It looks at these issues by examining the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference. Consuming Cities examines this impact using case studies from around the world including: the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, China, India, Sweden, Poland, Australia and Indonesia The contributors all have direct experience of the urban environment and urban policies in the countries on which they write and offer an authoritative commentary which brings the urban 'consumption' dimension of sustainable development into focus.

Consuming Race

Consuming Race PDF Author: Ben Pitcher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136238174
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
From the rise of Nordic noir to a taste for street food, from practices of natural gardening to the aesthetics of children's TV, contemporary culture is saturated with racial meanings. By consuming race we make sense of other groups and cultures, communicate our own identities, express our needs and desires, and discover new ways of thinking and being. This book explores how the meanings of race are made and remade in acts of creative consumption. Ranging across the terrain of popular culture, and finding race in some unusual and unexpected places, it offers fresh and innovative ways of thinking about the centrality of race to our lives. Consuming Race provides an accessible and highly readable overview of the latest research and a detailed reading of a diverse range of objects, sites and practices. It gives students of sociology, media and cultural studies the opportunity to make connections between academic debates and their own everyday practices of consumption.

Consuming Environments

Consuming Environments PDF Author: Mike Budd
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813525921
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This is an exploration of how much TV people watch, why they watch too much, and what they see. The authors argue that while people may have good reasons for watching television, they seem to be unaware that such habits might be harmful to their environmental health. The book examines how advertising and media companies have shaped the commercial content of most television, tracing industry motives and operations and their increasing concentration in fewer hands.