The Birth of a Consumer Society

The Birth of a Consumer Society PDF Author: Neil McKendrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description

The Birth of a Consumer Society

The Birth of a Consumer Society PDF Author: Neil McKendrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description


Buying Power

Buying Power PDF Author: Lawrence B. Glickman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226298663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
A definitive history of consumer activism, Buying Power traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists’ relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.

The Radical Potter

The Radical Potter PDF Author: Tristram Hunt
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1250128358
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
From one of Britain’s leading historians and the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, a scintillating biography of Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated eighteenth-century potter, entrepreneur, and abolitionist Wedgwood’s pottery, such as his celebrated light-blue jasperware, is famous worldwide. Jane Austen bought it and wrote of it in her novels; Empress Catherine II of Russia ordered hundreds of pieces for her palace; British diplomats hauled it with them on their first-ever mission to Peking, audaciously planning to impress China with their china. But the life of Josiah Wedgwood is far richer than just his accomplishments in ceramics. He was a leader of the Industrial Revolution, a pioneering businessman, a cultural tastemaker, and a tireless scientific experimenter whose inventions made him a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also an ardent abolitionist, whose Emancipation Badge medallion—depicting an enslaved African and inscribed “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”—became the most popular symbol of the antislavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic. And he did it all in the face of chronic disability and relentless pain: a childhood bout with smallpox eventually led to the amputation of his right leg. As historian Tristram Hunt puts it in this lively, vivid biography, Wedgwood was the Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century: a difficult, brilliant, creative figure whose personal drive and extraordinary gifts changed the way we work and live. Drawing on a rich array of letters, journals, and historical documents, The Radical Potter brings us the story of a singular man, his dazzling contributions to design and innovation, and his remarkable global impact.

The Metabolic Ghetto

The Metabolic Ghetto PDF Author: Jonathan C. K. Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107009472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
A multidisciplinary analysis of the role of nutrition in generating hierarchical societies and cultivating a global epidemic of chronic diseases.

Consumer Culture

Consumer Culture PDF Author: Roberta Sassatelli
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781412911818
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
'Roberta Sassatelli has written a thorough and wide-ranging synthetic account of social scientific research on consumption which will set the standard for the second generation of textbooks on cultures of consumption. Consumer Culture is an appealing and lucid introduction to the major themes - historical and contemporary, theoretical and empirical - surrounding the growth, nature and consequences of consumer culture. It will be of professional interest as well as serving a student audience' - Alan Warde, University of Manchester Showing the cultural and institutional processes that have brought the notion of the 'consumer' to life, this book guides the reader on a comprehensive journey through the history of how we have come to understand ourselves as consumers in a consumer society and reveals the profound ambiguities and ambivalences inherent within. While rooted in sociology, Sassatelli draws on the traditions of history, anthropology, geography and economics to give: - A history of the rise of consumer culture around the world; - A richly illustrated analysis of theory from neo-classical economics, to critical theory, to theories of practice and ritual de-commoditization; and - A compelling discussion of the politics underlying our consumption practices. An exemplary introduction to the history and theory of consumer culture, this book provides nuanced answers to some of the most central questions of our time.

The Penguin Social History of Britain

The Penguin Social History of Britain PDF Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141926473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
A portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

Timeless Simplicity

Timeless Simplicity PDF Author: John Lane
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 190744856X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
A delightful book, celebrating the wonders of simplicity and minimalism in a noisy, overwhelming world. Our planet was once teeming with all kinds of life, but our grandchildren will inherit one with less than 20 per cent of its early forests still in tact, and thousands of plant and animal species extinct. Sooner or later, a more frugal lifestyle is not only desirable, but will soon be imperative. Life at the moment isn't what it should be – technological and economic progress has resulted in a delusion that material solutions will solve emotional problems, but a simpler lifestyle leaves space for spiritual renewal. This is a book about simplicity – not destitution, parsimoniousness or self-denial, but the restoration of wealth in the midst of an affluence in which we are starving the spirit. There are many advantages to living a less cluttered, less stressful life than that which has become the norm in the overcrowded and manic-paced consuming nations. Written by painter, writer and educator John Lane, Timeless Simplicity is an ode to having less and enjoying more. More time to pursue creativity, eat good food, relax with your family – and to just be yourself!

Consumer Culture and Modernity

Consumer Culture and Modernity PDF Author: Don Slater
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745603049
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues, concepts and theories through which people have tried to understand consumer culture throughout the modern period, and puts the current state of thinking into a broader context. Thematically organized, the book shows how the central aspects of consumer culture - such as needs, choice, identity, status, alienation, objects, culture - have been debated within modern theories, from those of earlier thinkers such as Marx and Simmel to contemporary forms of post-structuralism and postmodernism. This approach introduces consumer culture as a subject which - far from being of narrow or recent interest - is intimately tied to the central issues of modern times and modern social thought. With its reviews of major theorists set within a full account of the development of the subject, this book should be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the many disciplines which now study consumer culture, including communications and cultural studies, anthropology and history.

Creditworthy

Creditworthy PDF Author: Josh Lauer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231544626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing. In Creditworthy, the first comprehensive history of this crucial American institution, Josh Lauer explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. Ultimately, Lauer argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports—and, later, credit ratings and credit scores—credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic "facts." It is fundamentally concerned with—and determines—our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.

Cognitive Capitalism

Cognitive Capitalism PDF Author: Yann Moulier-Boutang
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745647324
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;