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Author: Laura J. Miller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226525929
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail industries, has evolved from an arena dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. And as in other areas of retail, this transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process. This has been especially pronounced in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What drives that debate? And why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit? In Reluctant Capitalists, Miller looks at a century of book retailing, demonstrating that the independent/chain dynamic is not entirely new. It began one hundred years ago when department stores began selling books, continued through the 1960s with the emergence of national chain stores, and exploded with the formation of “superstores” in the 1990s. The advent of the Internet has further spurred tremendous changes in how booksellers approach their business. All of these changes have met resistance from book professionals and readers who believe that the book business should somehow be “above” market forces and instead embrace more noble priorities. Miller uses interviews with bookstore customers and members of the book industry to explain why books evoke such distinct and heated reactions. She reveals why customers have such fierce loyalty to certain bookstores and why they identify so strongly with different types of books. In the process, she also teases out the meanings of retailing and consumption in American culture at large, underscoring her point that any type of consumer behavior is inevitably political, with consequences for communities as well as commercial institutions.
Author: Laura J. Miller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226525929
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Get Book Here
Book Description
Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail industries, has evolved from an arena dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. And as in other areas of retail, this transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process. This has been especially pronounced in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What drives that debate? And why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit? In Reluctant Capitalists, Miller looks at a century of book retailing, demonstrating that the independent/chain dynamic is not entirely new. It began one hundred years ago when department stores began selling books, continued through the 1960s with the emergence of national chain stores, and exploded with the formation of “superstores” in the 1990s. The advent of the Internet has further spurred tremendous changes in how booksellers approach their business. All of these changes have met resistance from book professionals and readers who believe that the book business should somehow be “above” market forces and instead embrace more noble priorities. Miller uses interviews with bookstore customers and members of the book industry to explain why books evoke such distinct and heated reactions. She reveals why customers have such fierce loyalty to certain bookstores and why they identify so strongly with different types of books. In the process, she also teases out the meanings of retailing and consumption in American culture at large, underscoring her point that any type of consumer behavior is inevitably political, with consequences for communities as well as commercial institutions.
Author: Linda M. Randall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135957401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Reluctant Capitalists examines Russia's plodding, sometimes painful, journey toward a free-market. Through case studies, interviews and first-hand observation, Randall tells us of Russia's economic troubles and offers suggestions for making market reform work.
Author: Evan Friss
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593299930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category." —The New York Times "It is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book." —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author and owner of Books Are Magic An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field’s in 1944. The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.
Author: Daniel Herbert
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958020
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the "tangible phase" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture’s historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization. In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.
Author: Simon R. Frost
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438483538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445
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Book Description
Combining historical study, theorization, and experimental fiction, this book takes commodity culture and book retail around 1900 as the prime example of a market of symbolic goods. With the port of Southampton, England, as his case study, Simon R. Frost reveals how the city's bookshops, with their combinations of libraries, haberdashery, stationery, and books, sustained and were sustained by the dreams of ordinary readers, and how together they created the values powering this market. The goods in this market were symbolic and were not "consumed" but read. Their readings were created between other readers and texts, in happy disobedience to the neoliberal laws of the free market. Today such reader-created social markets comprise much of the world's branded economies, which is why Frost calls for a new understanding of both literary and market values.
Author: David Simon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134304889
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The essential guide to the world’s most influential development thinkers, this authoritative text presents a unique guide to the lives and ideas of leading contributors to the contested terrain of development studies. Reflecting the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of the area, the book includes entries on: * modernisers like Hirshman, Kindleberger and Rostow * dependencistas such as Frank, Cardoso and Amin * progressives like Prebisch, Helleiner and Streeten * political leaders enunciating radical alternative visions of development, such as Mao, Nkrumah and Nyerere * progenitors of religiously or spiritually inspired development, such as Gandhi and Ariyaratne * development-environment thinkers like Blaikie, Brookfield and Shiva. This is a fascinating and readable introduction to the major figures that have shaped the field, ideal for anyone studying or working in the area.
Author: Bernard H. Siegan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351312502
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
In this seminal work, Bernard Siegan traces the history of onstitutional protection for economic liberties in the United States. He argues that the law began to change with respect to economic liberties in the late 1930s. At that time, the Supreme Court abdicated much of its authority to protect property rights, and instead condoned the expansion of state power over private property. Siegan brings the argument originally advanced in the .first edition completely up to date. He explores the moral position behind capitalism and discusses why former communist countries flirting with decentralization and a free market (for instance, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) have become more progressive and prosperous as a result. He contrasts the benefits of a free, deregulated economy with the dangers of over-regulation and moves towards socialized welfare?most specifically as happened during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Supporting his thesis with historical court cases, Siegan discusses the past and present status of economic liberties under the Constitution, clarifies constitutional interpretation and due process, and suggests ways of safeguarding economic liberties. About the original edition, Doug Bandow of Reason noted, "Siegan has written a vitally important book that is sure to ignite an impassioned legal and philosophical debate. The reason?the necessity?for protecting economic liberty is no less than that guaranteeing political and civil liberty." Joseph Sobran of the National Review wrote, "Siegan...makes a powerful general case for economic liberty, on both historical and more strictly empirical grounds.... Siegan has done a brilliant piece of work, not only where it was badly needed, but where the need had hardly been recognized until he addressed it." And Edwin Meese remarked that, "This timely and important book shows how far we have drifted from protecting basic liberties that the Framers of the Constitution sought to secure. I recommend it highly." This new, completely revised edition of Economic Liberties and the Constitution will be essential reading for students of economics, history, public policy, law, and political science.
Author: Daria Tereshina
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 3643964080
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
This book investigates the moral dimensions of petty capitalism in Russia. Drawing on an ethnographic enquiry into the small-scale, family-based private sector of the city of Smolensk, it examines the values, moral ideas and sentiments that are entangled in the everyday workings of small businesses. The book situates the realm of values within the broader dynamics of Russia's political economy and the global circuits of capital. The moral frameworks of entrepreneurs incorporate conflicting values, such that moralities associated with the Soviet order are intertwined with market orientations and neoliberal ideologies. Daria Tereshina is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.
Author: Juris Dilevko
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786429259
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Beginning in the early 1980s, readers' advisory services were a widely discussed topic in North American public libraries. By 2005, almost every public library in the United States and Canada offered some form of readers' advisory service. The services offered have changed significantly, in ways perhaps disadvantageous to adult North American library patrons. This book provides a critical history of readers' advisory philosophy and offers a new perspective on the evolution of the service. The book analyzes the debate that shaped readers' advisory and discusses how the service has assumed its present form. The study follows readers' advisory through its three prominent stages of development, beginning with the period 1870 to 1916, when the service was still a subject of much crucial debate about its meaning and purpose. During the second phase (1917 to 1962), readers' advisory systematically committed itself to meaningful adult education through serious and purposeful reading. The book argues, however, that during the most recent phase of readers' advisory, from 1963 until the present, contemporary public libraries have turned their backs on the rich heritage of readers' advisory services by valorizing the reading of entertainment-oriented and commodified genre titles and bestsellers. Historical analysis, case studies and statistical charts augment the book's central argument.
Author: Bill Dunn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751280
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
The book provides a theoretically and historically informed analysis of the global economic crisis. It makes original contributions to theories of value, of crisis and of the state and uses these to develop a rich empirical study of the changing character of capitalism in the twentieth century and beyond. It defends, uses and develops Marxist theory while arguing particularly against jumping too quickly from abstract concepts to a concrete understanding of the crisis. Instead, it uses what Marx described in his notebooks as an ‘obvious’ analytical ordering to progress from a general analysis of economy and society to a discussion of recent economic transformations and the specifics of the crisis and its aftermath.Dunn argues that appropriately reconceived, a critical Marxism can incorporate and enrich rather than rejecting insights from other traditions. He disputes general characterisations of capitalism to the crisis and theories which see finance and the contemporary financial crises as largely detached from other aspects of the economy and society. Providing a thoroughly socialised and historically based account, this book will be vital reading for students and scholars of political economy, international political economy, Marxism, sociology, geography and development studies.
