Excess

Excess
Author: Kim Humphery
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745659039

Over-consumption is one of the key issues of our time, especially in the Western world. Over the past decade, in the face of historically unprecedented levels of consumer spending in the West - and the more recent impact of recession - a vigorous politics of anti-consumerism has emerged in a range of wealthy nations. This timely and original new book provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of what has come to be called the 'new politics of consumption'; a politics embodied in movements such as culture jamming, simple living, slow food and fair trade. The book offers an examination of anti-consumerism at a time when the idea of 'consumer excess' is being re-framed by a global economic downturn, and crucially explores what this means for the future of political debate. Drawing on interviews with activists across three continents, and offering a refreshingly accessible discussion of contemporary commentary and theory, Kim Humphery sympathetically explores anti-consumerism as cultural interpretation, lifestyle change, and collective action. Whilst analysing the positive advances of the anti-consumerist movement, Excess also challenges contemporary critical thinking on consumption, taking issue with the return to theories of mass culture in contemporary anti-consumerist polemic. Alternatively, Humphery begins to forge a politics of anti-consumerism that addresses the complexity of material acquisition and which avoids treating consumers as mere dupes in the logic of capitalism, viewing them instead as active participants in a culture which is capable of transformation.

Anti-Consumption

Anti-Consumption
Author: Hélène Cherrier
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2022-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 100064832X

In this edited volume, the leading scholars in the field engage with consumers, marketers, corporations and policymakers as well as space dynamics and network formation to provide an in-depth examination of anti-consumption: a voluntary behavioural inclination to minimise rather than grow, to decelerate and simplify and to reduce the unnecessary exploitation of resources fuelled by consumer culture. This book does not place anti-consumption on the high moral ground but rather demonstrates its complexity to spur innovative and critical thinking on how people, organisations, businesses and governments can treat consumption more as a necessity for survival than as a tool for self-expression, pleasure and economic growth. The first part of this book looks at anti-consumption from a diversity of perspectives. It analyses voluntary simplicity, a self-motivated engagement in consumption reduction, and boycotting, a politically-motivated reaction against unacceptable corporate practices, as distinct manifestations of anti-consumption that nonetheless remain rooted in the logic of the market. Paving the way to critical perspectives on the interface between anti-consumption, people and the environment, the second part of the book projects anti-consumption to issues of waste production and provides possible answers to global challenges of resources depletion, social inequalities and global warming. In this section, anti-consumption is critically assessed as an actor of change, both in terms of social change and paradigm change. To move the field forward, the third part of this book presents several theoretical frameworks that help set a roadmap for future research. Anti-Consumption will be of direct interest to scholars and researchers within the fields of marketing, consumer research, business studies, environmental studies and sustainability. It will also be of value to those researching the economics and/or sociology of markets.

Cultural Studies and Anti-Consumerism

Cultural Studies and Anti-Consumerism
Author: Sam Binkley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317984986

Anti-consumerism has become a conspicuous part of contemporary activism and popular culture, from ‘culture jams’ and actions against Esso and Starbucks, through the downshifting and voluntary simplicity movements, the rise of ethical consumption and organic and the high profile of films and books like Supersize Me! and No Logo. A rising awareness of labor conditions in overseas plants, the environmental impact of intensified consumer lifestyles and the effects of neo-liberal privatization have all stimulated such popular cultural opposition. However, the subject of anti-consumerism has received relatively little theoretical attention – particularly from cultural studies, which is surprising given the discipline’s historical investments in extending radical politics and exploring the complexities of consumer desire. This book considers how the expanding resources of contemporary cultural theory might be drawn upon to understand anti-consumerist identifications and practices; how railing against the social and cultural effects of consumerism has a complex past as well as present; and it pays attention to the interplays between the different movements of anti-consumerism and the particular modes of consumer culture in which they exist. In addition, as well as ‘using’ cultural studies to analyse anti-consumerism, it also asks how such anti-consumerist practices and discourse challenges some of the presumptions and positions currently held in cultural studies. This book was previously published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Ethical Consumption

Ethical Consumption
Author: James G. Carrier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0857453432

Increasingly, consumers in North America and Europe see their purchasing as a way to express to the commercial world their concerns about trade justice, the environment and similar issues. This ethical consumption has attracted growing attention in the press and among academics. Extending beyond the growing body of scholarly work on the topic in several ways, this volume focuses primarily on consumers rather than producers and commodity chains. It presents cases from a variety of European countries and is concerned with a wide range of objects and types of ethical consumption, not simply the usual tropical foodstuffs, trade justice and the system of fair trade. Contributors situate ethical consumption within different contexts, from common Western assumptions about economy and society, to the operation of ethical-consumption commerce, to the ways that people’s ethical consumption can affect and be affected by their social situation. By locating consumers and their practices in the social and economic contexts in which they exist and that their ethical consumption affects, this volume presents a compelling interrogation of the rhetoric and assumptions of ethical consumption.

Consumer-Driven Innovation in Food and Personal Care Products

Consumer-Driven Innovation in Food and Personal Care Products
Author: S R Jaeger
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 697
Release: 2010-08-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1845699971

Experts from around the world present changes in the global marketplace and developments in research methodologies underpinning new product development (NPD) in this essential collection. The business and marketing aspects of NPD, sometimes neglected in books of this type, are addressed alongside methods for product testing.Trends, processes and perspectives in consumer-driven NPD in the food and personal care product industries are addressed in the opening chapters of the book. Specific topics include evolution in food retailing and advances in concept research. Hedonic testing is the focus of the next section. Different viewpoints on consumer research methods and statistics for NPD are reviewed in later chapters. The final part of the book looks towards the future of innovation, covering the implications for NPD of topics such as human genetic variation in taste perception and neuroimaging.Several chapters are not standard scientific articles. Rather they are written records of conversations between two people on a particular topic related to consumer-driven innovation in foods and personal care products. In them the interviewees speak freely about their views and experiences in NPD, providing unique insights.Consumer-driven innovation in food and personal care products will broaden readers' understanding of the many approaches available to NPD personnel and ways in which they can be used to support innovation activities. - Provides expert insight into the changes in the global market place and developments in research methodologies underpinning NPD - Examines the business and marketing aspects of NPD, sometimes neglected in books of this type, are addressed alongside methods for product testing - Chapters review the different viewpoints on consumer research methods and statistics for NPD

Consumption and Well-Being in the Material World

Consumption and Well-Being in the Material World
Author: Miriam Tatzel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2013-09-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9400773684

This volume addresses how we can find happiness and well-being in the material world. It builds on previous works that find that materialism is associated with lowered well-being (materialists are less happy) and that consumerism, in all its profusion, is harmful to environmental well-being. How can we use the money and possessions in our lives in the service of well-being? Apparently not by being materialistic. Can we benefit from the many wonders of the marketplace -- in technology, convenience and aesthetics -- without falling prey to the lures and dangers of excessive material preoccupation? Can we meet our material needs in ways that nourish growth and well-being? The authors of the chapters in this volume are on-going researchers into such questions. Herein you can learn about the hedonic benefits of thrift and of spending on experiences; how possessions can be beneficial; how different types of consumers spend money; cultural variations in conceptions of the "good life;" how we might reconcile environmental and consumer well-being; and how to measure the whole of human, economic, and environmental well-being. Taken all together, this collection finds grounds for compatibility between what's good for the consumer and what's good for the environment. This volume appeals to academics, professionals, students and others interested in materialism and consumer well-being.

Radical Consumption: Shopping For Change In Contemporary Culture

Radical Consumption: Shopping For Change In Contemporary Culture
Author: Littler, Jo
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2008-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0335221521

"This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to examining contemporary radical consumption, analyzing its possibilities and problems, moralities, methods of mediation and its connections to wider cultural formations of production and politics." "Jo Littler argues that we require a more expansive vocabulary and need to open up new approaches of enquiry in order to understand the area's many contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on a number of contemporary theories, terms and debates in media and cultural studies, she uses a range of specific case studies to bring theory to life." "Radical Consumption is important reading for cultural, media and sociology students." --Book Jacket.

Consumption and Violence

Consumption and Violence
Author: Alexander Sedlmaier
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 047203605X

Reveals the relationship between the rise of political violence in West Germany to the unprecedented growth of consumption

Delirious Consumption

Delirious Consumption
Author: Sergio Delgado Moya
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2017-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1477314377

In the decades following World War II, the creation and expansion of massive domestic markets and relatively stable economies allowed for mass consumption on an unprecedented scale, giving rise to the consumer society that exists today. Many avant-garde artists explored the nexus between consumption and aesthetics, questioning how consumerism affects how we perceive the world, place ourselves in it, and make sense of it via perception and emotion. Delirious Consumption focuses on the two largest cultural economies in Latin America, Mexico and Brazil, and analyzes how their artists and writers both embraced and resisted the spirit of development and progress that defines the consumer moment in late capitalism. Sergio Delgado Moya looks specifically at the work of David Alfaro Siqueiros, the Brazilian concrete poets, Octavio Paz, and Lygia Clark to determine how each of them arrived at forms of aesthetic production balanced between high modernism and consumer culture. He finds in their works a provocative positioning vis-à-vis urban commodity capitalism, an ambivalent position that takes an assured but flexible stance against commodification, alienation, and the politics of domination and inequality that defines market economies. In Delgado Moya’s view, these poets and artists appeal to uselessness, nonutility, and noncommunication—all markers of the aesthetic—while drawing on the terms proper to a world of consumption and consumer culture.