Suchergebnisse

Introduction to consumerism -- How consumerism affects society -- The impact of consumerism internationally -- Consumerism and the environment -- The debate about consumerism -- The future of consumerism -- Appendix: Statistics of inequality -- Organizations to contact.

The article investigates how consumerism is perceived as an unremarkable part of quotidian existence, as a patriotic duty at various moments, as an indicator of social class, and as a means of semiotic self-fashioning. In consumerism, the tension between the sumptuary restraint on conspicuous consumption, which characterized the early Protestant ethic, and the dependence of capitalism itself on boundless commodity circulation, emerges again and again. I investigate how certain forms of consumerism, relating to excess and improper storage, are reclassified in medical terms. I also investigate modes of strategic consumerism, which try to bridge the gap between producer and consumer, and how certain forms of performative labor are themselves consumed. I close with a few reflections on sites for future study: shopping as a form of underrecognized labor, and an auto-ethnographic turn for academics, inspecting the reach of consumerism into academic practices and universities themselves.

Popular capitalism provides a useful case study to reveal the overt mechanisms of Thatcherism as well as the concealed and coincidental. The Party's programmes of council house sales and privatization have rightly been understood as a central part of popular capitalism. However, Thatcherism relied on far more than just the actions of the Conservative Party alone. This article explores the role of financial institutions in creating an institutional framework which enabled the British public to engage with popular capitalism. In doing so it builds on existing work on Thatcherism as a political and cultural project by considering both the ideological and institutional mechanisms through which economic elements of Thatcherism were normalized. In particular it explores the term 'financial consumerism' as a useful moniker for Thatcherism which moves beyond popular capitalism and allows a consideration of wider questions about consumer society, participation and social inclusion.

For too long criminologists have either ignored consumerism or misunderstood the role it plays in the constitution and reproduction of our current way of life. Few in criminology have acknowledged that consumerism is now integral to our global political economy, and even fewer have offered critical accounts of the vital functional and ideological roles consumerism has played throughout the history of capitalism. There is, of course, a valuable literature that covers most aspects of consumerism and consumer culture, but the illuminating concepts and analyses associated with this literature have yet to be integrated into our discipline. Here we argue that criminologists must now make a concerted attempt to push critical accounts of consumerism towards the centre of our discipline.

Introduces the issue on the theme of consumerism. Noted the difficulty in defining it; yet all contributors agree that the encouragement of greater consumer responsiveness in a public service must be seen as part of a total management and organisational philosophy. (PAS)

Consumerism is one of the most dangerous political scenarios in which human beings can enter; is the fantastic world that controls the real world. It is the world of stereotypes, temporary satisfaction, non-participation, manipulation, alignment, the world of the plastic
and the superficial, this is the axis of this text.

Australians live in a consumer society. It can be easy to ignore the fact that every purchase we make has an impact - financially, socially and environmentally. Being an ethical shopper means making conscious choices about what we consume, and how if affects our world. Do we choose low-cost, high-convenience and unnecessary consumption over environmental sustainability, corporate responsibility and actual need? Do the products we purchase harm other humans, animals or the environment? Are the people who produce them working in decent conditions? How can consumers influence producers and retail

Kathleen G. Donohue, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Jonathan M. Hansen, The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890–1920 (University of Chicago Press, 2003)Daniel Horowitz, The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004)To recapture the ideal vision that many late nineteenth-century American thinkers held for their society one can do no better than Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, Looking Backward, 1887–2000 (1888). In it Bellamy transports his young protagonist, Julian West, from the Boston of his day to a far more appealing version of the same city imagined as it was about to enter the twenty-first century. Julian finds a consumers' paradise, where each citizen receives a credit card to use in selecting from a virtually limitless variety of goods available for sale at local distribution centers. With everyone receiving a per capita share of the burgeoning national output, the entire society has now become securely middle class. Indeed, there is so much wealth that citizens are actively encouraged to spend rather than save. "The nation is rich," we are told, "and does not wish the people to deprive themselves of any good thing." Labor unions, strikes, and class conflict have all become a distant memory. Along with the working class, the unsightly factories that once dominated so much of the urban landscape have essentially vanished. A cornucopia of goods miraculously appears, with the apparatus required for manufacturing them entirely out of sight. Given this happy state of affairs, all citizens exhibit a strong degree of patriotism. Dissent and disloyalty have become unknown, since there is no longer any need for them.