Vol. 10, No. 1, December 2008

Books of Note

Blaszczyk, Regina Lee (ed). 2008. Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Focusing on the period from about 19900 to 1970, fourteen essays examine how “how the interactions among commerce, culture and consumers produce different fashions and help to disseminate them, sustain them, and contribute to their ‘going out of fashion.’”

Halton, Eugene. 2008 The Great Brain Suck: And Other American Epiphanies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
An original jeremiad against over-consumption and “the post-democratic military-industrial-academic-entertainment-sport-food complex.”

Jones, Ian R.,  Martin Hyde, Christina R. Victor, Richard D. Wiggins, Chris Gilleard and
Paul Higgs. 2008. Ageing in a Consumer Soceity: From passive to active consumption in Britain.
This book charts the engagement of older people with the processes of consumption from the 1960s to the present day and addresses an often overlooked aspect of consumer society.

Sherry, John F., Jr and Eileen Fisher. (2009) Explorations in Consumer Culture Theory (2009) London: Routledge
Leading researchers in the field of Consumer Culture Theory examine the lived experience of consumption in socio-historical perspective as it impinges on such topics as advertising, branding, retailing, lifestyle trends, corporate image management and family rituals.

Wherry, Frederick F. 2008. Global Markets and Local Crafts: Thailand and Costa Rica Compared. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Comparative ethnographies of the handicraft markets which call into question simple assumptions about capitalism and globalization.

Wilson, B. 2008. Swindled:The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.
A history of food adulteration from Roman times to the present, with attention to scientific, political/economic and social/cultural factors.

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