Vol. 10, No. 2, May 2009

Books of Note

Belasco, Warren and Roger Horowitz (eds.). 2008. Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
This collection of twelve historical case studies ranging widely from the pig, poultry, and seafood industries to the origins of the shopping cart reveals the remarkable inner workings of the modern food provisioning system and the complex web of institutions that move food from the farm to the dinner table.

Blaszczyk, Regina Lee.  American Consumer Society, 1865-2005: From Hearth to HDTV.  Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson Publishers, 2009.  
A whirlwind tour of U.S. consumer culture since the Civil War, focusing on shifting values from "things" to "experiences" or the transition from "cultural hardware" to "cultural software."

Cronin, Anne M. and Kevin Hetherington (eds.), Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle. New York and London: Routledge, 2008
Original essays by various authors focus on, among other things, the creation and loss of memory in the consumer landscape of 21st century cities.

Dworkin, Shari L. and Faye Linda Wachs (2009).  Body Panic: Gender, Health and the Selling of Fitness.  New York, NYU Press. 
This book uses content and textual analysis of men's and women's health and fitness magazines to explore the relationship between gender, ideologies of health and neoliberal manifestations of the fitness imperative.

Littler, Jo. 2008.  Radical Consumption: Shopping for Change in Contemporary Culture. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press
An examination of the moral discourses surrounding the contemporary entanglements of consumption with social activism..

Miller, Daniel 2008. The Comfort of Things, Cambridge: Polity.
In a “largely non-academic style,” Miller examines the place of goods in the lives of 30 people in North London, finding a variety of ways people use good for solace, support and touchstones of memories.

Sunderland, Patricia and Rita Denny. 2007. Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research. Left Coast Press.
A glimpse into the work of marketing anthropology by two veterans through case studies and discussions of method.

Weinreb, Amelia Rosenberg. 2009 (August release date). Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Provides a new line of inquiry into the place of citizenship and consumption in contemporary Cuban society, arguing that late-socialist transition on the island has just as much to do with ordinary consumer desire as it does with political ideology.

>>> back to Consumers, Commodities & Consumption, Vol. 10(2) May 2009.