Vol. 12, No. 1, Dec 2010

Books of Note

Buckingham, David and Vebjørg Tingstad (eds.) (2010). Childhood and Consumer Culture (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave).
Theoretical and empirical contributions highlight this collection of original and up-to-date research and thinking about the complicated interconnections between children and commercial life.

Comaroff, John L and Jean Comaroff. (2009). Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009.
An exploration of “ethno-entrepreneurialism” among a wide variety of groups and practices that portends a new relationship  between ethnicity, identity and the market.

Davis, Mark. (2008). Freedom and Consumerism: A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman’s Sociology. Aldershot: Ashgate.
A comprehensive and wide-ranging examination and critique of the works of one of the leading theorists of consumption and modernity.

Devinney, Timothy, Patrice Auger and Giana Eckhardt. (2010). The Myth of the Ethical Consumer. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
Using first-hand findings and extensive research, this book reveals not only why the search for the “ethical consumer” is futile but also why the social aspects of consumption cannot be ignored.

Humphery, Kim (2010). Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West.  Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Both an analysis of anti-consumption movements and attitudes and a critique of them, the author calls for a new politics of consumption which recognizes consumers as something other than mindless automatons.

Lukose, Ritty A. (2009).  Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Weaving together analyses of film, beauty pageants, fashion, politics, the street, family, sexuality and marriage in relation to youth in non-metropolitan India, this book highlight how anxieties about globalization often seek resolution in the young female form.

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