Summary
Contents
Subject index
Has consumer culture got out of hand? Are the costs of universal access and pollution too great to bear?This comprehensive, lively and informative book will quickly be recognized as a benchmark in the field. It brings together a huge set of resources for thinking about consumer culture and examining its origins and consequences within a global context. Adept in handling a complex range of theories, Consumer Society scrupulously uses examples throughout to inform and enhance understanding. Smart writes with verve and feeling and has produced a book that simultaneously covers and enlarges our understanding of consumer culture. Clear, engaging and original, this book will be important reading for all those interested in our global culture of consumption including students of sociology, social geography and cultural studies.
Consuming Futures II: ‘Green’ and Sustainable Alternatives
Consuming Futures II: ‘Green’ and Sustainable Alternatives
Concerns about consumerism and attempts to promote alternatives have a long history, almost ‘as old as capitalism itself’ (Etzioni, 2003: 7). Forms of consumer activism and campaigns arising from problems associated with capitalist market-exchange-based forms of consumption can be traced back to at least the mid-nineteenth century and the reaction of working-class communities in England to ‘excessive prices and poor quality goods, food in particular’, which led to the establishment of a modern cooperative movement offering consumers the possibility of forming mutually beneficial consumer cooperatives providing good quality products and services at the lowest cost, as an alternative to conventional profit-seeking consumer businesses. Consumer cooperatives are now to be found around the ...
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