Consumer Society and the Postmodern City

✍ Scribed by David B Clarke

• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 279
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The fact that we inhabit a consumer society has incredibly far-reaching implications. Working through the often controversial ideas of the consumer society's most influential theorists, Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman, this book assesses the ways in which consumerism is reshaping the nature and meaning of the city. It examines the nature of consumption and its increasing centrality to post-modern society by;considering the development of consumerism as a central facet of social lifedemonstrating that social inequalities are increasingly structured around consumptionuncovering the hidden consequences of consumerismpondering the meaning of lifestyle*revealing how the nature of reality is changing in an age of globalization.Employing a sustained and engaging theoretical analysis, the book ranges across a variety of sometimes unexpected topics. It represents an impassioned plea for everyone interested in the social life of cities to take the notion of the consumer society - and the arguments of its major theorists - seriously.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Consumption......Page 18
Consumption controversies......Page 20
Everything you ever wanted to know about consumption (but were afraid to ask Baudrillard)......Page 37
Consumption and the city......Page 82
Consumption and the city, modern and postmodern......Page 84
Seduced and repressed: collective consumption revisited WITH......Page 107
The consumer society and the postmodern city......Page 138
The meaning of lifestyle......Page 140
Minimal utopia......Page 178
Notes......Page 207
Bibliography......Page 228
Index......Page 268