Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture: Advertising's Impact on American Character and Society: Advertising's Impact on American Character and Society (September 28, 2003) Arthur Asa Berger Expanded and updated from the successful first edition, Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture, Second Edition looks at marketing strategies, sex and advertising, consumer culture, political advertising, and communication theory and process to give an accessible overview of advertising in America. New material includes classified advertising, advertising agencies in the recent economy, postmodern perspectives on advertising, new consumer cultures, metaphor and metonymy, product placement, and the 2002 California campaign for governor. A new chapter raises questions about prescription drug advertising and advertising to children. Visit our website for sample chapters! The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry (New Technologies/New Cultures) (November 1, 2003) Paul Frosh Quietly but implacably, powerful transnational corporations are gaining power over our visual world. A 'global, visual content industry' increasingly controls images supplied to advertisers, marketers and designers, yet so far the process has, paradoxically, evaded the public eye. This book is the first to expose the interior workings of the visual content industry, which produces approximately 70% of the images that define consumer cultures. The corporate acquisition of major photographic and film archives, as well as the digital rights to much of the world’s fine art, is having a profound effect on what we see. From stock photography to new technologies, this book powerfully engages with the historical and cultural issues relating to visual culture and new media. How has stock photography, the system of ‘renting out’ ready-made images, transformed the role of marketing and advertising? What impact are digital technologies having on the practices of industry professionals? How have software programs such as Photoshop enabled professionals to play ‘God’ with photographs and how does this influence our belief in the integrity of images? Combining original research on stock photography with a new theoretical take on the circulation of images in contemporary culture, The Image Factory provides a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of industrialized commercial photography, its uses and abuses. Paul Frosh is Lecturer, Department of Communication and Journalism, at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture (Paperback) (December 20, 2003) Daniel Doherty (Editor), Amitai Etzioni (Editor) In the past fifty years, the standard of living in most industrialized nations has risen dramatically, but the number of people describing themselves as content has remained steady or fallen. The result has been a growing desire to regain some of the virtues of simpler times, whether by forgoing luxuries, switching careers, or returning to nature. These essays reflect on the different facets of voluntary simplicity and consumer culture, providing an historic view of the movement as well as a social-scientific analysis of its causes and effects. Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge--And Why We Must Kalle Lasn America is no longer a country but a multimillion-dollar brand, says Kalle Lasn and his fellow "culture jammers". The founder of Adbusters magazine, Lasn aims to stop the branding of America by changing the way information flows; the way institutions wield power; the way television stations are run; and the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music, and culture industries set agendas. With a courageous and compelling voice, Lasn deconstructs the advertising culture and our fixation on icons and brand names. And he shows how to organize resistance against the power trust that manages the brands by "uncooling" consumer items, by "dermarketing" fashions and celebrities, and by breaking the "media trance" of our TV-addicted age. A powerful manifesto by a leading media activist, Culture Jam lays the foundations for the most significant social movement of the early twenty-first century -- a movement that can change the world and the way we think and live. Featured in the PBS documentary Affluenza, Kalle Lasn, whose documentaries have been broadcast on PBS, CBC, and around the world, has won 15 international awards, and has been profiled in Time. As publisher of Adbusters magazine and founder of Media Foundation and Powershift Advertising Agency, Lasn has launched social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week. He and his wife, Masako Tominaga, make their home in Vancouver, Canada. City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience (Criminology S.) (Sept. 30, 2004) Keith J. Hayward Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan (Suny Series in Japan in Transition) (August 30, 2004) William W. Kelly (Editor) Fanning the Flames examines the worlds of fans in the exuberant and commercialized popular culture of contemporary Japan. The works collected here profile denizens of all-night rap clubs; sumo stable patrons; passionate fan clubs of a professional baseball team; enthusiasts of traditional rakugo storytelling; a club of middle-aged female fans of a popular music star; youthful followers of Japan's longest-running rock band; vinyl record collectors; and a thriving community of girls and women who produce and devour amateur comics. Grounded in close, often extended fieldwork with the fans themselves, each case study is an effort to understand both the personal pleasures and political economies of fandoms. The contributors explore the many ways that fans in and of Japanese mass culture actively search for intimacy and identity amid the powerful corporate structures that produce the leisure and entertainment of today's Japan. Shop 'til You Drop: Consumer Behavior and American Culture:  (December 28, 2004) Arthur Asa Berger The number of malls in America has nearly doubled in the last 17 years, as has the amount of credit card debt. In this slim volume, Berger ponders this correlation and attempts to explain in great detail why the citizens of the most prosperous nation on Earth derive such joy from the mere act of consumption. Berger quotes French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who explains that "in the consumption of surplus... the individual-and society feel not merely that they exist, but that they are alive." Alternately dry and glib (his crudely drawn stickman cartoons with their thoughtful captions dot various chapters in the book), Berger explores the origins of "consumer culture" in an academic fashion and relies upon the work of social anthropologists to help unravel the mystery and motivation behind the urge to splurge. Whereas God once determined our actions, as stated by 18th-century Puritan writer Jonathan Edwards, it seems that ad agencies have now taken the place of the divine. While an analysis of shopping malls and their need to adapt to changing buying behaviors shows the resilience and creativity borne from capitalism, and the discussion of semiotics and cultural myths in advertising reveals how predictable the results of marketing manipulation can be on the buyer, the prevailing theme seems to be the effect of postmodernism on the American pursuit of happiness. The need to consume, Berger offers, once again citing Baudrillard, stems from the fear of missing something and an entitlement mindset that says one has the right to try everything. Though some of Berger's observations may interest the general reader, this dense analysis is largely for those who are serious about the study of consumerism. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. Are Americans obsessed with shopping? Shop 'til You Drop is a lively look at our consumer culture and its role in our everyday lives and society. Arthur Asa Berger considers the sacred roots of consumer culture, the demographics of consumption, theories about competing cultures, and the semiotics of shopping. Accessibly written and entertaining, this book is ideal for courses in cultural studies, advertising, and American studies, as well as for anyone curious about our nation's drive to consume. Hub Culture : The Next Wave of Urban Consumers (Hardcover) Stan Stalnaker Original and intriguing perspective on a significant and increasingly important marketing target group. * A hip, contemporary issue that people will want to be aware of. * Interesting comparison of various fashionable cities and places in the hub culture "league." Provides an interesting comparison of various fashionable cities and places in the hub culture league. An original and intriguing perspective on a significant and increasingly important marketing target group.

Consumer Culture Abstracts:

Perspectives on Consumer Culture 
Mike Featherstone 
Three accounts of consumer culture are discussed in this paper. The first one, the production of consumption perspective, presents the culture which develops around the accumulation of commodities as leading to greater manipulation and control. The second, the mode of consumption perspective, focuses upon the way in which goods are variably used to create distinctions and reinforce social relationships. The third perspective examines the emotional and aesthetic pleasures, the desires and dreams generated within particular sites of consumption and by consumer culture imagery. In addition the paper discusses the alleged tendencies towards cultural disorder and de-classification within consumer culture which some refer to as postmodernism. - soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/1/5

Chicano Lite
Mexican-American consumer culture on the border 
Howard Campbell, University of Texas at El Paso, hcampbel@utep.edu 
This article is an ethnography of working-class, Mexican-American consumer patterns on the US-Mexico border. Through a study of locally-owned grocery stores, family parties and fast-food restaurants in El Paso, Texas, I examine the double-edged nature of border consumerism. Minority consumers, such as Mexican-Americans, often modify mainstream consumer products and processes to suit their own needs and values. The resultant consumer styles embody a considerable degree of creativity, contradiction and hybridity, especially for immigrant minorities. I show how, despite their subordinated class and status positions in US society, Mexican-Americans create spaces of resistant cultural meaning within consumer spheres normally treated as generically (Anglo-) American. I conclude that US consumer culture is both a source of self-fulfilment and a means through which Mexican-Americans become further enmeshed in a system of vastly unequal political and economic power. - joc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/207

The Rise of Consumer Culture in a Chinese Society: A Reading of Banking Television Commercials in Hong Kong During the 1970s
Wendy Siuyi Wong, Department of Communication Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
In this article, I analyze 2 case studies of television advertising campaigns for banking services during the 1970s and early 1980s in Hong Kong, those of Hang Seng Bank and HongkongBank. Advertising from this period saw consumer society emerge as traditional values and themes were adjusted to fit the imperatives of capitalism. The earlier Hang Seng Bank campaign focused on the traditional banking practice of saving, encouraging customers to work hard and gradually accumulate wealth. The later HongkongBank campaign encouraged spending, immediate gratification of material desires, and symbolic status achieved through acquisition of goods. As the case studies show, this process entailed the reconfiguration of traditional Chinese values to accommodate the arrival of consumerism in Hong Kong, a Chinese society. - leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327825MCS0304_04

From Counterculture to Consumer Culture: Vespa and the Italian youth market, 1958-78 
Adam Arvidsson, University of East Anglia 
This article contributes to an analysis of the origins of contemporary post-modern consumer culture, centred on the notion of lifestyle choice. It presents a case study of Piaggio's marketing strategies for their motor scooters - the Vespa being the most famous one - during the 1960s and 1970s. Although the Vespa had become an icon of the international youth culture already at the beginning of this period, it is argued that Piaggio's advertising agency did not appropriate the counterculture on account of its quantitative importance. Rather, countercultural attachments were mobilized and made part of Piaggio's advertising discourse first when they harmonized with visions for a future 'postmaterialistic' consumer society harboured by advertising professionals. They subsequently used new techniques of market research, like motivation research, to translate such countercultural attachments into a consumer culture centred on individual self-realization rather than collective rebellion. In the 1970s, it is argued, this new consumer culture was transformed into what is now known as 'life-style consumerism'. - joc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/47

Consumer Culture and the Culture of poverty: Implications for Marketingtheory and Practice 
Ronald Paul Hill, University of Portlandhill@up.edu; ronaldpaulhill@msn.com 
This paper explores the influence of the larger material culture on consumers living within the culture of poverty so that the scholarly community mightbetter understand the actual as well as potential role marketing plays in the lives of the poor. The data are a series of short stories based explicitly on six distinct subpopulations of impoverished people, and these stories are used as ethnographic data for the purposes of analysis. An interpretation emerges that emphasizes five inter-related thematic categories: meager possessions, consumer restrictions, role of the media, consumer reactions, and survival strategies. The paper closes with a summary of findings and specific implications for the marketing community with regard to theory and practice. - mtq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/273

Marketing Sadism: Super-Cannes and Consumer Culture 
James Fitchett, Exeter University, UKj.a.fitchett@exeter.ac.uk 
This article examines the possibilities and futures of consumer society and the progression of a post-moral marketing paradigm through a critical review of J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes. - mtq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/309

What is new in the ‘south’? Consumer culture and the vicissitudes of poor youth’s identity construction in urban Brazil 
Lucia Rabello De Castro, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 
This study analyses the specificities of youth identity construction in Brazil in the context of global transformations and the particularities of the Brazilian model of development. Poor urban Brazilian youngsters’ demands to consume, as a ‘mode of inclusion’ in society, achieve short-term gains that narrow down prospective visions of the self. A ‘logic of survival’ hypothesis is proposed to account for the process of identity construction whereby encapsulated and rigid, rather than hybridized and creative, identities are constituted. The hypothesis is illustrated with a discussion of the cases of the drug dealer, the religious fanatic and the labourer. New cultural forms of consumer culture also convey claims for recognition and justice, shown by the musical expressions coming from the peripheries of big cities. It remains to be seen whether musical and artistic expressions, as possible factors that can enhance self-respect and group solidarity among poor youth, will not be consumed just as a new item of the culture industry. - you.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/3/179

Shopping Malls, Consumer Culture and the Reshaping of Public Space in Egypt 
Mona Abaza 
Egypt witnessed in the last decade, as in many Southeast Asian mega-cities, the reshaping of public space through the creation of new shopping malls and recreation places. This went hand in hand with the `gentrification' of certain areas of the city of Cairo, which is continuing at the expense of pushing away the poor. The 1980s and 1990s also witnessed increasing prosperity among certain classes and the appropriation of new consumer lifestyles. This article attempts to look at the variations of shopping malls in Cairo and the new phenomenon of hybridization of tastes. One can observe the creation of `chic' shopping malls functioning parallel to popular and working-class malls which are frequented by different classes, depending on the various districts of Cairo. These newly created public spaces are gendered. The malls provide new outlets for deprived youth to experience mingling and flirting, in other words, these spaces offer new forms of `mixity' between sexes. A glimpse at the `grands magasins' is brought up in relation to the history of consumerism in Egypt. This article also analyses the government's official discourse which alienates those living in unplanned and scattered construction as `violent' and unruly and relates it to the new remaking of the town of Cairo. - tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/5/97

Consumer Culture, Islam and the Politics of Lifestyle: Fashion for Veiling in Contemporary Turkey 
Baris Kilicbay, Gazi University, Turkey 
Muta Binark, Gazi University, Turkey 
This article traces the growth of the 'fashion for veiling' which has grown in Turkey since the early 1990s, and discusses the representation of Muslim women in both the cultural and public spheres in the late 1980s. The practice of veiling has been chosen to explore how religious iconography is changing to reflect new patterns of consumption and pleasure, and the ways in which these changes are occurring. The authors focus on the shifting meanings of the practice of veiling due to the articulation of Islamic faith into consumption culture, as evidenced in advertising images and commentaries taken from Islamic women's magazines, and fashion catalogues of major Islamic clothing companies. The authors examine the problematic relationship of the fashion for veiling to two other established meanings of veiling: as a sign of adherence to the Islamic principle of covering the female body to conceal it from the male gaze, and as a sign of 'political Islam'. - ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/4/495

Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Policing and Security 
Ian Loader 
This paper sets out to make sociological sense of some contemporary trends in the consumption of policing services and security products. I argue that the commodification of policing and security can fruitfully be theorised and investigated in terms of the spread of consumer culture, a contention that I demonstrate in three (related) ways. I begin by examining how a culture of consumption is pervading the practices and rhetoric of the public police and outlining the impact of `consumerism' on lay sensibilities towards policing. I then set out some prevailing trends in the consumption of protective services and hardware and consider the effects of a burgeoning `security market' on the construction of authority, subjectivity and social relations. Finally, I detail a number of possible points of resistance to the spread of commercially-delivered policing and security and argue that these provide both some potential cultural limits to the extension of a `consumer attitude' in this field, and a space within which to think about, and develop, modes of policing shaped by citizens acting in a democratic polity rather than consumers operating in the market. - soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/373

The punitive consequences of consumer culture 
Barry Vaughan, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, Ireland 
This article takes as its starting point a public punitiveness that is novel in its lack of sympathy for and stridency against offenders. It is suggested that this punitiveness can be partly explained by the ascent of consumerism as an axial principle of life today. The ideas of René Girard are used to elaborate upon this suggestion. Girard argues that disputes emerge within cultures when there are no public prohibitions on consumption. Desires converge on the same objects, producing conflicts that can only be resolved by a scapegoating mechanism. Although markets have always threatened to deregulate desires, there have usually been countervailing movements. The novelty of the consumer society is that while few goods are prescribed by custom, they no longer possess stable values. This exacerbates the anxiety predicted by Girard and scapegoating becomes more intensive in an effort to ground the value of objects of desire. - pun.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/195?ck=nck

"You're a Guaranteed Winner": Composing "You" in a Consumer Culture 
Helen Rothschild Ewald, Iowa State University 
Roberta Vann, Iowa State University, 
This article explores the functional elegance of direct mail as it con structs its target audience. More specifically, it examines direct mail ings included in a nationally publicized court case involving Publish ers' Clearing House and articulates how the use of particular genre-based, rhetorical and linguistic strategies in these mailings con struct reader identity. It argues that the documents use you-attitude to construct the identity of the reader as winner, implied reader devices to reinforce the reader's identity as winner and to establish the reader's identity as the writer's friend, and linguistic politeness strate gies to build feelings of solidarity of the reader toward the writer. It concludes with the observation that the direct mail in our study, rather than being "junk," is really a skillfully written set of documents, suc cessfully interweaving various discourse strategies and raising both ethical and professional issues in the process. - job.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/2/98

Globalized consumer culture: Its implications for social justice and practice teaching in social work 
Besthorn, Fred H.
The Journal of Practice Teaching in Health and Social Work, Volume 5, Number 3, 2004, pp. 20-39(20)
Abstract: Globalised consumer culture and its corresponding ethos that accumulation of material possessions equates to happiness are having a profound impact on the physical, social and emotional health of human beings. For social work practitioners and field educators the issue is how we balance the charge to serve our clients without unwittingly forcing them into a system that is designed by its very nature to increase their dissatisfaction and alienation. This essay discusses these concerns and offers some initial suggestions for how social work may respond. - ingentaconnect.com

POSTMODERN CONSUMER CULTURE WITHOUT POSTMODERNITY: COPYING THE CRISIS OF SIGNIFICATION 
Kang M.K.
Cultural Studies , Volume 13, Number 1, 1 January 1999, pp. 18-33(16)
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to interpret the meaning of the postmodern discourse produced by Korean television advertisements, by categorizing postmodern television advertisements and describing their representations andimages of reality indetail. Considering the production process of Korean postmodern advertisements, the study raised a question: How can we interpret the phenomena of imitating and assimilating the style of advertisements from the reservoir of postmodern signifiers, while not taking into account the values, ideas and ways of thinking implicit in such advertisements? There are two ways of interpretation. First, it would be an effect of structural dependence, in which postmodern consumer cultural forms are replicated and replace local products with mass-produced goods. The narratives of postmodern advertisements serve as the catalyst to introduce these advertisements and to teach the grammar of international advertising. Second, the assimilation of postmodern advertisements in Korean television means a newly emergent hybrid culture. Because the target of postmodern advertisements is the young consumer, the producers adopt postmodern tastes and styles, inserting and translating their roots into local forms. The study concluded that it may be more appropriate not to choose one of these interpretations as a single correct theory; it is better to look at the articulation of different forces and processes within a field of interconnections among mediascape, financescape and technoscape. - ingentaconnect.com

Culture, Consumption, and Adult Education: Refashioning Consumer Education for Adults as a Political Site Using a Cultural Studies Framework 
Jennifer A. Sandlin, Texas A&M University, jsandlin@coe.tamu.edu 
The field of adult education exists within a context of consumer capitalism, although adult educators have failed to acknowledge how central consumption is to today’s society. Traditional consumer education has typically focused on technical skills, and thus positions itself outside the social, political, and cultural realms. In this article, the author retheorizes consumer education into a more critical enterprise using the framework of cultural studies. She argues that consumer education is a political site that creates consumers with a range of reactions to consumer culture. From this perspective, consumer education for adults is reconceived to include a variety of informal sites of learning including those focusing on curbing consumption, fighting consumer capitalism, and "jamming" corporate-sponsored consumer culture. - aeq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/55/3/165

Theories of Overindebtedness: Interaction of Structure and Culture 
JEAN BRAUCHER, University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law 
Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 06-04 
Theoretical Inquiries in the Law, 2006 
Abstract: Consumer bankruptcy scholars typically stress either a structural or a cultural account of individuals' problems with debt. Drawing on the history of poverty research, this article argues that research on consumer overindebtedness and bankruptcy should avoid the pitfall of seeing structural and cultural factors as opposing explanations. Deregulation of the credit industry and an incomplete social safety net are key structural conditions that lead to a culture hospitable to overindebtedness. Furthermore, the interaction of structure and culture has practical policy implications. Structural changes such as interest-rate deregulation inevitably transform both business and consumer culture. Policies designed to create a different consumer culture will have a hard time when pitted against strong structural causes of overindebtedness. At a minimum, efforts to create a culture of personal financial responsibility need a strong structural base, such as public education starting at a young age, and could easily require a generation or more to take hold. - papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=826006

The Anxieties of Affluence Consumer Culture Urban Experience Fanning the Flames Ads Fads and Consumer Culture Hub Culture Shop until You Drop The Image Factory Voluntary Simplicity Culture Jam Freaks Geeks and Cool Kids