Second edition of a popular and lively introduction to the nature and role of consumption in modern societies. Includes new chapters on branding and the rise of ethical consumption. Reveals the central role consumer culture plays in providing new ways of creating social and political identities.
In this innovative book, Celia Lury argues that the time has come for us to explore the world not only with new methods, but with a new approach to methodology itself. Fundamental changes are taking place in how we produce knowledge, how we communicate it and, indeed, what we consider to be knowledge. These changes demand innovative and creative responses to research questions. Lury's rethinking of the nature of social inquiry starts by reconceptualizing the 'problem space'. Problems are not static or a 'given'; rather, they are created and continually recomposed as part of the methodological process itself. Following the line of thought that methods are practices that articulate as much as capture a social problem, Lury further develops the notion of compositional methodology to think through its implications. With remarkable fluency, the book draws into conversation a range of hot-button issues, both longstanding and novel, from observation, reflexivity, recursive measurement and feminist methodologies, to participation, context, datafication and platformization. Always with an eye to the methodological potential of new trends, the book provides a strong challenge to much received wisdom and argues that a combination of techniques can contribute to better understanding of the problem spaces we all inhabit.
This is a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of `society' and presents a sociology that takes as its main unit of analysis flows through time and across space. Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted `postmodern condition' but also a growth in reflexivity. In exploring this new reflexive world, the authors argue that today's economies are increasingly ones of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social sub
This penetrating book raises questions about how power and resistance operate in contemporary society. Scott Lash argues that critique must take place from within information flows, rather than from the safety of `academic detachment' and that information is power. The book identifies a central contradiction of the information society, that is, the more intelligent and rational that the information society becomes, the more irrational may be the consequences. Written by one of the most celebrated commentators on power and culture, the book is a major testament on the prospects of intellectual life in an age dominated by seemingly inexhaustible, global flows of information.
This authoritative and revealing book provides the first sociological examination of postmodernism. Lash examines the differences between modernism and postmodernism, providing a clear explanation of why postmodernism is important.
In the first half of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno wrote about the 'culture industry'. For Adorno, culture too along with the products of factory labour was increasingly becoming a commodity. Now, in what they call the 'global culture industry', Scott Lash and Celia Lury argue that Adorno's worst nightmares have come true.
Focusing on the shift from the United States to China as the driving force of globalization, the book explores the transition from neo-liberal individualism to collectivist relationality. It delves into the dynamic world of Shanghai's architecture, the ambitions of young traders and property developers, and innovative financial practices like intergenerational mortgages and microfinance. Additionally, it examines the pervasive influence of the Communist state, highlighting the sociology of risk in contemporary Chinese society.
This book is a radical plea for the centrality of experience in the social and human sciences. Lash argues that a large part of the output of the social sciences today is still shaped by assumptions stemming from positivism, in contrast to the tradition of interpretative social enquiry pioneered by Max Weber. These assumptions are particularly central to economics, with its emphasis on homo economicus, the utility-maximizing actor, but they have infiltrated the other social sciences too. Lash argues for a social sciences based not in positivism’s utilitarian a priori but instead in the a posteriori of grounded and embedded subjective experience. His wide-ranging account starts from considerations of ancient experience via Aristotle’s technics, continues through a politics of Hannah Arendt’s ‘a posteriori’ public sphere and concludes with the contemporary – with technological experience, on the one hand, and with Chinese post-ontological thought, in which the ‘ten thousand things’ themselves are doing the experiencing, on the other. This original book by a leading social and cultural theorist will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, cultural studies and throughout the social sciences.
Ta książka to fascynująca historia o tym, w jaki sposób przedmioty materialne, takie jak zegarki czy odzież sportowa, stały się wymownymi symbolami kulturowymi i jak produkcja symboli, w postaci rozpoznawalnych globalnie marek, stała się nadrzędnym celem kapitalizmu. Globalny przemysł kulturowy to bogaty zasób źródeł empirycznych i teoretycznych, pokazujących, w jaki sposób przedmioty te – od butów Nike do filmu Toy Story, od globalnej piłki nożnej do sztuki konceptualnej – ulegają metamorfozom i przemieszczają się ponad granicami państw. Globalny przemysł kulturowy ma ambicję stania się dialektyką oświecenia ery globalizacji. To podstawowa lektura dla studentów i wykładowców różnych nauk społecznych. Autorzy rzucają wyzwanie doktrynom liberalizmu i marksizmu gospodarczego, a także teorii kultury. W samym środku produkcji i konsumpcji dostrzegają mechanizmy tworzenia znaczeń. Rynkiem towarów rządzą obecnie totemy, a kultura popularna wytwarza, przesuwa i dynamizuje ikony rynkowych marek. Krążenie wartości ekonomicznej ma dziś postać rozmowy między rzeczami-symbolami. Globalny przemysł kulturowy to świetnie udokumentowana, wyrafinowana intelektualnie, ważna książka. Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University