Carl Ratner
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195373547
- eISBN:
- 9780199918294
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195373547.003.0055
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Concrete, political features of contemporary culture are articulated. A key example is the formation of the community college system in the United States. The political economic character and ...
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Concrete, political features of contemporary culture are articulated. A key example is the formation of the community college system in the United States. The political economic character and function of this system is related to the educational psychology of students. Concrete culture today is capitalist. Features of capitalist culture are explored. Its class structure is emphasized. The importance of this for psychology is explored. A concrete feature of contemporary capitalism is consumerism. Consumerism is presented as a concrete cultural factor whose effects on psychological phenomena are explored. Consumer psychology is presented as concrete cultural psychology that recapitulates consumer capitalism. Consumer psychology is shown to include a set of perceptions, sensitivities, sensations, reasoning, memory, self, and sexuality which all bear concrete features of consumer culture.Less
Concrete, political features of contemporary culture are articulated. A key example is the formation of the community college system in the United States. The political economic character and function of this system is related to the educational psychology of students. Concrete culture today is capitalist. Features of capitalist culture are explored. Its class structure is emphasized. The importance of this for psychology is explored. A concrete feature of contemporary capitalism is consumerism. Consumerism is presented as a concrete cultural factor whose effects on psychological phenomena are explored. Consumer psychology is presented as concrete cultural psychology that recapitulates consumer capitalism. Consumer psychology is shown to include a set of perceptions, sensitivities, sensations, reasoning, memory, self, and sexuality which all bear concrete features of consumer culture.
Kieran Laird
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623860
- eISBN:
- 9780748652808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623860.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter goes on to complicate the idea of thought further, as well as introducing the social element of thinking through discussion of affect and emotional regimes. It also examines the ...
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This chapter goes on to complicate the idea of thought further, as well as introducing the social element of thinking through discussion of affect and emotional regimes. It also examines the emotional regime instigated by consumer capitalism though the lens of Zygmunt Bauman's concept of unsicherheit.Less
This chapter goes on to complicate the idea of thought further, as well as introducing the social element of thinking through discussion of affect and emotional regimes. It also examines the emotional regime instigated by consumer capitalism though the lens of Zygmunt Bauman's concept of unsicherheit.
Woody Register
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167320
- eISBN:
- 9780199849710
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167320.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Fred Thompson's determination to encourage visions of surplus and luxury placed him at the center of the development of early-20th-century consumer capitalism. Between 1890 and 1930, Americans laid ...
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Fred Thompson's determination to encourage visions of surplus and luxury placed him at the center of the development of early-20th-century consumer capitalism. Between 1890 and 1930, Americans laid the institutional foundation of its economy—department stores, advertising agencies, grand hotels and lavish saloons, restaurants, dance halls, and the great “world's fairs”—which showcased the marvelous array of consumer goods and technologies produced by the new industrial order. The architects of the urban marketplace enlisted these institutions and the social roles and practices associated with them not just to sell goods in new or more-effective ways, but to make consumer goods the very marrow of American life.Less
Fred Thompson's determination to encourage visions of surplus and luxury placed him at the center of the development of early-20th-century consumer capitalism. Between 1890 and 1930, Americans laid the institutional foundation of its economy—department stores, advertising agencies, grand hotels and lavish saloons, restaurants, dance halls, and the great “world's fairs”—which showcased the marvelous array of consumer goods and technologies produced by the new industrial order. The architects of the urban marketplace enlisted these institutions and the social roles and practices associated with them not just to sell goods in new or more-effective ways, but to make consumer goods the very marrow of American life.
Lisa Tiersten
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520225299
- eISBN:
- 9780520925656
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520225299.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the conflict between commercial Paris and the civic vision of the French Republic. It discusses the development of new forms of consumer capitalism and the emergence of ...
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This chapter examines the conflict between commercial Paris and the civic vision of the French Republic. It discusses the development of new forms of consumer capitalism and the emergence of bourgeois women as the primary consumers in the late nineteenth century. It describes the perception of the modern marketplace and traces the processes the led to the creation of a female commercial culture and the impulse shopper. It explains that as the ethos of the market collided with that of the civic public in late-nineteenth-century France, bourgeois elites found themselves forced to grapple with the question of how to map the boundaries between the market, the political public and the domestic sphere.Less
This chapter examines the conflict between commercial Paris and the civic vision of the French Republic. It discusses the development of new forms of consumer capitalism and the emergence of bourgeois women as the primary consumers in the late nineteenth century. It describes the perception of the modern marketplace and traces the processes the led to the creation of a female commercial culture and the impulse shopper. It explains that as the ethos of the market collided with that of the civic public in late-nineteenth-century France, bourgeois elites found themselves forced to grapple with the question of how to map the boundaries between the market, the political public and the domestic sphere.
Christian Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, and Patricia Snell Herzog
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199828029
- eISBN:
- 9780199919475
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828029.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career ...
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Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. This book draws on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages between eighteen and twenty-three) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. The book identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture—a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, the book argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, the book suggests the need for what it calls “realistic concern”—and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices—that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.Less
Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. This book draws on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages between eighteen and twenty-three) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. The book identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture—a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, the book argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, the book suggests the need for what it calls “realistic concern”—and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices—that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.
Nancy Tomes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469622774
- eISBN:
- 9781469622798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469622774.003.0002
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
This chapter examines the end of “free trade” in doctoring in the late 1800s and the rise of modern consumer capitalism in the nineteenth century that transformed patients into consumers. It first ...
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This chapter examines the end of “free trade” in doctoring in the late 1800s and the rise of modern consumer capitalism in the nineteenth century that transformed patients into consumers. It first provides a background on how the free trade in doctoring operated and how it began to be curtailed in the late 1800s. It then looks at the 1906 passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act that allowed the federal government to get involved in consumer protection. It also explores institutional reforms implemented gradually after the American Civil War that laid the foundation for a much more confident medical professionalism; the emergence of the so-called “pioneers of novelties” that manufacture proprietary drugs; and how medicine figured in the postwar consumption economy. Finally, it reflects on how developments such as the new health dangers posed by prosperity and the increasingly rich variety of information and advertising surrounding every aspect of health fueled the growing expectation that ordinary Americans become more skilled at making medical choices.Less
This chapter examines the end of “free trade” in doctoring in the late 1800s and the rise of modern consumer capitalism in the nineteenth century that transformed patients into consumers. It first provides a background on how the free trade in doctoring operated and how it began to be curtailed in the late 1800s. It then looks at the 1906 passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act that allowed the federal government to get involved in consumer protection. It also explores institutional reforms implemented gradually after the American Civil War that laid the foundation for a much more confident medical professionalism; the emergence of the so-called “pioneers of novelties” that manufacture proprietary drugs; and how medicine figured in the postwar consumption economy. Finally, it reflects on how developments such as the new health dangers posed by prosperity and the increasingly rich variety of information and advertising surrounding every aspect of health fueled the growing expectation that ordinary Americans become more skilled at making medical choices.
Nancy Tomes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469622774
- eISBN:
- 9781469622798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469622774.003.0006
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
This chapter examines how medical care became the “fourth necessity” of modern life—after food, clothing, and housing—during the postwar period. There were disagreements on what shape America's ...
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This chapter examines how medical care became the “fourth necessity” of modern life—after food, clothing, and housing—during the postwar period. There were disagreements on what shape America's medical order would take after World War II. Some advocated for an American equivalent to Britain's National Health Service, whereas others agreed that a more “free enterprise” system would better suit the nation. In the late 1940s, the business-backed model of free enterprise prevailed, giving rise to a medical economy that moved in the opposite direction from what consumerists had hoped for. In the short run, these free enterprise modifications to the medical economy paved the way for the remarkable expansion of the health care system. This chapter considers how American medicine came into even closer alignment with the dynamics of postwar consumer capitalism, which brought a dramatic increase in the number of medical products and services available to patients but also led to more consumer dissatisfaction.Less
This chapter examines how medical care became the “fourth necessity” of modern life—after food, clothing, and housing—during the postwar period. There were disagreements on what shape America's medical order would take after World War II. Some advocated for an American equivalent to Britain's National Health Service, whereas others agreed that a more “free enterprise” system would better suit the nation. In the late 1940s, the business-backed model of free enterprise prevailed, giving rise to a medical economy that moved in the opposite direction from what consumerists had hoped for. In the short run, these free enterprise modifications to the medical economy paved the way for the remarkable expansion of the health care system. This chapter considers how American medicine came into even closer alignment with the dynamics of postwar consumer capitalism, which brought a dramatic increase in the number of medical products and services available to patients but also led to more consumer dissatisfaction.
Diana Tietjens Meyers
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195140415
- eISBN:
- 9780199871476
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195140419.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Although Narcissus was a man, narcissism is commonly considered a feminine vice. Over the centuries, several symbolic systems mediate this transfer: the myth of Narcissus evolves to reassign ...
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Although Narcissus was a man, narcissism is commonly considered a feminine vice. Over the centuries, several symbolic systems mediate this transfer: the myth of Narcissus evolves to reassign narcissism to women; the image of a woman gazing into her mirror becomes a staple motif of western art; and psychoanalytic theory solidifies the bond between women and narcissism and extends it to gay men. Meanwhile, to satisfy its appetite for expanding markets, consumer capitalism manufactures unattainable, ever‐changing beauty ideals that keep women hooked on self‐beautification products and services. This symbolic and economic legacy encodes a no‐win “feminine” psycho‐corporeal dynamic of eroticized estrangement from self – a subjectivity of self‐doubt, perplexity, and frustration, which I term the psychic‐psyché economy. In contrast, a number of contemporary feminist artists ironically appropriate and critically repudiate conventional woman‐with‐mirror imagery, and five of their self‐visionary projects are explored.Less
Although Narcissus was a man, narcissism is commonly considered a feminine vice. Over the centuries, several symbolic systems mediate this transfer: the myth of Narcissus evolves to reassign narcissism to women; the image of a woman gazing into her mirror becomes a staple motif of western art; and psychoanalytic theory solidifies the bond between women and narcissism and extends it to gay men. Meanwhile, to satisfy its appetite for expanding markets, consumer capitalism manufactures unattainable, ever‐changing beauty ideals that keep women hooked on self‐beautification products and services. This symbolic and economic legacy encodes a no‐win “feminine” psycho‐corporeal dynamic of eroticized estrangement from self – a subjectivity of self‐doubt, perplexity, and frustration, which I term the psychic‐psyché economy. In contrast, a number of contemporary feminist artists ironically appropriate and critically repudiate conventional woman‐with‐mirror imagery, and five of their self‐visionary projects are explored.
Dick Hobbs, Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister, and Simon Winlow
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199288007
- eISBN:
- 9780191700484
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199288007.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
The chapter examines how the economy has changed during the years when night time industries emerged. The modern times is characterised by the further convergence of cultural and economic spheres. ...
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The chapter examines how the economy has changed during the years when night time industries emerged. The modern times is characterised by the further convergence of cultural and economic spheres. Consumer capitalism is the driving factor behind experiential consumption. Another concept employed in the chapter is the concept of leisure. Its attainment has become so valuable among the youth that it has become how they identify themselves. It also discusses the aspects that define the night time industry and examines how night life has become partnered with commercial interests in order to form lawlessness and disorder in the cities.Less
The chapter examines how the economy has changed during the years when night time industries emerged. The modern times is characterised by the further convergence of cultural and economic spheres. Consumer capitalism is the driving factor behind experiential consumption. Another concept employed in the chapter is the concept of leisure. Its attainment has become so valuable among the youth that it has become how they identify themselves. It also discusses the aspects that define the night time industry and examines how night life has become partnered with commercial interests in order to form lawlessness and disorder in the cities.
Timothy Gloege
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621012
- eISBN:
- 9781469623191
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621012.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
American evangelicalism has long walked hand in hand with modern consumer capitalism. This book shows us why, through an engaging story about God and big business at the Moody Bible Institute. ...
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American evangelicalism has long walked hand in hand with modern consumer capitalism. This book shows us why, through an engaging story about God and big business at the Moody Bible Institute. Founded in Chicago by shoe-salesman-turned-revivalist Dwight Lyman Moody in 1889, the institute became a center of fundamentalism under the guidance of the innovative promoter and president of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell. This book explores the framework for understanding humanity shared by these business and evangelical leaders, whose perspectives clearly differed from those underlying modern scientific theories. At the core of their “corporate evangelical” framework was a modern individualism understood primarily in terms of economic relations.Less
American evangelicalism has long walked hand in hand with modern consumer capitalism. This book shows us why, through an engaging story about God and big business at the Moody Bible Institute. Founded in Chicago by shoe-salesman-turned-revivalist Dwight Lyman Moody in 1889, the institute became a center of fundamentalism under the guidance of the innovative promoter and president of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell. This book explores the framework for understanding humanity shared by these business and evangelical leaders, whose perspectives clearly differed from those underlying modern scientific theories. At the core of their “corporate evangelical” framework was a modern individualism understood primarily in terms of economic relations.
Gina Marchetti
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098015
- eISBN:
- 9789882206601
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098015.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
All the indicators of modern “progress” in Infernal Affairs point in a downward direction. Liberation from colonialism, the promise of modern technology, and the potential pleasures of global ...
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All the indicators of modern “progress” in Infernal Affairs point in a downward direction. Liberation from colonialism, the promise of modern technology, and the potential pleasures of global consumer capitalism fall from the heights as well. Postmodern texts tend to favor allegory. Infernal Affairs also slips among allegorical associations with religion, morality, nation, as well as with a more general condition of postmodern life. It envisions the movement of the global economy from processed raw materials driving imperialism (e.g. opium) to manufactured goods (e.g. electronics like stereos) at the base of postwar neocolonialism to the postmodern “information society” in which communication becomes commodified, and the economy moves from a base in production (of material things) to one based on reproduction (replication of images and information). In many ways, it provides a portrait of the new economy through its depiction of new technologies in action in the marketplace of information.Less
All the indicators of modern “progress” in Infernal Affairs point in a downward direction. Liberation from colonialism, the promise of modern technology, and the potential pleasures of global consumer capitalism fall from the heights as well. Postmodern texts tend to favor allegory. Infernal Affairs also slips among allegorical associations with religion, morality, nation, as well as with a more general condition of postmodern life. It envisions the movement of the global economy from processed raw materials driving imperialism (e.g. opium) to manufactured goods (e.g. electronics like stereos) at the base of postwar neocolonialism to the postmodern “information society” in which communication becomes commodified, and the economy moves from a base in production (of material things) to one based on reproduction (replication of images and information). In many ways, it provides a portrait of the new economy through its depiction of new technologies in action in the marketplace of information.
Erin A. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621326
- eISBN:
- 9781469621340
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621326.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter examines some of the best-selling mainstream religion/spirituality titles of the 1990s in light of increasing numbers of self-reported “spiritual seekers”—individuals with fluid, dynamic ...
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This chapter examines some of the best-selling mainstream religion/spirituality titles of the 1990s in light of increasing numbers of self-reported “spiritual seekers”—individuals with fluid, dynamic religious styles who move freely in and out of congregations across the life course, cobbling together a set of spiritual practices by combining elements of various traditions. In particular, it looks at Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul (1992), Karen Armstrong's A History of God (1993), Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk (1996), and Jack Miles's God: A Biography (1996), along with reviews by their readers on Amazon. These religious books have served as resources for spiritual seekers crafting their own religious identity narratives by modeling the formation of alternative spiritual faiths outside formal religious institutions, responding to the ills of consumer culture and consumer capitalism, and celebrating literary or poetic ways of being in the world.Less
This chapter examines some of the best-selling mainstream religion/spirituality titles of the 1990s in light of increasing numbers of self-reported “spiritual seekers”—individuals with fluid, dynamic religious styles who move freely in and out of congregations across the life course, cobbling together a set of spiritual practices by combining elements of various traditions. In particular, it looks at Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul (1992), Karen Armstrong's A History of God (1993), Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk (1996), and Jack Miles's God: A Biography (1996), along with reviews by their readers on Amazon. These religious books have served as resources for spiritual seekers crafting their own religious identity narratives by modeling the formation of alternative spiritual faiths outside formal religious institutions, responding to the ills of consumer culture and consumer capitalism, and celebrating literary or poetic ways of being in the world.
Timothy E. W. Gloege
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190280192
- eISBN:
- 9780190280222
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190280192.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This essay traces the development of fundamentalism in the context of wider changes in evangelical Protestantism and business in the United States. The need for social stability in antebellum America ...
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This essay traces the development of fundamentalism in the context of wider changes in evangelical Protestantism and business in the United States. The need for social stability in antebellum America and the role of Protestant religion in maintaining it tamped down the intrinsic individualism of both evangelicalism and business. But a series of social and business transformations after the Civil War, and the growing influence of the state in social and economic life, provided the impetus and opportunity for a fundamentalist movement to emerge in the 1910s. The firm establishment and naturalizing of modern consumer capitalism after World War II allowed a business-infused fundamentalism (known now as “neo-evangelicalism”) to thrive. Throughout its development, fundamentalism borrowed from business ideology and techniques for religious ends.Less
This essay traces the development of fundamentalism in the context of wider changes in evangelical Protestantism and business in the United States. The need for social stability in antebellum America and the role of Protestant religion in maintaining it tamped down the intrinsic individualism of both evangelicalism and business. But a series of social and business transformations after the Civil War, and the growing influence of the state in social and economic life, provided the impetus and opportunity for a fundamentalist movement to emerge in the 1910s. The firm establishment and naturalizing of modern consumer capitalism after World War II allowed a business-infused fundamentalism (known now as “neo-evangelicalism”) to thrive. Throughout its development, fundamentalism borrowed from business ideology and techniques for religious ends.
Denise Gigante
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300106527
- eISBN:
- 9780300133059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300106527.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter argues that Byron's legacy is the oxymoronic paradox of the tasteful cannibal, whose taboo desires resist incorporation into the symbolic economy of consumer capitalism. In particular, ...
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This chapter argues that Byron's legacy is the oxymoronic paradox of the tasteful cannibal, whose taboo desires resist incorporation into the symbolic economy of consumer capitalism. In particular, it reads the cannibalism episode in canto 2 of Don Juan as a critical moment in the literary history of taste, one that launches a critique of the cultural ideology of taste with its nationalist claims to distinction. While famous for its outrageous depiction of cannibalism, Don Juan rewrites cannibalism as vampirism, a paradoxically tasteful mode of consuming the other. So long as the enemy to aesthetic community was simply precivil appetite, it was possible to locate bad taste out there, in the barbaric hinterland or dark abyss beyond the pale of tasteful society. However, once appetite has been successfully repressed and made a driving force of society, to be aesthetic was to be extraordinary, or defined in ways other than commodity consumption.Less
This chapter argues that Byron's legacy is the oxymoronic paradox of the tasteful cannibal, whose taboo desires resist incorporation into the symbolic economy of consumer capitalism. In particular, it reads the cannibalism episode in canto 2 of Don Juan as a critical moment in the literary history of taste, one that launches a critique of the cultural ideology of taste with its nationalist claims to distinction. While famous for its outrageous depiction of cannibalism, Don Juan rewrites cannibalism as vampirism, a paradoxically tasteful mode of consuming the other. So long as the enemy to aesthetic community was simply precivil appetite, it was possible to locate bad taste out there, in the barbaric hinterland or dark abyss beyond the pale of tasteful society. However, once appetite has been successfully repressed and made a driving force of society, to be aesthetic was to be extraordinary, or defined in ways other than commodity consumption.
Timothy E. W. Gloege
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621012
- eISBN:
- 9781469623191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621012.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This introductory chapter charts a brief history of how American Protestantism had developed in conjunction with modern consumer capitalism. There are many points of entry to this corporate ...
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This introductory chapter charts a brief history of how American Protestantism had developed in conjunction with modern consumer capitalism. There are many points of entry to this corporate evangelical network, but the story that follows focuses on one of its key institutions, the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) in Chicago. The MBI was founded by the salesman-turned-revivalist Dwight L. Moody, the most important evangelical of the late nineteenth century. He ingeniously weaved disparate ideas drawn from business and religion into a compelling, if unstable, form of evangelical Protestantism. After Moody's death in 1899, a second generation of evangelicals led by Henry Parsons Crowell transformed MBI in significant ways. They shifted focus from converting the working classes to influencing middle-class Protestantism and swapped their overarching metaphor of industrial work with modern consumption.Less
This introductory chapter charts a brief history of how American Protestantism had developed in conjunction with modern consumer capitalism. There are many points of entry to this corporate evangelical network, but the story that follows focuses on one of its key institutions, the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) in Chicago. The MBI was founded by the salesman-turned-revivalist Dwight L. Moody, the most important evangelical of the late nineteenth century. He ingeniously weaved disparate ideas drawn from business and religion into a compelling, if unstable, form of evangelical Protestantism. After Moody's death in 1899, a second generation of evangelicals led by Henry Parsons Crowell transformed MBI in significant ways. They shifted focus from converting the working classes to influencing middle-class Protestantism and swapped their overarching metaphor of industrial work with modern consumption.
Kieran Laird
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623860
- eISBN:
- 9780748652808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623860.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter introduces three interlinked aims. The first is to introduce neuropsychological material that may help to generate interesting political theory at the most base level of the creation of ...
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This chapter introduces three interlinked aims. The first is to introduce neuropsychological material that may help to generate interesting political theory at the most base level of the creation of new thoughts, as well as serving to problematise some existing theory on a psychological basis. The second aim is to show how such psychological material may be used to critique contemporary Western society through an analysis of consumer capitalism. The third is to demonstrate how self-creation in today's society is in some qualitative way different from the selfhood elaborated in response to previous societies. The chapter presents an overview of the ways in which other psychological theories have been used for political ends: behaviourism, Freud's politics of the unconscious self and society, humanism's self-centred politics and postmodernism.Less
This chapter introduces three interlinked aims. The first is to introduce neuropsychological material that may help to generate interesting political theory at the most base level of the creation of new thoughts, as well as serving to problematise some existing theory on a psychological basis. The second aim is to show how such psychological material may be used to critique contemporary Western society through an analysis of consumer capitalism. The third is to demonstrate how self-creation in today's society is in some qualitative way different from the selfhood elaborated in response to previous societies. The chapter presents an overview of the ways in which other psychological theories have been used for political ends: behaviourism, Freud's politics of the unconscious self and society, humanism's self-centred politics and postmodernism.
Timothy E. W. Gloege
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621012
- eISBN:
- 9781469623191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621012.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter charts the key pivot by corporate evangelicals at the Moody Bible Institute (MBI), from religious identities rooted in Christian work to consumer identities branded as “pure religion.” ...
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This chapter charts the key pivot by corporate evangelicals at the Moody Bible Institute (MBI), from religious identities rooted in Christian work to consumer identities branded as “pure religion.” Evangelicals at the MBI had forged a consuming faith from the ideological overlap between modern consumer capitalism and religion—both advertisers and evangelists were tackling the same problem of individual human choice, after all, and both groups welcomed any art or science that gave them an advantage. The ideas that had been lifted from marketing and advertising strategies helped transition evangelicals from Moody's conviction that an authentic faith produced Christian workers to a new ideal embodied by the savvy consumer—a believer who rightly judged and appropriated correct belief and practice from the options in the religious marketplace.Less
This chapter charts the key pivot by corporate evangelicals at the Moody Bible Institute (MBI), from religious identities rooted in Christian work to consumer identities branded as “pure religion.” Evangelicals at the MBI had forged a consuming faith from the ideological overlap between modern consumer capitalism and religion—both advertisers and evangelists were tackling the same problem of individual human choice, after all, and both groups welcomed any art or science that gave them an advantage. The ideas that had been lifted from marketing and advertising strategies helped transition evangelicals from Moody's conviction that an authentic faith produced Christian workers to a new ideal embodied by the savvy consumer—a believer who rightly judged and appropriated correct belief and practice from the options in the religious marketplace.
Joseph R. Slaughter
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228171
- eISBN:
- 9780823241033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228171.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Thematically within Adama and The Kite Runner, and in their public reception, as with the other Bildungsromane that have been examined in this book, the worlds of geopolitics, consumer capitalism, ...
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Thematically within Adama and The Kite Runner, and in their public reception, as with the other Bildungsromane that have been examined in this book, the worlds of geopolitics, consumer capitalism, literary subjectivity, and human rights law, discourse, and practice overlap in a single world. The book is suggesting that the effective limitations of human rights are related not merely to the institutional frailty of the international legal regime but to the historically nationalist limitations of literary imaginations — cognitive limitations that make it possible, in the era of a global “war on terror,” to reduce The Kite Runner to “a story of two childhood friends in Afghanistan” and to read Adama as the expression of a “free voice” from an “empty quarter” rather than to consider the places of the writers and their readers themselves within overlapping world systems.Less
Thematically within Adama and The Kite Runner, and in their public reception, as with the other Bildungsromane that have been examined in this book, the worlds of geopolitics, consumer capitalism, literary subjectivity, and human rights law, discourse, and practice overlap in a single world. The book is suggesting that the effective limitations of human rights are related not merely to the institutional frailty of the international legal regime but to the historically nationalist limitations of literary imaginations — cognitive limitations that make it possible, in the era of a global “war on terror,” to reduce The Kite Runner to “a story of two childhood friends in Afghanistan” and to read Adama as the expression of a “free voice” from an “empty quarter” rather than to consider the places of the writers and their readers themselves within overlapping world systems.
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226016061
- eISBN:
- 9780226016047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226016047.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Within rich societies over the past few decades there has been a marked politicization of sex. This is a product of both consumer capitalism and political movements. Within the scale of roughly a ...
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Within rich societies over the past few decades there has been a marked politicization of sex. This is a product of both consumer capitalism and political movements. Within the scale of roughly a generation the “double standard” has moved from being “taken for granted” to a central concern in relations between women and men, as women have demanded the right to social and economic equality, and along with this equal access to pleasure and protection from harassment. The rapidity of the changes is marked yet again by the marital histories of the British royals. At the same time the open expression of homosexuality has gone from being a radical political gesture to a phenomenon associated with niche marketing to the extent that some theorists speak of a “postgay” world, meaning one in which sexual identities no longer have political significance.Less
Within rich societies over the past few decades there has been a marked politicization of sex. This is a product of both consumer capitalism and political movements. Within the scale of roughly a generation the “double standard” has moved from being “taken for granted” to a central concern in relations between women and men, as women have demanded the right to social and economic equality, and along with this equal access to pleasure and protection from harassment. The rapidity of the changes is marked yet again by the marital histories of the British royals. At the same time the open expression of homosexuality has gone from being a radical political gesture to a phenomenon associated with niche marketing to the extent that some theorists speak of a “postgay” world, meaning one in which sexual identities no longer have political significance.
Aaron Herald Skabelund
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450259
- eISBN:
- 9780801463235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450259.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines the commodification of dog keeping in Japan and other societies since the end of World War II. It considers three principal trends of dog keeping. First, thanks in large part to ...
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This chapter examines the commodification of dog keeping in Japan and other societies since the end of World War II. It considers three principal trends of dog keeping. First, thanks in large part to the powerful influence of postwar American culture, the breeds and dog-keeping practices spread by nineteenth-century canine imperialism proliferated with increasing acceleration during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the middle class, rather than just the upper class, helped spread cultural mores, including dog-keeping practices, in the latter half of the twentieth century. Third, dogs not only became pets, they were more than ever transformed into products, according to the logic of consumer capitalism. This chapter discusses the emergence of a middle-class, family-centered consumerism in which the dog was a desirable member, and how it led to increased commodification of dogs as products that could be bought, sold, and thrown out. It also looks at the triumph and troubles of the colonial dog in contemporary canine cartography.Less
This chapter examines the commodification of dog keeping in Japan and other societies since the end of World War II. It considers three principal trends of dog keeping. First, thanks in large part to the powerful influence of postwar American culture, the breeds and dog-keeping practices spread by nineteenth-century canine imperialism proliferated with increasing acceleration during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the middle class, rather than just the upper class, helped spread cultural mores, including dog-keeping practices, in the latter half of the twentieth century. Third, dogs not only became pets, they were more than ever transformed into products, according to the logic of consumer capitalism. This chapter discusses the emergence of a middle-class, family-centered consumerism in which the dog was a desirable member, and how it led to increased commodification of dogs as products that could be bought, sold, and thrown out. It also looks at the triumph and troubles of the colonial dog in contemporary canine cartography.
