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This chapter emphasizes that in offering an alternative to interminablist interpretations of the Kantian aesthetic, the present work has striven to develop avenues of understanding opened up through his key concepts and arguments. In particular, great emphasis has been placed on meta-aesthetic factors, which reveal the deep grounding of aesthetic phenomena on structures that are experientially decisive (as the basis of objective knowledge and the unity of self-consciousness). Through this means it has been possible, also, to show that the aesthetic domain has a depth of meaning that invests it with a validity that exceeds the levelling instincts of global consumerism and cultural relativism. It offers the basis of a critical justification of higher cultural phenomena.

Autonomy is important to leading a good life but a common liberal instrumental construal of the way in which it contributes to the leading of a good life is defective. A one‐sided focus on the development of capacities for revision of conceptions of the good should be corrected by attention to the value of developing capacities permitting a rational adherence to a conception of the good. Exposing children to a diverse but shallow secular and consumer culture might not facilitate goodness‐enhancing autonomy in a way that is superior to the more insular strategies of religious minorities whose child‐rearing practices are criticized by liberals.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on patient choice in end of life care. The philosophy of medicine and of end of life care in particular which emerged in the second half of the 20th century stressed the importance of patient choice in the light of information provided by the doctor. Consumerism is taking over health care, and the best interests of patients are being seen as patients getting whatever it is they choose, in terms of treatments, care and place of death. This chapter suggests that an end of life service should have the following characteristics: realism, fairness, humanity, and adoptability.

This chapter focuses on ethics at the market level, arguing that, contrary to popular wisdom, the market is not amoral. In typical contemporary framings, the market is presumed to be both inherently good-as in, the best way to do business and organize society-and yet amoral, in terms of bracketing out or holding at bay ethical judgments. The chapter includes a detailed discussion of the meanings of the market in everyday talk in addition to including accounts of historical and contemporary cases where the presumed “super-agency” of the market led people and societies astray. The chapter also reviews relevant research on happiness, especially as it bears on conceptions of economic productivity and success. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the possibilities for the ethical reform of the market through making visible what we mean when we invoke the term “market.”

Chapter 3 traces the portrayal of divine wedding ceremonies over time. These ceremonies are an important public ritual in which values and gender ideologies are articulated and tradition is constructed; they encapsulate what is understood to constitute love and its relationship to the matrimonial bond. Sita and Rama's wedding is very influential this way; Radha and Krishna's secret wedding (love marriage or Gandharva vivaha) does not really subvert this ideal, in the movies, such rituals lead to an unhappy outcome. Sending a positive message, the televised Ramayan emphatically corrects for the real‐life inequality between the bride's and the groom's parties and advocates understanding by the in‐laws for a young wife's plight. However, it is more conservative than the older sources in making the total submission of the woman to the man's family a prerequisite for her being treated well. In the “wedding wave” movies of the nineties, such submission is rewarded by an abundance of consumer goods. Movies discussed are Aradhana, Dil, Hum aapke hain koun..!, Lajja, and 7 1/2 Phere.

The conclusion first discusses the Indian Women's Movement's engagement with the goddess as role model and calls for a nuanced understanding before activist appropriation. Then, it brings together what insights can be drawn from this study for the construction of traditional South Asian “womanhood,” and how that construction has developed over time. It looks first at the devotional construction and then at the modern one. The latter is influenced by the rise of Hindutva in politics and by a consumerist context, not unlike Soap Serials. As Radha has come to resemble Sita, women who subordinate themselves to patriarchy are shown to be rewarded. Is this oppressive or catering to what women want? A test case is presented, studying recent attitudes toward dowry. Finally, suggestions are made for further investigation that might complicate these conclusions, but on the whole it seems that we can speak of a victory of dharma over love‐ at least for now.

In 1954, several developments combined to check the momentum of anti-Communist extremism. McCarthy's censure by the Senate was both a sign of and force for change. In the next three years, the atmosphere of the McCarthy era would dissipate. Many institutional underpinnings of the Red Scare endured, but the change was nonetheless profound. About a year into Eisenhower's first term, the loyalty-security apparatus began to attract rising criticism. Previously, publicity had nourished Red-hunters like McCarthy; now it operated to highlight the system's harshness and to discredit, if not the premise of anti-communism, at least the methods by which it was enforced. Potent social forces of the 1950s as consumerism and suburbanization may in some ways have helped cool the fever of McCarthyism.

Today's newspapers and magazines regularly feature stories about schools — reports on test scores, changes in the curriculum, proposed laws to raise academic performance — and the latest findings on child rearing, such as the impact of reading stories or playing classical music upon the later success of toddlers. At the same time, children's TV, beyond the toddler years, has been largely shorn of “educational” content and has little to do with growing up to success. These battles between consumerism and education have been with us for generations. Parents are frequently confused about how to balance serious effort with fun in their children's lives, especially when the ubiquitous commercial culture is so successful at the serious business of promoting fun. As a result, the very meaning of innocence has changed: the idea of sheltered innocence, with its insistence on effort, reason, and work, has ceded much influence to wondrous innocence, with its appeal to desire, imagination, and gratification.

The modern notion of the child as “cute” as opposed to merely adorable or even charming crosses a boundary. The meaning of the word “cute” underwent a transformation, from the manipulative and devious adult to the lively charm of the willful child, suggesting a new tolerance for the headstrong, even manipulative, youngster. This suggests that the attractive, bubbling enthusiasm associated with children is no longer seen negatively as manipulative or devilish, but positively as charming and even desirable. The cute became the look of wondrous innocence. Cute children became the New Kids in dolls, illustrated stories, magazines, and advertisements. This chapter examines how parents contributed to the idea of the cute child through their style of child rearing, and how this image promoted consumerism.

Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and birthdays are rituals invented by adults to evoke in their children the wonder of innocence. The images of the cute child were realized in these rituals, very often expressed in gift giving. Holidays and pilgrimages, once expressions of deep communal needs, became the quintessential festivals of wondrous innocence, while vacations and tourist sites increasingly were changed into children's times and places. This transformation coincided both with new attitudes toward the young and with the rise of consumerism. To make sense of these subtle and ambiguous changes, the present chapter reconsiders the traditional meanings of festival rites and why they have survived the revolutionary changes of modern capitalism.

Commercial culture abhors a vacuum and thus never leaves unsatisfied a marketable desire. Because modern adults often see their children's longings as innocent and kids' satisfactions as measures of their own happiness, the family becomes commercialized. This is especially true in middle-class America and has spread with increasing affluence. But when children's desires get away from parents' control and understanding and when capitalism draws out those youthful longings in ways that meet the immediate, but not the long-term, needs of children, parents see red. They demand boundaries and reassert older meanings of innocence, seeking shelter rather than wonder. When adults conceded that their offspring have autonomous needs and desires, merchandisers learned to sell the cool to kids. The modern penchant for associating childhood with wonder and the way that the cute becomes the cool have led inevitably to a renewed demand for the sheltered child.

Investigates the meaning and significance of postmodernity as the most recent cultural situation to arise within North America's pluralistic culture. It defines postmodernity as the condition of lost confidence in the modern project's ability to discover the truth and to reshape the world in light of that discovery. Instead, it recognizes that all human perception and thought is necessarily perspectival or subjective – from somewhere and by someone. Postmodernism is distinguished as the collective array of responses to postmodernity that accept its view of things and then attempt to construct a view of the world, and perhaps an entire way of life, on that basis. The multiculturalism of North American culture further exacerbates the situation of pluralism and postmodernity. The discussion of pluralism and postmodernity concludes by arguing that the present situation is distinct from former conditions in the scope and amount of plurality, the pace of change, the ubiquity of doubt, and finally, consumerism.

Consumerism is an outlook that frames everything in terms of consumption by the sovereign self. After having scrutinized basic convictions of consumerism, this chapter lists the effects of consumerism on the shape of religion in the private and public sphere. In the private sphere, religion becomes viewed as a consumer good; religions themselves become segmented into parts from which one may freely pick and choose according to one's needs, i.e., “Sheilaism.” Religion is selected or constructed by the self for the self, evident even in traditional Christian circles in the practice of “church‐shopping.” In the public sphere, consumerism reshapes religion such that any traits of religion contrary to the consumerist impulse are discarded. The chapter concludes, however, with the hopeful suggestion that because authentic Christianity is countercultural, it has the possibility of revitalizing modernity, rather than merely perpetuating it.