Cultures of Consumption

ISBN-13: 9780415030519 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 288 str.

Frank Mort

Opis

Consumption occupied a privileged place in the fabric of British society during the 1980s. From the lifestyle theories of market analysts to the spectacular changes in the high street, the world of goods became a critical factor in determining identity. The text explores popular and commercial culture of the period, showing how the marketplace dramatized a series of pressing questions about sexual politics and the meaning of masculinity. The habits and behaviours of young men lay at the heart of the so-called consumer revolution of the decade. The rise of a distinctive breed of entrepreneurs drove this expansion of gendered commerce. Figures such as the fashion stylist Ray Petri, journalists Julie Burchill and Robert Elms and graphic designer Neville Brody joined forces with innovators from the spheres of advertising and marketing to create a plurality of identities for men. The text sets these competing versions of the male consumer in the context of longer-term transformations in masculinity since the 1950s: from the persona of the gentleman to the figures of the yuppie and the gay flaneur.

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction; PART I The Cultural Authority of Style; PART II Commercial Epistemologies: Advertising, Marketing and Retailing since the 1950s; PART III Topographies of Taste: Place, Space and Identity in 1980s London; Chapter 2 Conclusion;

O autorze

David Morley, Frank Mort