The Authority of the Consumer explores the implications of consumer society - charting its meanings in particular contexts and debating the merits or drawbacks of this way of understanding the relationship between providers and recipients. Some have seen this development as involving a radical shift of authority - away from the provider/producer and towards the recipient/consumer. But they have differed in their responses to this shift, either welcoming it in terms of democratization, anti-elitism or empowerment, or decrying it as commercialization, populism or loss of integrity. Others have...

The Authority of the Consumer explores the implications of consumer society' - charting its meanings in particular circumstances and analysing this way of understanding the relationships between providers' and

This exciting new reader brings together some of the best recent sociological writing on British society. The volume features carefully selected extracts from books and journals, which have been chosen for the high quality of their sociological analysis and their relevance to understanding social change.


Thematically organized, the volume gives wide coverage to a range of key topics in sociology, including globalization, class and inequality, gender, ethnicity, the media, leisure and consumption. It also provides students with an interesting introduction to a variety of...

This exciting new reader brings together some of the best recent sociological writing on British society. The volume features carefully selected extracts from books and journals, which have been chosen for the high quality of their sociological analysis and their relevance to understanding social change.


Thematically organized, the volume gives wide coverage to a range of key topics in sociology, including globalization, class and inequality, gender, ethnicity, the media, leisure and consumption. It also provides students with an interesting introduction to a variety of...

The third edition of the highly-acclaimed Contemporary British Society is the only textbook to provide comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the social structure of modern Britain. Completely revised and updated, this new edition employs the very latest statistical information and empirical studies, and examines all the new arguments and debates concerning modern British society.

Separate chapters explore the major areas of modern life in Britain - economic organization, employment, patterns of inequality, class, gender, ethnicity, family and households, education, health,...

Sociology is the intellectual discipline that seeks to provide answers to those questions by the deployment of argument and evidence. In doing so it will often question basic assumptions that we all make about our social world and therefore has the capacity to upset settled or conventional opinions. This book is an invitation to engage in this endeavour.

• concise, accessible introduction to a key discipline in the social sciences;
  
• written by an experienced author who is widely respected for his broad and deep understanding of the subject and his ability to write...

Sociology is the intellectual discipline that seeks to provide answers to those questions by the deployment of argument and evidence. In doing so it will often question basic assumptions that we all make about our social world and therefore has the capacity to upset settled or conventional opinions. This book is an invitation to engage in this endeavour.

• concise, accessible introduction to a key discipline in the social sciences;
  
• written by an experienced author who is widely respected for his broad and deep understanding of the subject and his ability to write...

Offering a timely review of the past 50 years of theoretical and methodological debate Audiences argues the case for a paradigmatic shift in audience research.

Please update ISBN on outside back cover and imprint page.

Television and Society is a textbook designed to introduce students to the role of television in contemporary society. It explores the structure of the television text, the way in which that text is produced and the way it is consumed.


The first section deals with the analysis of television programmes as texts. It covers, for example, the issues of realism, narrative, genre and ideology, the domestication of television programming and the nature of soap opera and news. The section on the production of television deals firstly with the structure of the industry as a whole...