This work is a survey of the enormous number of writings on consumption produced over the last decade. The theorization of consumption is something which increasingly dominates economic, political and social debate - whether parent, passenger or patient, we are all consumers. This book includes contributions from leading researchers in the field. There are chapters on consumption studies in anthropology, consumer behaviour, economics, geography, history, media studies, psychology and sociology. This is an interdisciplinary overview which provides new theories, critical analyses and the latest...
This work is a survey of the enormous number of writings on consumption produced over the last decade. The theorization of consumption is something wh...
Worlds Apart is concerned with one of the new futures of anthropology, namely the advances in technologies which r eate an imagination of new global and local forms. It also analyses studies of the consumption of these forms and attempts to go beyond the assumptions that consumption either localises or fails to effect global forms and images. Several of the chapters are written by anthropologists who have specialised in material culture studies and who examine the new forms, especially television and mass commodities, as well as some new uses of older forms, such as the body. The...
Worlds Apart is concerned with one of the new futures of anthropology, namely the advances in technologies which r eate an imagination of new...
A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is primarily concerned with individuals and materialism. But Miller rejects this assumption and follows the surprising route of analysing shopping by means of an analogy with anthropological studies of sacrificial ritual. He argues that the act of purchasing goods is almost always linked to other social relations, and most especially those based on love and care.
The ethnographic sections of the book are based on a year's study of...
A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is...
This book starts from the premise that methodology - the procedures for obtaining an 'objective' knowledge of the past - has always dominated archaeology to the detriment of broader social theory. It argues that social theory is archaeological theory, and that past failure to recognise this has resulted in disembodied archaeological theory and weak disciplinary practice. Ideology, Power and Prehistory therefore seeks to reinstate the primacy of social theory and the social nature of the past worlds that archaeologists seek to understand. The contributors to this book argue that past peoples,...
This book starts from the premise that methodology - the procedures for obtaining an 'objective' knowledge of the past - has always dominated archaeol...
Anthropology is usually associated with the study of society, but the anthropologist must also understand people as individuals. This highly original study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other perspectives on the person.
Contributors draw on approaches from material culture to create fascinating portraits of individuals, offering analytical insights that convey ethnographic encounters with often extraordinary people from Turkey, Spain and Britain to Albania, Cuba, Jamaica, Mali,...
Anthropology is usually associated with the study of society, but the anthropologist must also understand people as individuals. This highly origin...
Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff. The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as social relations. It takes us inside the very private worlds of our home possessions and our processes of...
Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of materi...
On any given day nearly half the world's population is wearing blue jeans. This is entirely extraordinary. Yet there has never been a serious attempt to understand the causes, nature and consequences of denim as "the" global garment of our world. This book takes up that challenge with gusto. It gives clear, if surprising, explanations for why this is the case; challenging the accepted history of jeans and showing why the reasons cannot be commercial. While discussing the consequences of denim at the global level, the book consists of some exemplary studies by anthropologists of what blue...
On any given day nearly half the world's population is wearing blue jeans. This is entirely extraordinary. Yet there has never been a serious attem...
