The Production of Consumers and the Formation of Desire PDF Download

Author: Christine Darr
Publisher: Fortress Academic
ISBN: 9781978707054
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Many critiques of consumerism inadequately consider the complex interactions between individuals, their desires, and their social practices. Christine Darr provides an analysis of desire within consumer culture by integrating insights from moral theology and sociology and offers intellectual resources for more deliberate decision-making.

Author: Christine Darr
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978707061
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
We live in a society surrounded by stuff and bombarded with advertisements that try to convince us that shopping will improve our lives. Sometimes our lives do improve, yet our purchases are more often motivated by an impulse to satisfy immediate desires rather than reflective deliberation about how our purchasing choices enable us to live the lives we want. Christian moral reflection often criticizes this conundrum as “mindless consumerism,” arguing that it pulls Christians away from loving God above all things. While such critiques often encourage Christians to focus their desire on God rather than material goods, we might still wonder how we can exercise such control over our desires. By attending to desire itself ─ how it arises, how it is shaped by social context, and its role in cultivating a virtuous life ─ we can learn how to desire and then act in ways that are more consonant with our conception of what it means to live well. Within the Christian tradition, Thomas Aquinas offers a compelling model of human desire that, when juxtaposed with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practices, can help us make more considered judgments about how to navigate the consumer society in which we live.

Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542216
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.

Author: Roger Rosenblatt
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781610913874
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Consider this paradox: Ecologists estimate that it would take three planets Earth to provide an American standard of living to the entire world. Yet it is that standard of living to which the whole world aspires.In Consuming Desires, award-winning writer and social commentator Roger Rosenblatt brings together a brilliant collection of thinkers and writers to shed light on the triumphs and tragedies of that disturbing paradox. The book represents a captivating salon, offering a rich and varied dialogue on the underlying roots of consumer culture and its pervasive impact on ourselves and the world around us. Each author offers a unique perspective, their layers of thoughts and insights building together to create a striking, multifaceted picture of our society and culture.Jane Smiley probes the roots of consumerism in the emancipation of women from household drudgery afforded by labor-saving devices and technological innovation; Alex Kotlowitz describes the mutual reinforcement of fashion trends as poor inner-city kids and rich suburban kids strive to imitate each other; Bill McKibben discusses the significance, and the irony, of defining yourself not by what you buy, but by what you don't buy.The essays range widely, but two ideas are central to nearly all of them: that consumption is driven by yearning and desire -- often unspoken, seemingly insatiable -- and that what prevents us from keeping our consumptive impulse in check is the western concept of self, the solitary and restless self, entitled to all it can pay for.As Rosenblatt explains in his insightful introduction: "Individualism and desire are what makes us great and what makes us small. Freedom is our dream and our enemy. The essays touch on these paradoxes, and while all are too nuanced and graceful to preach easy reform, they give an idea of what reform means, where it is possible, and, in some cases, where it may not be as desirable as it appears."

Author: Gary S. Cross
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226121275
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
From the candy bar to the cigarette, records to roller coasters, a technological revolution during the last quarter of the nineteenth century precipitated a colossal shift in human consumption and sensual experience. Food, drink, and many other consumer goods came to be mass-produced, bottled, canned, condensed, and distilled, unleashing new and intensified surges of pleasure, delight, thrill—and addiction. In Packaged Pleasures, Gary S. Cross and Robert N. Proctor delve into an uncharted chapter of American history, shedding new light on the origins of modern consumer culture and how technologies have transformed human sensory experience. In the space of only a few decades, junk foods, cigarettes, movies, recorded sound, and thrill rides brought about a revolution in what it means to taste, smell, see, hear, and touch. New techniques of boxing, labeling, and tubing gave consumers virtually unlimited access to pleasures they could simply unwrap and enjoy. Manufacturers generated a seemingly endless stream of sugar-filled, high-fat foods that were delicious but detrimental to health. Mechanically rolled cigarettes entered the market and quickly addicted millions. And many other packaged pleasures dulled or displaced natural and social delights. Yet many of these same new technologies also offered convenient and effective medicines, unprecedented opportunities to enjoy music and the visual arts, and more hygienic, varied, and nutritious food and drink. For better or for worse, sensation became mechanized, commercialized, and, to a large extent, democratized by being made cheap and accessible. Cross and Proctor have delivered an ingeniously constructed history of consumerism and consumer technology that will make us all rethink some of our favorite things.

Author: Stuart Ewen
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452900902
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description

Author: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415244080
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
The desire to acquire luxury goods and leisure services is a basic force in modern life. This work explores both the historical origins and world-wide appeal of this relatively modern phenomenon.

Author: S. Ratneshwar
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415341930
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Now that consumption has become the defining phenomenon of human life and society, this book addresses the effects of critical life events on consumption motives and the sociological and intergenerational influences on consumers.

Author: Utpal M. Dholakia
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Desires to acquire, possess, use, experience, share, and display objects of consumption lie at the heart of consumer behavior. Consumer researchers have conceived of desire variously as “want”, “wish”, “urge”, “craving”, “approach motivation”, “appetite”, and “buying impulse” and have conceived of it in three senses. In its first sense, desire provides the motivational impetus for engaging in decision making and for pursuing enactment of effortful goals. It integrates a series of emotional, cognitive, self-perception and social appraisals of the consumer, is distinct from, and leads to formation of the intention. Desire in this sense resides at two levels in the consumer's action hierarchy: at the abstract level in the goal to be pursued as goal desire, and in the specific means to reach the goal as implementation desire. Second, in its most popular form, consumer researchers view desire as the countervailing force that opposes self-control. In this second sense, the consumer desires objects or to perform actions that provides pleasure in the short term but can produce significant negative consequences in the long-run. Upon experiencing desire, processes of self-regulation kick in and these processes have been the focus of extensive attention during the 2000s. Finally, desire is conceived of in consumer research as a sudden, spontaneous buying impulse. In its third sense, desire is synonymous with an urge or craving to buy, and is produced immediately upon exposure to the temptation. Over time, unchecked buying impulses are associated with serious and socially significant syndromes such as compulsive buying, materialism, and hoarding. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of selected consumer research on desire. A succinct summary of what we know about these three senses of consumer desire is presented with respect to its antecedents, constituents, and consequences, and emergent research questions and opportunities to further enhance our understanding of consumer desire are pointed out.

Author: Cynthia Huffman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134599021
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This book brings together an international collection of authors from a variety of disciplines who offer new and critical perspectives, summarize key findings and provide important theoretical frameworks to guide the reader through the ‘why?’ of consumption. The book answers questions such as: What is the nature of motives, goals, and desires that prompt consumption behaviours? Why do consumers buy and consume particular products, brands and services from the multitude of alternatives afforded by their environments? How do consumers think and feel about their cravings? Unique in focus and with multifaceted approach which anyone interested in consumption and consumer research will find fascinating, this topical book provides an excellent overview of current research, and imparts key insights to illuminate the subject for both academics and practitioners alike.