Call it an encyclopedia of low-brow aesthetics. In Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic, the writer whom Steven Millhauser called "the most original essayist since George Orwell" examines with devastating wit and in a style distinctly his own the contagious appeal of that which is not art, the uses of the useless, the politics of product design and advertising. Here is a psychic voyage into the aesthetic unconscious of the consumer, as well as "the perfect companion for any foray through Restoration Hardware or the freezer compartment at Dean & DeLuca" (Village Voice Literary Supplement). From teddy bears to Mars Bars to Leonardo DiCaprio, this is the refuse of consumerism unflinchingly—and very entertainingly—observed.

Cuteness is one of the most culturally pervasive aesthetics of the new millennium and its rapid social proliferation suggests that the affective responses it provokes find particular purchase in a contemporary era marked by intensive media saturation and spreading economic precarity. Rejecting superficial assessments that would deem the ever-expanding plethora of cute texts trivial, The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness directs serious scholarly attention from a variety of academic disciplines to this ubiquitous phenomenon. The sheer plasticity of this minor aesthetic is vividly on display in this collection which draws together analyses from around the world examining cuteness’s fundamental role in cultural expressions stemming from such diverse sources as military cultures, high-end contemporary art worlds, and animal shelters. Pushing beyond prevailing understandings that associate cuteness solely with childhood or which posit an interpolated parental bond as its primary affective attachment, the essays in this collection variously draw connections between cuteness and the social, political, economic, and technological conditions of the early twenty-first century and in doing so generate fresh understandings of the central role cuteness plays in the recalibration of contemporary subjectivities.

Yuriko Saito explores the nature and significance of the aesthetic dimensions of people's everyday life. Everyday aesthetics has the recognized value of enriching one's life experiences and sharpening one's attentiveness and sensibility. Saito draws out its broader importance for how we make our worlds, environmentally, morally, as citizens and consumers. Saito urges that we have a social responsibility to encourage cultivation of aesthetic literacy and vigilance against aesthetic manipulation. Yuriko Saito argues that ultimately, everyday aesthetics can be an effective instrument for directing the humanity's collective and cumulative world-making project for the betterment of all its inhabitants. Everyday aesthetics has been seen as a challenge to contemporary Anglo-American aesthetics discourse, which is dominated by the discussion of art and beauty. Saito responds to controversies about the nature, boundary, and status of everyday aesthetics and argues for its legitimacy. She highlights the multi-faceted aesthetic dimensions of everyday life that are not fully accounted for by the commonly-held account of defamiliarizing the familiar.

A collection that tracks the astonishing impact of one vernacular aesthetic category—the cute—on postwar and contemporary art. The Cute tracks the astonishing impact of a single aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices and discourses on which artists draw. From robots and cat videos to ice cream socials, The Cute explores the ramifications of an aesthetic “of” or “about” minorness—or what is perceived to be diminutive, subordinate, and above all, unthreatening—on the shifting forms and contents of art today. This anthology is the first of its kind to show how contemporary artists have worked on and transformed the cute, in ways that not only complexify its meaning, but also reshape their own artistic practices. Artists surveyed include Peggy Ahwesh, Cosima Von Bonin, Nayland Blake, Paul Chan, Adrian Howells, Juliana Huxtable, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Dean Kenning, Wyndham Lewis, Jeff Koons, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Alake Shilling, Annette Messager, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Charlemagne Palestine, David Robbins, Mika Rottenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, Jack Smith, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Nara Writers include Sasha Archibald, Roland Barthes, Leigh Claire La Berge, Lauren Berlant, Ian Bogost, Jennifer Doyle, Lee Edelman, Adrienne Edwards, Lewis Gordon, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Lori Merish, John Morreall, Juliane Rebentisch, Frances Richard, Carrie Rickey, Friedrich Schiller, Peter Schjeldahl, Kanako Shiokawa, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Kevin Young

An impassioned philosophical celebration of the multiple dimensions of contemporary cuteness. Involuntarily sucked into the forcefield of Cute, Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic decided to let go, give in, let the demon ride them, and make an accelerationism out of it—only to realize that Cute opens a microcosmic gate onto the transcendental process of acceleration itself. Joining the swarming e-girls, t-girls, NEETS, anons, and otaku who rescued accelerationism from the double pincers of media panic and academic buzzkill by introducing it to big eyes, fluffy ears, programming socks, and silly memes, they discover that the objects of cute culture are just spinoffs of an accelerative process booping us from the future, rendering us all submissive, breedable, helpless, and cute in our turn. Cute comes tomorrow, and only anastrophe can make sense of what it will have been doing to us. Evading all discipline, sliding across all possible surfaces, Cute Accelerationism embraces every detail of the symptomatology, aetiology, epidemiology, history, biology, etymology, topology, and even embryology of Cute, joyfully burrowing down into its natural, cultural, sensory, sexual, subjective, erotic, and semiotic dimensions in order to sound out the latent spaces of this Thing that has soft-soaped its way into human culture. Traversing tangents on natural and unnatural selection, runaway supernormalisation, the collective self-transformation of genderswarming cuties, the hyperstitional cultures of shojo and otaku, denpa and 2D love, and the cute subworlds of aegyo and meng, moé and flatmaxxing, catboys and dogon eggs, bobbles and gummies, vore machines and partial objects, BwOs and UwUs…glomping, snuggling, smooshing and squeeeeing their way toward the event horizon of Cute, donning cat ears and popping bubbles as they go, in this untimely philosophical intensification of an omnipresent phenomenon, having surrendered to the squishiest demonic possession, like, ever, two bffs set out in search of the transcendental shape of cuteness only to realize that, even though it is all around us, we do not yet know what Cute can do. Seriously superficial and bafflingly coherent, half erudite philosophical treatise, half dariacore mashup, 100 percent cutagion, this compact lil’ textual machine is a meltdown and a glow up, as well as a twizzled homage to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Welcome to the kawaiizome: nothing uncute makes it out of the near future, and the cute will very soon no longer be even remotely human.

From identity theft to product recalls, from what we once thought of as unshakeable institutions to increasing concerns about sustainability, consumer issues are an integral part of modern life. This fully updated third edition of Consumer Economics offers students an accessible and thorough guide to the concerns surrounding the modern consumer and brings to light the repercussions of making uninformed decisions in today’s economy. This definitive textbook introduces students to these potential issues and covers other key topics including consumer behavior, personal finance, legal rights and responsibilities, as well as marketing and advertising. Combining theory and practice, students are introduced to both the fundamentals of consumer economics and how to become better-informed consumers themselves. Highlights in this new edition include: New Critical Thinking Projects feature to encourage students to develop their critical thinking skills through analysing consumer issues. Expanded coverage of social media and the impact of social influence on consumers. Revised Consumer Alerts: practical advice and guidance for students to make smart consumer decisions. A new Companion Website with a range of presentation materials and exercises related to each chapter. Fully updated throughout, this textbook is suitable for students studying consumer sciences – what works, what doesn’t, and how consumers are changing.

The Philosophy of Design is an introduction to the fundamental philosophical issues raised by the contemporary practice of design. The first book to systematically examine design from the perspective of contemporary philosophy, it offers a broad perspective, ranging across key philosophical areas such as aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. The first part of the book explores central issues about the nature of design and its products, and the rationality of design methods. A central theme is that Modernist ideas, such as those offered by Loos and Gropius, provide important responses to these philosophical issues. In the second part of the book, these Modernist ideas serve as touchstones in the exploration of key issues for design, including: the place of aesthetics in design; designs relation to personal expression; the meaning of function; and designs relation to consumerism. The social responsibility of designers, and the impact of design practice on ethical reasoning are also discussed. Written in an accessible style, The Philosophy of Design presents a new perspective on design and a provocative reassessment of the Modernist legacy. It will engage students and designers with current philosophical debates, helping them to bring into clearer focus the meaning of contemporary design, and its unique challenges and possibilities.