"This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to examining contemporary radical consumption, analyzing its possibilities and problems, moralities, methods of mediation and its connections to wider cultural formations of production and politics." "Jo Littler argues that we require a more expansive vocabulary and need to open up new approaches of enquiry in order to understand the area's many contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on a number of contemporary theories, terms and debates in media and cultural studies, she uses a range of specific case studies to bring theory to life." "Radical Consumption is important reading for cultural, media and sociology students." --Book Jacket.

Anti-consumerism has become a conspicuous part of contemporary activism and popular culture, from ‘culture jams’ and actions against Esso and Starbucks, through the downshifting and voluntary simplicity movements, the rise of ethical consumption and organic and the high profile of films and books like Supersize Me! and No Logo. A rising awareness of labor conditions in overseas plants, the environmental impact of intensified consumer lifestyles and the effects of neo-liberal privatization have all stimulated such popular cultural opposition. However, the subject of anti-consumerism has received relatively little theoretical attention – particularly from cultural studies, which is surprising given the discipline’s historical investments in extending radical politics and exploring the complexities of consumer desire. This book considers how the expanding resources of contemporary cultural theory might be drawn upon to understand anti-consumerist identifications and practices; how railing against the social and cultural effects of consumerism has a complex past as well as present; and it pays attention to the interplays between the different movements of anti-consumerism and the particular modes of consumer culture in which they exist. In addition, as well as ‘using’ cultural studies to analyse anti-consumerism, it also asks how such anti-consumerist practices and discourse challenges some of the presumptions and positions currently held in cultural studies. This book was previously published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, society ought to offer enough opportunity and mobility for ‘talent’ to combine with ‘effort’ in order to ‘rise to the top’. This idea is one of the most prevalent social and cultural tropes of our time, as palpable in the speeches of politicians as in popular culture. In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture – and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy’s meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular ‘parables of progress’, from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the ‘mumpreneur’. Paying special attention to the role of gender, ‘race’ and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.

This book explores how clothing consumption has changed in Russia in the past 20 years as capitalism has grown in a postsocialist state, bringing with it a "consumer revolution." It shows how there has been and continues to be a massive change in the fashion retail market and how ideal lifestyles portrayed in glossy magazines and other media have contributed to the consumer revolution, as have shifts in the social structure and everyday life. Overall, the book, which includes the findings of extensive original research, including in-depth interviews with consumers, relates changes in fashion and retail to changing outlooks, identities, and ideologies in Russia more generally. The mentioned changes are also linked to the theoretical concept of fashion formed in postsocialist society.

The first cultural history of the iconic brand M·A·C Cosmetics, VIVA M·A·C charts the evolution of M·A·C's revolutionary corporate philanthropy around HIV/AIDS awareness. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with M·A·C co-founder Frank Toskan, key journalists, and fashion insiders, Andrea Benoit tells the fascinating story of how M·A·C's unique style of corporate social responsibility emerged from specific cultural practices, rather than being part of a strategic marketing plan. Benoit delves into the history of the M·A·C AIDS Fund and its signature VIVA GLAM fundraising lipstick, which featured drag performer RuPaul and singer k.d. lang in its first advertising campaigns. This lively chronicle reveals how M·A·C managed to not only defy the stigma associated with AIDS that alarmed many other corporations, but to engage in highly successful AIDS advocacy while maintaining its creative and fashionable authority.

The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides a comprehensive exploration of how different media have evolved within social, regional and national contexts. The 50 chapters in this volume, written by an outstanding team of internationally respected scholars, bring together current debates and issues within media history in this era of rapid change, and also provide students and researchers with an essential collection of comparable media histories. The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field. Chapter 40 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315756202.ch40

Buying (RED) products—from Gap T-shirts to Apple—to fight AIDS. Drinking a “Caring Cup” of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to support fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by buying something. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case studies of “commodity activism.” Drawing from television, film, consumer activist campaigns, and cultures of celebrity and corporate patronage, the essays take up examples such as the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, sex positive retail activism, ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, and Angelina Jolie as multinational celebrity missionary. Exploring the complexities embedded in contemporary political activism, Commodity Activism reveals the workings of power and resistance as well as citizenship and subjectivity in the neoliberal era. Refusing to simply position politics in opposition to consumerism, this collection teases out the relationships between material cultures and political subjectivities, arguing that activism may itself be transforming into a branded commodity.