Consumer Culture and Postmodernism or Marx Modernity

Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (Theory, Culture and Society Series)

Author: Mike Featherston

If a society is postmodern, it must prioritize the consumption of resources in everyday life. In this view, mass media advertising and market dynamics lead us to a constant search for new fashions, new styles, new sensations, and new experiences. In this volume, Featherstone examines the idea of a postmodern society. He explores the roots of consumer culture, how it is defined and differentiated and the extent to which it represents the arrival of a "postmodern" world. He examines the theories of consumption and postmodernism among contemporary social theorists and relates these to the actual nature of contemporary consumer culture. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism will interest academics and professionals in the areas of sociology, social theory, cultural studies, economics and anthropology. "Several of Mike Featherstone's chapters address topics that are immediately recognizable to marketing researchers. . . . In exploring these issues the author reveals a strong grounding in sociological theory and research, leading to some penetrating interpretive insights about contemporary consumer life. Uncovering the sociocultural significance of these particular consumption developments is Featherstone's chief concern. . . . He does an admirable job." --Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science "Featherstone neatly integrates recent ideas, models and writings concerning consumer capitalism, postindustrialism and postmodernity. . . . The author has taken great pains to develop (his) ideas clearly and to make the esoteric accessible to the literate." --Cooperative Economics News Service ". . . [Featherstone's book] can be recommended. . . . A worthwhile effort to open up a relativelyundeveloped field." --Peter R. Grahame, Bentley College in Massachusetts ". . . precisely the sort of text which is necessary to read to escape from our productivist preconceptions. . . . The text must be recommended wholeheartedly to all those in industrial relations who wish to have their noninstitutional lives illuminated for them." --British Journal of Industrial Relations "Of great value to social scientists seeking a guide to the growing literature on the intersection of these two processes, which can no longer be considered peripheral concerns of contemporary sociology." --Humanity and Society

Look this: Great Big Book Of Chili or Miso Cookery

Marx Modernity

Author: Antonio

In this illuminating and concise collection of readings, Karl Marx emerges as the first theorist to give a comprehensive social view of the birth and development of capitalist modernity that began with the Second Industrial Revolution and still exists today.

Table of Contents:

	Notes on Contributors
	General Editor's Foreword
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: Marx and Modernity	1
Pt. 1	Marx's Vision of History: "Historical Materialism"	53
1	Primary Historical Relations, or The Basic Aspects of Social Activity (with Engels)	57
2	The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas ... (with Engels)	60
3	The Formation of Classes ... (with Engels)	63
4	Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy	65
5	Labour Rent	67
6	Karl Marx (Engels)	69
7	Letter to Joseph Block (Engels)	72
Pt. 2	The Juggernaut of Capitalist Modernity: The Revolutionary Bourgeoisie, the End or Tradition, and New Social Powers	75
8	The Secret of Primitive Accumulation	79
9	Development of the Division of Labour (with Engels)	82
10	Bourgeois and Proletarians (with Engels)	90
11	Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation	93
12	Co-operation	95
13	Cardinal Facts of Capitalist Production	100
Pt. 3	Marx's Labor Theory of Value: The Hidden Social Relationship beneath Capitalism's Distorted "Economic" Surface	101
14	The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use Value and Value	105
15	From Value, Price and Profit	108
16	The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof	120
17	The General Formula for Capital	127
Pt. 4	From Manufacture to Modern Industry: The First and Second Industrial Revolutions	131
18	Division of Labour and Manufacture	135
19	Machinery and Modern Industry	143
Pt. 5	The Downside of Capitalist Growth: Overpopulation, Poverty, Speculative Crises, and Environmental Devastation	153
20	The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation	157
21	The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall	161
22	Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus Population or Industrial Reserve Army	163
23	The Increase of Lunacy in Great Britain	166
24	The Economic Crisis in Europe	169
25	Modern Industry and Agriculture	172
Pt. 6	Globalization and Colonialism: The New International Division of Labor	175
26	Foreign Trade	179
27	Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople	181
28	The Crisis in England	183
29	British Incomes in India	186
30	The Indian Revolt	190
Pt. 7	New Society Rising in the Old: Socially Regulated Capitalism and a Third Industrial Revolution	195
31	The Factory Acts	199
32	The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production	204
33	Fixed Capital and the Development of the Productive Forces of Society	208
Pt. 8	The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Vicissitudes of History: Counterrevolution, Dictatorship, or Radical Democracy?	213
34	The Rise of the Revolutionary Proletariat (with Engels)	219
35	Proletarians and Communists (with Engels)	225
36	From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte	227
37	From The Civil War in France	233
38	From Critique of the Gotha Programme	245
Pt. 9	After Communism: The Death or Return of Marx?	251
39	Mourning Marxism	255
40	Marx Redux	259
41	The Return of Karl Marx	264
Pt. 10	New Economy or Old? Information Capitalism and the Polarization of Class, Race, and Ethnicity	273
42	The Connected and the Disconnected	277
43	The Architecture of a New Consensus	292
44	Societal Changes and Vulnerable Neighborhoods	299
45	Fortress L.A.	307
Pt. 11	Neoliberal Globalization: Concentration, Proletarianization, and Dislocation in the New Transnational Order	315
46	America's Immigration "Problem"	319
47	"These Dark Satanic Mills"	326
48	From the Great Transformation to the Global Free Market	336
Pt. 12	Emergent Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization: Anti-Corporate Alliance Politics and Direct Actions	341
49	Slouching toward Seattle	345
50	Seattle Diary	352
51	Not just a Seattle Sequel	361
Pt. 13	Rethinking Class and Class Politics after Communism: Avoiding Marxist Determinism and Totalization	367
52	Class Analysis, History, and Emancipation	371
53	From Redistribution to Recognition?	379
	Bibliography	387
	Index	390