Dear EUROPEAN-SOCIOLOGISTS suscribers,
I hope the following is of interest to you:
Identifying Consumption
Subjects and
Objects in Consumer Society
Robert G.
Dunn
"Identifying Consumption is a bold and provocative treatment of many
interlocking issues, which in their integration represent a study that is novel
and much needed. More than a concise overview of critical theories of
consumption, Dunn's smoothly written study also provides a sharp sense of the
historical concern for consumption by tracing its emergence over the 20th
century and its present culmination in the burgeoning interest in consumption
studies today."
—Jon Cruz, University of California at Santa Barbara, and
author of Culture on the Margins
Identifying Consumption illustrates how an individual’s buying habits
are shaped by the dynamics of the consumer marketplace—and thus how consumption
and identity inform each other. Robert Dunn brings together the various theories
of spending and develops a mode of analysis concentrating on the individual
subjectivity of consumption. By doing so, he addresses how we spend and its
relationship with status and lifestyle.
Dunn provides a comprehensive guide to the study of modern consumer
behavior before summarizing and critiquing the major theories of consumption. At
this juncture, he proposes a method of analysis that focuses on the significance
of status and lifestyle in social relations that can help explain how the
consumer marketplace is shaped. He concludes by raising issues about different
ways of consuming and the relationship between consumption and identity.
"It is easy to go wrong writing about consumption, but Robert Dunn gets it
right. In this subtle, sophisticated, and erudite exploration into the social
dimensions of seemingly individual consumer aspirations and actions, Dunn
explains how shopping serves as the center of the social world, how it
influences the ways we come to understand ourselves and others. Identifying
Consumption brilliantly captures the contradictory quality of consumption as
both the apex of alienation and the ultimate in self-expression, as both a
deeply personal and a quintessentially social negotiation of signs, symbols, and
social relations."
—George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara
and author of Footsteps in the Dark
"In clear and well-written prose, Robert Dunn masterfully navigates a
wide literature ranging from consumption studies to postmodernity. He not only
places consumerism in theoretical and social context, but develops a remarkably
original and sophisticated understanding of the interplay of identity and
consumption in contemporary times."
—Kenneth H. Tucker, Jr., Mount Holyoke
College and author of Classical Social Theory and Anthony Giddens and Modern
Social Theory
Robert G. Dunn is Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, California
State University, East Bay, and author of Identity Crises: A Social Critique of
Postmodernity.
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Aug 2008
232 pages
£12.99 PB 978-1-59213-870-8