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Product Description
Life in the west is lived within a culture awash with the advertising, brand-names and labels of conspicuous consumerism. Accordingly, consumerism and consumer culture have become central to critical discussions of identity, postmodernity and culture as never before. And yet critiques of consumerism are largely confined to those who argue either for or against notions of elitism or manipulation. In the main, theorists such as Bauman, Giddens and Hall do not offer alternatives to consumerism, but argue that it is an all-enveloping and inescapable imperative, and a dominant motivation in contemporary life. This book challenges the assumptions behind these discussions of consumerism, and to broaden our understanding of the true nature of contemporary society. Lodziak argues that all-encompassing visions of consumerism are useful only as an ideology. They are not a realistic representation of modern culture and society, and, therefore, the understanding of identity that they offer is limited. In The Myth of Consumerism Lodziak opens up the debate, offering a cogent critique of consumer culture and analysing the role it really plays in our lives.
About the Author
Conrad Lodziak teaches Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University. Following his deportation from the USA in 1972 for anti-American activities, Lodziak has been involved in a variety of oppositional projects. He is the author of Andre Gorz: A Critical Introduction (Pluto Press,1997), a number of articles on psychological theory and critical social and political theory and contributor to The Power of Television: A Critical Appraisal (London: Pinter 1986).
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The dominant theory of consumption, at least within Cultural Studies and the sociology of culture, provides a highly positive assessment of consumerism. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
The dominant theory of consumption, at least within Cultural Studies and the sociology of culture, provides a highly positive assessment of consumerism. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is an amazing insite into our contemporary world and interrelations between the contries. I was crying reading it... Is there anything can be done to change the world for the better? The facts in this book should be taught and explained at schools. The author is very brave to reveal the real truth about our 'civilized' world. IT is critical and well referenced work. Every word was like a breath of fresh air. Highly reccommened to anybody who cares about the future of human race.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book you need time to digest. It comes along as some kind of scientific book and reveals itself as an ideological concoction that includes almost any infringement againts scientific veracity you can think of. Over 100 hundred pages the author creates the chimera of "the latest ideology of consumerism", but not a single reference to anyone holding this ideology is made. Then, he invents his production of consumption approach which seems to me as a rather naiv version of neo-marxism. The highlight of the book, however, is to be found in chapter 7 in which Lodziak enfoldes his ideology. This ideology is simple, the capitalist system (the same system, by the way, that enables him to write books rather than running around to make a living) is the culprit to almost any misdeed one can think of: it produces environmental devastation, it leaves the poor in poverty, it is responsible for the insecurity of individual lifes and so forth. Worst of all, the capitalist system sentences people to work, it subjects people to the need of employment. And because of their need to do "senseless work" (like writing this book) people do not have time for their own and this is why they need to consume and they need to consume more and more because of the capitalist system and the strain to buy it exerts on people. The only way out of this lamentable situation is to reduce consuming, as Lodziak writes, to necessary consumption and skip the unnecessary one (I should not have read this book). Needless to say, that it is up to the author to identify unnecessary consumption. It is in this chapter, that you will find almost any munition you need to equip lessons about faulty reasoning, and mis-interpretation of data (e.g., when Lodziak in a clean sweep accuses the capitalist system being responsible for the drop in life expectancy witnessed by Zambians; however,Zambia is one of the countries worst hit by AIDS, so the drop in life expectancy has a rather different explanation, i.e. if one is not inclined to blame the capitalist system for AIDS as well). So after reading the book, I asked myself, for what reason it had been written. It is not a scientific book, because it does not comply with the simplest rules of scientific veracity. It is not an entertaining book, because you start to get angry with the author from the very beginning of the book. And it is not an amusing book, because the mis-interpretations and faulty reasoning amassed in this book make you pity the author. I suppose this book is somekind of venting system for the author, to get rid of his anger. Considering all the trees that had to go to produce this book, I'd rather the author would have found a less capitalistic way to vent his anger.
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