Cross-cultural consumption

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Heather Rogers

In Green Gone Wrong environmental writer Heather Rogers blasts through the marketing buzz of big corporations and asks a simple question: Do today's much-touted "green" producers - carbon offsets, organic, food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homes - really work? Implicit in efforts to go green is the promise that global warming can be stopped by swapping out dirty goods for "clean" ones. But can earth-friendly products really save the planet? This narrative explores how the most readily available solutions to environmental crisis may be disastrously off the mark. Rogers travels the world tracking how the conversion from a "perro" to a "green" society affects the most fundamental aspects of life - food, shelter, and transportation. Reporting from some of the most remote places on earth, Rogers uncovers shocking results that include massive clear-cutting, destruction of native ecosystems, and grinding poverty. Relying simply on market forces, people with good intentions wanting to just "do something" to help the planet are left feeling confused and powerless. Green Gone Wrong reveals a fuller story, taking the reader into forests, fields, factories, and boardrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, and successes of eco-friendly consumption. What do the labels "USDA Certified Organic" and "Fair Trade" really mean on a vast South American export-driven organic farm? A superlow-energy "eco-village" in Germany's Black Forest demonstrates that green homes dramatically shrink energy use, so why aren't we using this technology in America? The decisions made in Detroit's executive suites have kept Americans driving gas-guzzling automobiles for decades, even as U.S. automakers have European models that clock twice the mpg. This expose pieces together a global picture of what's happening in the name of today's environmentalism. Rogers casts a sober eye on what's working and what's not.--

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Celia Lury

"The second edition of Consumer Culture brings this successful introductory textbook right up-to-date for students who are interested in the nature and role of consumption in modern societies. It introduces the importance of new object-based studies for consumer culture, as well as adding new chapters on branding and the rise of ethical consumption. Drawing on a wide range of studies, and using contemporary illustrations from the media and popular culture, the author examines the rise of consumer culture and the changing relations between the production and consumption of cultural goods. She argues that consumer culture has become increasingly stylized and now provides an important context for everyday creativity. The author explores the way an individual's position in social groups structured by class, gender, race and age affects the nature of his or her participation in consumer culture. She also argues that this has contributed to changes in the way in which individuals belong to these social groups. The powerful role consumption plays in our lives is thus revealed as consumer culture is seen to provide new ways of creating social and political identities."--Pub. desc.

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Pier Paolo Saviotti

Technological Evolution, Variety and the Economy discusses the fundamental role played by qualitative change in economic development, the contribution made by technological change and innovation, and the theoretical analysis of these phenomena in terms of evolutionary theories. Pier Paolo Saviotti's major new book goes beyond studying the effects of technological change on known economic variables. In addressing the actors and mechanisms of technological change, Dr Saviotti focuses first on changes in product technology and then examines the evolution of organizations with special reference to their use of information and knowledge. Using an evolutionary framework, he develops a model of technological evolution based on replicator dynamics which explicitly introduces these key actors and mechanisms. An in-depth discussion of the present state of evolutionary theories focuses on their methodological foundations and applicability to learning in organizations.

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Watts Wacker and Ryan Matthews

"Deviance is nothing more than a marked separation from the norm and is the source of innovation, the kind of breakthrough thinking that creates new markets and tumbles traditional ones. Positive deviation is an inexhaustible font of new ideas, products, and services. It's the source of all creative thinking and dynamic new market development and ultimately the basis of all incremental profit.". "The Deviant's Advantage describes how deviance proceeds along a traceable trajectory from the Fringe, where it originates but has zero commercial potential; to the Edge, where word of mouth creates a limited audience; to the Realm of the Cool, where the buzz and market momentum really start to build; to the Next Big Thing, where demand is honed and intensifies; finally landing at Social Convention, the heart of the mass market."--BOOK JACKET.