San Antonio College Library

A follow-up to the author's first book by the same title, this text trades the usual platitudes about the consumer society for a more detailed, exacting anthropological treatment.

"Many Americans today rightly fear that they are constantly exposed to dangerous toxins in their immediate environment: tap water is contaminated with chemicals; foods contain pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics; even the air we breathe, outside and indoors, carries invisible poisons. Yet we have responded not by pushing for governmental regulation, but instead by shopping. What accounts for this swift and dramatic response? And what are...

Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy) was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer's jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Follows Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir (a changing group of volunteers)...

"Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of America leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009." "Howard Bloom has a radically new answer. In The Genius of the Beast, the author of the acclaimed books The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain insists that Western civilization has only begun to realize its...

Traces the history of material acquisition and how it reflects culture, discussing the psychological factors that result in the human desire to acquire things.

A not-so-quiet revolution seems to be occurring in wealthy capitalist societies - supermarkets selling 'guilt free' Fairtrade products; lifestyle TV gurus exhorting us to eat less, buy local and go green; neighbourhood action groups bent on 'swopping not shopping'. And this is happening not at the margins of society but at its heart, in the shopping centres and homes of ordinary people. Today we are seeing a mainstreaming of ethical concerns around...

"By focusing on the consumer behavior of Midwestern farmers, Sowing the American Dream provides illustrative examples of how Americans came to terms with the economic and ideological changes that swirled around them. From the formation of the Grange to the advent of mail-order catalogs, the buying patterns of rural Midwesterners set the stage for the coming century." "Carefully documenting the rise and fall of the powerful purchasing cooperatives,...

De Vries traces the evolution of an 'industrious revolution' that fundamentally altered the material cultures of Europe and North America.

Oxford historian Karl Gerth reveals why we should all care about the everyday choices made by ordinary Chinese. Chinese consumers are quickly replacing overspent Americans as the global economic engine, but in so doing they are dramatically reconfiguring the world economy in ways that may be impossible to reverse.