Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management

A follow-up to Grant McCracken's groundbreaking Culture and Consumption, this new book trades the usual platitudes about the consumer society for a more detailed, exacting anthropological treatment. Each section of the book pairs a brief essay with an academic article. The essay is designed for a quick, provocative glimpse of the topic; the article provides a deeper anthropological treatment. The book opens with a broadside against the now thoroughly conventionalized attack on the consumer culture. Essays follow on homes, cars, people, and social mobility; celebrities, consumerism, and self-invention; museums and the power of objects; the anthropology of advertising; and marketing, meaning management, and value. Like McCracken's previous volume, this new book is an engaging, informative, and eye-opening foray into modern consumer culture.

Author: Grant David McCracken
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 07/22/2005
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 0.74d
ISBN: 9780253217615

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2006 pg. 1050

About the Author

Grant McCracken is a member of The MIT Laboratory for Branding Cultures and a visiting scholar at McGill University and author of several books, including Culture and Consumption (IUP, 1988), Big Hair, and Transformation.