The tendency to denigrate consumerism derives from the widespread acceptance of sociological theories that represent consumers as prompted by such reprehensible motives as greed, pride, or envy. These theories are largely unsubstantiated and fail to address the distinctive features of modern consumption, such as the apparent insatiability of wants and the preference for the novel over the familiar. A more plausible view of consumerism regards it as an aspect of hedonism, and links consumption to the widespread practice of daydreaming. Seen (...) in this light, one can discern an idealistic dimension to modern consumption. (shrink)

Through the critical examination of Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, this article seeks to make a wider contribution to contempor ary debates about postmodernism. It draws on a post-Cartesian, Heideg gerian philosophy to demonstrate the weakness of the concept of hyperreality and reveal its foundation in a Cartesian epistemology. The article goes on to claim that this same Heideggerian tradition suggests a way in which the concept of hyperreality and nihilistic postmodern sociologies more generally might be dialectically superseded. Instead of these (...) theories being seen as saying anything insightful about recent social transformations, the epistemological void in which they position themselves should be inter preted as the intellectual expression of the wider cultural and postmodern trend of transgression. Key Words: Baudrillard • Cartesianism • Heidegger • hyperreality • postmodernism. (shrink)

Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption, although widely known and commonly invoked, has rarely been examined critically; the associated "theory" has never been tested. It is suggested that the reason for this lies in the difficulty of determining the criterion that defines the phenomenon, a difficulty that derives from Veblen's failure to integrate two contrasting conceptual formulations. These are, first, an interpretive or subjective version that conceives of conspicuous consumption as action marked by the presence of certain intentions, purposes, or motives, (...) and second, a functionalist formulation in which conspicuous consumption is viewed as a form of behavior characterized by particular end results or outcomes. Consideration of each of these strands reveals major difficulties that prevent the construction of an operational definition of conspicuous consumption and hence the extraction of a workable theory from Veblen's discussion. (shrink)

This paper critically examines our relationship with justice in contemporary western liberal settings, with a particular focus on why our pursuit of justice is intimately entangled with punitive logics. It does so by defining this approach to justice as predominantly pathological, in the sense that it follows a logic that is akin to that displayed in our contemporary sensibilities regarding bodily pain. We deploy the concept of ‘dys-appearance’ used by Drew Leder in the context of his theory of embodiment to (...) discuss how, in western liberal societies, justice is primarily experienced and paid attention to when it appears negatively as a phenomenon; that is, we only become conscious of justice in our lived experiences through the painful and episodic experience of injustice. This phenomenological quality of justice, we argue, is intrinsically linked to how the pursuit of justice in these settings predominantly takes a hostile, punitive aspect. (shrink)

Immanent critique has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory. It is a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking normative and empirical modes of analysis. Immanent critique distinctively seeks to discern emancipatory or democratizing tendencies. However, the viability of immanent critique is currently in question. Habermas argued that it was necessary to revise the normative foundations of critical social theory, late-capitalist developments tended to undermine immanent critique. Although there is a (...) need for critical social theory to incorporate aspects of alternative interpretations of the contemporary period, the logics of influential theoretical perspectives on the present, especially postmodernism, the risk society and globalization, will be shown to be inconsistent with some of immanent critique's presuppositions. The synthetic aspirations of critical social theory nevertheless persist in recent attempts to reconcile positive liberty and social justice. (shrink)

At a time when the formerly strictly separated roles of citizen and consumer are arguably blurry, and when once powerful social institutions increasingly must yield to new social forces based on heightened knowledgeability and historically unprecedented wealth, it is likely that the economy of modern society is also subject to implicit changes. In this article, we argue that traditional theories of the market are increasingly losing their basis for analysing economic relationships as purely rational acts of exchange and utility maximization. (...) Instead, what can be witnessed is an increase in the influence of values and norms on markets, guiding our attention to how deeply embedded economic action is in modern culture. We put forward the idea of a moralization of markets, which has begun to change our conceptions and theories regarding what is at stake in a modern economy fundamentally. We conclude that in the future, production processes and standards, codes of conduct and consumer reasoning will become all the more important for doing business in Western knowledge societies. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: (...) that a person’s inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transformative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies. (shrink)

The fear of the other is the main focus of this paper, which analyse Tehran protest squares as inside-out spaces where the state attempts to maintain some form of control, and where the public attempts to occupy it. The fear of ‘others’ can lead to exclusion from the public space of those who are seen as threatening. This process of ‘otherness’ renders fear as an arena of conflict and highlights the political utility of fear by particular groups and individuals.

Cosmetic dentistry is a divisive discipline. Within discourses that raise questions of the purpose of the dental profession, cosmetic dentistry is frequently criticised on the basis of it being classified as a non‐therapeutic intervention. This article re‐evaluates this assertion through examination of ethics of care of the self, healthcare definitions and the social purpose of dentistry, finding the traditional position to be wanting in its conclusions. The slide of dentistry from a healthcare vocation towards being a predominantly business‐focused interaction between (...) clinician and consumer conflicts with traditional notions of dentistry as a profession. Whilst it is undeniable that cosmetic dental treatment particularly lends itself to the commercial paradigm, this is not exclusive to this area of professional practice. The cultural basis of dental appearance and the potential of the dental profession to exert coercive pressure upon the public to undergo treatment that is based upon social norms is discussed. This essay concludes that cosmetic dentistry is undeniably part of the professional purpose of 21st Century dentistry. However, the caveat that may be placed upon this, is that this status is conditional upon the professional conduct of dental practitioners remaining resilient to commercial practices not compatible with professional obligations. (shrink)

Three things must be clarified before we can proceed with the examination. These are the terms sustainability, politics and megatrend. Unfortunately, all three are ambiguous and few disciplines have arrived at a consistent definition for any of them. While we will not resolve the ambiguity to everyone's satisfaction, we will attempt to achieve an extensional bargain (Rappaport, 1953) through which we develop an understanding of how we are using the terms. First, sustainable development became a construct in 1987 through the (...) Brundtland Report (Brundtland, 1987) and has remained ambiguous ever since. This is where we begin our examination of sustainable consumption. Megatrend, as a phenomenon, has been defined in a multitude of ways over the past thirty-five years. In this chapter, we adopt the criteria set forth by Mittelstaedt et al. (2014) for categorising megatrends, but will use a broader interpretation of what constitutes megatrends. Finally, our use of the term political will be broader than the more common use of the term relating to legal structures, laws or agencies, and include the underlying institutions that frame the more micro aspects of politics. This approach is necessary because of the scale of sustainability and megatrends in both time and space. (shrink)

We offer a critical reading of televised weather reporting and forecasting discourse. We analyze text obtained from a US affiliate station of The Weather Channel over three days when a winter front advanced through the United States. Our critical analysis reveals the underlying ideological character of weather representation. We interpret the practice of weather representation within the context of the hegemonic discursive orders of leisure, consumption, capital accumulation, and risk management through the technologization of discourse. Through an analysis of the (...) interpretive practices of a small viewer community, we demonstrate that while alternative readings of weather discourse are possible, they are nevertheless shaped by the technologization of weather discourse. We conclude by promoting socio-semiotics and critical discourse analysis as promising theoretically-guided methodologies for analyzing discourse on the environment. (shrink)

Postmodernism is a variety of meanings and definitions, is used to refer to many aspects of social life from musical forms and styles, literature and fine art through to philosophy, history and especially the mass media and consumer culture. Post modernism is a slippery term that is used by writers to refer to several different things. Featherstone points out the term has been used to refer to new developments in intellectual and cultural theory. The suggestion that our subjective experience of (...) everyday life and our sense of identity has somehow changed significantly in recent years. The view that capitalist or industrial societies have reached new and important stages in their development, the shift from modernity to post-modernity. Consumer culture is also play a vital role in the society, consumer culture may be defined as a day to day change in the taste of consumer behaviour. The term “consumer culture” refers to cultures in which mass consumption and production both fuel the economy and shape perceptions, values, desires, and constructions of personal identity. Economic developments, demographic trends, and new technologies profoundly influence the scope and scale of consumer culture. Social class, gender, ethnicity, region, and age all affect definitions of consumer identity and attitudes about the legitimacy of consumer centred lifestyle. (shrink)

Section 1 of this thesis investigates one issue in meta-ethics, namely, the nature of moral judgments. What are moral judgments? What does it mean by "wrong" when we assert "Killing is wrong?" Neo-sentimentalism is a meta-ethical theory which holds that the judgment that killing wrong is the judgment that it is appropriate to have a particular negative emotion towards the action. In other words, to judge that murder is wrong is to judge that we have a right reason for having (...) a negative emotion towards the behavior. In the framework of neo-sentimentalism, the concepts of wrongness consist of negative emotions. If the moral judgment is the judgment that it is appropriate to have a negative emotion towards the action, and the concept of wrongness contains a negative emotion, then the following question is what emotions are. In section 2, I endorse the bodily attitudinal theory of emotions, a view which holds that a conscious physiological reaction which induces behavior disposition and the change of facial expression and internal organs is necessary for having an emotion. This section also articulates and replies to three major objections towards the bodily attitudinal theory of emotion. (shrink)

The education policy of Conservative governments in Britain since 1979 is sometimes said to be contradictory. It purports to empower the consumer, but legislation has given the lie to this, vesting ever greater powers in central government, less so in Scotland, the more so in England and Wales. In short, education policy contains mixed messages, or contradictions. But these contradictions to some extent express the tensions which have become apparent in an age of transition: that between the modern and the (...) postmodern, or between Fordist and 'disorganised' forms of capitalism. A new mode of regulation is being established within the agencies of the welfare state. It reveals an isomorphic structure - at the level of the pupil, the teacher, the parent and the school - whose purpose is the management of consent, and whose justification appeals to the culture of consumption. The analysis is illustrated mainly with reference to Scotland. (shrink)

‘Liberty’, as a word, is thrown about contemporary society as casually as a ball is on a summer’s day, and yet, does anyone have a grasp on what it is? If it is freedom from limitation, then liberty must represent nothing less than consciousness without restraint. But though this straightforward definition implies its acquisition to be equally straightforward, the full spectrum of liberty would certainly prove to be one of the most elusive concepts imaginable. As a result, what we have, (...) and what we throw about so indifferently, is a Substitute - a poor kind of replica of the real thing. True liberty - Omniversal liberty - is much less tangible however, and represents the equilibrium that occurs when anything is possible, but where the capacity to ever allow one possibility to dominate over another becomes impossible to maintain. (shrink)

This article addresses keep-fit culture not as a collection of commercial images or as the product of broader cultural values, but as a set of situated body practices, that is practices taking place within specific institutions where these images and values are reinterpreted in locally prescribed ways and, to some extent, filtered. Relying on fieldwork, fitness gyms are revealed to be experienced as places with their own rules, pleasures and identity games. The ideal of the fit body is shown to (...) be filtered from its wider, typically gender- and class-specific charges, transformed into a pure instrument of training, a machine which does not bear resemblance to the organic body of the changing rooms, an objectified utility which is beyond any social role specification. Social roles and their body requirements are both important for individual clients' structural chances to join the gym and locally neutralized or reduced to tension-release mechanisms. Similarly, the cultural ideals of a fit and toned body contribute to the legitimation of the gym; yet the actual capacity to train is less the result of the direct grip of culture, than the outcome of clients' adjustment to playing a particular game of involvement with and detachment from the mechanistic and abstract exercise body. Body definitions are not simply imposed on clients, but continuously negotiated and transformed. (shrink)

This article examines women's bodies in South Korea and the modes of Neo-Confucian governmentality at work within this consumer society. The concealed woman's body under Neo-Confucianism appears to have been supplanted by a liberated consumer body. This seems to represent a major shift in what the body means today. Nonetheless, the techniques of governmentality that controlled women's bodies under strict Neo-Confucian codes remain active in Korea's consumer society, so that despite the appearance of a striking shift in body presentation, the (...) methods of control remain remarkably similar. This article first examines the Neo-Confucian conception of the body, focusing on Neo-Confucian discourses on the female body and self, and the Neo-Confucian techniques of governmentality employed to control women's bodies. Next it observes how women live out the capitalist body in Korea's consumer society, using mostly journals, magazines and various women's views. Finally, it attempts to show how the new principles of consumer culture combine with Neo-Confucian techniques of governmentality to control women's bodies. (shrink)

The concept of liquid modernity proposed by Zygmunt Bauman suggests a rapidly changing order that undermines all notions of durability. It implies a sense of rootlessness to all forms of social construction. In the field of development, such a concept challenges the meaning of modernization as an effort to establish long lasting structures. By applying this concept to development, it is possible to address the nuances of social change in terms of the interplay between the solid and liquid aspects of (...) modernization. (shrink)

The retirement village sector1 is one part of the increasingly marketized `aged-care' services in New Zealand and in many other parts of the industrialized world. While critical researchers have examined organizational and residents' representations of aging, retirement, and retirement communities in the context of `the market', there is no research that examines communication related to residents' enactment of participation within these settings with respect to these processes of marketization. We aim to refine, complicate, and extend what we might call `the (...) marketization thesis' through this study that examines resident participation within retirement communities. This essay is based on a comparative examination of two major New Zealand retirement community organizations. The rhetorical and critical discourse analysis reveals the complexity of what `participation' means for the residents within the context of an institution that is in transition from a medicalized to a marketized model of service delivery. Through a close examination of these meanings, we offer new insights into issues of individual action and freedom within the frame of a market-driven and avowedly `customer-centred' organization and consequently suggest a reconsideration of participation in organizations in which clients are also `insiders'. (shrink)

This paper brings together evidence and theories from a number of disciplines and thinkers that highlight multiple, sometimes conflicting understandings about well-being.We identify three broad strands or themes within the literature that frame both the nature of the problem and its potential solutions in different ways. The first strand can be categorised as the "hard" science of well-being and its stagnation or decline in modern western society. In a second strand, social and political theory suggests that conceptualisations of well-being are (...) shaped by aspects of western culture, often in line with the demands of a capitalist economic system.A third theme pursues the critique of consumer culture's influence on well-being but in the context of broader human problems.This approach draws on ecology, ethics, philosophy and much else to suggest that we urgently need to reconsider what it means to be human, if we are to survive and thrive. Although no uncontroversial solutions are found within any of these themes, all play a necessary part in contributing to knowledge of this complex territory, where assumptions about the nature of the human condition come into question. (shrink)

Cultural capital and hegemonic masculinity are two concepts that have received intense attention. While both have received serious consideration, critique and analysis, the context or field-specificity of each is sometimes ignored. They have been used in a diversity of ways. Using ethnographic and interview data from a US male bodybuilding community, this study highlights one useful employment. Hegemonic masculinity takes different shapes in different fields of interaction, acting as a form of cultural capital: gender capital. Inherent in this discussion are (...) the cultural contradictions apparent among individuals striving for either physical or ideological embodiments of gender capital. Individuals can attempt to embody hegemonic idealizations, but bodies are not only inscribed with gender, inscriptions are read, and read differently by different social actors and in different settings. The capacity of gender capital to remain elusive is precisely what enables gender practices and projects like bodybuilding to retain passionate participation. (shrink)

Existing scholarly work on corporate social responsibility frequently emphasizes either normative/ethical claims about social progress or instrumental/strategic claims about corporate effectiveness, yet less often acknowledges the moral conditions of those undertaking CSR within a specific cultural context. In this paper, we draw attention to the social conditions in which CSR takes place and the related ethics of the subjects that must enact it. Our approach is to document the lived experiences of practitioners in Romania, a post-communist society. Drawing from fifty-three (...) depth interviews with both corporate responsibility practitioners, and managers in non-profit organizations who together work on CSR projects, we describe their experiences of the social and organizational environment, the CSR practices that are undertaken in this context, and the intended and unintended consequences of such work. Using Bauman’s theorization of ethics, including adiaphora and moral distancing, and Borţun’s interpretation of Romanianness, we then theorize liquid CSR as an ambivalence between adiaphoric practice and the moral impulse to do good, resulting in both intended and unintended consequences. (shrink)

Cheng Hao was a Confucian thinker during the Song dynasty. He strove to restore and reconstruct classical Confucianism. Although his theses were inherited from the Confucian classic, including the Anatects, Mencius, the Classic of Changes, and the Doctrine of the Mean, his interpretations offer learners new insight and perspective in understanding Confucianism. He and his younger brother, Cheng Yi, are commonly referred to as the “Two Chengs” for their parallel efforts in laying the groundwork of Neo-Confucianism.

In recent years, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has grown both in popularity and economic importance. I argue that this success is primarily the result of domestication to the dominant culture of biomedicine and is readily observable in images and metaphors of the body used both in CAM and biomedical discourse. It is suggested that this shared imagery points to a new phase in the relationship between the body and society. The domestication of CAM is further illustrated through processes of (...) dissemination and professionalization. The article concludes by discussing the domestication of CAM as a reflection of an epistemological shift in biomedicine alongside its continued hegemony. (shrink)

Many theorists have charted for some time how capital extends its lines of flight into new spaces, creating new markets by harnessing affect and intervening in intimate, emotional and domestic relationships, and into bio-politics more generally. Feminists have known for a long time that women’s ‘domestic’ labour has been central to the reproduction of capital but that it has been made invisible, surplus and naturalised and is rarely taken into account in theories of value. Yet we are now in a (...) bizarre historical moment wherein a format has emerged (reality television) in a major capitalist industry (the media) that is premised upon spectacularly visualising women’s labour in all its forms, especially through its focus on relationships, dispositions and emotional performance. Drawing on an ESRC research project, ‘Making Class and the Self through Mediated Ethical Scenarios’, this paper demonstrates how very different spheres of exchange—economy and affect—have come together, offering possibilities for fusing calculation and care. This process bears remarkable similarity to the legal adjudication of property and propriety in intimate relationships. Yet the paper shows how, as attempts are made to commodify affect, it is precisely affect that exposes and disrupts exchange and enables reality television as a technology of affect to visualise the different types of person-value that are constituted through class and gender relations. (shrink)

This article begins with a consideration of the `pure' unmediated relation between the human body and nature, exemplified, in different ways, by environmental expressivism, and Ingold's subtle analysis of affordance and the taskscape. It is argued that perspectives fail properly to incorporate the role of mundane technology in the mediation of human-nature relations. Drawing upon the work of Michael Serres, and, in particular, his concept of the parasite, I explore how these mundane technological artefacts - specifically, walking boots - intervene (...) in the circuits of communication between humans and the natural environment. This re-orientation traces how the local relation between bodies and environments is a complex movement between the material and semiotic, the local and the global. In the process, I draw upon four aspects of walking boots: first, there is the role of boots as mechanical technologies that can cause pain, dissolving identity and the relation between humans and nature; second, there is the role of boots as signifying style and identity; third, there is the role of boots as embodiments of procedures of standardization and objectification; and fourth, there is the role of boots as technological means of damage to nature. Finally, in concluding, I tentatively consider some of the political implications of this way of theorizing the relation between bodies and environments. (shrink)

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race (...) and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies. (shrink)

In this article we examine commodification and marketisation of genetic testing by companies offering direct-to-consumer genetic testing to the general public through online platforms in Hong Kong. Recently, offers of genetic testing have expanded from scientific and clinical genetic settings to general medicine and non-medical domains. The wider availability of tests, however, has raised concerns about the currently available scientifically proven utility of these tests. Using theme-oriented discourse analysis, we analyse the specific discursive modalities through which the DTC companies in (...) Hong Kong make inflated claims about the value of genetic tests to pursue their marketing agenda. We show that in this way the companies are selling ‘more’ than specific products to consumers: they are selling ‘hope’ and ‘increased autonomy’, that is, an opportunity to buy commodities online that promise consumers control of their health and wellbeing. (shrink)

It is a truism today that antiquities are valuable resource of symbolic capital of the modern nations. Therefore in many research fields a strong focus can be seen on the uses/abuses of the past in constructing national identity of the “imagined community” of the nation. I isolate the figure of Orpheus whose Thracian-ness fuelled “the grand national narrative” in Bulgaria, in the last few decades. It is studied in the context of the shared, connected, and entangled history of the Balkans (...) produced by Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek scholars. Their valuable reflexive and critical studies of the usable past are fruitful for the development of new perspectives in the academic space. The “eye of anthropology” gives priority to cultural phenomena and makes it possible to evaluate these imageries as cultural products in specific contexts. They are embedded through different media in everyday life which produce a number of representations – municipality emblems, narratives, films, monuments of the fabricated “national hero”. (shrink)

Using key writings in the sociology of consumption and consumerism and analyses of the nature of postmodern society, this paper considers how parents decide upon a secondary school and the nature of their engagement with the education market.

This paper sets out to review the role accorded to advertising in recent critical work. This work, I suggest, has been underscored by an ‘epochalist’ concern to map distinctions in the form of the culture/ economy relationship between the contemporary era and earlier periods. Significance has been accorded to the particular transformative potential of advertising and this is often related to research which emphasises the increasingly symbolic, persuasive and pervasive nature of advertising. In what follows, I make three central propositions. (...) Firstly, I argue that writers on advertising share a number of concerns particularly about the effect the evolving nature of advertising has on the relationship between people and objects and between culture and economy. Secondly I suggest that these writers share with certain other critical theorists a very particular approach to the definition of key entities like meaning, culture and economy. These very particular definitions are pivotal to the epochalist explanation of advertising's role in the transformation of the culture/ economy relation. Finally, I attempt to show, through a brief look at historical uses of persuasion in advertising, that the problem with epochalist theory lies in a tendency to overgeneralise a wide range of specific forces. (shrink)

This paper engages with debates around transformations in the production and circulation of images and the changes in modes of perception that these offer. Paul Virilio has argued that technological developments have produced a shift in the site of meaning‐production from the material reference space of the image to the time of visual contact by the viewer. I consider what significance these temporalities have in relation to social difference, and I develop debates around the performative to consider how the viewer (...) is constituted in visual performativity. This focus on time and performativity opens up questions of how vision may constitute the agency, intention and responsibility of the viewer. Drawing on an example of visual irony in advertising, I explore how the temporal suspension of meanings allows for a suspension of the terms of intent and responsibility. This visual performative accesses and reworks the terms of social difference and privilege in what I have called ‘retroactive intentionality’. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the metaphysical nature of necessity. My study focuses primarily on the reduction of metaphysical necessity and the question of whether a necessary truth can be reductively defined. Theodore Sider develops a new reductive account of metaphysical necessity. Unfortunately, the multiple realizability problem posed by Jonathan Schaffer undermines the credibility of Sider’s account. This underlies my motivation to search for a revised Siderian account of necessity. On this basis, I propose a modified version of Sider’s account and argue (...) that analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Since logical truths are necessary truths, analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths as well. In this thesis, I will proceed as follows. Chapter 1 introduces Sider’s account of necessity. In particular, I focus on his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth. His analysis is largely constitutive of the notion of a metaphysical semantics and some associated notions. I reconstruct his analysis and articulate his metaphysical semantics and the associated notions. Chapter 2 presents and clarifies the multiple realizability problem of Schaffer. His critique shows that Sider’s metaphysical semantics cannot handle multiple realizability. Sider refutes this claim by arguing that the multiple realizability problem is a problem for his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth, not for his metaphysical semantics itself. This is a good starting point to propound a modified account of necessity. Chapter 3 proposes and articulates my modified analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction, where I show that the necessity of a micro-reduction truth can be reductively defined without appeal to Sider’s metaphysical semantics. I argue that analytic, natural-kind and microreduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Logical truths are necessary and so are they. After that, I consider a potential objection to my modified account and attempt to respond to it. (shrink)

This article addresses the cultural commodification of the dress sign of the sacred body from contexts of `God' to its recontextualization within contexts of consumer capitalism or `Mammon'. The concept of religious dress `commodification' is employed heuristically to help make sociological sense of the seepage of dress sacra from religious contexts of origin to secular contexts of use. While other readings of the late modern career of the religious dress `text' are indeed possible, the suggestion here is that it can (...) be seen to float freely between the religious and secular domains and thus belongs to both as signage adding `religious' value to the material body for whatever purposes ñ commercial, erotic, ludic among others. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of the purpose of education within the context of Lyotardȁ9s framing of the postmodern condition. It points to some of the continuities and discontinuities in the framing of the current condition as postmodern and the recurrent problematics of truth-telling which is the mark of this condition. It suggests that educationally the postmodern condition is marked by lifelong learning, a constant apprenticeship rather than mastery, where in language stutters.

This article provides a critique of the postmodernist notion that there has been of recent years a dissolution of the divide between aesthetics and practical activities, between Art and Life. It does so by considering the game of soccer from a phenomenological viewpoint, which shows that the game possesses intrinsically ‘aesthetic’ qualities. The conditions of possibility of such qualities are understood by introducing the idea of the ‘proto‐aesthetics’ of soccer and other mundane phenomena. By considering the proto‐aesthetics of the quotidian (...) we argue that recent changes in the nature of practical life should not be regarded as due to ‘aestheticisation’ but rather as springing from processes of commodification. (shrink)

The advent of rBGH (recombinant bovinegrowth hormone) has spurred the establishment of anorganic milk industry. The food systems/commoditychain analytical framework cannot fully explain therise of this new food. An adequate understanding ofthe consumer's role in the food system/commodity chainrequires more attention to consumption as a form ofpolitics. One way to do this is to look at thepolitics of other new social movements, especiallythose contesting mainstream notions of risk. From thisapproach, organic milk consumption challenges rBGHfrom a ``Not-in-my-Body'' or ``NIMB'' politics of (...) refusal,similar to the political refusal of neighborhoodresidents in ``Not-in-My-Backyard'' or ``NIMBY''environmental movements. The NIMB form of politics isnot a social movement of politically consciousconsumers, yet it is still a political activity inwhich consumers participate in the formation of theindustry through a process of ``reflexive consumption.''An analysis of producer-consumer discourse on milkcartons reveals the nature of this political formation. (shrink)

Significant developments in medical research and technology have meant that the process of reproduction is increasingly affected by the consumption of a variety of services and goods. Individuals intervene in their own reproductive processes as they eat particular foods, take particular drugs and avail themselves of diagnostic and reproductive services. Although such developments have been analysed by feminists in terms of their ethical consequences or their contribution to the commodification of reproduction, they have not been evaluated in terms of their (...) contribution to reproductive consumption. This article argues that we can avoid the reductiveness of critiques of commodified reproduction by developing a conceptual framework of reproductive consumption. Thinking through reproductive consumption also enables feminist analysis to expand our understanding of the gendered aspects of consumption. Most feminist work on consumption practices has focused on the domestic sphere as a site of consumption or on the role of sex and sexuality in promoting consumption. This article's analysis of reproductive consumption adds to this work by revealing ways in which biological reproduction itself is a site of consuming desires and needs, and is permeated by socio-economic forces. In developing a theoretical framework for analysing reproductive consumption, this article argues that consumption produces adaptive value as an object of exchange is acquired and adapted in order to satisfy some need or desire. In making this argument I draw on O'Brien, who argued that reproduction produces syntheticvalue by synthesizing reason and nature in bringing another human being into the world. In doing so she used Marx's method of extracting the concept of commodity value from capitalist exchange relations. Similarly, I analyse the relations of consumption in order to distil a value that is specific to consumption. Reproductive consumption identifies the reproductive consumer as someone who adapts objects of consumption to her own reproductive needs and desires as she negotiates her reproductive nature. Thinking about reproduction and consumption in terms of each other helps us to identify how reproduction is brought about through a taste for particular goods and services, and how consumption works through the reproductive, as well as the sexual, body. (shrink)

In accordance with the established view that the new social movements since the late 1960s have always pursued an agenda of comprehensive societal change, the new wave of movement activism since the late 1990s has widely been interpreted as evidence of the emergence of a new global movement for a radically different society. A critique of the one-sided reliance in social movement research on traditional actor-centred approaches leads to a systems-centred conceptualization of late-modern society, and via the diagnosis of its (...) particular dilemmas, to the interpretation of contemporary social movements as a vital resource for the stabilization of the socioeconomic order of democratic consumer capitalism. As an addition to the existing social movement theories, the suggested approach contributes to a more complex understanding of non-conventional forms of political articulation and participation. (shrink)

This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with external environments; and the complementary thesis (...) that art could be seen as integral to the emergence of systems of human knowledge, communication and economy. Ornamentation and stylization are advanced as two concrete devices through which human attention is captured and experience is ordered through aesthetic patterns. The conclusion is drawn that art offers the social sciences a meaningful account of the perceptual or “qualitative” dimensions of social interactions; and that this is much needed today. (shrink)

This exploratory paper investigates the enactment of a number of “publics” in relation to a recent, ostensibly “technical”, innovation, namely, the nanotechnology Vertically Aligned Nanotube Array-black. In particular, we show how various representations of VANTAblack—as technical artifact, as an exclusive artist’s material, as an exciting coating for a mass-produced commercial product, and as an object of science communication—implicate different “aesthetic experiences”. We discuss these aesthetic experiences in terms of the enactment of four distinct “aesthetic publics.” We then consider the possible (...) analytic value of the concept of aesthetic publics, not least in relation to the “opening up” and “closing down” of the potential debates that might attach to emerging technologies. (shrink)

This article investigates a puzzle in the rapidly evolving profession of advertising in post-socialist Hungary: young professionals who came of age during the shift to market-driven practices want to produce advertising that is uncompromised by clients and consumers, and to educate others about western modernity. It is their older colleagues—trained during customer-hostile socialism—who emphasize that good professionals serve their clients’ needs. These unexpected generational positions show that 1) professions are more than groups expanding their jurisdiction. They are fields structured by (...) two conflicting demands: autonomy of expertise and dependence on clients. We can explain the puzzle by noting that actors are positioning themselves on one or the other side based on their trajectory or movement in the field relative to other actors. Old and new groups vie for power in the transforming post-socialist professional field, responding to each other’s claims and vulnerabilities, exploiting the professional field’s contradictory demands on its actors. 2) The struggle is not between those who are oriented to the west and those that are not. Rather, the west is both the means and the stake of the struggle over historical continuity and professional power. Imposing a definition of the west is almost the same as imposing a definition of the profession on the field. In this historical case, “field” appears less as a stable structure based on actors’ equipment with capital, than as dynamic relations moved forward by contestation of the field’s relevant capital. (shrink)

The end of the 1990s witnessed the corporatization of public universities in Malaysia resulting in the publication of corporate literature in these universities and the type of writing Fairclough refers to as the marketization of academic discourse. Marketization is necessary in public universities due to stiff competition in attracting students among the public universities as well as from the increasing number of private universities. This article reports how Malaysian universities re-brand themselves using the results of an investigation on corporate brochures (...) from these universities. The investigation employs a structural analysis and a textual analysis. Although informative in nature, these corporate brochures exhibit the use of promotional elements in the texts as seen in the contents and the language use. The communicative functions of university brochures are viewed to be more promotional than informative. (shrink)