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.

Grant McCracken is a visiting scholar at McGill University and author of several books, including "Culture and Consumption" (IUP, 1988), "Big Hair", and "Transformation".