In the chapter “Mobilizing the Consumer: Assembling the Subject of Consumption”, from their recent book Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life, Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose give a fine summary of the state of consumer/consumption theory.
It begins, appropriately, with a sketch of the profound ambivalence that has marked consumer studies since the [...]
Posts under ‘design’
Ambivalence in the study of the consumer subject
How Not Paying Attention to Brands Makes Them Stronger
Branding strategies and the marketing studies that inform them are increasingly taking into account the rules and conventions that shape consumer attention.
According to the New York Times, in a forthcoming article, “The Power of Strangers,” (to be published in The Journal of Consumer Research) Rosellina Ferraro, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of [...]
Battlespaces: Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare
London, November 26: Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG with Antoine Bousquet of Birkbeck College will present a public lecture on ‘Battlespace/s: Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare’.
Manaugh’s lecture will be an analysis of ‘cities gone wild’ and their relation to war, architecture, science fiction and geopolytics.
Being a fan of Rafi Segal’s important A Civilian [...]
Kitschy Restaurant Chain Decor in the Age of eBay
I don’t visit restaurants like Applebee’s or T.G.I. Friday’s very often so when I do I tend to be more fascinated (and demoralized) than I probably should be. The signature kitschy decor, which attempts to imitate a more natural accumulation of mementos, seems just the kind of dreary, instant local culture effect that a global [...]
