Consumer Culture Reborn

"Consumer Culture Reborn" places consumption as the focal point at which economy and culture converge. The book draws the discourses of political economy and cultural studies in a historical context as a means to understand our social situation as we approach the year 2000. Taking as its central theme the ability of capitalist production to transform the material and social world which sustains it, Lee focuses upon some of the ways in which this impulse has altered the means used by ordinary people to reproduce their lives and lifestyles. Treating the commodity as the primary touchstone for the analysis of both the economy and culture, "Consumer Culture Reborn" charts the rise and fall of the first' mass consumption society of the post-war years. It also considers the evidence supporting new consumer society today, exploring the ways in which the organization of economic affairs had profound consequences for the formation of lived, and eveyrday cultures.

Martyn J. Lee

Preface: The soul of things, Part I Preliminaries: perspectives on capital, consumption and culture, Part II The social transformations of capital, Bibliography, Index