`Historically contextualises the debates that have informed the theoretical frameworks by which consumerism has come to be understood. It plots a course from the passive consumer to the resistant consumer, noting the ossification of different positions into orthodoxies. It suggests that consumption is not such an easy matter to understand, always dependent upon practice and context. The thesis is supported by the use of original empirical research into young people and advertising which cleverly separates the practice of consuming and producing the meaning of adverts from consuming the product being advertised. This analysis draws the reader into the many paradoxes of consumption. This is a fine example of how the book as a whole is an argument against generalist theoretical sweeps which do not take the nuances, contexts and contradictory behaviour of consumers into account' -
Beverley Skeggs, Lancaster University `This is a lively and stimulating collection, a series of essays which spans the recent history of feminism and cultural studies and which draws together the pleasures and the pain of these encounters with clarity and theoretical fluency' - Angela McRobbie, Loughborough Univeristy
`The book represents a cultural history of the 1970s and 1980s...Its discourse helps us to reach a clearer intellectual understanding of the ways in which both individuals and society adjust to and settle within the shifting parameters of personal life. These shifts are followed through into their impact upon the political sphere...This is a collection of previously published articles which were well worth gathering together, and which I'm pleased to have on my bookshelf' - Chartist - For Democratic Socialism
