The Authority Of The Consumer

The book is about the authority of the consumer in different contexts. It discusses how the authority of the consumer has changed in different ways and how it has implications for society.

The Authority of the Consumer explores the implications of consumer society - charting its meanings in particular contexts and debating the merits or drawbacks of this way of understanding the relationship between providers and recipients . Some have seen this development as involving a radical shift of authority - away from the provider/producer and towards the recipient/consumer. But they have differed in their responses to this shift, either welcoming it in terms of democratization, anti-elitism or empowerment, or decrying it as commercialization, populism or loss of integrity. Others have been more sceptical. These issues are explored in this important and wide-ranging book. The authors have drawn from several disciplines in the social sciences and humanities and include several non-academics. Keat has also published Enterprise Culture , with Urry (Routledge, 1991); Politics of Social Theory (Blackwell, 1981); and Understanding Phenomenology (Blackwell, 1991). Abercrombie has published Contemporary British Society (Polity, 1988); and Social Change in Contemporary Britain (Polity, 1991). Review: The distinctive perspective of this collection is in linking the emphasis on consumerism in contemporary public discourse with our theorizations of power, or more precisely authority, in late-modern Britain...One of the great pleasures of this book is that the authors are clearly working seriously at the extent to which we have to re-think established prejudices..