Culture, Representation and Identity series – serie

Advertising is often used to illustrate popular and academic debates about cultural and economic life. This book reviews cultural and sociological approaches to advertising and, using historical evidence, demonstrates that a rethink of the analysis of advertising is long overdue.

Liz McFall surveys dominant and problematic tendencies within the current discourse. This book offers a thorough review of the literature and also introduces fresh empirical evidence.

Advertising: A Cultural Economy uses a historical study of advertising to regain a sense of how it has been patterned, not by the `epoch', but by the interaction of institutional, organisational and technological forces.

Advertising is often used to illustrate popular and academic debates about cultural and economic life. This book reviews cultural and sociological approaches to advertising and, using historical evidence, demonstrates that a rethink of the analysis of advertising is long overdue.

Liz McFall surveys dominant and problematic tendencies within the current discourse. This book offers a thorough review of the literature and also introduces fresh empirical evidence.

Advertising: A Cultural Economy uses a historical study of advertising to regain a sense of how it has been patterned, not by the `epoch', but by the interaction of institutional, organisational and technological forces.

Phrases such as `corporate culture', `market culture' and the `knowledge economy', have now become familiar clarion calls in the world of work. They are calls that have echoed through organizations and markets. Clearly something is happening to the ways markets and organizations are being represented and intervened in and this signals a need to reassess their very constitution. In particular, the once clean divide that placed the economy, dealt with mainly by economists, on one side, and culture, addressed chiefly by those in anthropology, sociology and the other `cultural sciences', on the other, can no longer hold.

This volume presents the work of an international group of academics from a range of disciplines including sociology, media and cultural studies, social anthropology and geography, all of whom are involved not only in thinking `culture' into the economy but thinking culture and economy together.

Phrases such as `corporate culture', `market culture' and the `knowledge economy', have now become familiar clarion calls in the world of work. They are calls that have echoed through organizations and markets. Clearly something is happening to the ways markets and organizations are being represented and intervened in and this signals a need to reassess their very constitution. In particular, the once clean divide that placed the economy, dealt with mainly by economists, on one side, and culture, addressed chiefly by those in anthropology, sociology and the other `cultural sciences', on the other, can no longer hold.

This volume presents the work of an international group of academics from a range of disciplines including sociology, media and cultural studies, social anthropology and geography, all of whom are involved not only in thinking `culture' into the economy but thinking culture and economy together.

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.

`This is one of the most important books on race, representation and politics to come along in a decade…. Sarita Malik's book is a brilliant contribution to the literature on race, cultural studies and public pedagogy' - Henry Giroux, Penn State University

Representing Black Britain offers a critical history of Black and Asian representation on British television from the earliest days of broadcasting to the present day. Working through programmes as wide-ranging as the early documentaries to `ethnic sitcoms' and youth television, this book provides a detailed analysis of shifting institutional contexts, images of `race' and ethnic-minority cultural politics in modern Britain.

Representing Black Britain: focuses on issues of representation, ideology, `race' and difference; covers a spectrum of television genres including documentary, news, comedy, light entertainment, youth television, drama, film and sport; examines the sociopolitical context of Black Britain; and looks at questions of policy and the institutional context of British broadcasting.

`This is one of the most important books on race, representation and politics to come along in a decade…. Sarita Malik's book is a brilliant contribution to the literature on race, cultural studies and public pedagogy' - Henry Giroux, Penn State University

Representing Black Britain offers a critical history of Black and Asian representation on British television from the earliest days of broadcasting to the present day. Working through programmes as wide-ranging as the early documentaries to `ethnic sitcoms' and youth television, this book provides a detailed analysis of shifting institutional contexts, images of `race' and ethnic-minority cultural politics in modern Britain.

Representing Black Britain: focuses on issues of representation, ideology, `race' and difference; covers a spectrum of television genres including documentary, news, comedy, light entertainment, youth television, drama, film and sport; examines the sociopolitical context of Black Britain; and looks at questions of policy and the institutional context of British broadcasting.

In this trenchant inquiry into the state of feminism, Angela McRobbie breaks open the politics of sexual equality and 'affirmative feminism' and sets down a new theory of gender power. Challenging the most basic assumptions of the 'end' of feminism, this book argues that invidious forms of gender re-stabilisation are being re-established. Consumer and popular culture encroach on the terrain of so-called female freedom, appearing supportive of female success, yet tying women into new post-feminist neurotic dependencies. With a scathing critique of 'women's empowerment', McRobbie has developed a distinctive feminist analysis that she uses to examine socio-cultural phenomena embedded in contemporary women's lives: from fashion photography and the television 'make-over' genre to eating disorders, body anxiety and 'illegible rage'.

A turning point in feminist theory, The Aftermath of Feminism will set a new agenda for gender studies and cultural studies.

"This book overturns the conventional thinking about organization and identity and puts in its place a wholly new theoretical synthesis. It is not just an extraordinarily incisive commentary on modern life but it is also a key to thinking about identity in new ways which will prove an indispensable guide as we move beyond social constructionism. Remarkable."- Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Warwick

"I have to say that as usual I find very refreshing Paul du Gay's courageous and unconventional approach, a clarity of vision that I find very appealing."- Professor Marilyn Strathern, University Of Cambridge

Like many other popular academic terms, ‘identity’ has been asked to do so much work that it has often ended up doing none at all and, as a consequence, there has been a recent turn away from identity work.

In this book, Paul du Gay moves identity theory in a new direction, offering a distinctive approach to studying how persons - human and non human - are put together or assembled: how their ‘identities’ are formed. He does through an engagement with a range of work in the social sciences, humanities and in organization studies which privileges the business of description over metaphysical speculation and epochalist assertion.

At the heart of the book is an approach to the material-cultural making up of ‘persons’ that involves a shift away from general social and cultural accounts concerning the formation of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘identity’ towards an understanding of the specific forms of personhood that individuals acquire through their immersion in and subjection to particular normative and technical regimes of conduct.

The book is written for postgraduate students and researchers interested in debates about identity, subjectivity and personhood in a range of disciplines – especially those in sociology, social anthropology, geography, and organization and management studies.

"This book overturns the conventional thinking about organization and identity and puts in its place a wholly new theoretical synthesis. It is not just an extraordinarily incisive commentary on modern life but it is also a key to thinking about identity in new ways which will prove an indispensable guide as we move beyond social constructionism. Remarkable."- Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Warwick

"I have to say that as usual I find very refreshing Paul du Gay's courageous and unconventional approach, a clarity of vision that I find very appealing."- Professor Marilyn Strathern, University Of Cambridge

Like many other popular academic terms, ‘identity’ has been asked to do so much work that it has often ended up doing none at all and, as a consequence, there has been a recent turn away from identity work.

In this book, Paul du Gay moves identity theory in a new direction, offering a distinctive approach to studying how persons - human and non human - are put together or assembled: how their ‘identities’ are formed. He does through an engagement with a range of work in the social sciences, humanities and in organization studies which privileges the business of description over metaphysical speculation and epochalist assertion.

At the heart of the book is an approach to the material-cultural making up of ‘persons’ that involves a shift away from general social and cultural accounts concerning the formation of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘identity’ towards an understanding of the specific forms of personhood that individuals acquire through their immersion in and subjection to particular normative and technical regimes of conduct.

The book is written for postgraduate students and researchers interested in debates about identity, subjectivity and personhood in a range of disciplines – especially those in sociology, social anthropology, geography, and organization and management studies.

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.