Consumer Capitalism Research Articles

James P. Woodard. Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. xvi + 524 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5643-4, $37.50 (paperback); 978-1-4696-5637-3, $29.99 (e-book).

James P. Woodard. Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. xvi + 524 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5643-4, 29.99 (e-book). - Volume 22 Issue 3

The Digital Capital of Social Services Consumers: Factors of Influence and the Need for Investment

Digitalization is one of the strategic directions taken in the reform of social services and a prerequisite for improving their quality and accessibility for various target groups in modern society. In recent years, the problems of digitalization occupy a significant place in social research; however, insufficient attention has been paid to the consideration of the digitalization process from the point of view of the social services clients themselves. The purpose of this article is to partially fill this gap. The article presents the results of a study aimed at developing the concept of the 'digital capital' of current and potential customers of social services, which comprised an analysis of their digital literacy, Internet use as well as the technical capabilities and willingness of Russian citizens to receive online social services. Our analysis of the digital capital of consumers of social services draws on data of the Federal Statistics Service and Unified Social Security Information System as well as on the results of a survey on social services conducted among residents of St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg in 2019. The results of the study suggest the existence of various barriers to the development of the digitalization of social services provision. In addition to infrastructural problems, the existence/absence of digital communication tools and ICT competencies among citizens, primarily socially vulnerable sectors of the population, it is necessary to highlight the socio-psychological barriers: a lack of understanding and distrust among certain social groups – primarily among older age groups – towards digital technologies, i. e. insufficient digital capital. Overcoming the identified barriers can be achieved by investing in the digital capital of consumers of social services.

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

YouTube, Learning, and Transformative Critical Pedagogy

Fundamental changes that have taken place in the realm of information technology— particularly with the emergence of the Internet—have altered significantly ways by which people communicate, interact and exchange information. Similarly, in the realm of education, the same events have changed the ways by which teaching and learning were conducted. Indeed, the integration of technology into learning has made the learning process more interactive, collaborative and experiential. However, any innovation in education, as a result of advances in technology, is not an end in itself, but one that must be based on scientific research. This study was a library research, seeking to evaluate some of the existing efforts in integrating YouTube into learning and review a series of critical examination of such practices from the perspective of transformative critical pedagogy. The study showed that the majority of learning that has made use of YouTube demonstrated high access to the material, a more successful learning, and increased motivation of students to learn even further by searching more relevant videos. Nonetheless, for YouTube’s integration into learning to be transformative, it needs clear philosophical and pedagogical foundations. Otherwise, it may serve as the fulfilment of capitalist consumerism.
 Keywords: technology, integration, learning, YouTube

Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. By James P. Woodward (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 544 pp. $95.00 cloth $37.50 paper

<i>Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century</i>. By James P. Woodward (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 544 pp. $95.00 cloth $37.50 paper

Retreating to the Country: R.C. Sherriff's Rural Interwar Novels &amp; Environmental Politics

This essay contextualizes two of R.C. Sherriff's inter-war novels, Greengates (1936) and The Hopkins Manuscript (1939), within modernist debates about countryside preservation as well as noting their ongoing relevance to contemporary environmental politics. By creating characters who are both sympathetic war veterans and easily satirized figures of patriarchy and privilege, Sherriff engages complex themes of capitalist consumerism, ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitudes about land policy, and fraught impulses of pastoral nostalgia. These novels resist facile diatribe; instead, they force the reader to inhabit the emotional swings inherent in the lived experience of love and sacrifice required for environmental preservation.

Brazil's Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century

Brazil's Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century

Экстерналистская траектория развития права: утилитаризм или эвдемонизм?

The article examines the importance of externalist and internalist approaches for the formation of an optimal strategy for the development of legal science in modern conditions. Some aspects of interaction of law with economics, ethics, politics and other spheres of public relations are considered. Special attention is paid to the influence of eudaimonism, utilitarianism and other consequential concepts on the legal institutions. It is concluded that the externalist path of development is promising, provided that the narrow utilitarian realization of the ideals and economic prerequisites of consumer capitalism is abandoned.

The Invention of Clutter and the New Spiritual Discipline of Decluttering

Abstract This essay argues that the popular global decluttering movement epitomized in Marie Kondo is a new spiritual discipline tailored to a particular cultural moment in which members of affluent societies, especially women, are caught between the shame of displaying too much “stuff” at home and the guilt of discarding it. After suggesting reasons for the movement’s neglect by theologians, the essay offers a brief history of the “invention of clutter.” Through this history, the essay frames decluttering as an expression of “makeover culture” that posits a timeless aesthetic self. Decluttering functions as a spiritual practice of late consumer capitalism that converts its followers to a disposition of detachment through procedures that mirror Christian conversion. While appreciating the attention the movement shows to women’s domestic lives and to material things, the essay offers a theological critique of the movement’s construction of an aesthetic self who is absolved of guilt by escaping time and the ecological web into private, timeless space. The essay commends instead a narrative, ecological self whose engagement with material things reflects a sacramental vision that issues in virtues like frugality.

Empire by emulation: Brazilian business elites encounter the U.S. department store

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of Brazilian businessmen in recreating aspects of the culture of U.S.-style consumer capitalism in their own country, especially through their emulation of the North American department store. Rather than an imposition from without, the reshaping of Brazilian retailing practice and culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century was largely the work of native-born Brazilian elites, some of whom were hugely successful, and whose success was part of a larger remaking of modern Brazil.

Poets in Prose: Genre &amp; History in the Arabic Novel

Abstract Novelists in many literary traditions have come to terms with the distinctiveness of their art form by thinking about poets and poetry. The need to differentiate the novel from poetry is especially pressing for Arab prose writers because of poetry's preeminent status in that literary corpus. Many twentieth-century Arab intellectuals have valorized the novel as the representative genre of modernity–whether conceived as an absent ideal or the epoch of consumerist capitalism–while situating poetry as a backward element of contemporary life. But poetry has also offered prose writers such as Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, in A Period of Time, and novelists such as Tayeb Salih, in Season of Migration to the North, a way to reflect on the ambivalences engendered by modernity and the experience of colonialism. This tradition of using the novel to meditate on historical rupture and the fate of poetry continues into the present, even as poetry's relation to political and intellectual life becomes increasingly tenuous.

Alice no país das rachaduras

Abstract This article focuses on the representation of consumption in Maria Valéria Rezende’s novel Quarenta dias (2014). Departing from Zygmunt Bauman’s perspective on the collateral damages of consumer capitalism in Consuming Life (2007) and from Silviano Santiago’s considerations about poverty in “O cosmopolitismo do pobre” (2004), I argue that Rezende provides a critique to the invisibility of low-income (or no-income) consumers in consumer society. I demonstrate that, through the path that the protagonist of Quarenta dias follows between her daughter’s consumerist world and the survival experience of those that she encounters in the streets of Porto Alegre while wandering through the city, Rezende makes visible certain segments of Brazilian society, such as Northeastern migrants and homeless people. While on this path, the protagonist both rejects and values consumption, depending on its intensity and the reach of its social consequences.

Brazil's Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. By James P. Woodard. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolinia Press, 2020. xvi + 524 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. Paperback, $37.50. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5643-4.

Brazil's Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. By James P. Woodard. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolinia Press, 2020. xvi + 524 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. Paperback, $37.50. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5643-4. - Volume 95 Issue 4

ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНО-ЕКОНОМІЧНИЙ МЕХАНІЗМ УПРАВЛІННЯ МАРКЕТИНГОВИМ ТЕСТУВАННЯМ РИНКОВИХ ПЕРСПЕКТИВ ТОВАРНИХ ІННОВАЦІЙ ПРОМИСЛОВИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ

The success of innovation activities of industrial enterprises to create product innovations depends on many factors. One of the main factors in this list is an objective assessment of their market prospects. This assessment can be carried out using the procedure of marketing testing, as it contains necessary methodological support and tools to determine the commercial prospects of product innovation at each stage of the innovation cycle. The effectiveness of marketing testing largely depends on how successfully organized this process in the enterprise, which actualizes the development of organizational and economic mechanism for managing marketing testing of market prospects for product innovations. This research is devoted to this question. The article presents the organizational and economic mechanism for managing marketing testing of market prospects of product innovations of industrial enterprises. The developed mechanism contains: subsystem of information support (internal and external information), target subsystem (tasks and purposes, criteria and principles of management of marketing testing), control subsystem (subjects which carry out management and functions which they carry out), the managed subsystem (divisions of the enterprise). Involved in marketing testing), providing a subsystem (methods and resources of management) and a subsystem of controlling the procedure of marketing testing of market prospects of product innovations. The mechanism also includes a subsystem of marketing testing, which consists of the author’s theoretical and methodological approaches to assessing the market prospects of product innovations at the stages of the innovation cycle of their development. It is based on the following approaches: theoretical and methodological approach to foresight research of future needs in product innovations; theoretical and methodological approach to the criterion base of evaluation and selection from a number of alternatives of innovative projects for the development of product innovations; theoretical and methodological approach to marketing testing and evaluation of market prospects of product innovations; theoretical and methodological approach to the diagnosis and strengthening of consumer capital of the enterprise; methodical approach, by which decisions are made on the readiness of product innovations to enter the market and complete the work on the procedure of marketing testing. The marketing testing mechanism contains the relationships between the subsystems (influence, coordination, and adjustment, feedback) to obtain an overall result. The result of the implementation of the proposed mechanism is tested for market success, developed product innovation, which is ready for commercialization, which is predicted to succeed, and the developer, thus, will receive all planned revenues and profits from its sale on the market. The conducted analysis is a future basis for the implementation of the developed organizational and economic testing mechanism in the practical activities of domestic innovative industrial enterprises.

MESO I PIJESAK: Rasvjetovljenje slike i afektivna logika tijela u slikarstvu Francisa Bacona – Deleuzeov uvid

Autor u analizi slikarstva Francisa Bacona nastoji preispitati koliko je „kanonska” knjiga Gillesa Deleuzea još uvijek dostatna za mogućnost uvida u ono što ovo slikarstvo uistinu hoće – dospjeti do krajnjih granica rasvjetovljenja slike i afektivne logike tijela. Pritom se u suprotstavljenosti povijesno-umjetničkoga puta tumačenja i onoga filozofijskog pokazuje kako svaka isključivost ne pridonosi željenomu rezultatu. U kritičkome razmatranju ovoga prijepora, posredovanoga novijom literaturom o tome koliko je uopće održiva Deleuzeova postavka o Baconu kao o „antinarativnome” i „antireprezentacijskome” slikaru nasilja i histerije u suvremenome svijetu spektakla potrošačkoga kapitalizma, autor tvrdi da se pitanje slike u Bacona mora raščistiti na tlu razumijevanja onoga što u opreci „mesa” i „pijeska” proizlazi iz tzv. ranoga i kasnoga opusa ovoga paradigmatskog slikara korporalnoga obrata. To se ponajprije odnosi na ono kako analiza Figure i „logike senzacije” u Deleuzeovu tumačenju otvara pitanje koliko je Francis Bacon uopće slikarstvo zatvorio u vlastiti prostor „hipnotičkoga učinka” stvaranja nastojeći na zasadama Cézannea i Van Gogha obujmiti predmet slikanja vlastitim „dijagramom” koji umjesto skica preuzima funkciju intuitivnoga mišljenja u trenutku, neponovljivoga i jednokratnoga poput bljeska sunca u zrcalu.

Drugs, brands and consumer culture: the sign-value of the products sold on the darknet marketplaces

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore drug consumption from a cultural perspective, in the context of the consumer culture. It aims to identify if, through the branding process, cryptomarket vendors are attaching a sign-value to their products to facilitate the process by which consumers will recognize and appreciate it. Design/methodology/approach The study was done by performing a qualitative content analysis loosely inspired from semiotics on a sample of 40 seller pages from the Dream Market and samples of their listings, collected in 2018. The vendors who had over 1,000 successful transactions were selected, as they were considered to be the ones who have gained a certain level of trust on the cryptomarket and were considered to having to compete by differentiating their services through their brands of choice. Findings The results have shown that the sign-value attached to the drugs sold by the vendors from this sample can be divided in two different types of sign-systems: the popular culture and the drug cultures. The popular culture includes sign-value borrowed from established brands, popular media and media representations of crime worlds. The drug cultures include values from three types of subcultural systems: cannabis, party and psychonaut subculture. Originality/value The study is trying to stir the discussions around the regulation of the drug markets by looking at the market forces within them as rather a product of consumer capitalism and not as processes that happen outside the postmodern cultural and societal trends.

Precarity and Enterprising Selves: The Resemiotization of Neon Language Objects

Following my observation of an increased prevalence of neon or neon-esque signs within high-end spaces of consumption, this paper seeks to theorise how such signs can function as vehicles for the circulation of neoliberal ideas, a key concept structuring the capitalist economies, whilst having effects for individuals who are sold a brand of cool capitalist consumption. I demonstrates how neoliberalism is semiotically realised both online and offline through examples of “language objects” consisting of neon signs found in cafes located in Hong Kong and Singapore, and their Instagram resemiotizations, focusingon dimensions of precarity and the entrepreneurial self. In doing so, I suggest that these signs are not merely aphorismic decor but a means to reproduce neoliberal ideology in both their medium and message when they stylise concepts of individual agency, success and the turning of everyday activities into “projects”. Instead of the transformation and success promised by these stances, these signs further obscure the social embeddedness of neoliberalism and resulting inequality.

Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century. By James P. Woodard

<i>Brazil’s Revolution in Commerce: Creating Consumer Capitalism in the American Century</i>. By James P. Woodard

System for Evaluating Organizational, Human and Consumer Capital for Effective Management of Intellectual Capital of High-Tech Digital Companies

The problem of forming effective teams for creating, implementing and commercializing innovative products is relevant for high-tech companies focused on business digitalization. The paper offers a solution to this problem based on the developed methodology for assessing human intellectual potential. The content of sensory, emotional, logical, creative, socio-cultural and economic components of intelligence is revealed and their functional interaction in the implementation of team innovation is described. The study presents a method for determining the integral indicator of individual intellectual potential based on a weighted score of structural components of intelligence. There was described an algorithm for finding the synergy coefficient and team potential. Also, there were presented testing results of the methodology in the activities of the international Russian company “Yandex” (on the example of a regional branch). Based on the testing results, additional areas of application of the developed methodology were identified.

Toxic Theisms? New Strategies for Prebunking Religious Belief-Behaviour Complexes

This article offers a brief epidemiological analysis and description of some of the main cognitive (and coalitional) biases that can facilitate the emergence and enable the maintenance of a broad category of toxic traditions, which will be referred to here as “religious” belief-behaviour complexes (BBCs) or “theisms”. I argue that such BBCs played an “adaptive” role in the Upper Paleolithic and have continued to “work” throughout most of human history by enhancing the species’ capacity for material production and promoting its biological reproduction. However, today the theist credulity and conformity biases that surreptitiously shape these kinds of social assemblages have now become maladaptive in most contexts in the Anthropocene. In order to help address the pressing global challenges our species faces, such as extreme climate change, excessive consumer capitalism, and escalating cultural conflict, I commend the use of “prebunking” and other debiasing strategies in our attempts to reduce the toxicity of theisms in the body politic.