Overview

Buying (RED) products—from Gap T-shirts to Apple—to fight AIDS. Drinking a “Caring Cup” of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to support fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by buying something. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case studies of “commodity activism.” Drawing from television, film, consumer activist campaigns, and cultures of celebrity and corporate patronage, the essays take up examples such as the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, sex positive retail activism, ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, and Angelina Jolie as multinational celebrity missionary. Exploring the complexities embedded in contemporary political activism, Commodity Activism reveals the workings of power and resistance as well as citizenship and subjectivity in the neoliberal era. Refusing to simply position politics in opposition to consumerism, this collection teases out the relationships between material cultures and political subjectivities, arguing that activism may itself be transforming into a branded commodity.

Full Product Details

Author:   Roopali Mukherjee ,  Sarah Banet-Weiser
Publisher:   New York University Press
Imprint:   New York University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.30cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9780814764008

ISBN 10:   0814764002
Pages:   314
Publication Date:   01 February 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments Foreword Marita Sturken Introduction: Commodity Activism in Neoliberal Times Sarah Banet-Weiser and Roopali MukherjeePart One: Brand, Culture, Action 1 Brand Me ""Activist"" Alison Hearn 2 ""Free Self-Esteem Tools?"" Sarah Banet-Weiser 3 Citizen Brand Laurie Ouellette 4 Good Housekeeping Jo LittlerPart Two: Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship 5 Make It Right? Brad Pitt, Post-Katrina Rebuilding, and the Spectacularization of Disaster Kevin Fox Gotham 6 Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone): Roopali Mukherjee 7 Salma Hayek's Celebrity Activism Isabel Molina-Guzman 8 Mother Angelina Alison Trope 9 ""Fair Vanity"" Melissa M. BroughPart Three: Community, Movements, Politics 10 Civic Fitness Samantha King 11 Eating for Change Josee Johnston and Kate Cairns 12 Changing the World One Orgasm at a Time Lynn Comella 13 Pay-for Culture John McMurria 14 Feeling Good While Buying Goods Mari Castaneda About the Contributors Index"

Reviews

Commodity activism has a long history but never has its significance been more complex to unravel than today...[this] smart, empirically rich and globally wide-ranging new collection provides us with very welcome coordinates in this difficult terrain. Nick Couldry, author of Why Voice Matters

Commodity activism has a long history but never has its significance been more complex to unravel than today...[this] smart, empirically rich and globally wide-ranging new collection provides us with very welcome coordinates in this difficult terrain. Nick Couldry, author of Why Voice Matters Without doubt this important collection of essays will contribute significantly to the new and growing field of 'critical consumer studies'. --J.R. Mitrano, Choice

Author Information

Roopali Mukherjee (Editor) Roopali Mukherjee is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the City University of New York, Queens College, and the author of The Racial Order of Things: Cultural Imaginaries of the Post-Soul Era. Sarah Banet-Weiser (Editor) Sarah Banet-Weiser is Professor and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She is the author of four books, including Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (2012), which won the International Communication Association's Outstanding Book Award, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (1999), Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship (2007), and Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (2018). She is the co-editor of Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting (2007) and Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times (2012), both available from NYU Press.

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