Targeted as the ‘grey consumer’, people retiring now participated in the creation of the post-war consumer culture. These consumers have grown older but have not stopped consuming.
Based on extensive analysis over two years, this unique book examines the engagement of older people with consumer society in Britain since the 1960s. It charts the changes in the experience of later life in the UK over the last 50 years, the rise of the ‘individualised consumer citizen’ and what this means for health and social policies.
The book will appeal to students, lecturers, researchers and policy analysts. It will provide material for teaching on undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses in sociology, social policy and social gerontology. It will also have considerable appeal to private industry engaged with older consumers as well as to voluntary and non-governmental organisations addressing ageing in Britain.
Later life in consumer society 49 FIVE Later life in consumer society introduction As we have seen in Chapters One and Two, the closing decades of the 20th century saw significant social changes in the nature of later life, some of which reflect the emergence of ‘consumer societies’ in the UK and elsewhere. The uneven nature of retirement, as well as the relative affluence of many retired people and the poverty of others, influence the experience and patterns of consumption in later life. Several key writers have pointed out how social identities are
Key messages Environmental ethics understood as general understandings are situated and contextualised in everyday life, experience and place. Therefore they are not a universal understanding of environmental ethics. Environmental ethics can take part in challenging and questioning the contemporary cultural formations concerning consumption and provision, and be part of forming a cultural critique. Strong environmental ethics are to a high degree connected to people’s ability to imagine (consumer) society and everyday life differently, and they can take
In the context of widespread precarity and ongoing crises, it is no surprise ruins have captured much attention in recent years. This book is about a new kind of space, one that is deeply troubling for consumer society: the retail ruin.
Jacob C. Miller bridges human geography, archaeology and critical urban studies to offer a starting point for conceptualizing retail ruins. Drawing on fieldnotes and photographs, Miller crafts a hauntological approach informed by the theories of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to more recent thinking on assemblage, spectacle and the politics of urban space.
This radical and experimental book advances a new approach to understanding spectacle, one that helps us better understand how consumer culture paved the way for the post-truth politics of Donald Trump.
Miller innovatively blends social and political theory, newspaper articles and contemporary commentary on Trump and Trumpism to provide a unique perspective on how capitalism intersects with and enables fascistic forms of power.
His analysis contributes fresh insights to the rise of Trump and the politics of everyday consumer culture today.
This book challenges existing stereotypes about the ‘consumer as chooser’. It shows how we must develop a more sophisticated understanding of consumers, examining their place and role as users of public services. The analysis shows that there are many different ‘faces’ of the consumer and that it is not easy to categorise users in particular environments.
Drawing on empirical research, “The consumer in public services" critiques established assumptions surrounding citizenship and consumption. Choice may grab the policy headlines but other essential values are revealed as important throughout the book. One issue concerns the ‘subjects’ of consumerism, or who it is that presents themselves when they come to use public services. Another concerns consumer ‘mechanisms’, or the ways that public services try to relate to these people. Bringing these issues together for the first time, with cutting-edge contributions from a range of leading researchers, the message is that today’s public services must learn to cope with a differentiated public.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of social policy and public administration. It will also appeal to policy-makers leading ‘user-focused’ public service reforms, as well as those responsible for implementing such reforms at the frontline of modern public services.
Which underlying problems pose the greatest threat to British society in the 21st century? A hundred years after its philanthropist founder identified poverty, alcohol, drugs and gambling among the social evils of his time, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation initiated a major consultation among leading thinkers, activists and commentators, as well as the wider public. The findings have now been brought together in this fascinating book.
Individual contributors range across the political spectrum but the book also reports the results from a web survey and consultation with groups whose voices are less often heard. The results suggest that while some evils - like poverty - endure as undisputed causes of social harm, more recent sources of social misery, such as an alleged rise in selfish consumerism and a perceived decline in personal responsibility and family commitment, attract controversy.
Drawing on practices and theories of sustainability, Environmental policy and sustainable development in China explores the prospects for achieving environmentally benign economic and social development in China and beyond. Using the Chinese ‘world city’ of Hong Kong as a backdrop and case study, it introduces major conceptions of sustainability, describes historical and political contexts for environmental policymaking, and analyses key challenges related to sustainable development, including air pollution, water quality, waste, transport and climate change. The book will be a valuable and unique resource for students, teachers and readers interested in environmental policy, sustainable development and ecological governance, especially in China and Hong Kong.
All of the author’s royalties from sales of this book will be donated by Policy Press to Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong) and WWF (Hong Kong).
To begin new relationships in later life is increasingly common in large parts of the Western world. This timely book addresses the gap in knowledge about late life repartnering and provides a comprehensive map of the changing landscape of late life intimacy.
Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the book examines the changing structural conditions of intimacy and ageing in late modernity. How do longer lives, changing norms and new technologies affect older people’s relationship careers, their attitudes to repartnering and in the formation of new relationships? Which forms do these new unions take? What does a new intimate relationship offer older men and women and what are the consequences for social integration? What is the role and meaning of sex?
By introducing a gains-perspective the book challenges stereotypes of old age as a period of loss and decline. It also challenges the image of older people as conservative, and instead presents them as an avant-garde that often experiment with new ways of being together.
Society is undergoing change, and, as a result, social welfare services – including social work – are being transformed. This book explores the sociological basis of contemporary society and shows how social workers experience tensions and contradictions in practice.
The book uses case studies and self directed activities to enable students to relate sociology to daily lives. It explores key themes in turn, examining their relevance for social work and how they can be applied to practice, particularly in areas such as children and families, mental health, disability and older people.
Relevant and accessible, the authors explore aspects of class, ethnicity and gender and conclude with suggestions of how sociology can inform practice and enable social work to engage with processes of transformation.
The book provides essential material for students of social work and social care, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It will also be relevant to social policy and sociology undergraduates.
