Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle

ISBN 10: 041595519X / ISBN 13: 9780415955195

Published by Routledge, 2008

About this Item

A collection that offers a global perspective on the changing character of cities and the increasing importance that consumer culture plays in defining their symbolic economies. It is suitable for students of Urban Studies, Geography, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Heritage Studies and Anthropology. Editor(s): Cronin, Anne; Hetherington, Kevin. Num Pages: 320 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: JFFT. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 229 x 151 x 16. Weight in Grams: 440. . 2008. 1st Edition. paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780415955195

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle
• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041595519X
• ISBN 13: 9780415955195
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This collection offers a global perspective on the changing character of cities and the increasing importance that consumer culture plays in defining their symbolic economies. Increasingly, forms of spectacle have come to shape how cities are imagined and to influence their character and the practices through which we know them - from advertising and the selling of real estate, to youth cultural consumption practices and forms of entrepreneurship, to the regeneration of urban areas under the guise of the heritage industry and the development of a WiFi landscape. Using examples of cities such as New York, Sydney, Atlantic City, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Douala, Liverpool, San Juan, Berlin and Harbin this book illustrates how image and practice have become entangled in the performance of the symbolic economy. It also argues that it is not just how the urban present is being shaped in this way that is significant to the development of cities but also that a prominent feature of their development has been the spectacular imagining of the past as heritage and through regeneration. Yet the ghosts that this conjures up in practice offer us a possible form of political unsettlement and alternative ways of viewing cities that is only just beginning to be explored.

Through this important collection by some of the leading analysts of consumption, cities and space Consuming the Entrepreneurial City offers a cutting edge analysis of the ways in which cities are developing and the implications this has for their future. It is essential reading for students of Urban Studies, Geography, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Heritage Studies and Anthropology.

About the Author

Anne M. Cronin is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology department at Lancaster University, UK. She is the author of Advertising and Consumer Citizenship and Advertising Myths.

Kevin Hetherington is Professor of Geography at The Open University, UK. He has published widely on issues of spatiality and consumption. His most recent book with Routledge is Capitalism’s Eye: Cultural Spaces of the Commodity.