The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentation

"This book tries to understand the rise and fall of consumerism. For marketers and service providers alike, a consuming read." --Business Today "The Unmanageable Consumer is an excellent volume that guides the reader through some of the most impenetrable thickets of consumer theory, safely negotiating the weird as well as the familiar. It is often engrossing, never lifeless, and always illuminating." --Colin Brown in Consumer Policy Review Consumption and concepts of "the consumer" sit at the center of current academic, political, and environmental debates. The premise of this provocative book, a tour-de-force in its breadth of coverage and analysis, focuses on the fact that different traditions have constructed different representations of the consumer, each having its own specificity. Beginning with a historical overview of the evolution of contemporary Western consumerism, The Unmanageable Consumer successfully analyzes the different meanings of consumerism over time. Succeeding chapters then present distinctive portraits of "the consumer," including the consumer as chooser, communicator, identity-seeker, and rebel. In an informative discussion of the fragmentation, volatility, and confusions of Western consumerism, the authors achieve their goal of defining "the unmanageable consumer." This book is essential reading for courses in marketing, organization theory, management studies, and cultural studies. The Unmanageable Consumer is a timely and accessible volume covering a wide range of perspectives.

Yiannis Gabriel is Professor of Organizational Theory at Bath University. Yiannis has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Yiannis is well known for his work into organizational storytelling and narratives, leadership, management learning and the culture and politics of contemporary consumption. He has used stories as a way of studying numerous social and organizational phenomena including leader-follower relations, group dynamics and fantasies, nostalgia, insults and apologies. He has also carried out extensive research on the psychoanalysis of organizations.

 

Yiannis is founder and coordinator of the Organizational Storytelling Seminar series, now in its fourteenth year (See http://www.organizational-storytelling.org.uk/), the author of nine books and numerous articles. He is elected to the board of EGOS and is currently Senior Editor of Organization Studies. His enduring fascination as a researcher lies in what he describes as the unmanageable qualities of life in and out of organizations.

Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University′s Centre for Food Policy since 2002. With a PhD in Social Psychology from Leeds University he became a hill farmer in Lancashire, North of England, in the 1970s.

Over the last four decades he has engaged in public and academic research and debate about food policy: what sort of food system do we want? What do we mean by progress? He has written and co-written 10 books and many reports and papers on the trends, problems and policy frameworks in the food system. A constant theme is how public health, environment, social justice and consumer rights do and don’t connect.

Besides his academic work, he has been an advisor to many bodies including the World Health Organisation, the EU Environment Commissioner, the Mayor of London and many civil society organisations. He was the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commissioner for food and land use in 2006-11. All this enquiry and engagement spawned and retains his keen interest in the issues analysed in The Unmanageable Consumer.