In Praise Of Commercial Culture

Download In Praise Of Commercial Culture full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online In Praise Of Commercial Culture ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

In Praise of Commercial Culture

Author : Tyler COWEN
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674029933
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis In Praise of Commercial Culture by : Tyler COWEN

Download or read book In Praise of Commercial Culture written by Tyler COWEN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.

What Price Fame?

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674001558
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What Price Fame? by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book What Price Fame? written by Tyler Cowen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where more people know who Princess Di was than who their own senators are, where Graceland draws more visitors per year than the White House, and where Michael Jordan is an industry unto himself, fame and celebrity are central currencies. In this intriguing book, Tyler Cowen explores and elucidates the economics of fame. Fame motivates the talented and draws like-minded fans together. But it also may put profitability ahead of quality, visibility above subtlety, and privacy out of reach. The separation of fame and merit is one of the central dilemmas Cowen considers in his account of the modern market economy. He shows how fame is produced, outlines the principles that govern who becomes famous and why, and discusses whether fame-seeking behavior harmonizes individual and social interests or corrupts social discourse and degrades culture. Most pertinently, Cowen considers the implications of modern fame for creativity, privacy, and morality. Where critics from Plato to Allan Bloom have decried the quest for fame, Cowen takes a more pragmatic, optimistic view. He identifies the benefits of a fame-intensive society and makes a persuasive case that however bad fame may turn out to be for the famous, it is generally good for society and culture.

Creative Destruction

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400825180
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Creative Destruction by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book Creative Destruction written by Tyler Cowen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity. Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade. For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.

Big Business

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1250110548
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Big Business by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book Big Business written by Tyler Cowen and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.

Selling Paris

Author : Alexia M. Yates
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674915984
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Selling Paris by : Alexia M. Yates

Download or read book Selling Paris written by Alexia M. Yates and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1871 Paris was a city in crisis. Besieged during the Franco-Prussian War, its buildings and boulevards were damaged, its finances mired in debt, and its new government untested. But if Parisian authorities balked at the challenges facing them, entrepreneurs and businessmen did not. Selling Paris chronicles the people, practices, and politics that spurred the largest building boom of the nineteenth century, turning city-making into big business in the French capital. Alexia Yates traces the emergence of a commercial Parisian housing market, as private property owners, architects, speculative developers, and credit-lending institutions combined to finance, build, and sell apartments and buildings. Real estate agents and their innovative advertising strategies fed these new residential spaces into a burgeoning marketplace. Corporations built empires with tens of thousands of apartments under management for the benefit of shareholders. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Parisian housing market caught the attention of the wider public as newspapers began reporting its ups and downs. The forces that underwrote Paris’s creation as the quintessentially modern metropolis were not only state-centered or state-directed but also grew out of the uncoordinated efforts of private actors and networks. Revealing the ways housing and property became commodities during a crucial period of urbanization, Selling Paris is an urban history of business and a business history of a city that transforms our understanding of both.

Brand New China

Author : Jing Wang
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674044821
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (448 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Brand New China by : Jing Wang

Download or read book Brand New China written by Jing Wang and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-10 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One part riveting account of fieldwork and one part rigorous academic study, Brand New China offers a unique perspective on the advertising and marketing culture of China. Jing Wang’s experiences in the disparate worlds of Beijing advertising agencies and the U.S. academy allow her to share a unique perspective on China during its accelerated reintegration into the global market system. Brand New China offers a detailed, penetrating, and up-to-date portrayal of branding and advertising in contemporary China. Wang takes us inside an advertising agency to show the influence of American branding theories and models. She also examines the impact of new media practices on Chinese advertising, deliberates on the convergence of grassroots creative culture and viral marketing strategies, samples successful advertising campaigns, provides practical insights about Chinese consumer segments, and offers methodological reflections on pop culture and advertising research. This book unveils a “brand new” China that is under the sway of the ideology of global partnership while struggling not to become a mirror image of the United States. Wang takes on the task of showing where Western thinking works in China, where it does not, and, perhaps most important, where it creates opportunities for cross-fertilization. Thanks to its combination of engaging vignettes from the advertising world and thorough research that contextualizes these vignettes, Brand New China will be of interest to industry participants, students of popular culture, and the general reading public interested in learning about a rapidly transforming Chinese society.

Markets and Cultural Voices

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472024124
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (72 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Markets and Cultural Voices by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book Markets and Cultural Voices written by Tyler Cowen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intriguing work explores the world of three amate artists. A native tradition, all of their painting is done in Mexico, yet, the finished product is sold almost exclusively to wealthy American art buyers. Cowen examines this cultural interaction between Mexico and the United States to see how globalization shapes the lives and the work of the artists and their families. The story of these three artists reveals that this exchange simultaneously creates economic opportunities for the artists, but has detrimental effects on the village. A view of the daily village life of three artists connected to the larger art world, this book should be of particular interest to those in the fields of cultural economics, Latino studies, economic anthropology and globalization.

Commerce in Culture

Author : Cynthia Joanne Brokaw
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 728 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 (3 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Commerce in Culture by : Cynthia Joanne Brokaw

Download or read book Commerce in Culture written by Cynthia Joanne Brokaw and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sibao today is a cluster of impoverished villages in western Fujian. But from the late 17th-early 20th centuries, it was home to a flourishing publishing industry supplying south China through itinerant booksellers. Brokaw describes this rural, low-level operation, tracing how Sibao's socio-geographical character shaped its progress.

Stubborn Attachments

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : Stripe Press
ISBN 13 : 1953953352
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (539 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Stubborn Attachments by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book Stubborn Attachments written by Tyler Cowen and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bestselling author and economist, a contemporary moral case for economic growth—and a dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. Growth is good. Through history, economic growth, in particular, has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue on our trends of growth, and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it, every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us. So, how do we proceed? Tyler Cowen, in a culmination of 20 years of thinking and research, provides a roadmap for moving forward. In this new book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. As a means of practicing the altruism that Stubborn Attachments argues for, Tyler Cowen is donating all earnings from this book to a man he met in Ethiopia earlier this year with aspirations to open his own travel business.

A Culture of Credit

Author : Rowena OLEGARIO
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674041631
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Culture of Credit by : Rowena OLEGARIO

Download or read book A Culture of Credit written by Rowena OLEGARIO and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the growing and dynamic economy of nineteenth-century America, businesses sold vast quantities of goods to one another, mostly on credit. This book explains how business people solved the problem of whom to trust--how they determined who was deserving of credit, and for how much. Rowena Olegario traces the way resistance, mutual suspicion, skepticism, and legal challenges were overcome in the relentless quest to make information on business borrowers more accurate and available.

Good and Plenty

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400827000
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Good and Plenty by : Tyler Cowen

Download or read book Good and Plenty written by Tyler Cowen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans agree about government arts funding in the way the women in the old joke agree about the food at the wedding: it's terrible--and such small portions! Americans typically either want to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, or they believe that public arts funding should be dramatically increased because the arts cannot survive in the free market. It would take a lover of the arts who is also a libertarian economist to bridge such a gap. Enter Tyler Cowen. In this book he argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty--and how it could result in even more and better. Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America's meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental--but decidedly not laissez-faire--system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe. Bringing serious attention to the neglected issue of the American way of funding the arts, Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.

Selling under the Swastika

Author : Pamela Swett
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804773553
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Selling under the Swastika by : Pamela Swett

Download or read book Selling under the Swastika written by Pamela Swett and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selling under the Swastika is the first in-depth study of commercial advertising in the Third Reich. While scholars have focused extensively on the political propaganda that infused daily life in Nazi Germany, they have paid little attention to the role played by commercial ads and sales culture in legitimizing and stabilizing the regime. Historian Pamela Swett explores the extent of the transformation of the German ads industry from the internationally infused republican era that preceded 1933 through the relative calm of the mid-1930s and into the war years. She argues that advertisements helped to normalize the concept of a "racial community," and that individual consumption played a larger role in the Nazi worldview than is often assumed. Furthermore, Selling under the Swastika demonstrates that commercial actors at all levels, from traveling sales representatives to company executives and ad designers, enjoyed relative independence as they sought to enhance their professional status and boost profits through the manipulation of National Socialist messages.

A Culture of Fact

Author : Barbara J. Shapiro
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801488498
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (884 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Culture of Fact by : Barbara J. Shapiro

Download or read book A Culture of Fact written by Barbara J. Shapiro and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shapiro traces the genesis of the fact, a modern concept that originated not in natural science but in legal discourse. She follows the concept's evolution and diffusion across a variety of disciplines in early modern England.

The Warhol Economy

Author : Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691213232
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Warhol Economy by : Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

Download or read book The Warhol Economy written by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which is more important to New York City's economy, the gleaming corporate office--or the grungy rock club that launches the best new bands? If you said "office," think again. In The Warhol Economy, Elizabeth Currid argues that creative industries like fashion, art, and music drive the economy of New York as much as--if not more than--finance, real estate, and law. And these creative industries are fueled by the social life that whirls around the clubs, galleries, music venues, and fashion shows where creative people meet, network, exchange ideas, pass judgments, and set the trends that shape popular culture. The implications of Currid's argument are far-reaching, and not just for New York. Urban policymakers, she suggests, have not only seriously underestimated the importance of the cultural economy, but they have failed to recognize that it depends on a vibrant creative social scene. They haven't understood, in other words, the social, cultural, and economic mix that Currid calls the Warhol economy. With vivid first-person reporting about New York's creative scene, Currid takes the reader into the city spaces where the social and economic lives of creativity merge. The book has fascinating original interviews with many of New York's important creative figures, including fashion designers Zac Posen and Diane von Furstenberg, artists Ryan McGinness and Futura, and members of the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The economics of art and culture in New York and other cities has been greatly misunderstood and underrated. The Warhol Economy explains how the cultural economy works-and why it is vital to all great cities.

Imaging Culture

Author : Candace M. Keller
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253057213
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Imaging Culture by : Candace M. Keller

Download or read book Imaging Culture written by Candace M. Keller and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imaging Culture is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthetic significance of photography in Mali, West Africa, from the 1930s to the present. Spanning the dynamic periods of colonialism, national independence, socialism, and democracy, its analysis focuses on the studio and documentary work of professional urban photographers, particularly in the capital city of Bamako and in smaller cities such as Mopti and Ségu. Featuring the work of more than twenty-five photographers, it concentrates on those who have been particularly influential for the local development and practice of the medium as well as its international popularization and active participation in the contemporary art market. Imaging Culture looks at how local aesthetic ideas are visually communicated in the photographers' art and argues that though these aesthetic arrangements have specific relevance for local consumers, they transcend geographical and cultural boundaries to have value for contemporary global audiences as well. Imaging Culture is an important and visually interesting book which will become a standard source for those who study African photography and its global impact.

Selling Sounds

Author : David Suisman
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067403337X
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Selling Sounds by : David Suisman

Download or read book Selling Sounds written by David Suisman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-31 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast. Selling Sounds uncovers the origins of the culture industry in music and chronicles how music ignited an auditory explosion that penetrated all aspects of society. It maps the growth of the music business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on everything from copyright law to the sensory environment. While music came to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as sound ensured that its commercial growth and social impact would remain unique. Today, the music that surrounds us—from iPods to ring tones to Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from airports to grocery stores. The roots of this modern culture lie in the business of popular song, player-pianos, and phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.

Evangelicals Incorporated

Author : Daniel Vaca
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674243978
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Evangelicals Incorporated by : Daniel Vaca

Download or read book Evangelicals Incorporated written by Daniel Vaca and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.