In Praise Of Commercial Culture

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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)

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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.

Creative Destruction

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

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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.

What Price Fame?

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

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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.

Big Business

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

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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.

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)

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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.

Brand New China

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

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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.

Commerce in Culture

Author : Cynthia J. Brokaw
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684174503
Total Pages : 699 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Commerce in Culture by : Cynthia J. Brokaw

Download or read book Commerce in Culture written by Cynthia J. Brokaw and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sibao today is a cluster of impoverished villages in the mountains of western Fujian. Yet from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth century, it was home to a flourishing publishing industry. Through itinerant booksellers and branch bookshops managed by Sibao natives, this industry supplied much of south China with cheap educational texts, household guides, medical handbooks, and fortune-telling manuals.It is precisely the ordinariness of Sibao imprints that make them valuable for the study of commercial publishing, the text-production process, and the geographical and social expansion of book culture in Chinese society. In a study with important implications for cultural and economic history, Cynthia Brokaw describes rural, lower-level publishing and bookselling operations at the end of the imperial period. Commerce in Culture traces how the poverty and isolation of Sibao necessitated a bare-bones approach to publishing and bookselling and how the Hakka identity of the Sibao publishers shaped the configuration of their distribution networks and even the nature of their publications.Sibao’s industry reveals two major trends in print culture: the geographical extension of commercial woodblock publishing to hinterlands previously untouched by commercial book culture and the related social penetration of texts to lower-status levels of the population."

The Age of Persuasion

Author : Terry O'Reilly
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1582437246
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (824 download)

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Book Synopsis The Age of Persuasion by : Terry O'Reilly

Download or read book The Age of Persuasion written by Terry O'Reilly and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stop to consider the culture of the 21st century: Each morning, you might hear a half–dozen ads on the radio before your feet touch the floor. Staggering out of bed, you'll pass brand logos on your clothing and in your bathroom. By the end of the day, hundreds — perhaps thousands — of marketing messages have targeted you. And yet so little is understood about how marketing affects our lives, our society, and our world. Enter Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant, the ad men behind The Age of Persuasion, the popular radio show broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Sirius Radio. They have made it their mission to share the back–room story of modern marketing, entertaining asides and all. "Think of advertisers as millions of ants in a colony, each working hard and each with its own objective. Except that in this colony, every single ant is competing against the others. That's the ad business. Almost every ad you see, hear, and otherwise experience is competing for a piece of your imagination. And like any cross–section of humanity, the vast, worldwide advertising community is diverse: composed of geniuses and idiots, saints and buffoons, and everything in between." From the early players to the Mad Men of the 1960s and beyond, O'Reilly and Tennant offer insights into a rapidly evolving industry. Smart and funny, The Age of Persuasion provides an entertaining — and eye–opening — look at a world driven by marketing.

Selling Paris

Author : Alexia M. Yates
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674915984
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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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 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Besieged during the Franco-Prussian War, its buildings damaged, its finances mired in debt, Paris was a city in crisis. Alexia Yates chronicles the private actors and networks, practices and politics, that spurred the largest building boom of the nineteenth century, turning city-making into big business in the French capital.

German Pop Culture

Author : Agnes C. Mueller
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472113842
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (138 download)

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Book Synopsis German Pop Culture by : Agnes C. Mueller

Download or read book German Pop Culture written by Agnes C. Mueller and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive study of the impact of American culture on modern German society

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)

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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.

Selling under the Swastika

Author : Pamela E. Swett
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804788839
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Selling under the Swastika by : Pamela E. Swett

Download or read book Selling under the Swastika written by Pamela E. Swett and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 361 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.

Advertising Empire

Author : David Ciarlo
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674059239
Total Pages : 438 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Advertising Empire by : David Ciarlo

Download or read book Advertising Empire written by David Ciarlo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the nineteenth century, Germany turned toward colonialism, establishing protectorates in Africa, and toward a mass consumer society, mapping the meaning of commodities through advertising. These developments, distinct in the world of political economy, were intertwined in the world of visual culture. David Ciarlo offers an innovative visual history of each of these transformations. Tracing commercial imagery across different products and media, Ciarlo shows how and why the “African native” had emerged by 1900 to become a familiar figure in the German landscape, selling everything from soap to shirts to coffee. The racialization of black figures, first associated with the American minstrel shows that toured Germany, found ever greater purchase in German advertising up to and after 1905, when Germany waged war against the Herero in Southwest Africa. The new reach of advertising not only expanded the domestic audience for German colonialism, but transformed colonialism’s political and cultural meaning as well, by infusing it with a simplified racial cast. The visual realm shaped the worldview of the colonial rulers, illuminated the importance of commodities, and in the process, drew a path to German modernity. The powerful vision of racial difference at the core of this modernity would have profound consequences for the future.

Stubborn Attachments

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

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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.

In Praise of Slowness

Author : Carl Honore
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061907316
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (619 download)

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Book Synopsis In Praise of Slowness by : Carl Honore

Download or read book In Praise of Slowness written by Carl Honore and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults currently devote on average a mere half hour per week to making love. Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control. In Praise of Slowness traces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation. Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Realizing the price we pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace -- and living happier, healthier, and more productive lives as a result. A Slow revolution is taking place. Here you will find no Luddite calls to overthrow technology and seek a preindustrial utopia. This is a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word -- balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where they may have been least expected -- in slowing down. In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.

Your Ad Here

Author : Michael Serazio
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814724590
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Your Ad Here by : Michael Serazio

Download or read book Your Ad Here written by Michael Serazio and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2015 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Media Ecology Association 2013 Book of the Year, Visual Communication Division, National Communication Association Amidst the profound upheavals in technology, economics, and culture that mark the contemporary moment, marketing strategies have multiplied, as brand messages creep ever deeper into our private lives. In Your Ad Here, an engaging and timely new book, Michael Serazio investigates the rise of “guerrilla marketing” as a way of understanding increasingly covert and interactive flows of commercial persuasion. Digging through a decade of trade press coverage and interviewing dozens of agency CEOs, brand managers, and creative directors, Serazio illuminates a diverse and fascinating set of campaign examples: from the America’s Army video game to Pabst Blue Ribbon’s “hipster hijack,” from buzz agent bloggers and tweeters to The Dark Knight’s “Why So Serious?” social labyrinth. Blending rigorous analysis with eye-opening reporting and lively prose, Your Ad Here reveals the changing ways that commercial culture is produced today. Serazio goes behind-the-scenes with symbolic creators to appreciate the professional logic informing their work, while giving readers a glimpse into this new breed of “hidden persuaders” optimized for 21st-century media content, social patterns, and digital platforms. Ultimately, this new form of marketing adds up to a subtle, sophisticated orchestration of consumer conduct and heralds a world of advertising that pretends to have nothing to sell.

In Praise of Copying

Author : Marcus Boon
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674047834
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis In Praise of Copying by : Marcus Boon

Download or read book In Praise of Copying written by Marcus Boon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically, culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.