Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption

Citation

Nava M, Blake A, MacRury I & Richards B (eds.) (1997) Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Buy-This-Book-Studies-in-Advertising-and-Consumption/Nava-Blake-MacRury-Richards/p/book/9780415141321

Abstract
Buy this Book: originated at a three-day conference entitled 'Changes in Advertising and Consumption Since the 1950s', which was organised by us (now the editors of this volume) under the aegis of the Centre for Consumer and Advertising Studies at the University of East London in 1994. Although we were confident, as we sent out calls for papers, that this then still-emerging area of intellectual concern was important as well as exciting, we did not anticipate the extensiveness of the response (which ranged from as far afield as Scandinavia, North America and the Pacific Rim), nor the high quality of the many contributions we selected for the conference and in many cases subsequently, for this collection. It has become clear that the production of this book - from the planning of the conference to the date of publication - has spanned a period during which consumption and advertising have gained enormously in terms of scholarly interest and visibility (see for example, Falk 1994; Miller 1995; Carter 1996; Lury 1996; Mort 1996; Nava 1996; Nixon 1996; Slater 1996; Warde 1996; Campbell and Falk 19972). Thus, as we complete the editing work and write this introduction, the key political-theoretical issue may no longer be to insist to the wider academic world that these themes and their associated conceptual innovations be awarded the recognition that we think they merit. This is increasingly happening. The issue today is rather to consider how the focus on consumption - and in this case advertising as one aspect of it - both interrogates assumptions within specific disciplines and demands a reassessment of the relationship between disciplines. © 1997 Mica Nava, Andrew Blake, lain MacRury and Barry Richards.