Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 169 pages
- Published by: Routledge
- Edition: 2nd Edition October 16, 1996
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0415130476
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0415130479
-
Book Dimensions:
8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
- Weighs: 8.5 ounces
Product Description
First published in 1979,
The World of Goods rapidly established itself as a classic. In this pioneering work, a leading anthropologist and an economist join forces to suggest what market researchers have long suspected and anthropologists have observed firsthand in other cultures--that people use goods as a means of communicating with each other.
It is the unique contribution of this fascinating book that it shows us precisely how the insights of anthropology can help us better understand the varied ways in which we use the "world of goods" to communicate.
About The Author
Mary Douglas retired as Professor of Anthropology at University College London in 1977, and taught in America until 1988. Baron Isherwood is an Economist and Director of the Regeneration Group, Government Office for the North West, Manchester.
Reader ReviewsWritten in 1979 and revised recently in 1996, Douglas and Isherwood's classic breaks through our own love/hate relationship with consumption and the biased interpretations of history and the present to look in a reasoned fashion at the patterns with which all people choose to buy things and the affiliations we create using these things. Lamenting the fact that economics has restricted itself by limiting human tastes to a black-box phenomenon, Douglas (a renowned, now retired, anthropologist) rips open the box and finds many convincing arguments for the uses of goods as a means of communication in all societies. Additionally, they discuss previous and current ideas about why people save, or don't consume, and provide excellent comparative analyses between societies in Great Britain, blacks and whites in the US, the Nuer of the Sudan, and Zimbabwe's Lele people. What the reader comes away with is a deeper understanding of how people use consumption, both consciously and unconsciously, to provide information about themselves, send messages to others, and try to control the flow of culture and information to best benefit themselves and their interests. The writing, which I have the impression was mostly written by Douglas since I'm familiar with her style from other books, feels a bit cerebral but is extremely lucid and will keep you on your toes with novel interpretations of familiar cultural phenomena.
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