Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (Mike Featherstone)

“I first became interested in consumer culture in the late 1970s. The stimulus was the writings of members of the Frankfurt School and other proponents of Critical Theory which were featured and discussed so well in journals like Telos and New German Critique. The theories of the culture industry, reification, commodity fetishism and the instrumental rationalization of the world directed attention away from a focus on production towards consumption and processes of cultural change.” (excerpt from “Preface to the First Edition”)

Download: Mike Featherstone – Consumer Culture and Postmodernism

The Cultural Turn (Fredric Jameson)

“In a brief compass, The Cultural Turn traces the movement of one of the leading cultural intelligences of our time, in pursuit of the mutable forms of the postmodern world. The results will leave few indifferent.” (from Perry Anderson’s foreword)

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A Companion to Marx’s Capital (David Harvey)

“My aim is to get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital, Volume I, and to read it on Marx’s own terms. 1 This may seem a bit ridiculous, since if you haven’t yet read the book you can’t possibly know what Marx’s terms are; but one of his terms, I can assure you, is that you read, and read carefully. Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown. My own readings of Capital, collected in the present volume, will prove far more enlightening if you have read the pertinent chapters beforehand. It is your own personal encounter with this text that I want to encourage, and by struggling directly with Marx’s text, you can begin to shape your own understanding of his thought.” (quoted from David Harvey’s Introduction)

Download: A Companion to Marxs Capital