Fit For Consumption

This is the first text to offer a comprehensive socio-cultural and historical analysis of the current fitness culture. Fitness today is not simply about health clubs and exercise classes, or measures of body mass index and cardiovascular endurance. Fit for Consumption conceptualizes fitness as a field within which individuals and institutions may negotiate - if not altogether reconcile - the competing and often conflicting social demands made on the individual body that characterize our current era. Intended for researchers and senior undergraduate and postgraduate students of sport, leisure, cultural studies and the body, this book utilizes the US fitness field as a case study through which to explore the place of the body in contemporary consumer culture. Combining observations in health clubs, interviews with fitness producers and consumers, and a discourse analysis of a wide variety of fitness texts, this book provides an empirically grounded examination of one of the pressing theoretical questions of our time: how individuals learn to fit into consumer culture and the service economy and how our bodies and selves become ‘fit for consumption.'

In Berman's latest short story collection, the phrase "you are what you eat" is taken to heart; these are stories of men facing strange appetites within their own physicality, within a lover or, perhaps, a stranger's hungers. A young athlete attends an exclusive wrestling camp, but some of the campers are more focused on the unwelcome boys they claim lurk inside their bellies. A fixit man on a mission to retrieve a runaway finds himself forced into impersonating a pulp hero by her captor. Life as a pledge at a New Orleans fraternity is made all the worse when a magical--perhaps cursed?--flask that fills with whatever the bearer desires, yet also causes the drinker to desire the pledge. With stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ramsey Campbell, the menu has thirteen tales that range from the weird to the humour noir to the monstrous. No digestif is necessary.

Consumption research is burgeoning across a wide range of disciplines. The Routledge Handbook on Consumption gathers experts from around the world to provide a nuanced overview of the latest scholarship in this expanding field. At once ambitious and timely, the volume provides an ideal map for those looking to position their work, find new analytic insights and identify research gaps. With an intuitive thematic structure and resolutely international outlook, it engages with theory and methodology; markets and businesses; policies, politics and the state; and culture and everyday life. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social and economic sciences.

This book investigates the concept of consumer social responsibility (CnSR) by considering the combination of ‘consumption behaviour’ and ‘social responsibility’. It puts forward a theory of responsible consumption behaviour, then models and empirically tests this theory using quantitative research methods. In so doing, the book offers a new consumer behaviour model: the C-A-C-B (Concern-Attitude-Commitment-Behaviour) model. The book appeals to readers interested in consumer behaviour, research methodologies, social responsibility, corporate social responsibility, segmentation and profiling, sustainability, and structural equation modelling with path analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The book also offers concrete recommendations that will benefit businesses and governments alike.

Sport has gained increasing importance for welfare society. In this process, however, the term of ‘sport’ has become less and less clear. Larger parts of what nowadays is called ‘sport for all’ are non-competitive and derived from traditions of gymnastics, dance, festivity, games, outdoor activities, and physical training rather than from classical modern elite sports. This requires new philosophical approaches, as the philosophy of sport, so far, has been dominated by topics of elite sports. Based on Scandinavian experiences, the book presents studies about festivities of sport, outdoor activities, song and movement, and play and game. The engagement of elderly people challenges sports. Games get political significance in international cooperation, for peace culture and as means against poverty (in Africa). The empirical studies result in philosophical analyses on the recognition of folk practice in education and on relations between identity and recognition. The study of ‘sport for all’ opens up for new ways of phenomenological knowledge, moving bottom-up from sport to the philosophy of "the individual", of event, of nature, and of human energy. Popular sports give inspiration to a philosophy of practice as well as to a phenomenological understanding of ‘the people’, of civil society and the ‘demos’ of democracy – as folk in movement. This book was published as a special issue in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

Scholars from psychology, neuroscience, economics, animal behavior, and evolution describe the latest research on the causes and consequences of overconsumption. Our drive to consume—our desire for food, clothing, smart phones, and megahomes—evolved from our ancestors' drive to survive. But the psychological and neural processes that originally evolved to guide mammals toward resources that are necessary but scarce may mislead us in modern conditions of material abundance. Such phenomena as obesity, financial bubbles, hoarding, and shopping sprees suggest a mismatch between our instinct to consume and our current environment. This volume brings together research from psychology, neuroscience, economics, marketing, animal behavior, and evolution to explore the causes and consequences of consumption. Contributors consider such topics as how animal food-storing informs human consumption; the downside of evolved “fast and frugal” rules for eating; how future discounting and the draw toward immediate rewards influence food consumption, addiction, and our ability to save; overconsumption as social display; and the policy implications of consumption science. Taken together, the chapters make the case for an emerging interdisciplinary science of consumption that reflects commonalities across species, domains, and fields of inquiry. By carefully comparing mechanisms that underlie seemingly disparate outcomes, we can achieve a unified understanding of consumption that could benefit both science and society.

To gain the most competitive edge, marketers must continually optimize their promotional strategies. While the adult population is a prominent target, there is significant market potential for young consumers as well. Analyzing Children’s Consumption Behavior: Ethics, Methodologies, and Future Considerations presents a dynamic overview of the best practices for marketing products that target children as consumers and analyzes the most effective promotional strategies being utilized. Highlighting both the advantages and challenges of targeting young consumers, this book is a pivotal reference source for marketers, professionals, researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners interested in emerging perspectives on children’s consumption behavior.

Vols. 1-36, 1914-1949, 1999- issued in separate parts, called sections, e.g. Journal section, Federal Court section, Privy Council section, Allahabad section, Bombay section, etc.