In this Book

summary

How is it that American intellectuals, who had for 150 years worried about the deleterious effects of affluence, more recently began to emphasize pleasure, playfulness, and symbolic exchange as the essence of a vibrant consumer culture? The New York intellectuals of the 1930s rejected any serious or analytical discussion, let alone appreciation, of popular culture, which they viewed as morally questionable. Beginning in the 1950s, however, new perspectives emerged outside and within the United States that challenged this dominant thinking. Consuming Pleasures reveals how a group of writers shifted attention from condemnation to critical appreciation, critiqued cultural hierarchies and moralistic approaches, and explored the symbolic processes by which individuals and groups communicate.

Historian Daniel Horowitz traces the emergence of these new perspectives through a series of intellectual biographies. With writers and readers from the United States at the center, the story begins in Western Europe in the early 1950s and ends in the early 1970s, when American intellectuals increasingly appreciated the rich inventiveness of popular culture. Drawing on sources both familiar and newly discovered, this transnational intellectual history plays familiar works off each other in fresh ways. Among those whose work is featured are Jürgen Habermas, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin, C. L. R. James, David Riesman and Marshall McLuhan, Richard Hoggart, members of London's Independent Group, Stuart Hall, Paddy Whannel, Tom Wolfe, Herbert Gans, Susan Sontag, Reyner Banham, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-xi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction: Understanding Consumer Culture in the Post–World War II World
  2. pp. 1-18
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 1: For and Against the American Grain
  2. pp. 19-44
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 2: Lost in Translation
  2. pp. 58-85
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 3: Crossing Borders
  2. pp. 86-121
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 4: Reluctant Fascination
  2. pp. 122-162
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 5: Literary Ethnography of Working-Class Life
  2. pp. 163-192
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Interlude
  2. pp. 193-197
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 6: Pop Art from Britain to America
  2. pp. 199-234
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 7: From Workers and Literature to Youth and Popular Culture
  2. pp. 235-270
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 8: Class and Consumption
  2. pp. 271-305
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 9: Sexuality and a New Sensibility
  2. pp. 306-334
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 10: Learning from Consumer Culture
  2. pp. 335-359
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Conclusion: The World of Pleasure and Symbolic Exchange
  2. pp. 361-363
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Abbreviations
  2. pp. 365-366
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 367-466
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 467-487
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. 489-491
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.