Read more about the topics explored in The Routledge Companion to Digital Consumption in this fascinating interview with the editors.
 

Overall, what picture do these interesting, yet varied essays, point of digital consumption? Is there an overarching message, and if not, are there particular divergences that are important to note?

In a few short decades digital consumption has colonized more and more of our lives from entertainment to communication to shopping to learning about the world. We have had many technological revolutions before, dating back to the Stone Age. But this one is profound. As consumers of digital technologies, we have already experienced seismic shifts in how we spend our day. Industries have rapidly emerged and others have rapidly declined in the face of these shifts in consumption. This book is a compendium of answers to what this means for consumers, marketers, theory, research, and human well-being.

Which of the essays in this collection would you say was the most radical in terms of its view of digital consumption, and why?

Norah Campbell’s chapter on the posthuman consumer presents a radical view of consumers becoming digital machines and digital machines becoming human. Each of the chapters in the section on researching the digital consumer introduces radically new methods needed to understand digital consumption. And the chapters by Pridmore and Zwick and Singh and Lyon alert us to the social and ethical issues arising from digital surveillance and the radical changes in notions of privacy that such surveillance is creating.

What prompted you to bring this collection together and are there any essays that you particularly agree with or feel are very important in terms of getting a particular message about digital consumption out there?

Digital consumption was the elephant in the room that everyone could see but very few were addressing in terms of what it means for consumer theory and practice. The papers in the introductory section on “What’s Digital?” help set the stage for the volume by tracing many of the changes taking place and raising an agenda of issues. The next five sections help understand a variety of digital consumption phenomenon that together comprise a good view of the emerging field. But the final section on issues for society and culture is the most profound in taking a hard critical look at the consequences, both positive and negative, that have thus far arisen in the area of digital consumption.

Please could you say a few words about the potential dangers that arise from taking digital consumption for granted? How would these play themselves out?

Past technological revolutions like those involving electricity, the telegraph, radio, television, and the automobile have taught us that while they were inevitably accompanied by simultaneous frenzies of technophilia and technophobia, it is once they became normalized that they had their greatest impacts, even though they were less appreciated at the time. The same is true of digital consumption. We have already seen how changes in the consumption of books, music, and film initially caused celebrations of free information and at the same time fierce resistance from those industries wed too strongly to older technologies. But issues of what digital consumption do to our notions of self, trust, friendship, and consumer activism have been less appreciated until recently, even though they likely have a more profound on our well being.

What do you think is the biggest assumption about digital consumption that needs to be addressed?

The initial assumption was that the so-called digital divide would separate ages, genders, and nations, empowering the young, men, and wealthy nations and disempowering the others. This gave way to an almost opposite assumption that digital technologies level the playing field, with digital phones leapfrogging landlines and anyone being able to buy, sell, and compete online. Neither of these assumptions was wholly warranted, but we need to find just which groups are benefitting from digital consumption and what the impediments are for those who are not. We also need to critically examine the assumption that everyone must have high speed internet access in order to be a fully functioning human being able to compete in the global marketplace.

How much does digital consumption reflect itself in society? Do you have any anecdotes that you would like to share which reflect this or sum it up?

We already have numerous concepts that have changed our lexicon, from “Google it” to “lol” to “in the cloud.” There’s an anecdote contained in the initial chapter about how one of us was teaching a class first thing in the morning on the first day of the term and students were straggling in late due to a major snow storm. When they were asked how many had nevertheless been on Facebook already that morning, three-fourths raised their hands. When they were asked how many had been on Facebook before they got out of bed, nearly a third raised their hands. Just don’t expect your hundreds of Facebook friends to all show up at your wedding or funeral.

How fast do you think digital consumption is evolving and to what extent can you see it taking over our lives? In other words, will there always be a place for the cashier?

There is already something of a backlash with banks and other institutions advertising that when you call you can talk to a real human being. So perhaps “taking over our lives” is a bit too extreme. With the advent of digital music, the record has made a comeback. And there is still a reasonable market for books and magazines made of paper. Together with printing out digital copies, our consumption of paper has actually gone up. But these exceptions do not negate the wave of digital consumption sweeping over us. Yes, there will always be a place for the cashier as well as the butcher, the waiter, and the air host or hostess, just as there is still a place for the blacksmith, the sweeper, and the actor or actress. But it is a safe bet that there are ever more human applications that will be replaced or aided by some form of digital encounter. Even robotic partners for life have been proposed by some utopic or dystopic visionaries.
 

Routledge Major Works WINTER BACKLIST OFFER! (from 12/12/12 – 12/3/13)

There is a fantastic range of titles on offer from subject areas such as Allied Health, Asian Studies, Business, Economics, Education, History, Linguistics, Literature, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion and Sociology.

This eclectic mix of titles includes collections on Mao Zedong, Sufism, Marketing Research, Journalism, Radio, French Feminists, War and Human Rights.

Click here to download our list of 50 titles currently available to purchase!

To receive 20% off simply add your selection of books to your cart, place MWINTER20 into the Discount code field and then “Update Cart”!

This particular offer really shows the scope and range of Routledge Major Works-an essential reference teaching programme for your library.

eBooks from Taylor & Francis - Helping you to choose the right eBooks for your Library

As we enter 2013, we are seeing more and more institutions and libraries investing in electronic information products and resources. There is increasingly less space for physical books, and students are now accessing more information remotely.

A 2012 IFLA report rightly makes the point that 'eResources present a number of challenges not encountered with the selection and acquisition of traditional analogue materials'. For this reason, at Taylor & Francis we endeavour to offer you as much support as possible to help you integrate our eProducts into your library as easily as possible. And with our eBooks, we have made things super simple.

At first glance, the sheer scale of our eBook backlist and frontlist can be quite daunting. We have over 30,000 eBooks across the Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences and Law, from leading imprints, including Routledge, Focal Press and Psychology Press.

With eBooks covering everything from Language & Linguistics and Philosophy of Film to Commercial Law and Development Economics, there is a lot to choose from. For that reason, we have made our purchase options nice and flexible; subject eCollections, interdisciplinary eFocus packages, Pick n' Mix and more ...

Give our new video a watch and get a snapshot of what T&F eBooks could do for your library:

Want to get the complete rundown of all the new content?  Click here!

Want to request your complimentary exam copy?  Click here, fill out our simple, pre-set form, and we'll take care of the rest!

Titles in the collection span a broad range of topics, appealing to those particularly interested in subjects involving race relations, crime, sociology and media.

These titles are all part of the Routledge Revivals programme. The programme is designed to reissue out-of-print and unavailable titles written by leading academic scholars.

E. Cashmore

A professor of Culture, Media and Sport at Staffordshire University’s School of Health, E. Cashmore previously worked as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampa, Florida, as well as a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Cashmore studied for his degree in Sociology at Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic. After completing his masters at the University of Toronto, he returned to England and began work on his PhD thesis on the rastafari movement in England in the late 1970s. This became the subject for his first published work, Rastaman, which is just one of the titles to be reissued by Routledge Revivals.

The remaining titles within the revived E. Cashmore collection include:

Black Youth in Crisis – This title studies the position of young Afro-Caribbean people in the 1980s and how they were unduly hit by high unemployment, appeared high in crime statistics and were under achieving in schools.

Black Sportsmen – This books examines the affect that race has had on sportspeople – ranging from Olympic athletes to school children.

The Logic of Racism – Studies 800 individuals from all areas of society to gain an understanding of race relations, combining real life experiences with a commentary from Cashmore.

Having To – Interviews more than 200 single parent men and women from across the UK, giving an account of life in one parent families.

United Kingdom? – Examines the divisions present in Britain following the Second World War; namely class, race and gender. The book looks at issues of conflict and unity in the period from the war up until the late 1980s.

Out of Order? - Considers the challenging relationships that have existed between Afro-Caribbean people and the police in both Britain and the USA.

...and there was telev!s!on – Is, by Cashmore’s own admission, the odd book out in the series. The book looks at the affect that television has had on our lives and examines how the evidence against television is unfounded.

These titles have wide appeal across a number of subject areas, crossing over into a range of areas of interest for students and researchers, including Sociology, Religion, Race and Ethnic Studies, Criminology and Media Studies.
 

Douglas Harper has been involved with the visual sociology movement since its beginning. His dissertation and four subsequent visual ethnographies have been published or are in press at the University of Chicago Press. The first of these books, Good Company, sold out a large first printing (nearly 10,000) and was translated and published by university presses in France and Italy, and recently republished in third edition in the U.S.Changing Works: Visions of a Lost Agriculture won two awards from scholarly organizations, and Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop was featured in reviews in Scientific American and The Smithsonian, was the basis of special sessions at the meetings of the Society for the History of Technology and the History of Science.

He has written several chapters and articles defining aspects of visual sociology. Theses include chapters in the three editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Research, generally considered to be the standard in its area. His article on photo elicitation was recently noted as the most downloaded article in Visual Studies. Harper has taught visual sociology in several universities in the States, as well as in at the University of Amsterdam (three years) and the university of Bologna (off and on for over twenty years). He has taught workshops in visual sociology at more than ten IVSA annual meetings, and in universities including the Sorbonne, University of Zurich, Duke University, Harvard University and many others.
 

Kia ora koutou! The second international Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines (CEAD) hui has been announced. The conference will take place from 20 - 23 November 2012 and will return to the stunning University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. More information will be announced in the coming weeks. Scholars, professionals, and students from all disciplinary backgrounds are invited to share in the rich diversity that the conference and hui provides. There are three major content strands of themes for the CEAD hui (read more about each one here):
1.Emerging Methods
2.Practice and Advocacy
3.Social Justice and Transformation

To see all the key note speakers click here

Visit the website for CALL FOR PAPERS

Why not attend the Pre Conference Workshops on 20 November
www.cead.org.nz

You can check out some of our best Readers below.

You can check out our newest research & reference titles below.

You can check out our most recent and forthcoming textbooks below.

You can check out the newest Shortcuts books below, or you can click here for the full series page.

You can see the list of Sociology Handbooks below, or click here for the full series page to see handbooks in other fields.

First published in 1977, Women, Crime and Criminology presents a feminist critique of classical and contemporary theories of female criminality, while The Ties that Bind, published initially in 1984, makes an important and timely contribution to the development of the idea that the law is a major source of women’s oppression. Read below for further information on each individual title:

Women, Crime & Criminology
When first published in 1976, Women, Crime & Criminology was a bold feminist intervention into the field of criminology. The book’s main purpose was to critique the paternalistic and patriarchal thinking that dominated the field at that time. Smart’s critique of classical criminology is vigorous and challenging, but she also exposes the problematic treatment of women in the criminal justice system as both offenders and as victims of crime. Women, Crime & Criminology was part of a new wave of feminist sociology and criminology which gathered pace in the 1970s and 1980s, and it remains an important contribution to the history of feminist scholarship in the UK.

For a detailed contents listing, or to order a copy of Women, Crime and Criminology, click here.
 

The Ties That Bind
The Ties That Bind was originally published in 1984 and was one of the earliest Second Wave feminist analyses of the workings of family law in England. Smart was one of the pioneers of feminist socio-legal studies in the early 1980s and this book provides a comprehensive, but accessible, discussion of the ways in which family law in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s shaped and impacted (negatively) on the lives of women. Although many laws have been reformed since 1984 The Ties That Bind offers a scholarly analysis of legal thinking as it affected the private sphere of family life. The book concludes with a discussion of how a feminist perspective could reform family law.

For a detailed contents listing, or to order a copy of The Ties That Bind, click here.