Page 98 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

FROM WAYS OF LIFE TO LIFESTYLE

1 For an elegant interrogation of the need for a concept of culture in social theory, see
Carrithers (1992).
2 I have discussed how the study of culture has been di ffused in more general social
consciousness in greater detail in Chaney (1994: chapter 2).
3 I will from here on refer without further elaboration to the social world in an era of
mass communication and entertainment as a mass society.
4 I will go on to argue that culture becomes something that is more or less self-
consciously invented, with the result that it can been as arti ficial – a perception that
probably underlies much of the hostility shown by intellectuals to suburban ways of
life (e.g. Silverstone 1997).
5 Again I have previously discussed how notions of culture and ideology have been
elided in the development of cultural studies, in the first chapter of Chaney (1994).
6 On the development of lifestyles in the context of consumer culture, see Chaney
(1996) and Lury (1996).
7Different versions of this exploitation thesis can be found in Haug (1986) and Cross
(1993), and it clearly still troubles a book on fashion by Davis (1992).

References

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Blaxter, M. (1990). Health and Lifestyles. London: Tavistock Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London:
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Carrithers, M. (1992). Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social
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Chaney, D. (1994). The Cultural Turn: Scene-setting Essays on Contemporary Cultural
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—— (1996). Lifestyles. London: Routledge.
—— (1997). ‘Authenticity and suburbia’. In S. Westwood and J. Williams (eds),
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—— (1998). ‘The new materialism? The challenge of consumption’. Work, Employment
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Cross, G. (1993). Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture. London: Routledge.
Davis, F. (1992). Fashion, Culture and Identity. London: University of Chicago Press.
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Gronow, J. (1997). The Sociology of Taste. London: Routledge.
Haug, W. (1986). The Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality and
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Jenks, C. (1993). Culture. London: Routledge.
Kephart, W. M. (1982). Extraordinary Groups: The Sociology of Unconventional Life-styles.
New York: St Martin’s Press.
Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1987). The End of Organized Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
—— (1994). Economies of Signs and Spaces. London: Sage.
Lull, J. (2000). Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach (second ed.).
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