Books in the CRESC series

Assembling and Governing Habits engages with the diverse ways in which habits are governed through the knowledge practices and technologies that have been brought to bear on them.

What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more 'creative' than those in other sectors? This book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. It is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including business and management studies.

Presents a socio-material analysis of the British milk industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title is suitable for any researcher interested in the hybrid socio-material, economic and political factors underpinning the transformation of the milk industry.

Offers a contribution to international debates regarding the role of cultural capital in relation to modern forms of inequality. Drawing on a national study of the organisation of cultural practices in contemporary Britain, this work reviews Bourdieu's classic study of the relationships between culture and class in the light of subsequent debates.

Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion sheds important light on the ways in which society is intimately linked to and characterized by mimetic patterns.

Globalisation and neo-liberalism have generated rapid economic growth and technological progress, but they have also laid waste to established communities, cultures and the natural environment. One outcome has been populist politics, playing on fears of change, but this book offers counter-narratives of hope emerging from the wastelands of globa

Speculative Research presents a range of innovative contributions that address the take-up of speculative philosophies in empirical sociocultural research to examine and grasp the complex, unforeseen and creative production of possible futures through future-making practices.

Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion sheds important light on the ways in which society is intimately linked to and characterized by mimetic patterns.

In 2010 Shanghai hosted the largest, most spectacular and most expensive expo ever. Attracting a staggering 73 million visitors, and costing around US$45 billion dollars, Shanghai Expo broke the records in the history of world's fairs and universal expositions. The thirteen essays in Shanghai Expo, written by a team of interdisciplinary researchers, offer a uniquely detailed analysis of this globally significant event.

Studio Studies is an edited collection which explores and examines the studio as the principal site of aesthetic and material production, inextricably linked with ¿ and a key feature of ¿ contemporary forms of capitalism. The volume presents case studies addressing a wide range of sociocultural practices that are dependent on the studio as the setting for bringing tangible and immaterial cultural objects into being.

Theorizing Cultural Work brings together leading theorists to reflect on the ways in which forms of cultural work are embedded historically and socially, and to assess the extent to which they are illustrative of some putatively new social relations of work. It analyzes both local and internationally inter-linked cultural/creative labour processes as they unfold across different territories and economic regimes, considering the history and the future of cultural work in light of the immediate (post-crisis) and longer term social context.

This book represents the first anthropological ethnography of Ikea consumption and goes to the heart of understanding the unique and at times frantic popularity of this one iconic transnational store. Based on a year of participant observation in StockholmΓÇÖs Kungens Kurva store ΓÇô the largest in the world - this book places the retailer squarely within the realm of the home-building efforts of individuals in Stockholm and to a lesser degree in Dublin. Ikea, the worldΓÇÖs largest retailer and one of its most interesting, is the focus of intense popular fascination internationally, yet is rarely subject to in-depth anthropological inquiry. In Unpacking Ikea, Garvey explores why Ikea is never ΓÇÿjust a storeΓÇÖ for its customers, and questions why it is described in terms of a cultural package, as everyday and classless. Using in-depth interviews with householders over several years, this ethnographic study follows the furniture from the Ikea store outwards to probe what people actually take home with them.

Markets and the Arts of Attachment explores how sentiment, aesthetics and relationships are put to work in consumer markets. In this edited collection, contributors explore the tools and techniques used to work with sentiment, aesthetics and relationships in strategies.

This book considers the legacy of Bourdieüs sociology of taste and the ideas on art and aesthetics that informed it. It employs an interdisciplinary framework and international perspective that includes contributions from arts practitioners, sociologists, philosophers, museum directors, curators, design historians and art historians from Asia, America, Australia and Europe.