The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentation - Softcover

`By distilling a mass of scholarship into nine main themes and then carefully tracing their lineage and development, the book provides a superb guide to twentieth century ideas about consumption. Its value lies in documenting so much in one volume and, more importantly, in making it all accessible. A good deal of the source material comes from texts which can be obscure, baffling, or even plain whacky, and Gabriel and Lang have done us a great service in translating it all into the language used by normal human beings. The authors start with a valuable and sobering examination of the term consumerism, teasing out several current usages of the word.... When dealing with cultural studies the authors excel at bringing high theory down to earth.... Not only are the ideas explained elegantly, but so is their historical development.... Another reason why this theoretical tour makes for a comfortable read is its comprehensiveness: consumption is examined from so many angles that there is a fragment of theory somewhere in the book to match exactly the way you experience just about every consumer transaction. I would be surprised if anyone will read the book without often feeling intrigued and embarrassed about the explanations and explorations of their own consumer behaviour and saying, "yes, that is exactly how I feel!".... The wealth of analysis in the cultural theory chapters is matched in the chapters on consumer politics. However, the latter also contain a useful account of the development of the various strands of the western consumer movement, from the birth of the modern cooperative movement in the nineteenth century, through the growth of "second wave" consumer organisations pursuing value for money, then Naderism, and on to the "alternative" consumer campaigns of recent years: green and ethical consumerism.... an excellent volume which guides the reader through some of the most impenetrable thickets of consumer theory, safely negotiating the weird as well as the familiar. It is often engrossing, never lifeless, and always illuminating' - Consumer Policy Review

`This is an important and highly topical book. Taking a long hard look at the contradictions of Western consumption, it sets out some of the key challenges of society - and for the consumer movement - at the turn of the century' - James Firebrace, Director General, Consumers International

`Choice has become the great fetish of Western societies to such an extent that every party and interest group now wants to speak for the consumer. Tim Lang and Yiannis Gabriel have done an exemplary job in analysing the nature of consumerism, in setting out where consumerism goes from here and in showing why choice may not be the unalloyed marvel that it is sometimes made out to be' - Geoff Mulgan, Director, Demos

Yiannis Gabriel is Professor of Organizational Theory at Bath University. Yiannis has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Yiannis is well known for his work into organizational storytelling and narratives, leadership, management learning and the culture and politics of contemporary consumption. He has used stories as a way of studying numerous social and organizational phenomena including leader-follower relations, group dynamics and fantasies, nostalgia, insults and apologies. He has also carried out extensive research on the psychoanalysis of organizations.

Yiannis is founder and coordinator of the Organizational Storytelling Seminar series, now in its fourteenth year (See http://www.organizational-storytelling.org.uk/), the author of nine books and numerous articles. He is elected to the board of EGOS and is currently Senior Editor of Organization Studies. His enduring fascination as a researcher lies in what he describes as the unmanageable qualities of life in and out of organizations.