Advertising Myths: The Strange Half-Lives of Images and Commodities

by Cronin,Anne

• ISBN13: 9780415281744
• ISBN10: 0415281741
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-12-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Advertising is often portrayed negatively, as corrupting a mythically pure relationship between people and things. InAdvertising MythsAnne Cronin argues that it is better understood as a "matrix of transformation" that performs divisions in the social order and arranges classificatory regimes. Focusing on consumption controversies, Cronin contends that advertising is constituted of "circuits of belief" that flow between practitioners, clients, regulators, consumers and academics. Controversies such as those over tobacco and alcohol advertising, she argues, distil these beliefs and articulate with programs of social engineering aimed at altering consumption patterns. This book will be essential reading for students and academics of advertising and consumption.

Author Biography

Anne M. Cronin is a lecturer in the Sociology Department and at the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
List of abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
1 Images, commodities and compulsions: consumption controversies of the nineteenth century	9	(24)
Commodities, consuming pathologies and the useless object	11	(12)
Advertising and the dialectical image	23	(3)
Signs of the times? Gender, commodities and modernity	26	(7)
2 Advertising as site of contestation: criticisms, controversy and regulation	33	(24)
Regulating culture	34	(11)
Instituting beliefs: trade associations and non-governmental organizations	45	(3)
Legislating advertising	48	(9)
3 Advertising agencies: commercial reproduction and the management of belief	57	(22)
Advertising effects and agencies' self-promotional practices	59	(5)
Regulation, promotional rhetoric and commercial practice	64	(5)
Controversies and regulation	69	(4)
Understanding advertising	73	(6)
4 Animating images: advertisements, texts, commodities	79	(34)
Text, commodity, pathology	82	(15)
Antidotes to advertising and the maladies of representation	97	(8)
Commodities, persons and ownership	105	(8)
5 Advertising reconsidered	113	(21)
Cultures of addiction? Consumption, representation and crisis rhetoric	117	(5)
A politics of synthetics	122	(5)
Advertising and taxonomy	127	(7)
Notes	134	(3)
Bibliography	137	(11)
Index	148