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In a world that is marked by homogeneity, capitalism has favorable conditions to grow. However with changes in thinking and urban theory, instead of describing this concept in terms of production, it is now consumption that defines our times. We are living in a consumer society or a consumerist culture because consumption drives production instead of it being the other way around. People have now become more liberal in the way they live their lives. There are no specific rules to follow and changing lifestyles mean everyone would want something different. This results in increased variety and expanded range of goods and services at people's disposal. Combine this with more disposable income and you have consumerism on hands. People are no longer afraid to live their dream lives and this often means fewer savings. Interestingly, consumers are not worried about that. It appears as if the fears that drove people to save in the modernist world have now been replaced by a sense of unprecedented freedom. This freedom translates into freedom of choice, increased demand for sophisticated goods, and more traveling and less savings. But the dwellers of a postmodern city do not really have a problem with that. They are happy being able to spend as and when they wish. They have higher incomes than they had ever before, greater access to credit, which was unheard of in modernist era and an insatiable appetite for entertainment.
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References
Arnold, J. (2001) 'Why consumer confidence matters', BBC Online, 25 September 2001, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1561000/1561162.stm
Baudrillard, J (1998a) the Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Sage, London.
Baudrillard, J. (1995b) 'The virtual illusion: or the automatic writing of the world', Theory, Culture and Society, 12, 97-107.
Bauman, Z. (1983) 'Industrialism, consumerism and power', Theory, Culture and Society, 1(3), 32-43.
The four illustrations from the earliest decades of the twentieth century illustrate the importance of fashion in the formation of identity just as much as Twiggy's outfit does, and in fact are possibly even more telling given their distance from current styles. Regardless of what people of the time though regarding the sexuality of certain of these gown, all of them give the female figure an incredibly sculpted look, whether
Postmodernism Capitalism entered a new 'postmodern' phase in the 1970s and 1980s in which small-scale and entrepreneurial enterprises revived, and became the most dynamic sector of the economy in the West. This revival coincided with the reemergence of free market conservatism under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the same time, along with a culture that became more aggressively competitive, egotistic and individualistic. During the same period, economists and sociologists rediscovered
697). Rutherford goes on to submit that Graham's narrative is more about the city within a city (cyberspace), in "all its forms and functions," than it is about the utopian of "dystopian visions of technology" that some authors have alluded to. As for Graham's book, in the Introduction he explains that he has put together a book with a myriad of inputs from scholars in several technology-related fields; and, in