Death in a Consumer Culture (Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research)

Hardcover, xxiii + 328 pages, NOT ex-library. Printed and bound in the UK. Fine interior, book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Boards show gentle handling wear. Issued without a dust jacket. -- Death has never been more visible to consumers. From life insurance to burial plots to estate planning, we are constantly reminded of consumer choices to be made with our mortality in mind. Religious beliefs in the afterlife (or their absence) impact everyday consumption activities. The book presents the broadest array of research on the topic of death and consumer behaviour across disciplinary boundaries. Organized into five sections, it explores topics from celebrity death tourism, pet and online memorialization, and family history research, to alternatives to traditional corpse disposal methods and patient-assisted suicide. Work from scholars in history, religious studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies sits alongside research in marketing and consumer culture. From eastern and western perspectives, spanning social groups and demographic categories, all explore the ubiquity of death as a physical, emotional, cultural, social, and cosmological inevitability. Offering a richly unique anthology on this challenging topic, this book will be of interest to researchers working at the intersections of consumer culture, marketing, and mortality. Susan Dobscha is Associate Professor of Marketing at Bentley University in Waltham MA, USA. -- Contents: A Brief, Abbreviated Introduction to Death; Pt1 The Death Industry -- 1 Proclaiming Modernity in the Monument Trade: Barre Granite, Vermont Marble, and National Advertising, 1910-1932 / Bruce S. Elliott; 2 Marketing of a Siege: Leningrad vs. Sarajevo - Memorializing Death and Despair / Brent Mckenzie & Mary Clairebass; 3 Marketing Death Through Erotic Art / Christina Welch; 4 Authenticity, Informality and Privacy in Contemporary New Zealand Post-mortem Practices / Cyril Schäfer & Ruth Mcmanus; 5 Custody of the Corpse: Controlling Alkaline Hydrolysis in US Death Care Markets / Philip R. Olson; Pt2 Death Rituals and Consumption -- 6 Death, Ritual and Consumption in Thailand: Insights From the Pee Ta Kohn Hungry Ghost Festival / Rungpaka Amy Hackley; 7 Ritual, Mythology, and Consumption After a Celebrity Death / Scott K. Radford; 8 Voluntary Simplicity in the Final Rite of Passage: Death / Hakan Cengiz; Pt3 Consumption of Death -- 9 Cheating Death via Social Self Immortalization: The Potential of Consumption-Laden Online Memorialization to Extend and Link Selves Beyond (Physical) Death / Terrance G. Gabel; 10 Extending the Mourning, Funeral, and Memorialization Consumption Practices to the Human-Pet Relationship / Phylis M. Mansfield; 11 Great Granny Lives on: Pursuing Immortality Through Family History Research / Leighann C. Neilson; 12 Physician-Assisted Suicide at the Crossroads of Vulnerability and Social Taboo: Is Death Becoming a Consumption Good? / Françoise Passerard; 13 Dispatches From the Dying: Pathographies as a Lens on Consumption in Extremis / Darach Turley; Pt4 Death and the Body -- 14 Role of Body Disposition in Making Sense of Life and Death / Courtney Nations Baker; 15 Consumer Acceptance of Radical Alternatives to Human Disposal: An Examination of The Belgian Marketplace / Louise Canning; 16 Theatre of the Abject: Body Worlds and the Transformation of the Cadaver / Kent Drummond; Pt5 Alternate Endings -- 17 'Mortal Coil' and the Political Economy of Death: A Critical Engagement with Baudrillard / Ai-Ling Lai; 18 Spectre of Posthumanism in Technology Consumption: The Death of the Human? / Margo Buchanan-Oliver; 19 Poetically Considering Death and Its Consumption / Terrance G. Gabel; 20 Examining Death and Learning About Life / Jeffrey Podoshen; Index.…