Relationships among healthy lifestyle beliefs and body mass index in urban China

Consumption is a major driving force in China's economy. The consumer society is particularly emerging in the more urbanized and affluent regions in China. Given the rise of consumerism on the one hand, and the rise of overweight and obesity on the other, this study explored whether the proliferating consumer culture is a threat to the traditional health culture in China. The lifestyle‐oriented approach used in this study does not confirm a straightforward relationship between an upward trend in Chinese with (economic) assets to join the consumer society and a downward trend in health interest among urban Chinese. The result that the rise of the consumer society is not directly accompanied by a devaluation of health issues does not imply that lifestyle research is of no use. On the contrary, this paper successfully identified four dimensions of health‐related lifestyle for urban China, namely Food‐health Belief, Perceived Knowledge, Health Careless and Group Conformity. This result is informative with respect to the complexity of sociocultural factors influencing the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity.     

Peter Drucker on marketing: an exploration of five tenets

The authors review Peter Drucker’s contributions to marketing theory and practice. A bibliometric analysis of Drucker’s academic influence in marketing is presented. The five main tenets that are derived from the bibliometric study are expanded upon as follows: (1) The Marketing Concept: Creating Value for Customers; (2) Broadened Role of Marketing in Society: Corporate Social Responsibility, Consumerism, Social Marketing, and Lessons from Non-Profit Organizations; (3) Contributions to Marketing Strategy: The Obvious and Not So Obvious; (4) Marketing-Innovation Interface: New Product Development; (5) Future of Globalization: Rise of Non-National Enterprises.

Consumer Culture,Ecology and the Possibility of Cosmopolitan Citizenship

This article argues that the study of citizenship needs to be engaged with questions raised by consumer cultures and ecological concerns. The article begins by investigating the different ways in which we might view contemporary consumer societies from the vantage point of citizenship. I go on to examine the relationship between citizenship and environmental questions. Finally, I argue that the social transformations brought about by the development of a consumer society and questions of ecological risk mean that citizenship needs to find cosmopolitan forms of expression. Unless ethical agendas are able to develop the practice of citizenship in this direction, we are unlikely to be able to find adequate political responses to some of the key dilemmas of our age.     

高校消费主义的危害性及其抵御

消费主义导致大学生消费价值观取向出现偏差,使得大学生出现精神危机,让高校学生心理产生不平衡感,不和谐因素开始在校园衍生,对高校师生的思想道德建设产生重要影响.高校的当务之急是践行以"俭"为核心的消费价值观,采取包括开设消费教育课程等等在内的措施予以应对.     

The PTA: Promoting Swiss tours, 1888–1939

This research examines the development from educational to commercial tourism in Britain between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century by questioning whether this reflected a transformed understanding of the role of travel within society. It focuses on the Polytechnic Touring Association (PTA), a London-based originally philanthropic travel organisation that became a commercial firm. During this period the PTA moved from the project of contributing to the education of citizens to the market-led imperative of ‘harnessing’ a consumer desire. In examining this transformation via the PTA’s changing approach to the visual promotion of its Swiss tours, we suggest that the development of the tourism industry in Britain should also be explored in relation to changing ideas about travel’s contribution to social formation.     

警惕消费主义 促进和谐发展

消费主义作为西方社会的主流意识形态,以物质主义和享乐主义为价值目标,崇尚过度的物质占有并将消费视为人生的最高意义。它的产生是经济、政策、舆论以及大众媒体等各方面因素共同作用的结果。消费主义在全球范围内的蔓延,对人类的社会生活产生了极为不利的影响。     

消费主义的侵入与大学生理性消费价值观的构建

消费主义是一种以崇尚、追求过度占有和消费作为满足自我和人生目标的价值取向以及在这种价值观念支配下的行为实践。当前大学生群体中的超前消费、高消费、炫耀性消费方式都表现出一种情绪化、非理性的消费状态和消费主义的倾向。大学生思想政治教育应当主动应对消费主义的挑战,通过加强思想教育、提高教学质量、加强师德建设、弘扬大学精神等途径,教育和引导青年大学生合理、适度、科学的消费,构建理性的消费价值观。     

Highlighting the Darker Side of Liberal Internationalism for a Counter-Colonizing Consumerism

By embracing counter-colonialism at large, this article challenges the subordination and eventual complicity of management and marketing studies with the dark(er) side of liberal internationalism pasts. We show how the official history of consumerism in marketing overlooks important events related to the US liberal internationalism project during and before the Cold War period, which are closely associated by other areas of knowledge in the United States with the hegemonic plans of the United States in becoming the sole global power in the post-World War II, at the expense of the Third World movement that aimed to bring independence to the Global South.     

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

Programmes and policies for a Circular Economy (CE) are fast becoming key to regional and international plans for creating sustainable futures. Framed as a technologically driven and economically profitable vision of continued growth in a resource-scarce world, the CE has of late been taken up by the European Commission and global business leaders alike. However, within CE debates and documentation, little is said about the social and political implications of such transformative agendas. Whilst CE proponents claim their agenda is ‘radical’, this paper outlines its inability to address many deeply embedded challenges around issues of consumption and the consumer, echoing as it does the problematic (and arguably failed) agendas of sustainable consumption/lifestyles. Using the Sharing Economy as an example, we argue here that the ontological and sociological assumptions of the CE must be open to more ‘radical’ critique and reconsideration if this agenda is to deliver the profound transformations that its advocates claim are within our collective reach.     

Bio-politicizing consumption: neo-liberal consumerism and disembodiment in the food marketplace

How consumerism proliferates in society is central to consumer culture studies, yet little research has examined the power of consumerist discourses in shaping consumption at the intersection of marketing with State regulation. Drawing on Foucault's notions of governmentality and bio-power, a discourse analysis is conducted of food date labeling regulation. The study problematizes how labeling actualizes a form of neo-liberal consumerism within manufacturing and retail in which consumption is enacted as a site of bio-political control. Labeling, it is argued, fosters unsustainable excess consumption in the name of life and health of people by temporalizing and standardizing consumption, as well as disembodying the marketplace as an area for knowledge creation in consumption. Accordingly, the study discusses two processes “bio-politicizing” consumption that seek to dispense responsibility and re-distribute embodied consumption competence. Finally, it highlights the potential in people to resist such consumerism by developing alternative subjectivities and embodiments in the marketplace.