This year let’s change the pattern of buying and focus instead back to the true meaning of giving. buynothingchristmas.org gives great examples of alternatives for giving that do not involve feeding the commercial frenzy that has taken hold of the season. Give heartfelt and personal gifts and stop the madness of the malls and department [...]
I hate to give this issue more attention (and a bit late). But in analyzing the growing use of guerilla advertising by the largest most profitable companies we must unfortunately give the companies some time and words.
In April of this year Louis Vuitton had some students at Yale place some advertising on a prominent [...]
In The Rebel Sell, cultural critics Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter argue that the counter culture is no different from the establishment. They point out common practices of the counter culture as not only unsuccessful but in fact actually counter productive.
The authors have angered many of the most prominent activists especially followers of Naomi [...]
In thinking about the successes of the counter culture we often find ourselves listing art experiments and campaigns that have been carried out in a variety of media in entirely illegal ways. Street art has been a platform for the counter culture. In a constant give and take, the establishment will in turn coopt these [...]
Burlesque was originally a form of art that mocked by imitation, referring to everything from comic sketches to dance routines and usually lampooning the social attitudes of the upper classes. It was often ridiculous in that it imitated several styles, and combined imitations of authors and artists with absurd descriptions. In this, the term was [...]
Affluence is expensive. If you thought that the middle class is struggling with price increases and a general rapidly rising cost of living, well apparently the rich have it worse. Luxury goods are increasing at higher percentages. Dom Perignon, diamonds and caviar are spiraling out of reach of the most affluent….. It hurts to be [...]
I was going to write a whole post about this craziness.
But I find that this is just so much more positive, and makes me not so hateful. It’s good to remind ourselves that the crazy extremists of any religion are not its best representatives. The Progressive Christians Uniting also have the handy ready-made [...]
So much work can be found critiquing hyper consumerism and the phenomenon of the corporation. Here is just a sampling:
Vandana Jain
Yuken Teruya
Peter Gronquist
Floating Logos
Tim Gaskin
Hand-To-Brand-Combat: A Profile Of Naomi Klein
Great article by Katharine Viner in the Guardian in September 2000 on Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador)
No Logo has been referred to as “the Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement” and Viner claims “Naomi Klein might just be helping [...]
mission: microRevolt’s projects investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor.
one of microRevolt’s project’s knitPro is a web application that translates digital images into knit, crochet, needlepoint and cross-stitch patterns. Just upload jpeg, gif or png images of whatever you wish [...]