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Showing papers by "Danny Miller published in 1998"


Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a comparison between shopping as sacrifice and making love in supermarkets, and show that shopping as a means of self-sacrifice is more appropriate.
Abstract: Introduction. 1. Making Love in Supermarkets. 2. Shopping as Sacrifice. 3. Subjects and Objects of Devotion. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

999 citations


Book
05 Jun 1998

406 citations


BookDOI
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: For instance, the authors discusses the legitimacy of an economic model of fishing in Iceland, Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson the transnational capitalist class, Leslie Sklair virtual capitalism - the globalization of reflexive business knowledge, Nigel Thrift conclusion, Daniel Miller.
Abstract: ion in western economic practice, James G. Carrier the triumph of economics - or, "rationality" can be dangerous to your reasoning, Ben Fine abstraction, reality and the gender of "economic man", Julie Nelson development and structural adjustment, Philip McMichael cash for quotas - disputes over the legitimacy of an economic model of fishing in Iceland, Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson the transnational capitalist class, Leslie Sklair virtual capitalism - the globalization of reflexive business knowledge, Nigel Thrift conclusion, Daniel Miller.

211 citations


Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In this paper, D.A. Miller probes what all the jokes about the post-war Broadway musical laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a "general" cultural form and the despised "minority" that was in fact that form's implicit audience.
Abstract: It used to be a secret that, in its post-war heyday, the Broadway musical recruited a massive underground following of gay men. But though this once silent social fact currently spawns jokes that every sitcom viewer is presumed to be in on, it has not necessarily become better understood. In this text, D.A. Miller probes what all the jokes about the post-war Broadway musical laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a "general" cultural form and the despised "minority" that was in fact that form's implicit audience. D.A. Miller restores to their historical density the main modes of reception that so many gay men developed to answer the musical's call: the early private communion with the original cast albums; the later camping of show tunes in piano bars; and the still later reformatting of these same songs at the post-Stonewall disco. In addition, through an extended reading of "Gypsy", Miller specifies the nature of the call itself, which he locates in the post-war musical's most basic conventions: the contradictory relation between the show and the book; the mimetic tendency of the musical number; and the centrality of the female star. If the post-war musical may be called a "gay" genre, Miller demonstrates, this is because its regular but unpublicized work has been to indulge men in the thrills of a femininity become their own.

69 citations


Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The authors explores the many contradictions faced by shoppers on a typical street in London, and in the process offers a sophisticated examination of the way we shop, and what it reveals about our relationships to our families and communities, as well as to the environment and the economy as a whole.
Abstract: Shopping is generally considered to be a pleasurable activity. But in reality it can often be complicated and frustrating. Daniel Miller explores the many contradictions faced by shoppers on a typical street in London, and in the process offers a sophisticated examination of the way we shop, and what it reveals about our relationships to our families and communities, as well as to the environment and the economy as a whole. Miller's companions are mostly women who confront these contradictions as they shop. They placate their children with items that combine nutrition with taste or usefulness with style. They decide between shopping at the local store or at the impersonal, but less expensive, mall. They tell of their sympathy for environmental concerns but somehow avoid much ethical shopping. They are faced with a selection of shops whose shifts and mergers often reveal extraordinary stories of their own. Filled with entertaining—and thoroughly familiar—stories of shoppers and shops, this book will interest scholars across a broad range of disciplines.

42 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the utopian definition of sexuality as sexual desire and will to identity is too divorced from the mundane - love: domesticity and reproduction in a broad sense - and based on a too limited sphere of social experience.
Abstract: This article is intended as a critique of recent theorizations of sexuality and desire, which have led performative theorists to contend that gender is an effect of discourse, and sex an effect of gender. It results from informal discussions between the three authors on the mechanisms through which sexuality gets objectified in modernity. The ideas of influential Western thinkers (in particular Georges Bataille) are confronted with field data on sexuality - as lived and imagined - that the authors have been gathering in Amazonian societies, Trinidad, and on the Internet. Ethnographic data and Western theories about the nature of eroticism are used to argue that the utopian definition of sexuality as sexual desire and will to identity is too divorced from the mundane - love: domesticity and reproduction in a broad sense - and based on a too limited sphere of social experience. Consequently, to apply this definition to how and why humans engage in sexual activity leads to erroneous generalizations. For when encountered ethnographically, sexuality consists of practices deeply embedded in relational contexts. The article concludes with the proposition that debates about the possibilities of human sexuality and of its political intervention will make no significant progress unless we stop repeating that 'sexuality is socially constructed', and start looking at the ways in which it is lived as part of everyday social life.

35 citations


Book Chapter
01 Jan 1998

31 citations




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A second reading of Miller's work as mentioned in this paper reveals how those projects generate social and cultural contradictions among and between producers, and how these projects generate a kind of hyperreal idealized world of consumption.
Abstract: Capis An Edaphic Approadi. DANIEL MILLER New York: Be% 1997; x + 357 pp. On a first reading Capitalism appears scattered and confusing; on a second reading it is significant and provocative. The first reading stems from Capitalism's seemingly erratic jumps from one social context to another and from one agent's perspective to another's in its descriptions of commodity production in Trinidad, Capitalism's ethnographic site. A second reading clarifies Miller's major proposition: commodities are produced not only as objects with market value by manufacturers, but also as "projects of value," Miller's key concept, by brand owners, advertising executives (Capitalism's research foci, heretofore neglected by anthropologists), and even consumers. That reading also reveals how those projects generate social and cultural contradictions among and between such producers. For example, Trinidadian sweet drink manufacturers seek market share and profit through creating local and transnational brand name reputations, as well as through advertising agents' ads and promotions. Yet, brand names and products are also projects of value. Solo company's sweet drinks wear the oldest, indigenous brand name. Its brand, therefore, represents authentic Trinidadian nationalism; loyalty to the brand is loyalty to Trinidadian identity. But in other contexts Trinidadians identify as global consumers of higher quality foreign drinks. Coke, therefore, lends its reputation for quality to its local franchiser, Cannings. Local company executives face the problems of positioning the company in the market and of positioning themselves within larger global conglomerates. They represent themselves to conglomerates as having local expertise necessary to reinterpret or replace homogenized, global marketing campaigns by locally relevant, but for conglomerates more expensive, ones despite suspected lesser effectiveness. Conglomerates often accede so as to increase the local office's importance and because consumer reaction is unpredictable. "Profitability" of a local branch's "nationalism," therefore, structurally contradicts that of its conglomerate's "globalism." Profitability is not the only "value" at issue; material culture's logic cannot be reduced to market culture's commodities. Rather, commodities are complex symbolic formations (p. 4) produced and reproduced by multiple agents in a dynamic history of production, distribution, and consumption. Advertising agents create ads using their own models of consumer preferences as well as current aesthetic and professional models. The result is a genre of "capitalist realism . . . a kind of hyperreal idealized world of consumption" (p. 191). It has its own self-referential standards and expectations about which Trinidadians are highly sophisticated, because for them the world of ads is similar to the world of cinema elsewhere. Consumers also have their own categories and discourses: red drinks stand for East Indians and black drinks for Africans. Yet, consumers in each ethnic group tend to drink and identify with a drink's other qualities in the opposed category, for example, Indians consume Coke, a black drink, because of its modernity. Commodities such as drinks become, therefore, objectifications, out of commerce's control, for projects of value whereby each group appropriates imaginary aspects of the other's identity. Surprisingly, advertising executives tend to ignore consumers' categories for their own. Reactive fear of competitors, networks of social peers, and unpredictability of consumer reaction, more than profitability, motivate them. Miller concludes that "cultures" of consumption and production can operate separately, because assigning blame for advertising campaign failures is difficult. …

2 citations