Popular Culture, Political Economy and the Death of Feminism

"This volume seeks to offer a critical, innovative and empirically driven interrogation of the international political economy of cultures of production and consumption in Western market societies, investigating the reproduction of Western popular and commercial culture (including its products and representations) alongside analysis of representations of and attitudes towards feminism in contemporary Western societies. Many scholars have examined the marginalisation of feminist concerns in contemporary Western societies, argued that we now live in a post-feminist age, or shown how feminist concerns have been appropriated and absorbed by institutions that contribute to the perpetuation of gender inequalities. Death of Feminism? furthers this debate by focusing on how these very arguments depend upon a cultural political economy that has gendered understandings of everyday life, gendered patterns of consumption, and gendered predominant forms of commercial capitalism that circulate at the global level. This book will provide significant insight into how cultural artefacts of the past decade in the UK, US, and Australia have made use of gendered representations for the purposes of promoting specific forms of consumption, how these artefacts can be (and have been) understood as gendered, and the political consequences of these representations and understandings. Written in an accessible fashion, analysing a broad range of commercial and popular culture artefacts (including advertising, radio, television, film and online media) and including primary data from interviews and focus groups, this work will of use to students and scholars of IR, IPE, gender, cultural and media studies"-- "This book explores the intimate connections between representation, the politics of feminism and the cultural practices of modern, Western, consumer society. It explores feminism 'made sensible' through visual imagery and popular culture representations, examining feminism's popular and commercial value. It investigates how popular culture is produced, represented and consumed to reproduce the conditions in which feminism is valued or dismissed. It asks where and how the sexualisation of cultural products is maintained and to what effect. It asks, finally, whether sufficient evidence can be marshalled to argue that antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable"--