Understanding British and European Political Issues: A Guide for A2 Politics Students (Understandings) - Softcover

McNaughton, Krystyna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719062454 ISBN 13: 9780719062452

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2003

Synopsis

The structure and regulation of consumption and demand has recently become of great interest to sociologists and economists alike, and at the same time there is growing interest in trying to understand the patterns and drivers of technological innovation. This book, newly available in paperback, brings together a range of sociologists and economists to study the role of demand and consumption in the innovative process.

The book starts with a broad conceptual overview of ways that the sociological and economics literatures address issues of innovation, demand and consumption. It goes on to offer different approaches to the economics of demand and innovation through an evolutionary framework, before reviewing how consumption fits into evolutionary models of economic development. Food consumption is then looked at as an example of innovation by demand, including an examination of the dynamic nature of socially-constituted consumption routines.

The book includes a number of illuminating case studies, including an analysis of how black Americans use consumption to express collective identity, and a number of demand–innovation relationships within matrices or chains of producers and users or other actors, including service industries such as security, and the environmental performance of companies. The involvement of consumers in innovation is looked at, including an analysis of how consumer needs may be incorporated in the design of high-tech products. The final chapter argues for the need to build an economic sociology of demand that goes from micro-individual through to macro-structural features.
This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 9, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

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About this title

About the Author

Neil McNaughton is former Head of Politics at University College School. He is currently curriculum adviser to the Times Educational Supplement and is a principal examiner in A Level Government and Politics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719062454
• ISBN 13: 9780719062452
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288