{"product_id":"authentic-9780814787137","title":"Authentic™","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stimulating, smart book on what it means to live in a brand culture\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns  and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and  self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed  “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But  while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of  marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way  to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser  argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as  they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthentic™\u003c\/b\u003e maintains that branding has extended  beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of,  our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of  brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living,  individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers  to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap  and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the  normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand  culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as  “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of  green branding and “shopping for change.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a  culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls  and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a  political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts,  Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the  “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also  contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities,  leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence,  creating a lens through which we can see potential political  possibilities within the new consumerism.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sarah Banet-Weiser","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48274244272379,"sku":"9780814787137","price":107.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/CoreSourceHub_765fafa0-9e9c-4c7c-a34b-4e9b72c6c238.jpg?v=1771077698","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/authentic-9780814787137","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}