A Primer for Daily Life (Electronic book text)

The interacting components of everyday life - the weekly supermarket shopping trip, fast food, children's toys - are still largely unremarked by cultural theorists. Grounded in Marxist theory, and guided by feminism, Susan Willis's lucid and entertaining study of the consumer culture broadens the scope of cultural studies to introduce the notion of daily life, with the commodity at its centre. Willis pays particular attention to the influence of commodity fetishism on social relations. Her investigation includes the taken for granted phenomena of modern culture - Barbie dolls, plastic packaging, banana sticker logos and the aerobic workout. A Primer For Daily Life demonstrates that the trivial is crucial for our understanding of capitalist culture, and argues for the necessary development of a critical perspective on daily life.