Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting, and Desire
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (903 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0415974364 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 328 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
According to eBay itself, up to 165,000 Americans now make their living by selling through the website, and other business analysts project that hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide now make their living through eBay.. Everyday eBay is the first scholarly analysis of the internet marketplace that has become a global social, cultural and economic phenomenon. Since its debut ten years ago, eBay has quickly become a central destination for millions of web browsers. From old toys steeped in nostalgia to 'rare' limited edition shoes, the contributors demonstrate that value on eBay is never simply about 'price'.On any given day, more than two million items are listed for sale on eBay, from everyday objects to kitsch and collectibles to the truly bizarre. The eighteen new and classic essays gathered here examine eBay from a wide variety of perspectives as a bellwether of taste and material culture; as a rich site of cultural, racial, and sexual discourse and practice; as an emergent media form; and as a facilitator of global consumerism
"This book is a first, sorely needed attempt to learn from eBay, to understand it, and to situate it in the broader field of contemporary culture."-Jonathan Sterne, McGill University "This is an excellent idea for a book; eBay is a fascinating and timely subject, allowing authors to touch on a large number of interesting issues that are densely interwoven in the practices that constellate around eBay: cyberculture and cybercommunity, consumption, material culture, cultural economy, collecting."-David Bell, author of "An Introduction to Cyberculture and co-editor of "The Cybercultures Reader
Not that easy to read, not a how-to, but still a great book Tacky Julie I have to counter the statement in another review that this book is "easy to read." Yes, it is, if you know what "latent semiotic unruliness" means. It is also not a how-to book. I would not recommend buying this book unless you are interested in how eBay has affected our culture. Having said this, I agreed that it is a great book, but not for the same reasons as t. Paul Couillard said Great Book - Smart AND Useful. This is a really great book. When I first read through it I was a bit surprised as I'd assumed it was a straightforward "how to" book about buying and selling on eBay. Actually it's a collection of easy to read articles that look at the ways various groups of collectors, sellers and other folks use ebay and how it relates to their lives on a daily basis. There are
He is author of Digital Sensations: Space, Identity and Embodiment in Virtual Reality; Online a Lot of the Time: Ritual, Fetish, Sign; and co-author of Google and The Culture of Search.Michael Petit is Mellon Lecturing Fellow at the University Writing Program in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Writing at Duke University. .