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Farb- und Formpsychologie
by Tobias C. BreinerDieses Werk ist eine umfassende und praxisrelevante Darstellung zur Farb- und Formpsychologie. Mit einer klaren Sprache und über 100 farbigen Abbildungen wird Ihnen die komplexe Thematik auf eine wissenschaftliche und anregende Art veranschaulicht.Über eine allgemeine Einführung in die Grundlagen des visuellen Systems hinaus werden Sie ebenfalls spezielles Wissen zu Assoziationen, Wirkungen und Anwendungen bestimmter Farben und Formen erwerben. Speziellen Wert legt der Autor dabei auf deren Einsatz im Game Design. Es wird zudem erstmals eine neue Farbstudie präsentiert, die zeigt, dass die Assoziationen zu Farben sich in einem in sich logischen dreidimensionalen System anordnen lassen. Die daraus gezogenen überraschenden Erkenntnisse liefern mögliche Antworten auf fundamentale Fragen der Philosophie. Das Buch ist daher nicht nur ein Muss für Wahrnehmungspsychologen und Designer, sondern eine Bereicherung für alle an dieser Thematik Interessierten.
Farewell European Hist Ils 95 (International Library of Sociology)
by Alfred WeberFirst published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts And Pieces Of Country Life
by Julia Rothman<P>What's the difference between a weanling and a yearling, or a farrow and a barrow? Country and city mice alike will delight in Julia Rothman's charming illustrated guide to the curious parts and pieces of rural living. <P>Dissecting everything from tractors and pigs to fences, hay bales, crop rotation patterns, and farm tools, Rothman gives a richly entertaining tour of the quirky details of country life. <P>From the shapes of squash varieties to the parts of a goat; from how a barn is constructed to what makes up a beehive, every corner of the barnyard is uncovered and celebrated. <P>A perfect gift for gardeners, locavores, homesteaders, and country-living enthusiasts alike.
Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (Information Policy)
by Christopher AliAn analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan.As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.
Farmers Helping Farmers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914-1935
by Nancy K. BerlageOne of the largest volunteer movements in the twentieth century, local farm and home bureau organizations have been woefully underrepresented in socio-political studies of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Nancy K. Berlage addresses this omission with an insightful look at how bureau members put university science to work in agricultural and rural life at the local level, even while industrialization, and urbanization profoundly shifted the landscape of labor in the U.S. In Farmers Helping Farmers, Berlage explores how bureaus served as the locus of science-based agriculture for rural communities. Drawing on community bonds and culturally powerful metaphors to overcome skepticism, bureaus played a critical role in circulating knowledge grounded in the new disciplines of agricultural economics, rural sociology, home economics, veterinary medicine, child science, and public health. Throughout the book, Berlage weaves a novel consideration of women's roles into the story of farm and home bureaus, noting that these organizations served as places where supporters could grapple with issues beyond farming practices such as child welfare, personal health, and gender ideals. They were also crucial in supporting the organization's underlying mission to strengthen community and family ties to the benefit of more efficient and productive farm. In addition to bureau documents, Berlage draws from cartoons, films, photographs, and personal correspondence, to add a human dimension this organizational history. The resultant analysis offers a fresh look at the local bureaus' social, economic, cultural, and political functions and book highlights the organizations' significant influence on American life in the early twentieth century.
Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 (Social History of Africa Series)
by Nwando AchebeThis is a brilliant and refreshing book, which gives ample and well-deserved voice to women...It is a book that will definitely be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of history, anthropology, political science, religion, and political economy. It is a must read for scholars and students in Women''s Studies Programs.
Farmers’ Suicides in India: A Policy Malignancy
by P. C. BodhThis book locates the malignant causes behind the factors leading to farmers’ suicides in India. It argues that not only a combination of innovative managerial and economic policies is required to make farming profitable, but also food production within the carrying capacity of soil, water, forests and economic and social resources must still be maintained. It brings together diverse themes, such as farming development and suicide statistics, as well as the developmental inertia evident in farmers’ welfare policy history. The book stresses the need to go beyond the narrow crop economics of minimum support price utility and towards recognizing the farm household economic nature of farming, reinventing the uniqueness of farmers as a productive class engaged in converting cosmic elements into food and adopting the budgetary support approach to bail out the farmers from the suicidal, debt-multiplying, production support approach. Lucid and topical, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political studies, political sociology, agricultural economics, political economy, public policy, sociology, agrarian and rural development studies, as also to policy analysts, governmental bodies and civil society activists.
Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (Rural Studies)
by Michael Mayerfeld BellClimate change. Habitat loss. Soil erosion. Groundwater depletion. Toxins in our food. Inhumane treatment of farm animals. Increasing farm worker exploitation. Hunger and malnutrition in the midst of plenty. What will it take for farmers in the United States to embrace sustainable practices?Michael Mayerfeld Bell’s Farming for Us All first tackled this question twenty years ago, providing crucial insight into how the structure of US agriculture created this situation and exploring, by contrast, the practices of farmers who are working together to radically change how they think, learn, and grow. This updated edition of his now-classic work reflects on the lessons learned over the past two decades.Constrained by an oppressive nexus of markets, regulations, subsidies, and technology, farmers find themselves undermining their own economic and social security as well as the security of the land. Bell turns to Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), that state’s largest sustainable-agriculture group. He traces how PFI creates an agriculture that engages others—farmers, researchers, officials, and consumers—in a common conversation about what agriculture could look like. Through dialogue, PFI members crossbreed knowledge, discovering pragmatic solutions to help crops grow in ways that sustain families, communities, societies, economies, and environments.Farming for Us All makes the case that for sustainable farming to flourish, new social relations are as important to cultivate as new crops. This book is necessary—and hopeful—reading for anyone concerned about the present and future of food and farming.
Farming for the Long Haul: Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness
by Michael FoleyIt&’s all but certain that the next fifty years will bring enormous, not to say cataclysmic, disruptions to our present way of life. World oil reserves will be exhausted within that time frame, as will the lithium that powers today&’s most sophisticated batteries, suggesting that transportation is equally imperiled. And there&’s another, even more dire limitation that is looming: at current rates of erosion, the world&’s topsoil will be gone in sixty years. Fresh water sources are in jeopardy, too. In short, the large-scale agricultural and food delivery system as we know it has at most a few decades before it exhausts itself and the planet with it.Farming for the Long Haul is about building a viable small farm economy that can withstand the economic, political, and climatic shock waves that the twenty-first century portends. It draws on the innovative work of contemporary farmers, but more than that, it shares the experiences of farming societies around the world that have maintained resilient agricultural systems over centuries of often-turbulent change. Indigenous agriculturalists, peasants, and traditional farmers have all created broad strategies for survival through good times and bad, and many of them prospered. They also developed particular techniques for managing soil, water, and other resources sustainably. Some of these techniques have been taken up by organic agriculture and permaculture, but many more of them are virtually unknown, even among alternative farmers. This book lays out some of these strategies and presents techniques and tools that might prove most useful to farmers today and in the uncertain future.
Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941
by Jonathan L. Dekel-ChenThis is the first history of the Jewish agricultural colonies that were established in Crimea and Southern Ukraine in 1924 and that, fewer than 20 years later, ended in tragedy. Jonathan Dekel-Chen opens an extraordinary window on Soviet rural life during these turbulent years, and he documents the remarkable relations that developed among the American-Jewish sponsors of the ambitious project, the Soviet authorities, and the colonists themselves. Drawing on extensive and largely untouched archives and a wealth of previously unpublished oral histories, the book revises what has been understood about these agricultural settlements. Dekel-Chen offers new conclusions about integration and separation among Soviet Jews, the contours of international relations, and the balance of political forces within the Jewish world during this volatile period.
Farms, Factories, and Families: Italian American Women of Connecticut
by Anthony V. Riccio Mary Ann McDonald CarolanDocuments the rich history of Italian American working women in Connecticut, including the crucial role they played in union organizing.
Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
by Steven JohnsonThe hardest choices are also the most consequential. So why do we know so little about how to get them right? Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they're also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums. Steven Johnson's classic Where Good Ideas Come From inspired creative people all over the world with new ways of thinking about innovation. In Farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can't model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. These experts aren't just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy. They're the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters' inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven't even imagined. The smartest decision-makers don't go with their guts. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way. Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history.
Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama: How to Reduce Stress and Make Extraordinary Progress Wherever You Lead
by Janice Fraser Jason FraserFarther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers a simple but powerful set of leadership behaviors to align teams and accelerate progress. Fom team leaders to consultants to stay-at-home parents, everyone wishes life could be less complex, but that often feels impossible. Janice and Jason Fraser introduce the Four Leadership Motions, a method they have been using for decades to help all kinds of teams make fast, meaningful progress—including Navy SEALs, startup CEOs, and Fortune 100 executives. With the Four Leadership Motions, you will set and achieve goals faster, make complex situations more manageable, and create momentum even during overwhelming circumstances. The book calls on readers to: Orient honestly to understand the complexities of any situation Value outcomes more than plans, activities, or deliverables Leverage the brains by tapping the right people and maximizing their contribution Make durable decisions by eliminating the two pernicious kinds of waste Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers theory alongside hands-on exercises, formulas, and frameworks that can all be adapted to real-life situations in both professional and personal contexts. The world around you might constantly be in flux, but you don&’t have to be. With this book, you&’ll be empowered to make efficient progress with less stress—every single day.
Fascism (Routledge Library Editions: Racism and Fascism)
by Paul M. HayesThis book, first published in 1973, sets out to clear away many of the confused ideas and misconceptions concerning the origins and nature of fascism. The first section deals with the intellectual origins of fascism and examines the constituent strands and development of fascist theory, including discussion of such topics as the myth of race, the idea of the elite and the leader, nationalism, and the influence of militarism. The book then goes on to look at fascism in action, particularly in relation to economic affairs. The author here examines the process by which the fascists came to power in Germany and Italy, investigating both the political and social causes. A third section contains discussion of the nature of more recent regimes in Greece, Latin America and Africa.
Fascism in Europe (Routledge Library Editions: Racism and Fascism)
by S. J. WoolfWhat was fascism, why did it gain support between the wars, and could it happen again? This collection of essays, published in 1981, by leading authorities on the subject, offers a comprehensive study of European fascism, with a detailed analysis of its roots, its extraordinary strength between the two world wars, and its prospects in modern Europe. The essays discuss the economic, political and social conditions out of which individual fascist movements arose, the crucial problem of why a few fascist parties succeeded but most failed. The essays on Italy, Germany and Spain examine the continuities and contradictions between the fascist movements in opposition and the fascist regimes in power. The introductory and conclusive essays are concerned with the overall problem of the historical nature of the fascist phenomenon, but all the papers address themselves directly to this theme, testing the generalizations made by social scientists against the historical experiences of individual countries. Besides Italy and Germany, which harboured the major fascist movements, the countries discussed range from those with traditional parliamentary democracies – such as England, France, Belgium and Norway – to the new states which emerged from the collapse of the central European empires, such as Austria, Hungary, Romania and Poland. Originally published in 1968 under the title European Fascism, this survey acquired a worldwide reputation for its excellent and wide-ranging account of the history, role and functions of fascism in Europe. The present edition contains six new or wholly re-written essays and three substantially revised ones.
Fascism, Power, and Individual Rights: Escape from Freedom, To Have or To Be?, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
by Erich FrommThree fascinating examinations of the psychology of political power from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art of Loving. Philosopher and social theorist Erich Fromm is renowned as “a psychologist of penetration and a writer of ability” (Chicago Tribune). In these three riveting works, Fromm sheds light on some of the most critical dilemmas facing humanity. Escape from Freedom: Though freedom has been a prized value in Western culture for centuries, it is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. Fromm’s compelling study demonstrates how these feelings of alienation can lead to a desire for conformity and authoritarianism, bringing invaluable insight into the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe. To Have or To Be?: Life in the modern age began when people no longer lived at the mercy of nature and instead took control of it. Fromm argues that through the process of modern materialism, the natural tendency of humankind moved away from practicing human abilities, and instead focused on possessing objects. Humankind therefore began using tools that replace our own powers to think, feel, and act independently. Fromm argues that positive change—both social and economic—will come from being, loving, and sharing. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness: This classic study makes a distinction between animal aggression and certain forms of destructiveness that can only be found in human beings. His case studies span zoo animals, necrophiliacs, and the psychobiographies of notorious figures such as Hitler and Stalin, offering a comprehensive exploration of the human impulse for violence. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
Fashion & Music
by Jochen SträhleThis book will broaden readers’ understanding of the links between the music and fashion industries. It highlights the challenges currently facing the fashion industry in terms of hyper-competition, definition of ever-faster trends, changing consumer demands etc. In fact, the fashion industry is heavily influenced by the digital revolution in the music industry, which has changed the face of individual music consumption and social reference, and therefore, also has impacts on fashion consumption and social reference. This understanding is crucial in order to realign any fashion company’s strategies to the demands of modern fashion consumers. In terms of content, the book first discusses the social perspective of fashion and music. This includes an analysis of music as a key influencer of fashion trends, both theoretically and on the basis of a case study on grunge music. Then the role of music in the fashion business is addressed, and covers in-store music and the role of music in fashion communication. Following up, the role of fashion in the music business is analyzed. This includes the trend of co-design of fashion collections, music artists’ role of differentiation by style, and the market for music fashion merchandise articles (both theoretically and drawing on a case study). In closing, potential lessons learned from the music industry are developed for the fashion industry. This includes an analysis of the digital revolution and the advent of the crowdfunding idea (both theoretically and in a case study).
Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors
by Tsan-Ming ChoiFashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors presents eye-opening theory, literature review and original research on the mutual influence of branding strategies and consumer response. Contributors use multiple methods to analyze consumers' psychosocial needs and the extent that their fulfillment goes beyond the usefulness or value of the items they purchase as well as the fashion industry's means of communicating brand identity and enhancing brand loyalty. Along the way, these studies raise important questions about consumer behaviors, consumer welfare, environmental ethics and the future of consumer research. Included in the coverage: A symbolic interactionist perspective on fashion brand personality and advertisement response. Optimizing fashion branding strategies in a fluctuating market. An analysis of fashion brand extensions by artificial neural networks. Domestic or foreign luxury brands? A comparison of status- and non-status- seeking teenagers. The impact of consumers' need for uniqueness on purchase perception. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity and the marketing mix. A breakthrough volume on the complexities of how and why we buy, Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors will captivate researchers and practitioners in the fields of consumer psychology, marketing and economics.
Fashion Marketing: an anthology of viewpoints and perspectives (Routledge Revivals)
by Martin Christopher David Midgley Roy Hayhurst Gordon WillsFirst published in 1973, Fashion Marketing is intended for all whose work is linked to the vagaries of fashion or who are simply fascinated by the subject. Although much of the evidence and material collected here is related to textiles and clothing in particular, businessmen are becoming increasingly aware that fashion now extends its influence beyond its traditional fields. The fickleness of fashion has previously discouraged detailed analysis of trends, and such significant contributions to the literature as have been made often occur in the most unlikely places. It was this inaccessibility which led to the preparation of the present volume, which developed out of the considerable research activity into textile markets by the editors, first at the University of Bradford, and more recently at the Cranfield School of Management to which their research work was transferred in 1972. This book will be of interest to students of business, economics, marketing and fashion.
Fashion Theory: A Reader (Routledge Student Readers)
by Malcolm BarnardFrom its beginnings in the fifteenth century, intensified interest in fashion and the study of fashion over the last thirty years has led to a vast and varied literature on the subject. This collection of essays surveys and contextualizes the ways in which a wide range of disciplines have used a variety of theoretical approaches to explain, and sometimes to explain away, the astonishing variety, complexity and beauty of fashion. Themes covered include individual, social and gender identity, the erotic, consumption and communication. By collecting together some of the most influential and important writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we think and say about fashion.
Fashion Theory: A Reader (Routledge Student Readers)
by Malcolm BarnardThis thoroughly revised and updated edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader brings together and presents a wide range of essays on fashion theory that will engage and inform both the general reader and the specialist student of fashion. From apparently simple and accessible theories concerning what fashion is to seemingly more difficult or challenging theories concerning globalisation and new media, this collection contextualises different theoretical approaches to identify, analyse and explain the remarkable diversity, complexity and beauty of what we understand and experience every day as fashion and clothing. This second edition contains entirely new sections on fashion and sustainability, fashion and globalisation, fashion and digital/social media and fashion and the body/prosthesis. It also contains updated and revised sections on fashion, identity and difference, and on fashion and consumption and fashion as communication. More specifically, the section on identity and difference has been updated to include contemporary theoretical debates surrounding Islam and fashion, and LGBT+ communities and fashion and the section on consumption now includes theories of 'prosumption'. Each section has a specialist and dedicated Editor's Introduction which provides essential conceptual background, theoretical contextualisation and critical summaries of the readings in each section. Bringing together the most influential and ground breaking writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we all think and say about fashion. This second edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader is a timeless and invaluable resource for both the general reader and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines including sociology, cultural studies and fashion studies.
Fashion Theory: An Introduction (Routledge Student Readers Ser.)
by Malcolm BarnardFashion is both big business and big news. From models’ eating disorders and sweated labour to the glamour of a new season's trends, statements and arguments about fashion and the fashion industry can be found in every newspaper, consumer website and fashion blog. Books which define, analyse and explain the nature, production and consumption of fashion in terms of one theory or another abound. But what are the theories that run through all of these analyses, and how can they help us to understand fashion and clothing? Fashion Theory: an introduction explains some of the most influential and important theories on fashion: it brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we think and say about fashion every day and shows how they depend on those theories. This clear, accessible introduction contextualises and critiques the ways in which a wide range of disciplines have used different theoretical approaches to explain – and sometimes to explain away – the astonishing variety, complexity and beauty of fashion. Through engaging examples and case studies, this book explores: fashion and clothing in history fashion and clothing as communication fashion as identity fashion, clothing and the body production and consumption fashion, globalization and colonialism fashion, fetish and the erotic. This book will be an invaluable resource for students of cultural studies, sociology, gender studies, fashion design, textiles or the advertising, marketing and manufacturing of clothes.
Fashion Trends and Forecasting: The Fashion Futurists' Toolkit (Mastering Fashion Management)
by Stephen Westland Caroline HemingrayFashion Trends and Forecasting explores how designers, merchandisers, buyers, marketers and strategists use fashion trend forecasting to predict upcoming trends and understand past or current ones.It explains the importance of trend forecasting for businesses and how technology such as artificial intelligence can help to advance it for the future. Addressing both macro- and micro-trends, including fashion styles, textiles and colour trends as well as the impact of technology such as AI and the metaverse, the book offers guidance on how fashion students can address fast-changing consumer needs and demands and identify wider shifts in the cultural, environmental, political and technological worlds. Case studies from globally recognised organisations feature in every chapter, highlighting and contextualising theory for students. Discussion questions, further reading and exercises help facilitate class discussion and deeper understanding.Designed to equip the reader with Fashion Forecasting tools, methods and principles in an accessible and clear way, this text is recommended and core reading for students studying fashion forecasting, fashion buying and fashion marketing.Supplementary online resources can be found at www.routledge.com/9781032541860 and include a short instructor’s manual of points to be used for seminar discussions and chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides for instructors.
Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing
by Diana CraneIt has long been said that clothes make the man (or woman), but is it still true today? If so, how has the information clothes convey changed over the years? Using a wide range of historical and contemporary materials, Diana Crane demonstrates how the social significance of clothing has been transformed. Crane compares nineteenth-century societies—France and the United States—where social class was the most salient aspect of social identity signified in clothing with late twentieth-century America, where lifestyle, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ethnicity are more meaningful to individuals in constructing their wardrobes. Today, clothes worn at work signify social class, but leisure clothes convey meanings ranging from trite to political. In today's multicode societies, clothes inhibit as well as facilitate communication between highly fragmented social groups. Crane extends her comparison by showing how nineteenth-century French designers created fashions that suited lifestyles of Paris elites but that were also widely adopted outside France. By contrast, today's designers operate in a global marketplace, shaped by television, film, and popular music. No longer confined to elites, trendsetters are drawn from many social groups, and most trends have short trajectories. To assess the impact of fashion on women, Crane uses voices of college-aged and middle-aged women who took part in focus groups. These discussions yield fascinating information about women's perceptions of female identity and sexuality in the fashion industry. An absorbing work, Fashion and Its Social Agendas stands out as a critical study of gender, fashion, and consumer culture. "Why do people dress the way they do? How does clothing contribute to a person's identity as a man or woman, as a white-collar professional or blue-collar worker, as a preppie, yuppie, or nerd? How is it that dress no longer denotes social class so much as lifestyle? . . . Intelligent and informative, [this] book proposes thoughtful answers to some of these questions."-Library Journal
Fashion and its Social Agendas
by Diana CraneIt has long been said that clothes make the man (or woman), but is it still true today? If so, how has the information clothes convey changed over the years? Using a wide range of historical and contemporary materials, Diana Crane demonstrates how the social significance of clothing has been transformed. Crane compares nineteenth-century societies—France and the United States—where social class was the most salient aspect of social identity signified in clothing with late twentieth-century America, where lifestyle, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ethnicity are more meaningful to individuals in constructing their wardrobes. Today, clothes worn at work signify social class, but leisure clothes convey meanings ranging from trite to political. In today's multicode societies, clothes inhibit as well as facilitate communication between highly fragmented social groups. Crane extends her comparison by showing how nineteenth-century French designers created fashions that suited lifestyles of Paris elites but that were also widely adopted outside France. By contrast, today's designers operate in a global marketplace, shaped by television, film, and popular music. No longer confined to elites, trendsetters are drawn from many social groups, and most trends have short trajectories. To assess the impact of fashion on women, Crane uses voices of college-aged and middle-aged women who took part in focus groups. These discussions yield fascinating information about women's perceptions of female identity and sexuality in the fashion industry. An absorbing work, Fashion and Its Social Agendas stands out as a critical study of gender, fashion, and consumer culture. "Why do people dress the way they do? How does clothing contribute to a person's identity as a man or woman, as a white-collar professional or blue-collar worker, as a preppie, yuppie, or nerd? How is it that dress no longer denotes social class so much as lifestyle? . . . Intelligent and informative, [this] book proposes thoughtful answers to some of these questions. "-Library Journal