Liza Featherstone's Books

Divining Desire

Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

By: Liza Featherstone

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Divining Desire

Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

By: Liza Featherstone

Over the course of the last century, the focus group has become an increasingly vital part of the way companies and politicians sell their products and policies. Few areas of life, from salad dressing to health care legislation to our favorite TV shows, have been left untouched by the questions put to controlled groups about what they do and don’t like. Divining Desire is the first-ever popular survey of this rich topic. In a lively, sweeping history, Liza Featherstone traces the surprising roots of the focus group in early-twentieth century European socialism, its subsequent use by the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue, and its widespread deployment today. She also explores such famous “failures” of the method as the doomed launch of the Ford Edsel with its vagina shaped radiator grille, and the even more ill-fated attempt to introduce a new flavor of Coca Cola (which prompted street protests from devotees of the old formula). As elites have become increasingly detached from the general public, they rely ever more on focus groups, whether to win votes or to sell products. And, in a society where many feel increasingly powerless, the focus group has at least offered the illusion that ordinary people will be listened to and that their opinions count. Yet, it seems the more we are consulted, the less power we have. That paradox is particularly stark today, when everyone can post an opinion on social media—our 24 hour “focus group”—yet only plutocrats can shape policy. In telling this fascinating story, Featherstone raises profound questions about democracy, desire and the innermost workings of consumer society.

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Page Count

366

Publisher

OR Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1682191079

ISBN 13

9781682191071

Divining Desire

Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

By: Liza Featherstone

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Divining Desire

Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

By: Liza Featherstone

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366

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OR Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1682191079

ISBN 13

9781682191071

Selling Women Short

The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart

By: Liza Featherstone

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Selling Women Short

The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart

By: Liza Featherstone

On television, Wal-Mart employees are smiling women delighted with their jobs. But reality is another story. In 2000, Betty Dukes, a 52-year-old black woman in Pittsburg, California, became the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores , a class action representing 1.4 million women. In an explosive investigation of this historic lawsuit, journalist Liza Featherstone reveals how Wal-Mart, a self-styled "family-oriented," Christian company: Deprives women (but not men) of the training they need to advance -- Relegates women to lower-paying jobs, like selling baby clothes, reserving the more lucrative positions for men -- Inflicts punitive demotions on employees who object to discrimination -- Exploits Asian women in its sweatshops in Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth. Featherstone reveals the creative solutions Wal-Mart workers around the country have found-like fighting for unions, living-wage ordinances, and childcare options. Selling Women Short combines the personal stories of these employees with superb investigative journalism to show why women who work low-wage jobs are getting a raw deal, and what they are doing about it.

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Page Count

305

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786738162

ISBN 13

9780786738168

Students Against Sweatshops

By: Liza Featherstone,United Students Against Sweatshops

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Students Against Sweatshops

By: Liza Featherstone,United Students Against Sweatshops

This short, punchy book is both a record of a new mass campaign and a tool for the realization of its goals. The students demand one thing: that clothing bearing university logos must be produced under healthy, safe, and fair working conditions.

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Page Count

132

Publisher

Verso

Published Date

ISBN 10

1859843026

ISBN 13

9781859843024

Anna Karenina and Others

By: Liza Knapp

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Anna Karenina and Others

By: Liza Knapp

Liza Knapp offers a fresh approach to understanding Tolstoy's construction of his novel Anna Karenina and how he creates patterns of meaning. Her analysis draws on works that were critical to his understanding of the interconnectedness of human lives, including The Scarlet Letter, Middlemarch, and Blaise Pascal's Pens es. Knapp concludes with a tour-de-force reading of Mrs. Dalloway as Virginia Woolf's response to Tolstoy's treatment of Anna Karenina and others.

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Page Count

337

Publisher

University of Wisconsin Pres

Published Date

ISBN 10

0299307905

ISBN 13

9780299307905

Good Governance, Scale and Power

A Case Study of North Sea Fisheries

By: Liza Griffin

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Good Governance, Scale and Power

A Case Study of North Sea Fisheries

By: Liza Griffin

In recent years there have been several alarming predictions about the future of the planet’s fish stocks. As a result, many national governments and supranational institutions, including the European Union, have instituted reforms designed to mitigate the crisis. This book examines the discourse and practice of ‘good governance’ in the context of fisheries management. It starts by examining the ‘crisis’ of fisheries in the North Sea, caused primarily by overfishing and failure of the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy. It then goes on to analyse reforms to this policy enacted and planned between 2002 and 2013, and the proposition that collapse of fish stocks could occur as a result of deficiencies in new governing arrangements, i.e. failure to apply ‘principles of good governance’. The book argues that impediments to good governance practice in fisheries are not merely the result of implementation deficits, but that they constitute a more systematic failure. Governance theory addresses issues of power, but it does not recognise the many important spatially contingent and relational forms of power that are exercised in actual governing practice. For example, it frequently overlooks spatial practices and strategies, such as ‘scale jumping, ‘rescaling’ and the discursive redrawing of governing boundaries. This book exposes some of these spatial power relationships, showing that the presence of such relationships has implications for accountability and effective policymaking. In sum, this book explores some of the ways in which we might better understand governance practice using theories of scale and relational concepts of power, and in the process it offers a critique and rethinking of governance theory. These reflections are made on the basis of an in-depth case study of the attempted pursuit of ‘good governance’ in the European Union via institutional reforms, focusing particularly on the thorny and fascinating case of North Sea fisheries management.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135078343

ISBN 13

9781135078348

The Things That Fly in the Night

Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora

By: Giselle Liza Anatol

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The Things That Fly in the Night

Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora

By: Giselle Liza Anatol

The Things That Fly in the Night explores images of vampirism in Caribbean and African diasporic folk traditions and in contemporary fiction. Giselle Liza Anatol focuses on the figure of the soucouyant, or Old Hag—an aged woman by day who sheds her skin during night’s darkest hours in order to fly about her community and suck the blood of her unwitting victims. In contrast to the glitz, glamour, and seductiveness of conventional depictions of the European vampire, the soucouyant triggers unease about old age and female power. Tracing relevant folklore through the English- and French-speaking Caribbean, the U.S. Deep South, and parts of West Africa, Anatol shows how tales of the nocturnal female bloodsuckers not only entertain and encourage obedience in pre-adolescent listeners, but also work to instill particular values about women’s “proper” place and behaviors in society at large. Alongside traditional legends, Anatol considers the explosion of soucouyant and other vampire narratives among writers of Caribbean and African heritage who in the past twenty years have rejected the demonic image of the character and used her instead to urge for female mobility, racial and cultural empowerment, and anti colonial resistance. Texts include work by authors as diverse as Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, U.S. National Book Award winner Edwidge Danticat, and science fiction/fantasy writers Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson.

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Page Count

420

Publisher

Rutgers University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813575591

ISBN 13

9780813575599

Selling Women Short

The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart

By: Liza Featherstone

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Selling Women Short

The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart

By: Liza Featherstone

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

305

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786738162

ISBN 13

9780786738168

Book's by Liza Featherstone

Divining Desire

Divining Desire

Divining Desire

Divining Desire

Selling Women Short

Selling Women Short

Students Against Sweatshops

Students Against Sweatshops

Anna Karenina and Others

Anna Karenina and Others

Good Governance, Scale and Power

Good Governance, Scale and Power

The Things That Fly in the Night

The Things That Fly in the Night

Selling Women Short

Selling Women Short

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