Product Description: Public spaces have become platforms for the invention and display of self-identity, especially in the affluent West where the restaurant, from local café to Michelin-starred establishment, deftly stages these performances. In this follow-up to her classic Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, Joanne Finkelstein takes a fragment of social life―restaurant dining―and uses it to examine the dramatic effect our public behavior and social habits have on our private desires and sense of identity...read more

Product Description: From the rise of the Fashion Café to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects–on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations–been fully considered...read more

Product Description: Fashion is more that supermodels in odd clothes pouting and pirouetting on Parisian catwalks. Commentators and theorists have variously seen fashion as a social, economic or aesthetic force, or sometimes as all three at once. Fashion helps to form our individual identities and lets us stand out from the crowd...read more

Discusses the social significance of dining out, explains why it has become so popular, and traces the history of the restaurant