R Sassatelli
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 21368 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | R Sassatelli |
| NOMBRES | R |
| APELLIDO | Sassatelli |
| FIRMA | SASSATELLI R |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Milan |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4240-9691 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 130 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1997 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Body and Cultural Sociology
Across the social sciences and humanities, embodiment has become a central analytic perspective, reflecting the recognition that bodily experiences vary historically and cross‐culturally. Far from a fixed biological entities, human bodies are understood as socially mediated, relational, and power‐laden processes. Since the 1980s, cultural sociology (drawing on phenomenology, French pragmatism, poststructuralism, and feminist theory) has shown how…
Embodiment as an uncharted territory of consumption
This roundtable takes an embodied approach to consumption, treating the body as an active medium through which consumption is organized, experienced and governed, rather than as a residual site of inscription. Drawing on perspectives from sociology, geography and digital media studies, the contributors discuss how sensory and affective bodily experiences influence everyday consumption in various contexts, from hunger and satiety to walking and ‘s…
Between commerce and care
The paper considers the way commercialization is negotiated in important consumption rituals such as funerals by mourners. Focusing on Italy, we start by providing data about funeral participation, and propose that there is a tension between affective and commercial personalization which informs all stages of the social management of death and the encounter between the mourners and the funeral industry. We look at how the organization and purchas…
Decolonising consumption, the hegemony of consumer culture and the politics of consumption
sat down with Roberta to discuss consumer culture, the politics of consumption, authenticity, the sharing economy, food and the body, and the future of consumption studies
Consumer Society
The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Arendt, Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard. It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. In contemporary societies, because of the separation of production and consumption, we find ourselves confronted with objects whose meaning is beyo…
Consumer identities
This chapter addresses the centrality of the ‘consumer’, the lengthy and contested historical processes which led to its formation, the many theoretical portrayals of consumer agency which have followed each other in a succession of criticism and cross-reference, the political implications of conceiving contemporary culture as made of consumers. It considers how consumer identities have been constructed and promoted as major social identities in …
The political morality of food
Anthropology and sociology have been keen to show that consumption is a social and moral field, and that consumer practices are part of an ongoing process of negotiation of social classifications and hierarchies. This chapter contends that the study of the arguments and discourses deployed to criticise or otherwise qualify consumption is important to the political morality of consumption. Moral discourses surrounding consumer practices are crucia…
Global surveillance of trends in cancer survival 2000–14 (Concord-3)
BACKGROUND: In 2015, the second cycle of the CONCORD programme established global surveillance of cancer survival as a metric of the effectiveness of health systems and to inform global policy on cancer control. CONCORD-3 updates the worldwide surveillance of cancer survival to 2014. METHODS: CONCORD-3 includes individual records for 37·5 million patients diagnosed with cancer during the 15-year period 2000-14. Data were provided by 322 populatio…
Fitness Culture
In contemporary western societies, the “fit body” has replaced body decoration as a potent symbol of status and character, both for men and women. Fitness gyms and health centers have become highly visible as the sites where such a body is produced. They are at the core of a much broader fitness culture, comprising a variety of commodities and are key institutions of contemporary consumer culture. Fitness culture has attracted contrasting diagnos…
Health, bodies and active leisure
This chapter considers how consumer culture contributes to the contemporary politics of health, active leisure and the body. It shows how the way body care is organized through fitness culture as a predominantly commercial culture which addresses the sovereign, even choosy consumer. The chapter looks at which kind of symbolic work happens in the gym around ideals of the body, considers the interplay between health and beauty, the emergence of fit…
Gary Alan Fine
This chapter considers the work of Gary Alan Fine, probably the most prolific contemporary cultural ethnographer and one of the key contributors to the sociology of small groups. In the chapter, Fine’s intellectual journey is explored, from his earlier studies on the Baseball little league to his recent research on ‘futurework’ and the way forecast is culturally and organizationally structured. While Fine’s perspective is interdisciplinary, with …
Consumption, Critical/Responsible
Consumer practices in consumer capitalist societies are increasingly reflexively addressing mainstream circuits of commercialization, with consumers being voluntarily engaged in alternative, responsible, or critical consumption. Each of these labels tends to stress a particular aspect of consumer practice as being different from mainstream commercialism, showing consumers' commitment to the welfare of others and to the environment and expressing …
You can all succeed
Broad cultural trends such as spectacularization and individualization as induced by consumer culture are transforming the global scene of sport practice with effects that may appear as socially reconciliatory. Commercialization has worked in two directions: while competitive, professional sport is becoming a global media phenomenon, with increasingly global and yet fragmented audiences, ordinary sport practice is being individualized in the Glob…
Healthy cities and instrumental leisure
As urbanisation has come to characterise contemporary societies, large cities have become quite ambivalent places for the human species: they are removing the human body from its perceived natural condition, while increasingly attempting to provide a cure for the ills of a sedentary life. Fitness gyms are presented as the ‘natural' solution to our ‘unnatural' lifestyle as urban dwellers and as a therapeutic fix to the ills of metropolitan living.…
Creating value, consuming Bologna
This article addresses the aestheticization of traditional foods and the use of territorialization as a brand value for the promotion of products and services. Economy of quality is studied through a focus on the role that political institutions may have in promoting quality chains. Through document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, we consider the case of the quality brand, DegustiBo, promoted by the Province of Bologna, It…
Consumer Culture, Sustainability and a New Vision of Consumer Sovereignty
The article considers sustainable consumption and alternative food networks in the context of global consumer capitalism as a locus where a new form of consumer sovereignty can be developed. It offers a theoretical overview aimed at charting the emergence and consolidation of a relational, responsible vision of consumer sovereignty. Potentially alternative to neo-classical and neoliberal views, such a vision of consumers and their power involves …
Contestação E Consumo Alternativo
Este artigo explora a relação entre contestação social e consumo alternativo de alimentos, argumentando que a comida se tornou um locus privilegiado para a expressão de valores morais e políticos. A autora analisa como as escolhas alimentares, como o vegetarianismo, o veganismo e o consumo de orgânicos, podem ser entendidas como formas de resistência a sistemas de produção e consumo dominantes, refletindo uma crítica à globalização, à industriali…
Self and Body
This article investigates the historical formation and specific configuration of a threefold relation crucial to contemporary society, that between the body, the self, and material culture, which, in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies, has become largely defined through consumer culture. Drawing on historiography, sociology, and anthropology, it explores how, from the early modern period, the consolidation of new consumption…
Consumption, Critical/Responsible
Consumer practices in consumer capitalist societies are increasingly reflexively addressing mainstream circuits of commercialization, with consumers being voluntarily engaged in alternative, responsible, or critical consumption. Each of these labels tends to stress a particular aspect of consumer practices as being different from mainstream commercialism, showing consumers’ commitment to other people's welfare and nature and expressing consumers’…
Interview with Laura Mulvey
This conversation between Laura Mulvey and Roberta Sassatelli offers a historical reconstruction of Mulvey's work, from her famous essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' to her most recent reflections on male gaze, film technology and visual culture. The conversation initially deals with the socio-cultural context in which the 'Visual Pleasure...' essay was produced by outlining a number of possible theoretical parallelisms with other schol…
Fitness Culture
This book provides a sociological perspective on fitness culture as developed in commercial gyms, investigating the cultural relevance of gyms in terms of the history of the commercialization of body
Fitness Culture
In contemporary Western societies, the “fit body” has replaced body decoration as a potent symbol of status and character, both for men and for women. As clothes are ever more revealing, what is fashionable is the sculpting of the body itself. Fitness gyms and health centers have become highly visible as the sites where such a body is produced. Fitness gyms are a special breed of gyms: they are typically unisex, non‐competitive environments aimed…
Consumption, Pleasure and Politics
A growing field of research is documenting the political investment of the consumer. Yet, consumers are invested of political responsibilities in many different ways, which respond to different visions of politics and consumption, culture and the economy. In this article we critically explore the particular stance of an increasingly international actor such as Slow Food, placing it in the context of current debates on the scope of alternative foo…
An Interview with Paul Willis
An Interview with one of the founders of British Cultural Studies, introduced by a text which contextualizes both the interview and the author (and British Cultural Studies). The issues discussed are the three in the title: commodification, symbolic resistance and cultural reproduction. But also creativity and methological issues in the analysis of culture
Corpi in pratica
According to the theory of reflexive individualisation, in the conditions of high modernity the body becomes a never-ending reflexive project. In this paper I discuss the limits of this view of action, reflexivity and embodiment. I argue that it relies on some form of body/mind dualism, it is not enough sensitive to the limits to reflexivity imposed by the very fact that our practices are embodied, and it might take what are normative claims abou…
Consumption, Pleasure and Politics
A growing field of research is documenting the political investment of the consumer. Yet, consumers are invested of political responsibilities in many different ways, which respond to different visions of politics and consumption, culture and the economy. In this article we critically explore the particular stance of an increasingly international actor such as Slow Food, placing it in the context of current debates on the scope of alternative foo…
Novel Food, New Markets and Trust Regimes
The public debate around food confidence stimulated by food scares, the opening up of wider food markets and the introduction of GM foods provides an opportunity to analyse citizens' identification with their community sociologically, as it is reproduced through mundane practices. In order to do so, this article examines the GM food debate in Italy and the implications for food and agricultural policy of Austria's entry into the EU. Britain, with…
Interaction Order and Beyond
This article addresses keep-fit culture not as a collection of commercial images or as the product of broader cultural values, but as a set of situated body practices, that is practices taking place within specific institutions where these images and values are reinterpreted in locally prescribed ways and, to some extent, filtered. Relying on fieldwork, fitness gyms are revealed to be experienced as places with their own rules, pleasures and iden…
Interview with Laura Mulvey
This conversation between Laura Mulvey and Roberta Sassatelli offers a historical reconstruction of Mulvey's work, from her famous essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' to her most recent reflections on male gaze, film technology and visual culture. The conversation initially deals with the socio-cultural context in which the 'Visual Pleasure...' essay was produced by outlining a number of possible theoretical parallelisms with other schol…
Fitness Gyms and the Local Organization of Experience
One of the peculiarities of fitness gyms is the succession of people who try and follow a training programme and are not able to stick to it. Based on ethnographic research I try to account for this phenomenon. For regular participants, fitness training is not only important for the kind of body it will hopefully produce in the long run, but also for how it is lived in the present. I will try to show that the way gyms are locally organized - spat…
The Commercialization of Discipline
Keywords: Keep-fitfitness culturegymnasiumbodyfatness
You can all succeed
Broad cultural trends such as spectacularization and individualization as induced by consumer culture are transforming the global scene of sport practice with effects that may appear as socially reconciliatory. Commercialization has worked in two directions: while competitive, professional sport is becoming a global media phenomenon, with increasingly global and yet fragmented audiences, ordinary sport practice is being individualized in the Glob…
Creating value, consuming Bologna
This article addresses the aestheticization of traditional foods and the use of territorialization as a brand value for the promotion of products and services. Economy of quality is studied through a focus on the role that political institutions may have in promoting quality chains. Through document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, we consider the case of the quality brand, DegustiBo, promoted by the Province of Bologna, It…
An Interview with Paul Willis
An Interview with one of the founders of British Cultural Studies, introduced by a text which contextualizes both the interview and the author (and British Cultural Studies). The issues discussed are the three in the title: commodification, symbolic resistance and cultural reproduction. But also creativity and methological issues in the analysis of culture
From Value to Consumption. A Social- theoretical Perspective on Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes
Re-interpreting Simmel's work on money as an attempt to develop a critical sociology of consumption from a relativist theory of value, this paper illustrates the extent to which it may be seen as something more, and different than, sociological impressionism. The modern social space of valuation is chiefly defined by the development of money economy within metropolitan settings. This allows for the public commensurability of values and pushes for…
Consumer Culture, Sustainability and a New Vision of Consumer Sovereignty
The article considers sustainable consumption and alternative food networks in the context of global consumer capitalism as a locus where a new form of consumer sovereignty can be developed. It offers a theoretical overview aimed at charting the emergence and consolidation of a relational, responsible vision of consumer sovereignty. Potentially alternative to neo-classical and neoliberal views, such a vision of consumers and their power involves …
Contestação E Consumo Alternativo
Este artigo explora a relação entre contestação social e consumo alternativo de alimentos, argumentando que a comida se tornou um locus privilegiado para a expressão de valores morais e políticos. A autora analisa como as escolhas alimentares, como o vegetarianismo, o veganismo e o consumo de orgânicos, podem ser entendidas como formas de resistência a sistemas de produção e consumo dominantes, refletindo uma crítica à globalização, à industriali…
The Commercialization of Discipline
Trust, choice and routines
(2001). Trust, choice and routines: Putting the consumer on trial. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Trusting in Reason: Martin Hollis and the Philosophy of Social Action, pp. 84-105
Consuming Ambivalence
Contrasting diagnoses on commercial modernity have been typically organ ized by a normative dichotomy between consumption and production that can be traced back to the emergence of a public discourse on commodity circulation in 18th-century Britain. Within this framework, I re-interpret Bernard Mandeville as a proto-sociologist. Mandeville may be considered as the forerunner of a position that neither refuses nor celebrates com mercial modernity.…
Consuming Ambivalence
Contrasting diagnoses on commercial modernity have been typically organ ized by a normative dichotomy between consumption and production that can be traced back to the emergence of a public discourse on commodity circulation in 18th-century Britain. Within this framework, I re-interpret Bernard Mandeville as a proto-sociologist. Mandeville may be considered as the forerunner of a position that neither refuses nor celebrates com mercial modernity.…
Justice, television and delegitimation
Pier Paolo Giglioli, Sandra Cavicchioli and Giolo Fele, Rituali di degradazione. Anatomia del processo Cusani , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997, 243 pp., ISBN 88–15–05713–7 pbk, 28,000 Lire. Recent developments in Italian politics, such as the emergence of Forza Italia , became possible only after a much deeper process had taken place, the delegitimation of Italian politicians. In the early 1990s, much of the political class which had dominated Italian …
Interaction Order and Beyond
This article addresses keep-fit culture not as a collection of commercial images or as the product of broader cultural values, but as a set of situated body practices, that is practices taking place within specific institutions where these images and values are reinterpreted in locally prescribed ways and, to some extent, filtered. Relying on fieldwork, fitness gyms are revealed to be experienced as places with their own rules, pleasures and iden…
Fitness Gyms and the Local Organization of Experience
One of the peculiarities of fitness gyms is the succession of people who try and follow a training programme and are not able to stick to it. Based on ethnographic research I try to account for this phenomenon. For regular participants, fitness training is not only important for the kind of body it will hopefully produce in the long run, but also for how it is lived in the present. I will try to show that the way gyms are locally organized - spat…
The Commercialization of Discipline
Keywords: Keep-fitfitness culturegymnasiumbodyfatness
Italian summaries
From Value to Consumption. A Social- theoretical Perspective on Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes
Re-interpreting Simmel's work on money as an attempt to develop a critical sociology of consumption from a relativist theory of value, this paper illustrates the extent to which it may be seen as something more, and different than, sociological impressionism. The modern social space of valuation is chiefly defined by the development of money economy within metropolitan settings. This allows for the public commensurability of values and pushes for…
From Value to Consumption. A Social-theoretical Perspective on Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes
Novel Food, New Markets and Trust Regimes
The public debate around food confidence stimulated by food scares, the opening up of wider food markets and the introduction of GM foods provides an opportunity to analyse citizens' identification with their community sociologically, as it is reproduced through mundane practices. In order to do so, this article examines the GM food debate in Italy and the implications for food and agricultural policy of Austria's entry into the EU. Britain, with…
Trust, choice and routines
(2001). Trust, choice and routines: Putting the consumer on trial. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Trusting in Reason: Martin Hollis and the Philosophy of Social Action, pp. 84-105
The Commercialization of Discipline
The Commercialization of Discipline
Consumer Culture
Showing the culture & institutional processes that have brought the notion of the 'consumer' to life, 'Consumer Culture' guides the reader on a comprehensive journey through the history of how we have come to understand ourselves as consumers in a consumer society & reveals the profound ambiguities & ambivalences inherent within
Consumer Society
The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard (cf. Baudrillard 1998). It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. At that time, the label “consumer society” constituted an attack on so‐called “consumerism”: a continuous and unremitting search for…
An Interview with Paul Willis
An Interview with one of the founders of British Cultural Studies, introduced by a text which contextualizes both the interview and the author (and British Cultural Studies). The issues discussed are the three in the title: commodification, symbolic resistance and cultural reproduction. But also creativity and methological issues in the analysis of culture
Fitness Culture
This book provides a sociological perspective on fitness culture as developed in commercial gyms, investigating the cultural relevance of gyms in terms of the history of the commercialization of body
Fitness Culture
In contemporary Western societies, the “fit body” has replaced body decoration as a potent symbol of status and character, both for men and for women. As clothes are ever more revealing, what is fashionable is the sculpting of the body itself. Fitness gyms and health centers have become highly visible as the sites where such a body is produced. Fitness gyms are a special breed of gyms: they are typically unisex, non‐competitive environments aimed…
Consumption, Pleasure and Politics
A growing field of research is documenting the political investment of the consumer. Yet, consumers are invested of political responsibilities in many different ways, which respond to different visions of politics and consumption, culture and the economy. In this article we critically explore the particular stance of an increasingly international actor such as Slow Food, placing it in the context of current debates on the scope of alternative foo…
Interview with Laura Mulvey
This conversation between Laura Mulvey and Roberta Sassatelli offers a historical reconstruction of Mulvey's work, from her famous essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' to her most recent reflections on male gaze, film technology and visual culture. The conversation initially deals with the socio-cultural context in which the 'Visual Pleasure...' essay was produced by outlining a number of possible theoretical parallelisms with other schol…
Self and Body
This article investigates the historical formation and specific configuration of a threefold relation crucial to contemporary society, that between the body, the self, and material culture, which, in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies, has become largely defined through consumer culture. Drawing on historiography, sociology, and anthropology, it explores how, from the early modern period, the consolidation of new consumption…
Consumption, Critical/Responsible
Consumer practices in consumer capitalist societies are increasingly reflexively addressing mainstream circuits of commercialization, with consumers being voluntarily engaged in alternative, responsible, or critical consumption. Each of these labels tends to stress a particular aspect of consumer practices as being different from mainstream commercialism, showing consumers’ commitment to other people's welfare and nature and expressing consumers’…
Healthy cities and instrumental leisure
As urbanisation has come to characterise contemporary societies, large cities have become quite ambivalent places for the human species: they are removing the human body from its perceived natural condition, while increasingly attempting to provide a cure for the ills of a sedentary life. Fitness gyms are presented as the ‘natural' solution to our ‘unnatural' lifestyle as urban dwellers and as a therapeutic fix to the ills of metropolitan living.…
Creating value, consuming Bologna
This article addresses the aestheticization of traditional foods and the use of territorialization as a brand value for the promotion of products and services. Economy of quality is studied through a focus on the role that political institutions may have in promoting quality chains. Through document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, we consider the case of the quality brand, DegustiBo, promoted by the Province of Bologna, It…
Consumer Culture, Sustainability and a New Vision of Consumer Sovereignty
The article considers sustainable consumption and alternative food networks in the context of global consumer capitalism as a locus where a new form of consumer sovereignty can be developed. It offers a theoretical overview aimed at charting the emergence and consolidation of a relational, responsible vision of consumer sovereignty. Potentially alternative to neo-classical and neoliberal views, such a vision of consumers and their power involves …
Contestação E Consumo Alternativo
Este artigo explora a relação entre contestação social e consumo alternativo de alimentos, argumentando que a comida se tornou um locus privilegiado para a expressão de valores morais e políticos. A autora analisa como as escolhas alimentares, como o vegetarianismo, o veganismo e o consumo de orgânicos, podem ser entendidas como formas de resistência a sistemas de produção e consumo dominantes, refletindo uma crítica à globalização, à industriali…
Sociology (29 obras) · Political science (23 obras) · Law (19 obras) · Social science (16 obras) · Epistemology (13 obras) · Politics (13 obras) · Aesthetics (11 obras) · Economics (11 obras) · Psychology (11 obras) · Law (10 obras)