Social Sciences

Architecture and Ritual explores how the varied rituals of everyday life are framed and defined in space by the buildings which we inhabit. It penetrates beyond traditional assumptions about architectural style, aesthetics and utility to deal with something more implicit: how buildings shape and reflect our experience in ways of which we remain unconscious.

First, businesses discovered quality as a key competitive edge; next came service. Now, Donald A. Norman, former Director of the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of California, reveals how smart design is the new competitive frontier. The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

Technology has been an essential factor in the production of dress and the cultures of fashion throughout human history. Structured chronologically from prehistory to the present day, this is the first broad study of the complex relationship between dress and technology.

The make-take-waste paradigm of fast fashion explains much of the producer and consumer behavior patterns towards fast fashion. The evolution from a two-season fashion calendar to fast fashion, characterized by rapid product cycles from retailers and impulse buying by consumers, presents new challenges to the environment, workplace and labour practices. This book provides a comprehensive overview of new insights into consumer behaviour mechanisms in order to shift practices toward sustainable fashion and to minimize the negative impacts of fast fashion on the environment and society.

Economics is a broad topic, and your knowledge might be limited if you're not an economist by profession -- until now! The Economics Book is your jargon-free, visual guide to understanding the production and distribution of wealth. Using a combination of authoritative, clear text, and bold graphics, this encyclopedia explores and explains big questions and issues that affect us all. Everything from taxation, to recession to the housing market and much more!

Boldly illustrated and comprehensive in its scope and depth, Entrepreneurs Who Changed History profiles more than 90 industry leaders across the world and throughout the ages - from the enterprising bankers of the medieval world and the merchants of an empire to the titans of industry and the geniuses of Silicon Valley.

Understand everything you need to know about our democratic system--from the Constitution to present-day elections--with The Everything American Government Book.

Debates over constitutional rights impact you every day as an American citizen. But do you know what the U.S. Constitution actually says? This accessible guide contains the complete text of the Constitution, with short, descriptive margin notes throughout. Articles and amendments are then analyzed in depth to help you comprehend the basis of democracy.

Bridging theory and practice, this accessible text considers fashion from both cultural studies and fashion studies perspectives, and addresses the growing interaction between the two fields. Kaiser and Green use a wide range of cross-cultural case studies to explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender and other identities intersect and are produced through embodied fashion. Drawing on intersectionality in feminist theory and cultural studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies is essential reading for students and scholars.

A groundbreaking investigative work by a critically acclaimed sociologist on the corporate takeover of local news and what it means for all Americans

Marketing Fashion is a practical guide to the fundamental principles of marketing and branding, from catwalk to price calculation, developing brand identity, to creating a customer profile. The book explains key theoretical concepts, and illustrates how they are applied within the global fashion and retail industry, from the heights of haute couture to the multiples of the mass market.

The Psychology Book is your visual guide to the complex and fascinating world of human behavior. Discover how we learn, become emotionally bonded with others, and develop coping mechanisms to deal with adversity, or conform in a group. Get to know key thinkers, from Freud and Jung to Elizabeth Loftus and Melanie Klein, and follow charts and timelines to make sense of it all and see how one theory influenced another.

The Psychology of Music serves as an introduction to an interdisciplinary field in psychology, which focuses on the interpretation of music through mental function. This interpretation leads to the characterization of music through perceiving, remembering, creating, performing, and responding to music.

This book brings together a series of new and historical case studies to show how different phases of globalization are transforming the built environment. Taking a broad interdisciplinary approach, the author draws on sociological, geographical, cultural and postcolonial studies to provide a critical account of the development of three key concepts: global culture, post colonialism, and modernity.