Advertising Cultures

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Sociological debates about the new information-intensive economies, and government policy on the creative industries have begun to focus attention on the practitioners of `creative work'. The book presents a case-study of the social make-up, informal cultures and subjective identities of these creative practices.

Sean Nixon forges a distinctive style of cultural analysis out of this world of economic and cultural endeavour that draws on studies of consumer and commercial cultures, and is richly informed by extensive original research.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.