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Review

"A provocative, original, and thoughtful writer, someone who addresses topics that are central to our culture from a fresh vantage point, and someone who is willing to challenge orthodoxies -- right, left, and center -- which prevent theorists of other stripes from seeing what's in front of their eyes." -- Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture

Product Description

Self reinvention has become a preoccupation of contemporary culture. In the last decade, Hollywood made a 500-million-dollar bet on this idea with movies such as Multiplicity, Fight Club, eXistenZ, and Catch Me If You Can. Self reinvention marks the careers of Madonna, Ani DiFranco, Martha Stewart, and Robin Williams. The Nike ads of LeBron James, the experiments of New Age spirituality, the mores of contemporary teen culture, and the obsession with "extreme makeovers" are all examples of our culture's fixation with change. In a time marked by plenitude, transformation is one of the few things these parties have in common.

Although transformation is widely acknowledged as a defining characteristic of our culture, we have almost no studies on what it is or how it works. Transformations offers the first comprehensive and systematic view. It is an ethnography of the contemporary world.

Trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago), Grant has studied American culture and business for 25 years.

He has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and worked for many corporate clients including Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, IBM, IKEA, Chrysler, Kraft, and Kimberly Clark.

He started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures.

He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.

He is a long time student of culture and commerce. Many academics prefer to look askance at interactions of culture and commerce. Grant believes this is the secret of American culture. He has explored this theme in two books: Culture and Consumption I, and Culture and Consumption II.

He has also looked at how Americans invent themselves. This helps explain, he thinks, what’s happening in the new media space and properties like Second Life. It also helps him understand Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. He had explored this theme in two more books: Big Hair and Transformations: identity construction in a contemporary culture.

He is the student of American culture. Plenitude published in 1997 looked at the new explosive growth of contemporary culture. In Flock and Flow, he shows how contemporary culture and commerce change.

This fall he is publishing a book called Chief Culture Officer with Basic Books that argues that culture now creates so much opportunity and danger for the corporation. We need senior managers who focus on it full time. I am hoping this will create a new occupational destination for all those smart people who know about culture but are not presently allowed to draw upon this for career purposes.