It's in the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience [Hardcover]

Lloyd Klein (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0275957578 | ISBN-13: 978-0275957575 | Publication Date: December 30, 1999

This is the first comprehensive account of the development of consumer credit. Consumer credit is a vital force driving the development of our economic system. Rather than look at consumer credit solely as an economic phenomenon, Klein examines the social impact of the consumer credit industry within the framework of economic and cultural change. His analysis offers a concise examination of the industry from the perspective of marketing, the creating of material and experiential products, and the product distribution mechanisms. The discussion of changes within the bankruptcy structure accounts for the creation of overzealous consumer spending and the implementation of controls over individual consumer credit. This will be of interest to scholars or students concentrating in economic sociology, stratification, and cultural studies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

LLOYD KLEIN teaches in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (December 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275957578
• ISBN-13: 978-0275957575
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,455,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Credit and the Material World, June 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: It's in the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience (Hardcover)

The world of consumer credit offers many cultural and real financial implications. Credit cards, their marketing, social significance, and consumer utilization are areas not usually covered in both social and economic contexts. This book offers a view that credit is a part of everyday life. In addition, analysis offered in this study portrays consumer credit as both a positive and negative force in our society. The analysis of historical development, marketing, cultural values and facilitation of consumer spending would suffice as an adequate analysis. But the view of the credit card industry as dependent upon issuing more plastic after consumer bankruptcy is important. We get the idea that credit cards are facilitators for middle class lifestyles and continuance of the economic system. This book clearly builds upon the early assumptions and gives us a wider view of the socio-economic playing field related to the influence of credit card utilization.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating footnotes aren't enough to redeem bad text, May 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: It's in the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience (Hardcover)

Boy, there's a lot in this book, but not a lot about credit cards or even consumer credit. I learned that Dail-a-Porn lasts 57 seconds, how truckers negotiate prices from prostitutes on CB radio, and that a certain woman who doesn't find Arabian-nights themed hotel rooms sexy prefers bondage games. But what is the point: that credit lets people buy things, that credit cards let people borrow to buy, that a card rather then currency removes a fetish for retaining money, or that a card encourages annonymity? Don't truckers pay hookers in cash anyway?

This is a messy pastiche of the author's previous academic paper, the type of sociology that consists of recounting the scripts of ads then telling readers what the advertisers were really trying to say, and lots of academic sounding references. Freud, Marx, Weber, Veblen,Maury Povich,and Foucalt have all been included in that festive intellectual name- dropping style.