Customer Reviews

Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a big fan of Grant McCracken's blog, so I was eagerly anticipating his new book, which postulates that, as he titles his preface, "Entertainment is dead, long live Transformation". Instead of passively watching entertainment, people have become active consumers of the world around them, using ideas from all cultures to drive change within themselves. McCracken traces transformation possibilities throughout history, starting with tribal ritualistic transformations of rites of passage, passing through the industrial conception of working to improve one's social status by imitating the upper class, on to the 50s warring transformations of beatnik dropout culture vs. technophilic "brightwork" culture, and then to the postmodern transformations available to us today. We have moved from a world where one's birth determined one's destiny (sons of tailors became tailors) to one where we reinvent ourselves on an ongoing basis. McCracken takes the reader on a tour of several categories of postmodern transformations, including the capitalistic swift self and the Eastern-philosophy leaning radiant self. I highly recommend this book - it's so dense with new ideas and incisive observations that every few pages I would have to put it down and think for a while.

I can't be as enthusiastic as the three earlier reviewers. While
McCracken has insightful analyses of trends in the arts, and I picked
up some interesting observations that he makes along the way to his
main thesis, I don't find his big picture--the justification for
writing the book--that compelling. For every current example of
transformation he gives, I could find an example of somebody doing it
centuries ago, and McCracken gives minimal attention to such
historical parallels. If more of that kind of transformation is going
on now, perhaps it's because there are more people alive, or more
wealth and leisure, or more freedom in all things. Finally, while I
was impressed with his breadth of scope, I sometimes thought he drew
his view too broadly and forced a lot of things into his thesis that
are described better with other frameworks.

The author studies transformation as a contemporary phenomenon. This book is intended for academic audiences, but it's also a fun read.

If you remember "Dress for Success" or watch "What Not to Wear," this book will grab you and keep you turning pages!

Reading this book was a transformative experience for me. Imagine a Zen master, replete with the knowledge of the ages, suggesting to you that identity is an illusion. Now imagine that a Harvard Business School master of anthropology and marketing took the Zen master seriously, and decided to study the topic. Suppose this demi-god decided to focus on the history of identity construction from pre-historic through Madonna and Robin Williams...and then wrote a book about it that educated through example. My head is still spinning...

I'd summarize, but to summarize this book (unlike so many more) is to lose most of the value. The flavor of the book and the examples, the examples, the examples give so much more than I can present in between 100 and 6000 words that a summary is almost offensive against the richness of the book. It's like saying: Moby Dick is about a guy chasing a whale.

My tiny attempt (existing only to entice my reader to read this book):

People have evolved the notion of the self over the course of history. Whereas in the deep past, identity was thought to be stable, the postmodern approach justifiably rejects this, and allows a fluidity of identity. And this is good, besides not being transient. Let Grant open your mind to the dizzying array of identity transformation in 2010, and show the historical chain whereby this modern fluidity is nonetheless connected back to the tribal experience of stable self. Along the way, your guide will, in passing, allow you to encounter every subculture in the modern world, and most historical ones as well.