The sense of smell, though rarely considered important in America, clearly delineates cultural boundaries; this is both demonstrated and promoted through marketing and advertising of consumer products. Historical analyses is invoked to explain why Americans have different tolerances for body odor than their European predecessors. Cultural perceptions of smell are assessed according to Maiy Doug...

In both original form and in popular discourse, Weber's classic Protestant Ethic thesis is grounded in the relationship between capitalist values and status attainment. Advocates and opponents of Weber’s thesis have primarily focused on the religious underpinnings of the ‘Protestant Ethic’ at the expense of the ideological dimension Weber saw as the key motivational force behind the rise of con...

This paper uses a state-of-the-art quantitative modeling approach to latent class analysis analyze American, Canadian, and French consumers’ perception of technology-based products their cultural values. It identifies hidden segments consumers based on technology adoption propensity, cosmopolitan characteristics, identification with the global consumer culture. The study emphasizes diversity va...

“The Labor Party movement is a political earthquake of the first magnitude. The American capitalist class issued its Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The day of the Declaration of Independence of the American working class will be the day of the founding of its independent political party. July 3 and 4, 1923, the date of the Convention of the Farmer-Labor Party, can be in history th...

From Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Bellah and Alan Wolfe, the many observers of the United States invariably call attention to its emphasis on individualism. In the popular culture of American television and movies, the autonomous individual stands out, whether as rebel against the system or as self-centered consumer of endless products, services, and other people. Then there are the advertis...

The widespread notion of a unique national humour involves an impulse to apply the commonplace assumptions identity that demand uniqueness identity, history, language and culture for political society. What is deemed true distinctive nation must be also its humour, goes thinking. However, such cultural exclusivity has not been reconciled with exchanges between nations. Paradoxically, conception...