--- Ken Hillis <khillis@email.unc.edu> wrote:
Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting, and Desire Edited by Ken Hillis and Michael Petit with Nathan Epley Routledge, April 2006
Everyday eBay is the first book-length scholarly analysis of eBay that examines how the site has become a global social, cultural, and economic phenomenon. The nineteen interdisciplinary essays in the volume approach eBay from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, revealing how the auction site has become a bellwether of taste and material culture, a research tool, a nexus for the increasingly ubiquitous practice of selling and buying goods online, and a neoliberal facilitator of global consumerism.
Ken Hillis is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Certainly we have bellwether on e-bay - http://search.ebay.co.uk/bellwether_W0QQfcclZ1QQfclZ4QQfnuZ1QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1 but are we seeing a rather more pervasive phenomenon - the following definition from financial markets (this from ANZ Bank, for example: Bellwether (from the sheep which leads the flock) a barometer. Financial markets commentators speak of a particular bond being the bellwether stock, meaning that movements in its price are indicative of the mood or health of the market in general) - of a term being used entirely out of context? Dominic Pinto BA MIEEE MCMI MRi FRSA Independent Advisor 36 Bedfordbury Flat 29 Covent Garden London WC2N 4DQ e-m: dominic.pinto@ieee.org M: +44 780 302-8268 Ph: +44 207 379-8341 In the U.S. M/Cell: +1 215 667-3001