Professor Mike Featherstone
Staff details

Mike Featherstone is Professor of Sociology in ICCE. He joined Goldsmiths Sociology Department in January 2013 and moved to ICCE in January 2016. He was previously Research Professor of Sociology and Communications and Director of the Theory, Culture & Society Centre at Nottingham Trent University.
Academic qualifications
- PhD
- MA Durham,
- BA, State University of Utrecht 1900
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
Mike has supervised a wide range of thesis in sociology, cultural studies, social and cultural theory, communications and media studies.
His current research interests include: consumer culture, social and cultural theory, the body, global culture and knowledge formation, ageing and the life course, automobilities, aestheticization processes, digital culture.
He has spent time as a visiting professor in Barcelona, Geneva, Kyoto, Recife, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo and Vancouver. He currently spends part of the year working with colleagues at the University of Tokyo and Tokyo University of the Arts on a project on the Olympics.
Publications and research outputs
Edited Book
Lash, Scott and Featherstone, Mike, eds. 2002. Recognition and Difference: Politics, Identity, Multiculture. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0761949879
Lash, Scott and Featherstone, Mike, eds. 2000. Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. London: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-0761961222
Lash, Scott; Featherstone, Mike and Robertson, Roland, eds. 1995. Global Modernities. London: TCS/Sage. ISBN 978-0803979482
Book Section
Featherstone, Mike. 2018. Consumer Culture and Its Futures: Dreams and Consequences. In: Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva, ed. Approaching Consumer Culture: Global Flows and Local Contexts. Basel: Springer Nature, pp. 1-46. ISBN 9783030002268
Featherstone, Mike. 2016. The Object and Art of Luxury Consumption. In: John Armitage and Joanne Roberts, eds. Critical Luxury Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 108-127. ISBN 978-1-4744-0261 3
Featherstone, Mike. 2014. Mass Culture. In: M. Sasaki; J. Goldstone; E. Zimmermann and S. Sanderson, eds. Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, pp. 252-261. ISBN 9789004206243
Featherstone, Mike. 2014. The Rich and the Super-Rich: Mobility, Consumption and Luxury Lifestyles. In: Nita Mathur, ed. Consumer Culture, Modernity and Identity. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, pp. 3-44. ISBN 9788132111276
Featherstone, Mike. 2013. Super-rich Lifestyles. In: Thomas Birtchnell and Javier Caletrío, eds. Elite Mobilities. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 99-135. ISBN 978-0-415-65580-4
Article
Featherstone, Mike and Turner, Bryan S.. 2022. Mary Douglas on Purity and Danger: An Interview. Theory, Culture & Society, 39(7-8), pp. 133-158. ISSN 0263-2764
Featherstone, Mike. 2020. Problematizing the Global: An Introduction to Global Culture Revisited. Theory, Culture & Society, 37(7-8), pp. 157-167. ISSN 0263-2764
Featherstone, Mike. 2020. Whither Globalization? An interview with Roland Robertson. Theory, Culture & Society, 37(7-8), pp. 169-185. ISSN 0263-2764
Featherstone, Mike and Tamari, Tomoko. 2019. The Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies: An Introduction. International Journal of Japanese Sociology, 28(1), pp. 3-10. ISSN 0918-7545
Featherstone, Mike. 2016. Luxury, Consumer Culture and Sumptuary Dynamics. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption, 1(1), pp. 47-69. ISSN 2051-1817
Featherstone, Mike. 2013. Preliminary Reflections on the Visible, the Invisible and Social Regulation: Panopticism, Biopolitics, Neoliberalism and Data Consumption. Journal of Critical Studies in Business and Society, 4(1), pp. 6-37.
Featherstone, Mike. 2011. Societal Value Formation and the Value of Life. Current Sociology, 59(2), pp. 119-134. ISSN 0011-3921
Featherstone, Mike. 2010. Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture. Body & Society, 16(1), pp. 193-221. ISSN 1357-034X
Lash, Scott and Featherstone, Mike. 2001. Recognition and Difference: Politics, Identity, Multiculture. Theory, Culture and Society, 18(2-3), pp. 1-19. ISSN 0263-2764
Conference or Workshop Item
Tamari, Tomoko and Featherstone, Mike. 2011. 'The Cultural Politics of Ryukyu Cuisine: China and Satsuma Influences in the Development of Food Culture'. In: The Proceedings of The 12th Symposium on Chinese Dietary Culture. Taipei, Taiwan, Province of China.
Tamari, Tomoko and Featherstone, Mike. 2006. 'Chinese Food in Britain: Consumer Culture and Taste'. In: The 9th Symposium on Chinese Dietary Culture. Taihoku, Taiwan, Province of China.
Further profile content
Professional Activities & Featured Work
Mike has helped to organize a series of international conferences in Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. He has also helped to develop several international networks and has given numerous keynote presentations in various parts of the world.
He has been a member of: the executive board of the US based Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (2000-05); the Economic and Social Research Council’s assessment panels for: the transnational societies programme (1997-8) and cultures of consumption programme (2002). In addition, he was a member of the HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise Sociology panels in 1995-6 and 2001.
He is founding editor of the journals Theory, Culture & Society (1982-) and Body & Society (1995-). He is editor of the Theory, Culture & Society Book Series (1990-).
Author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on social and cultural theory, consumer and global culture, ageing and the body. His books and articles have been translated into sixteen languages. The Consumer Culture and Postmodernism book has been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Spanish and Turkish. Undoing Culture has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian and Portuguese. Other books and articles have been translated into Croatian, French, German, Hungarian and Ukrainian.