Americans want it both ways. They are committed to cultural diversity, yet demand an endless variety of cheap consumer goods from a global system that destroys distinct ways of life. Americans have papered over this paradox by embracing the rhetoric of diversity and multiculturalism, hiding the extent to which they have accepted homogenized ways of working and living. In this groundbreaking work, David Steigerwald exposes this paradox and examines how culture, rather than economics or politics, became the framework for understanding human affairs. Steigerwald criticizes contemporary cultural studies and multiculturalism, showing how they lead, not to true understanding and acceptance, but to mass consumption and bureaucratic power. Culture's Vanities moves debate away from the culture wars by examining what culture actually means and how the modern understanding of it can only destroy true diversity.

"The author provides a well-written, insightful survey of workplace alienation and the loss of craft; the ironies of identity claims, multiculturalism, and 'managed diversity;' and the crisis of the black intellectual, with special attention to Cornel West. Stiegerwald's insistence that analysis by grounded in attention to actual existing conditions continues the discussion among leftist scholars about the direction of critical inquiry. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." - CHOICE