Professor Sean Nixon is Head of the Department of Sociology and Director of MA Advertising and Marketing and the Media. at the University of Essex.

Introduction
PART ONE: ADVERTISING, CULTURAL INTERMEDIARIES AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Advertising and Commercial Culture
PART TWO: COMMERCE AND CREATIVITY
`Purveyors of Creativity'
Advertising Agencies, Commercial Expertise and Creative Jobs
Déclassé and Parvenus? The Social and Educational Make-Up of Creative Jobs
The Cult of Creativity
Advertising Creatives and the Pursuit of Newness
PART THREE: GENDER, CREATIVITY AND CREATIVE JOBS
A Homosocial World? Masculinity, Creativity and Creative Jobs
Between Men
Masculinity and the Dynamics of Creative Partnerships
Pleasure at Work
The Gender Ambivalences of Work-Based Sociability
Conclusion

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.