This study serves three major aims: the first is to provide a thorough and critical review of the now extensive literature on advertising in sociology and cultural studies; the second is to present the major results of research conducted by the authors at the Centre for Advertising Studies at the University of East London, in which changes in advertisment content over the last 50 years have been analyzed; the third aim is to develop a method for the psychosocial study of all forms of public communication, and of other aspects of everyday life, which brings together an understanding of contemporary cultural change with a sensitivity to the profound forces at work within the individual. The authors suggest that advertisements, while important in our daily emotional self-management, are far more closely linked to the pragmatics of everyday life than their symbolic richness might suggest. Trends in advertisement content point to an important shift in our relationship to goods that reflects an increasing preoccupation with risk management.