Sociology of Culture and Consumption
Seminar 63138-01     Spring 2007


 Description:

            In the past century the twin problems of meaning and materialism have come to the forefront of modern civilization, forming the basis of a variety of philosophies and social theories, animating revolutionary movements in art, looming as the silent specter behind mass society and its dramas of consumption. Today's consumer societies offer the promises of affluence, of convenience, of "the good life."
            Consumption touches on themes that reach from the sources of identity and small-scale processes to the problems of the global economy, environment, and culture. Yet it is by no means clear that the massive technological advances and material gains in advanced industrial societies have contributed to a better way of life--many would say increased meaningless is the actual result: a "goods life" instead of the good life.
            By exploring the rise of materialism and its contemporary presence through a variety of historic sources, key expressions in social theory, works of art, and consumption culture, we will attempt to achieve a new understanding of contemporary materialism and the prospects for the good life.
            Key topics to be taken up in the course include: Invention of poverty and wealth: Civilized consciousness and the animate mind; the rise of modern ghost in the machine; making the matrix of modern life; contemporary consumption culture and its effects on domestic; civic and global life; from materialism to signs of life.


Introduction: Civilized Consciousness and Materialism

Introduction: Civilized Consciousness, Animate Mind, and Materialism

Wed, Jan 17          Introduction –glossary on materialism (p. 2) Jared Diamond, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race;” Discover-May 1987, pp. 64-66;
Csikzentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton: Chapter 7 from The Meaning of Things: “The Transactions Between Persons and Things”                   

Wed, Jan 24          Selection from: Mumford, from “The Pentagon of Power,” Horizon Magazine, 1970. Book: Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness.

                Optional: Mumford, “The First Megamachine,” Technics and Human Development; “The New Megamachine,” from The Pentagon of Power;
“The Monastery and the Clock” from Technics and Civilization (1934), in The Lewis Mumford Reader.

                 Also of interest: E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past & Present 1967 38(1):56-97. 
Morris Berman, “Consciousness and Society in Early Modern Europe,” from The Reenchantment of the World. New York: Bantam, 1984

<>Wed, Jan 31          Colin Campbell, “Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming;” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader Edited and Introduced by Lawrence B. Glickman, 1999.

                Book: Chs. 1-2: “People and Things,” and “What Things Are For,” from The Meaning of Things (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton).  Borgmann, “The Moral Significance of Material Culture,” Inquiry 35 (1992): 291-300.

                Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson, “Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31, March, 2005: 868-882.

Materialism and Consumption

Wed, Feb 7            further selections from The Meaning of Things. 
William L. Rathje and Cullen Murphy, “The Landfill Excavations, Ch. 4: Into the Unknown,” from Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage, Tuscan, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
Michael Pollan, “The Feedlot: Making Meat,” from The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

<>                                Optional: Halton on NPR, “Storing the Self” http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2003/08/20030825_b_main.asp
                                online article, citing the “brand name game” from Halton’s undergrad class: http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/su2003/monczunski.html

Wed, Feb 14         John O'Neill, "Have You Had Your Theory Today;" Pp. 41-56 in Resisting MacDonaldization, edited by Barry Smart. London: Sage Publications, 1999.   Book: Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, Intro., Ch. 1-5

SAT, Feb 17          VIEW Our Daily Bread (7), Fast Food Nation (10)   

Wed, Feb 22         Fast Food Nation, Chs. 6-end                          View Supersize Me interview by Morgan Spurlock with Eric Schlosser.

<>Wed, Feb 28         Session on body, food, consumption:

                                Susan Bordo, “Hunger as Ideology,”in Eating Culture. Edited by Ronald Scapp & Brian Seitz. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).
                                E.Melanie Dupuis, “The Body and the Country: A Political Ecology of Consumption.”In New Forms of Consumption. Ed. By Mark Gottdeiner, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2000: 131-152.

Wed, Mar 7           Goldman and Papson, “Authenticity in the Age of the Poseur” Goldman, Robert and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, NY: Guilford, 1996.

<> <>March 10-18        BREAK                             
<>Wed, Mar 21        Halton and Rumbo, “Membrane of the Self: Marketing, Boundaries, and the Consumer Incorporated Self.”
                                In Research in Consumer Behavior, volume 11, Consumer Culture Behavior. Edited by Russel Belk and John F. Sherry, MacMillan: In press;
                                Jacobson and Mazur, “Targeting Children,” from Marketing Madness;
                                Erich Fromm, “What is the Having Mode?” from To Have or To Be? (1976: Harper & Row)         
                                 View documentary: Affluenza 
                                                                        
Wed, Mar 28        Juliet Schor, Born to Buy, intro & chs. 1-5                     

Wed, Apr 4            Born to Buy, continued chs. 6-10  

Wed, Apr 11         Halton, “Brain Suck”                                                                                                 

Wed, Apr 18         Class presentations of Midterm assignment: Develop a consumption course           

Wed, Apr 25         class presentations continued                                                                                                                                          

Wed, May 2          overview; last class day discussions                 
<>                                                                                           

Required Books:  Nature and Madness, Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998

Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy, New York: Scribner, 2004.

<> <>
 return to home page