Course content
The course introduces the students to the fundamental concepts, theories, frameworks and methods in consumer culture theory (CCT). The course is interdisciplinary in nature as the consumer culture theory rather than being one grand theoretical model represents an assemblage of diverse and interdependent approaches mobilized from within sociology, anthropology and cultural studies so as to explain, understand and analyze the cultural embeddedness of markets. The course equips the students with the basic methodological skill-set for conducting qualitative consumer culture study including in-depth individual and group interviews, ethnographic methods, digital and visual methods. Issues related to philosophy of science are also covered.
It is the main assumption of the course that markets, apart from being economic phenomena, are also embedded in social and cultural contexts whereby culture influences the way markets operate and shape consumers’ conduct, behavior and action. The last couple of decades bear indeed witness to a rather extraordinary flourishing of sociological, anthropological and cultural studies scholarship which seeks both to critique the analytical assumptions and research procedures commonly used in mainstream economics, and also offer sociologically and anthropologically grounded accounts of economic phenomena such as consumption. In the effort to arrive at cultural explanations of consumption, the course assumes that consumption rather than being a deliberate sovereign consumer act of acquisition and purchase of objects/services, is a nexus of cultural elements, social expectations, practical competence, distinction, materialities, ideologies, cultural scripts and meaning structures immanent in the consumer practices of cleaning, repairing, mending, wearing, displaying, showcasing, storing, caring, sharing, disposing, depleting, recycling, borrowing etc.
The course therefore approaches consumption from a particular perspective of the interlocking relationship between social actors and markets, technologies, materialities, popular culture, ideological and moral categories. In this course we will theoretically and analytically follow the life of objects ('consumer objects') while charting a historical, genealogical, material, cultural and social lineage of how social actors interact with objects (including intangible objects such as sounds, images, ideas, experiences) and their meaning but also material affordances and infrastructures. While following 'the life of objects' we closely follow the distinct epistemological developments within CCT.
Accordingly, we will: 1) focus on the rise of the hyper-consumption society and zoom in on consumer rituals, identity-formation projects and the symbolic aspects of possessions and ‘loved objects’; 2) examine the tribal aspects of consumption and zoom in on marketplace sub-cultures, digital cultures, social movements, consumer communities and socialites; 3) concentrate on consumer practices and zoom in on how objects are implicated in human and non-human agencements underpinning routine, habituated and repetitive everyday activities; 4) investigate the recent shift from owning objects to digitally-enabled sharing, accessing and commoning in the newly emerging ‘sharing economy’; and finally 5) probe the moral limits of the markets and investigate the commodification of ‘sacred objects’ and the dynamics of ‘taboo markets’.
See course description in course catalogue