Consumer Culture

"It is important to establish the “Proto-dynamo” as concept that represents an entirely new paradigm of economic infrastructure. The concept alludes to the “dynamo” which is a machine that uses opposing magnetic forces to efficiently produce/convert energy. The principle behind the dynamo is to use opposing forces within the same machine to get a consolidated output of energy. If the new paradigm of “protodynamism” can be represented by an electrical generator, the old paradigm of Keynesian theory can be represented by a meat grinder in which ten pounds of product goes in one side, and six ounces of tasteless sausage comes out the funnel possibly tainted with formaldehyde or some random pesticide that is unpronounceable. "

The relationship between music, the self/identity, and consumption is significant and widely acknowledged, yet it remains under-researched. To further our understanding of the symbolic consumption of music, this study evaluates the usefulness of Larsen, Lawson, and Todd's (2009) conceptual framework of the consumption of music as self-representation, and presents a revised framework. Twenty-two individuals provided data, including in-depth interviews and participant diaries. The resulting framework details the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the symbolic consumption of music. It is based on an evaluation of the level and acceptability of congruency between the image of the music and the self-concept, both of which are socially situated. Identity is expressed through a variety of consumption rituals, which allow the individual to ‘own’ or ‘possess’ the associated meanings. The framework demonstrates that music is a rich and important site of symbolic consumption, and could also be used in contexts other than music to describe symbolic consumption.

Online music streaming has become a rapidly increasing social phenomenon in past few years with as many as 103.1 million people currently paying for music streaming services worldwide. However, the literature highlights a specific issue regarding online consumer behaviour. Recent figures published by popular online streaming service providers show that the number of people that use music streaming services for free substantially eclipses this figure. Therefore, by using Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour Model, this study identifies which factors best determine a consumer’s willingness to pay for music online.
Through the use of quantitative, statistical methods, this study finds a strong association between a person’s age group and a willingness to pay for online music streaming. This study suggests that young people demonstrate a conscience for online music consumption activity due to an increased consciousness for normative social influences and are, therefore, more likely to engage in the social behaviour. Perhaps more importantly, this study demonstrates the usefulness of applying Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour Model to research within the social sciences due its demonstrated high construct validity in addition to its ability to explain the nature of social action within an Internet technology-related consumer behaviour context.
It is hoped that the findings of this study will be used to inform some of the key players within the music industries about taking a sociological approach to the understanding of online consumer behaviour. By gaining an understanding of the motivations behind a consumer’s willingness to pay for online music streaming, better marketing initiatives can be developed to improve the disparity between fee paying and fee free users.

This article discusses the political impacts on the poor's subjectivity provoked by neoliberal policies such as inclusion through consumption in 21st century Brazil. From 2009 to 2014, we carried out ethnographic research with new consumers in a lowincome neighbourhood-Morro da Cruzin the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. We argue that consumption does not necessarily depoliticize human experience, as it is broadly assumed to have done in the scholarly literature on neoliberalism. In a society in which the poor has obtained goods through hierarchical and servile relationships, the possibility of buying things provides a micro sphere for recognition, though not in terms of classic collective action or even hidden subversion. Coupled with the momentum towards a national 'economic emergence', status goods became vehicles of an emergent subjectivity, which we conceptualize as 'the right to shine'. The right to shine are subtle forms of class and racial self-worth, and individual and interpersonal empowerment that revealed interclass defiance.

Se da la circunstancia de que en esta informada época postmoderna en que vivimos, la conciencia del tiempo histórico se ha convertido en parte de nuestras vidas. Ahora ya nadie niega que el historicismo, el eclecticismo y el revival están a la orden del día en nuestra experiencia vital cotidiana, porque tanto los consumidores, como los diseñadores como los estudiantes de diseño miran hacia la historia, sobre todo la del siglo XX, como fuente de ejemplo, disonancia o inspiración.

With an emphasis on everyday life, this respected text offers a lively and perceptive account of the key theories and ideas which dominate the field of consumption and consumer culture. Engaging case studies describe forms of consumption familiar to the student, provide some historical context, and illustrate how a range of theoretical perspectives – from theories of practice, to semiotics, to psychoanalysis – apply. Written by an experienced teacher, the book offers a comprehensive grounding drawing on the literature in sociology, geography, cultural studies, and anthropology. This new revised and expanded edition includes more extended discussion of gender, the senses, sustainability, globalization, and the environment, as well as a brand new chapter on the ethics of consumption.

Combinando enfoques filosóficos, semióticos y hermenéuticos, en el presente libro se realiza un análisis de diversas producciones audiovisuales que tienen como temática central al narcotráfico. Se trata de un escrito colectivo donde las distintas voces y perspectivas se amalgaman en una sola preocupación: pensar el fenómeno narco. En la introducción se abordan diversos aspectos metodológicos, semióticos y ontológicos presupuestos en el análisis de los discursos audiovisuales, se realiza un breve repaso del contexto en el que tiene lugar el narcotráfico y del impacto en la cultura mexicana del narcorrido. En estas piezas musicales ya están presentes la mayoría de los elementos que conformaran los estereotipos de la narcocultura. En el primer capítulo se presenta una contraposición entre la manera de narrar la vida de Pablo Escobar en NARCOS y en PABLO ESCOBAR, EL PATRÓN DEL MAL, que invita a repensar los intereses de quienes crean y distribuyen estas producciones audiovisuales. En el segundo capítulo, a propósito de BREAKING BAD, se analizan los fundamentos de lo legal y su necesidad de encaminar a los hombres hacia la justicia y la libertad. En el tercer capítulo se aborda la frágil y volátil contención que aportan el dinero, el poder y los símbolos del narcotráfico en EL CARTEL DE LOS SAPOS y SICARIO. Finalmente, en el cuarto capítulo, el filme PAULETTE es ocasión para pensar tanto las adicciones en una sociedad de consumo exacerbado como las arbitrariedades e inconsistencias de las políticas sobre drogas y demás delitos asociados con el narcotráfico.

598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps even more pertinent in digital contexts. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties,2 Rosemary Coombe explored mass commercial culture and popular cultural ...

This paper investigates, on the basis of work by Jean Baudrillard and David Harvey, what we can define as neo-liberal global culture. Harvey's ideas on time-space compression and management of such within production systems are in the paper combined with Baudrillards thoughts on the symbolic culture and consumerism. The paper concludes that the neo-liberal global culture is a of constructing cultural demand and controlling class determined production.

O estudo teve como objetivo principal levantar os hábitos e motivações associados ao consumo do guaraná (Paullinia Cupana Kunth) junto aos moradores de Maués, município do Amazonas reconhecido nacionalmente pela qualidade do guaraná produzido.
A pesquisa concentrou-se, exclusivamente, no consumo in natura, por meio das aplicações mais utilizadas pelo público-alvo.
Classifica-se, predominantemente, como estudo quantitativo, com finalidade descritiva e periodicidade transversal. Investigação
do tipo exploratória, identificando os interesses e motivações do uso do guaraná in natura, onde confirma a associação dos hábitos de consumo à tradição popular local. Os dados foram coletados por meio de survey aplicada presencialmente a uma amostra com 301 indivíduos residentes em Maués/Amazonas, Brasil. Os Resultados evidenciaram um significativo volume de consumo da planta (63,4%) em pó (pronto para uso) ou na sua forma básica de bastão. Predominantemente, usam-no como estimulante (85,4%), para a longevidade (24,6%) ou o fortalecimento do sistema imunológico (19,6%). O consumo é, quase totalmente, motivado pela tradição local (80%) com base no conhecimento adquirido e transferido por gerações. Somente 1% buscaram orientação profissional para consumi-lo. A maioria (59,3%) dilui o pó em água e aplica em pequenas doses diárias (1-2g), entretanto, 23,5% o fazem mais de uma vez ao dia (4-5g). Mesmo reconhecendo haver distúrbios no sistema nervoso – e até mesmo cardiopatias em razão da super dosagem – 66,4% afirmaram categoricamente que o guaraná “só faz bem”

This paper focuses on community development and its relationship to eco-tourism as a means of creating a sustainable future for local Cuban communities. If communities control local resources to create economic opportunities for local goals, there is a greater chance that community development will be more effective and sustainable. Local empowerment can play a key role in community development through ecological and cultural tourism. The focus of this paper is Cuba's potential to develop into a major ecological and cultural tourism center within international tourism. Recent policy announcements regarding the intention to diversify Cuba's economy and move people into private enterprise will require new employment opportunities, especially those with lower opportunity costs and resources. The growth of small paladares (restaurants run by self-employed owners) and casas particulares (rooms for rent in private homes), which provide low environmental impact and resource use, are compatible with eco-cultural tourism's emphasis on the local. In an era of increasing environmental costs and resource scarcity, eco-cultural tourism offers a sustainable alternative to conventional tourism.

The use of material culture methodologies within the historical discipline has prompted scholars to redefine how and what we might consider primary source material. Subsequently, objects and their ‘process of making’ have come to play a more significant role in recent studies of social and cultural history. A growing body of scholarship has developed in order to investigate how objects have the potential to communicate within social groups, so becoming ‘objects of discourse’.
Within the study of political history, however, this approach is still very much in its infancy. This is particularly true in regards to the analysis of women’s dress and broader textile culture. Whilst the potential importance of the ‘politics of appearances’ and ‘dressing the body politic’ have been acknowledged, a methodology for assessing the impact of politically provocative textile culture within eighteenth century society remains significantly under-explored.

This paper outlines the research context and methodology of my thesis,
followed by an in-depth discussion of a number of politically invested textile objects created by women throughout the long eighteenth century. The main body of this discussion shall explore the visual and material language used in the design and execution of these objects, and the impact such a language might have had upon popular political discourses of the period. The production and display of such objects will also be discussed, with particular emphasis upon the private-to-public dimension of women’s textile craft. Political subjects under consideration include military and naval engagements, expressions of British patriotism, electoral and philanthropic campaigns, and national commemorations.
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Presented at the Difficult Women Conference: 1680-1830 (University of York: November 27-28, 2015). Winner of the Best Postgraduate Paper Prize, sponsored by the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

O site Jovem Nerd se transformou em porta-voz do estilo de vida nerd no Brasil. Sua influência no consumo e comportamento destes jovens comprova a sedimentação deste estilo de vida e nicho de mercado. Este artigo faz parte de uma pesquisa que investiga a ressignificação do estereótipo do nerd, bem como os processos sociais que levaram a tal mudança. Esta análise está centrada no estudo da cultura do consumo e na constante catalogação, classificação e hierarquização de objetos na cultura nerd, seus elementos de disputa simbólica (BOURDIEU, 2007) e acumulação de capital subcultural (THORNTON, 1996). Serão observadas as várias formas como a cultura nerd se apropria dos textos da cultura da mídia a fim de produzir sentido, através da análise dos discursos presentes e sobre o site Jovem Nerd.

Qu'est-ce que consommer ? Comment aborder, en sociologue, un phénomène si familier ? Le présent ouvrage apporte des réponses à partir d'un ensemble de recherches, toutes empiriquement fondées. Les différentes thématiques abordées-enjeux de définition, étude des budgets des ménages, rôle des marchés et des dispositifs marchands, liens entre consommation et hiérarchisation des groupes sociaux, rapports entre consommation et politique-permettent de comprendre comment la sociologie « bouscule » la notion de consommation et en redessine le contenu et les contours. En introduisant de nombreuses analyses, riches et stimulantes, ce livre interroge les frontières entre certaines catégories-comme celles qui séparent consommation et production ou consommation et culture. Il questionne également certaines habitudes de pensée : pourquoi la consommation est-elle rattachée à la sphère domestique ? Pourquoi est-elle si souvent considérée comme une activité féminine ou encore pourquoi fait-elle sans cesse l'objet de jugements moraux ? SOMMAIRE : Comment aborder la consommation ?-Consommation et budgets familiaux-La consommation face à la production-Consommation et stratification sociale-Consommation et politique.

The article traces the changes in everyday practices of production and consumption of amateur photographs at the beginning of the XXIst century. The authors argue that transformations were caused by a massive shift towards use of digital cameras and by rapid development of Web 2.0. As a result, the number of amateur photographs posted
in Internet has dramatically increased. This led to criticism resulted in uprising of specific resistance practices. Among the resistance practices are return to film-type cameras and the lomography movement.

В статье представлен анализ трансформации повседневных практик производства и потребления любительских фотографий в начале XXI века. Ее причиной, по мнению авторов, является переход
к использованию цифровых камер и активное развитие нового подхода к организации интернет-контента Web 2.0, в результате чего основной функцией любительской фотографии становится самопре-
зентация, направленная на создание образа творчества. В итоге насыщения информационной среды идентичными фотографическими образами появляется критика доминирующего способа обращения с
изображениями, а также специфические практики сопротивления. Среди последних в статье рассматривается возврат к технологии пленочной фотографии и появление движения ломографии, которое
позднее приобретает цифровую форму.

Although it is widely accepted that music can be used as a tool to communicate symbolic meaning, there has been little inquiry into how music is consumed to represent the self in social interaction. This paper seeks to provide new insights into the ways in which individuals symbolically consume recorded music. Through the interpretation of phenomenological data gathered from 16

The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of man: the metrosexual. Overwhelmingly straight, white, and wealthy, these impeccably coiffed urban professionals spend big money on everything from facials to pedicures, all part of a multi-billion-dollar male grooming industry. Yet as this innovative study reveals, even as the industry encourages men to invest more in their appearance, it still relies on women to do much of the work.

Styling Masculinity investigates how men’s beauty salons have persuaded their clientele to regard them as masculine spaces. To answer this question, sociologist Kristen Barber goes inside Adonis and The Executive, two upscale men’s salons in Southern California. Conducting detailed observations and extensive interviews with both customers and employees, she shows how female salon workers not only perform the physical labor of snipping, tweezing, waxing, and exfoliating, but also perform the emotional labor of pampering their clients and pumping up their masculine egos.

Letting salon employees tell their own stories, Barber not only documents occasions when these workers are objectified and demeaned, but also explores how their jobs allow for creativity and confer a degree of professional dignity. In the process, she traces the vast network of economic and social relations that undergird the burgeoning male beauty industry.

Análisis de los cinco grandes modelos publicitarios de análisis del consumidor: el racional (informativo-persuasivo), el conductista (publicidad mecanicista), el motivacionista (publicidad sugestiva), el modelo social (publicidad de integración) y el cognitivo (publicidad psico-lingüística)

In addressing skin this paper seeks to illuminate current research within consumer culture theory. Framing our discussion within a consideration of tattoo culture, we explore the double-sidedness of skin, its ambiguity and ambivalence. In this way, we examine the relationship between identity and consumption and throw into question many of the received ideas concerning embodied identity within consumer research. Utilizing three skin metaphors (skin as container, projection surface, and cover to be modified), we generate a ...

This study focuses on brand literacy in the emerging market of China. Results reveal Chinese consumer desire to express a deep resonance between Chinese values and aesthetics and a favored brand identity. Chinese brands such as Shanghai Tang and Shang Xia – developed in collaboration with leading European luxury brands – build upon Chinese culture, values, and aesthetics to create distinctive, culturally infused brand identities. At a basic level, culture, which includes aspects of particular histories of meaning, and moments of creative innovation, can be perceived as a resource upon which branding processes and practices can draw. Yet, brand culture refers not to a simple process of applying “culture” to a brand.
Under what conditions may we perceive the many ways in which branding – and brands themselves – go beyond cultural branding, and indeed, co-create culture in relation to consumer processes and practices? One way of thinking about how brands and culture interact draws upon the notion of brand literacy – how well consumers are able to “read,” understand, and engage brands and brand messages. We explore a growing brand literacy among Chinese consumers, and reveal how brand literacy is embedded in a cultural context and contributes to brand culture. This study highlights multidimensional aspects of brand literacy and represents an initial step toward a more developed framework in the context of brand culture.

This book argues that the transformation of the print media in the 1950`s and 1960`s expanded the possibilities for social, individual and national identities in Japan. From the late 1950`s, the growth in the market for weekly magazines was fueled by the huge potential for advertising revenue, the rapid development of the Japanese economy, and the necessity for the growth of a consumer society. This resulted in the merging of national identity with individual subjectivity – which this book describes as 'national subjectivity' – as the Japanese media promoted individual consumption to aid the recovery of the Japanese nation as a whole.

This article focuses on how spirituality and commercialism are intertwined in the representations of yoga in the media. For this study, articles on yoga were collected from seven Finnish popular magazines, and analyzed using qualitative close reading guided by sensitizing concepts of subjective wellbeing spirituality and prosumerism. The results show that looks, wellbeing and health are found to be the main selling points of yoga, whereas spirituality is used as a distinguishing device and a tool for constructing a consumer identity associated with ‘spiritual’ values. The material also raises questions on the possibility of anti-consumerist trends within contemporary yoga.

Despite the prediction that modernization would lead to
secularization, the past 30 years brought a global resurgence of
religion. As many scholars note, religion has gained a new
visibility in the contemporary political economy and become
firmly embedded within the identity politics. The changing role of
religion is linked to the growing influence of neoliberalism and
the expansion of the market logic. In this study, I look at the
intersections between Islam, consumption, and market and trace
the shifts in the conceptualizations of Muslims in relation to the
changing market dynamics and the broader socio-political and
economic structures. I discuss three phases through which the
view of Muslims as modern consumers in search of distinction
and propriety comes to dominate the view of Muslims as non- or
anti-consumers: exclusion, identification, and stylization. I
conclude by discussing the implications of the study for the
current understandings of the marketization of religion.

A short article on my research on Cape Town's craft beer industry. It argues that craft beer is a new expression of social distinction acting through the desire of high-end consumers (who seek out individuation through alternative lines of consumption) to buy the more discerned products of human labor - such as handmade things, more personal and exclusive articles; i.e. CRAFT beer.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, rap music became the soundtrack of Americanization. Along with breakdance, graffiti, and deejaying, rap inspired young people all over the world to create and practice their own versions of this popular culture. In my essay, I examine how hiphop pervaded the Iron Curtain. More specifically, I analyze the conditions under which hiphop culture became known and accepted in the GDR. Focusing on the interaction between representatives of the Socialist regime and young hiphop practitioners, I scrutinize their cultural transfers of hiphop and the different meanings both sides attributed to its practice. I flesh out the discrepancy between the hegemonic discourse on popular culture, which tried to recode hiphop into a desirable Socialist practice, and the youth cultural practice of hiphop, which deviated from this discourse. Paradoxically, young breakdancers, rappers, DJs, and graffiti artists hardly had to fear any consequences stemming from their practice. With my paper, I contribute to historical research on youth culture, the GDR's final years, and Americanization as one of the driving forces behind its disintegration.

Focusing on the account book of the MP and antiquary Sir Edward Dering (1598–1644), which covers the decade of his life in which he came of age, was knighted, and embarked on an ambitious political and courtly career, this article argues that his account book was a space in which Dering recorded momentous life events and meditated upon his purchases. Dering reveled in his attire, spending a great deal of money on it, as well as taking the time to record each element of its construction and decorative design in minute detail. Purchasing luxury goods – particularly clothing – was an important way for an ambitious politician to express his social, emotional and political links to patrons, and to show his suitability for promotion. While he begins the account book in 1619 by chastising himself for spending too much in a “prodigal year,” by the end of the account book in 1628, Dering seems content to buy expensive goods, including a costly linen damask tablecloth depicting the story of the prodigal son. This article traces Dering’s acquisition of luxury goods at home in Kent, in London and overseas, and places him in relation to contemporary discourses of luxury and prodigality. It argues that Dering’s consumption of luxury goods was part of a wider project of self-definition, which included having his portrait painted, and even forging his family history.

This article explores the way in which wine came to be viewed as a quintessentially ‘Italian’ beverage among Italy's middle- and upper-class households during fascism's twenty years in power. Due to significant increases in wine consumption among the labouring classes during the years immediately following the First World War, wine, as a general category of beverage, had become closely associated within the minds of many bourgeois and wealthy consumers with the country's popular taverns and saloons, alcoholism and physical and moral ‘degeneration.’ In response, fascist Italy's typical wine growers, merchants and industrialists worked feverishly to rehabilitate the beverage's downtrodden reputation via a series of wide-ranging public relations and collective marketing campaigns during the 1920s and 1930s. By promoting the beverage's hygienic and alimentary qualities, as well as systematically intertwining the moderate consumption of the peninsula's standardised wines with the dictatorship's nationalisation and popular mobilisation programmes, this article will show, the Industrial Wine Lobby successfully re-established ‘wine's honour’ and, simultaneously, recontextualised the country's typical wines as Italy's wholesome, family-friendly, ‘national beverage’.

Le differenze di genere  hanno importanti effetti sulle nostre preferenze di consumo e sulla cultura materiale. Non solo uomini e donne consumano cose diverse in modo diverso, ma esistono anche oggetti “maschili” e oggetti “femminili”, merci e pratiche di consumo capaci di conferire elementi di maschilità o femminilità, pur nella varietà di queste codificazioni. E’ questa circolarità – che vede genere e consumo come due pratiche storicamente e istituzionalmente situate che si costituiscono vicendevolmente – ad essere divenuta un importante oggetto di ricerca storica e sociologica. Come vedremo in questo capitolo, essa va configurandosi sia come un aspetto cruciale della cultura di consumo contemporanea sia come una sua importante dinamica generativa.

In order to attract the consumer's some organizations introduce new products whereas some organizations advertise in order to attract the consumers. The latter is considered to be one of the most influential ways of attracting consumers, since advertising not only creates awareness about the product among the consumers but also entertains them. Even though past studies have agreed that advertisement, especially tv advertisement, is the most effective media source since it attracts consumer's attention. Advertisements affect the perceptions of the consumers and it can influence the consumer's buying decisions. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of tv advertisement on the consumer buying behavior by conducting survey. For this purpose, quantitative method was used, in which the impact of advertisement through brand awareness was seen on the consumer buying behavior. The main focus of this study was how brand awareness is created through tv advertising and its impact on the buying behavior of consumers, this impact is seen on the buying behaviors of consumers in electronic goods.