Consumer Culture: Vocab and Concepts

Question 1

Brand

Answer 1

is a simple story attached to a manufactured object

Question 2

Appellation (Interpellation)

Answer 2

FIND

Question 3

Targeted advertising

Answer 3

look up

Question 4

Trademark

Answer 4

government/legal distinction that controls use of symbol, slogan or name; ownership; a form of property
• any device, label, name, signature, shape, colour, smells, movements, and combos of these that are capable of distinguishing a company
• capable of some kind of representation and applied to goods or services to which it is registered

Question 5

Cluster

Answer 5

reflects diverse patterns of where they live, what they buy

Similar demographic; similar taste in media, lifestyle, home, etc. geodemographics, cluster-based marketing

Question 6

Conspicuous consumption

Answer 6

spending money on or acquiring luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power
i.e. women’s fashion
• Upper middle class woman lounging in a corset
o Corset indicated that women do not have to labour
o Corset prevent from breathing, exert
o Visual appeal, a conspicuous display of the wealth of the family, husband, etc.
o Above things such as domestic work

Question 7

Conspicuous unconsumption

Answer 7

Not consuming as a display of wealth and privelege

Question 8

Democratizing consumption

Answer 8

look up

Question 9

Flaneur

Answer 9

an urban rambler often describing an individualistic and masculine perspective of the city and modernity

Flaneuse – a women who delighted wandering thru and writing about the city; hits up the social conventions that deemed it improper to walk outdoors; when they do that they were assumed to be “streetwalkers”

Question 10

Proletarian Shopping

Answer 10

window shopping with no intention to buy
• Young ppl consuming images and space instead of commodities; a kind of sensuous consumption that doesn’t create profit
• Oppositional cultural practice that asserts the difference from the established expectation of use and the sort of “spitting” in the face of “real” consumers or mall security guards

Question 11

la perruque

Answer 11

“the wig” - this is a worker’s own activities disguised as work for his/her employer

Question 12

Trickster

Answer 12

a pleasurable practice/exploitation of their knowledge of the official rules of the game; know the prescribed limits and rules, and exploit this to find where these rules can be mocked so they can be free from these practices
• Read and know the rules of the game then exploit them for their own ends
• From peasant and folk cultures – refusal to be subjugated
• tactical raids (buying a dress to wear once and returning it)
• practices of trickery – children going afterschool w/ no parents around, workers trying on clothing w/ no intention of buying
• Acts of trickery can be reappropriated by the company back by the space
o Cyclical structure

Question 13

Encoding

Answer 13

look up

Question 14

Decoding (3 forms)

Answer 14

look up

Question 15

Poaching

Answer 15

• Limits to the impact that this had
• Who did they affect/influence? How much change reverberated out of that act?
• You making meaning for yourself; ultimately for your own ends
• Difference b/t individual acts of poaching and movements

Greater sphere of influence but don’t create substantive change of the system

Question 16

Extertisement

Answer 16

these are ad practices that try to take our eye off the ball; they divert your attention to other issues

i.e. Childhood Obesity vs McDonalds
• Childhood obesity – what parents can do, what schools can do; but rarely criticize their money-making clients (such as McD)

Question 17

Ethical Consumption (Ethical Consumerism)

Answer 17

consumer activism; a way to vote with your buying dollars in favour of an ethical practice
• Issues like environmentalism (organic products), humanitarian reasons, fair trade practices, animal rights
• Work to benefit some particular issue to create change
• But they work from within an already established market structure
• Use the same models that we know, logos, labels for packaging, but instead attaching an ethical sign
• Connecting their company with particular ideals (i.e. recycled paper); they allow the attachment of moral or ethical ideals to their product (even though they don’t have to)

Question 18

Interactivity

Answer 18

o Costs and benefits

o Monitoring and empowerment

Question 19

Anti-Advertising

Answer 19

a style of advertising that harnessed the public mistrust about consumerism in the service of the consumer system
• A type of advertising that breaks the mould
• “anti” meaning opposite
• Advertising not literally used to sell products
• i.e. Ads that don’t get paid for but w/i public domain
• How structures, rhetoric of consumer culture bleed into other areas
o Social advocacy
o Political realm