Culture And Consumption Flashcards
A society’s culture includes its
Values, ethics and the material objects provided by its people.
It is the accumulation of shared meanings and traditions among members of society
Share systems beliefs and practices
It is not static but constantly evolving
Cultures differ in relationship to space, time and emphasis on individualism (prioritise own personal goals (uk/us)) vs collectivism (subordinate own goals to meet collective goals (Malaysia/China))
Culture (szmigin and piacentini)
Is the sum total of learned beliefs, values, knowledge and customs that together regulate the behaviour of members of a particular society
Beliefs
Thoughts an individual holds about object, idea or person
Values
The deep rooted and enduring beliefs or ideas about what is good and desirable and what is not
Knowledge
The familiarity with people or things, which can include understanding, facts, info and descriptions gained through experience and education
Customs
The norms of behaviour that have been passed from generation to generation - how parents divide labour in home, different things in different countries are prerogative of male or female
Eg diy dads job, but becoming more shared
Digital native
Inherent from birth
Children have more tech
How is culture learned or inherited
Enculturation -
Acculturation -
Consumer acculturation -
Culture is communicated…
To members of society through a common language and commonly shared symbols
Advertising provides models for behaviour and reinforced desired models of behaviour and expectations.
Fam fun day - safety dress- helmets
Enculturation - giving cues about what to do
Dimensions of cultural values
Individualism
Masculinity (force,assertive,competitive)
Power distance (power unevenly distributed)
Uncertainty avoidance
Long term orientation (things that pay off in future)
Converse ad
Collectivism society in Japan
Identified uniform
Individualism through shoes
Norms
The accepted main ways of behaving in a culture: Enacted norms (explicitly decided) Crescive norms (embedded in culture) (- customs - moves - conventions (everyday life like give up seat for disabled/ pregnant))
Role of magic
All cultures have stories and practices to provide a collective sense of its values
Primitive belief in a modern rational society?
Used to market health food, anti aging, gambling offers
The magic most prevalent in consumer culture is transformation of our bodies - detoxing, losing weight, cosmetics surgery, mindfulness.
Things that make sense in some society’s don’t in others eg 8 in China lucky
The role myths
Myths and symbols are example of what we can call a template or cultural blue print for interpretation because hey help us to understand what we observe in social life (Arnold et al)
Emphasis how things are interconnected
Maintain social order by authorising a social code
Provide psychological models individual behaviour and identity
Myth examples
Green and blacks - never as dark as it seems
Myth of little red riding hood
Myths important part of our consumption
Halifax wizard of oz , no place like home , mortgage
Role of rituals
A type of expressive; symbolic activity constructed of multiple behaviours that occur in a fixed, episodic sequence and that ten to be repeated over time. Ok rituals consumers manipulate objects and symbols Birthday cakes - has to have candels Wedding dress-white Wimbledon - strawberries and cream Birth of child - silver spoon Graduation - pen Nye - champagne
Religious rituals
Baptisms etc
Rite of passage rituals
Graduations
Marriage
Fam rituals
Mother’s Day
Meal times
Personal rituals
Grooming
Household rituals
How has consumer culture developed
Global market expansion to virtually every good, service, image, idea and experience
Increasing importance of materialism and personal identity among consumers
Loosening of class boundaries
Faster flow of information via commercial and social media
Huge influence of fashion industry - fast turnover in fashions for clothing, music, films; food, advertising, interior decor
Thrust of consumer culture theory (CCT)
Consumer identity projects
Marketplace cultures
Socio-historic patterning of consumption
Mass mediated, marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies
Marketplace cultures (arnould Thompson)
Consumers are seen as culture producers
Consumers may create cultural worlds through the pursuit of common consumption interests
Consumers forge more collective identifications and participate in rituals of solidarity that are grounded in common lifestyle interests and leisure avocation
The socio-historic pattering of consumption (Arnould and Thompson)
How consumption is shaped by Social class hierarchies
Mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers interpretive strategies (Arnould and Thompson)
Read popular culture texts as lifestyle and identity instructions that convey unadulterated market place ideologies
See how cultural product systems invite consumers to convert certain identity and lifestyle ideals
The meaning transfer model
McCracken
Possession rituals (McCracken)
Claiming possession of the good as own
Personalising
Eg tartan car
Housewarming counts as a type of personalisation
Gift/exchange rituals
When, value, how
Gift givers are made agents of meaning transfer to the extent that they selectively distribute goods with specific properties to individuals who may or may not have chosen them otherwise
Grooming rituals (McCracken)
Culture - haircuts
Grooming consumer bs grooming good - man cleaning his car
Divestment rituals
Applies to good the consumer is dispensing with either by giving them away or selling them
For second hand goods, involves erasing the meaning associated by previous owner
Holts metaphors (in a quadrant)
Consuming as experience
Consuming as play
Consuming as integration
Consuming as classifications
Consuming as experience (holt)
Emotion states arising during consumption Social world of baseball is constituted not only by the formal rules of the game, but, by the wide variety of conventions, habits, strategies and styles on which spectators draw. Spectators use interpretive frameworks to experience baseball in 3 ways: Through accounting (spectators make sense of baseball) Through evaluating (spectators construct value judgement regarding baseball) Through appreciating (spectators respond emotionally to baseball)
Consuming as integration (holt)
How consumers acquire and manipulate object meanings through consumption rituals, self extension processes, personalising rituals and sacralising processes.
Baseball spectators integrate a variety of elements of baseball into their identity; a team, players, ball park.
Assimilating - length and quality of integration between spectator. May occur in any interaction, watching on tv, reading a page about it - but attending game is best
Producing - act to enhance their perception that they are significantly involved in producing baseball
Personalising - assert the individuality of their relationship with professional baseball
Consuming as classification (holt)
A process in which objects viewed as vessels of cultural and personal meaning to classify their consumers
Baseball spectators engage in two distinct methods of classifying:
Through objects - clothing with team logo, souvenirs, photos
Through action - attending game
Consuming as play (holt)
Spectators, when they play, adopt a meta communicational frame that defines the content of their talk and actions as meaningless expect for its role in enhancing interaction with others.
Two types of playing prevalent among baseball spectators- in communicating (spectators share their mutually felt experiences with each other) and in socialising (spectators make use of experiential practices to entertain each other).
Sacred consumption
Are set apart from everyday actions or products and tested with some degree of respect or awe: - places, times, tangible/intangible things, persons or other beings, experiences
Not religious in definition but special/respected
Processes of sacralisation
Collecting is one of the most common ways of experiencing sacred consumption in daily life
Other ways are via ritual, pilgrimages, quintessence, gift giving, inheritance and external sanction.
Christmas sacralisation
Rituals - decorating tree, gift wrapping; stockings, cleaning house before, (grooming rituals) - gift giving, children write list, adults who want nothing get hmouros presents
Pilgrimages - trip to see lights or Santa grotto
Quintessential objects - mince pies, roaring fire
Gifts - signify connections between people
Inheritance - gift given down family
External authority - children to believe in father Christmas
Desacralisation
Occurs when objects that were previously sacred lose their sacred meaning to a culture or specific groups within a culture
Subculture
Shared demographic characterisations (eg age, regionalist, ethnicity, race) or in terms of shared consumption interests (goths)
They are important in marketing as hey capture links and connections between groups in society
Similar to microcultires and tribes
Age based subcultures
Tweens - 8-12 yrs- consumers in training
Terms 13-18 yrs - large, valuable markerC digital native, tech savvy
Generation Y or millennial - confident; self involved, materialistic m
Generation X - diverse pessimistic, suspicious of marketing
Baby boomers - sizeable, importance, born in time of optimism and economic security
Regional, ethnic and religious subcultures
Regional - Yorkshire tea Uk, local beer
Ethnic and religious - Shazam halal food; specialist stores kosher food
Ethnic subcultures represent 15% of uk populations
Brand community
A specialised, non geographically bound community, based in a structured set of social relations among admirers of brand.
Storytelling, experiences, consumption shared
Anti brand communities I hate Starbucks
Consumer tribes
A group of people emotionally connected by similar consumption values and usage, who used the social linking value of products and services to create a community and express identity
Enculturation
Enculturation - refers to how and individual learns the traditional content of his/her native culture. Watch, listen , taught, rewarded for things that fit.
Most takes places in family contextsi
Acculturation
relates to idea of movement between places or cultural context.
Consumer acculturation
is the general process of movement and adaption to the consumer cultural environment in one country by persons from another country. Assimilation - adapt o new Mainlancace - keeps 2 cultures Resistance - shock to culture Segregation - segregate culture needs
The cultural system (szmigin and piacentini)
Compromise of
Ecology - weather population
Social structure - stereotypes
Ideology - mental characteristics of people
McCracken advertising
Works as a potential method of meaning transfer by bringing the consumer good and a representation of the culturally constituted world together within the frame of a particular advertisement (advertising system in figure)
McCracken fashion system
The process has sources of meaning, agents of transfer and media of communication. Some of this additional complexity can be captured by noting that the fashion world works in 3 distinct way to transfer meaning of goods:
1 - similar to advertising - conjoin aspects of world and consumer goods is evident in mags, the same processes of glimpsed similarity is sought after
2 - opinion leader help shape and refine cultural meaning, encouraging the reform of cultural categories and principles
3 - radical reform - western societies subject to constant change. Anonymous social forces
