Lecture 8 Flashcards
Sociology of consumption
What is sociology?
The study (or ‘science’) of individual behaviour in the context of society (e.g. religion/inequality)
Why do people do what they do? / What explains social processes? / How can society be understood?
By behaving in a certain way –> influence on society
Sociological imagination
“A quality of mind that seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realities of
ourselves in connection with larger social
realities”
How our individual behaviour is bound culturally and socially
Structure is the social context and individual behaviour agency
Structure
Enduring
patterns/forces/rules that organise and constrain social
life (gender, class, ideology, capitalism)
Individual factors shape our behaviour
Agency
The ability of
individuals to make decisions
and take action in their lives (free will, choice, decisions)
Example of pac-man
Structure: fixed maze, location of ghosts,
Agency: moving of pac-man
What pac-man does influences the context and the context influences his behaviour
The sociology of consumption
Subdiscipline of sociology
Applying ‘sociological imagination’ to consumption
(Social) structure and (individual) agency
What are the main phases of sociology of consumption?
Three main phases, roughly:
- ‘Mass culture’ (e.g. Frankfurt School)
- ‘Consumer culture’ (e.g. creative consumption)
- Recent developments (e.g. practice theory,
liquid consumption)
Sociology of consumption: “mass culture”
Franfurt school: the power of the culture industry’s ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness
Culture industry:
- Adorno & Horkheimer
- Popular culture consists of standardised,
bland products, which pacify and subdue the
masses
- Consumers as ‘cultural dupes’
Sociology of consumption: “consumer culture”
Creative consumption:
- “[T]his bogey of a deluded, superficial person
who has become the mere mannequin to
commodity culture is always someone other
than ourselves.”
- Increasing “recognition that consumption is a
necessary, enjoyable, and often constructive
process”
E.g. Daniel Miller’s idea of ‘making love in the
supermarket’
- See: A Theory of Shopping (1998)
Consumption – even if it is mundane – as a
means of enacting familial love and care
Consumption as a means of ‘doing’ or
‘Practising’ love, kinship, family relations
Sociology of consumption: recent developments
Integrating structure and agency:
- Bauman’s idea of ‘liquid
modernity’
- Theories of practice: Schatzki,
Shove
- Bourdieu – distinction and
forms of capital
Liquid modernity (Bauman)
Influential
work of social theory regarding modern
consumer culture
From ‘solid’ social relations…
- Traditional social roles
- Lifelong jobs
- Relatively) fixed social bonds and relations
…to ‘liquid modernity’
- Older social bonds begin to ‘melt away’
- Jobs, relationships etc. increasingly temporary
- Society defined by ideas of choice –
everything starts to resemble consumption
From solid to
liquid
consumption
Bauman’s work is social theory – it tries
to diagnose how contemporary society
works
For Bauman, more or less everything is
‘consumption’
More recent work (Bardhi & Eckhardt
2017) takes Bauman’s solid/liquid
metaphor and applies it to
understanding the changing nature of
consumption
Liquid consumption (Bardhi & Eckhardt)
Draws on Bauman’s theory,
conceptualises how consumption is
changing in today’s ‘liquid modern’
society
Give an example of liquid and solid consumption
Liquid consumption: swapfiets/spotify/workout app
- Emphemeral (vluchtig)
- Access-based
- Dematerialized
Solid consumption: motorbike
- Enduring
- Ownership-based
- Material
Liquid modernity vs
consumption
Liquid modernity theorises the increasing
fluidity/precarity/insecurity in modern
(Western) society
Liquid consumption theorises how
consumption itself is changing under these
conditions
Please note that ‘consumption of liquids’ is not the same as ‘liquid consumption’!
Max Weber
German sociologist
Modern Western society
characterised by
disenchantment and
rationalisation (most efficient way to reach our goals - becoming less religious)
Three main cultural forms: bureaucracy, science, capitalism (achieve predefined goals in a systematic way)
The ‘iron cage’ of
rationality - rationalized is not always better; path of development and makes them not superior
- Can have negative consequences
- Iron cage: efficient, but an impersonal and alienated life
Can you give an example of Max Weber’s rationalization/cultural shift
Exercise was to commune with nature and experiencing the natural way (spiritual)
Contemporary running: exercise today is hyper-rational, most optimized training
McDonaldization
Process by which the
principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and more sectors of American
society as well as of the rest of the world
Not just about food consumption, general theory in organizational change
In their quest for rationalisation, McDonaldized systems often become highly irrational
For example, they can become dehumanizing, inefficient, wasteful
Explain the key principles of ‘McDonaldization’ increasingly evident across global
societies:
- Efficiency: finding and using the optimum method
for getting from one point to the other (e.g. drive-through) - Calculability: emphasises the quantitative aspects
of products sold and services offered (e.g. tracking of delivery) - Predictability: assurance that products/services
will be the same over time/space (e.g. exact same burger at MacDonalds) - Control: exerted over both customers and staff (strict rules)
What examples can you think of where
consumption is ‘McDonaldized’?
Or is becoming more McDonaldized?
Key principles: efficiency, calculability, predictability, control
