Sociology of Consumption: Markets, Meaning, and Material Culture

SOCIOL 1209 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Why do we buy the things we buy? From the clothes we wear to the food we eat to the guilty pleasures we hide, where do our tastes come from and how do they become symbols of belonging or exclusion? This class examines consumption, the act of shopping, buying, and using material culture. Consumption, we will see, is more than just a simple economic transaction; it helps us construct identities, signal status, navigate relationships, and reproduce inequalities. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the tension between consumer agency—the joy and creativity of self-expression—and the structural forces limiting that agency—mass marketing, global inequality, environmental destruction, and more. Key themes we will discuss include conspicuous consumption, cultural capital, symbolic boundaries, "prosumption," and the aestheticization of daily life.