LARTS 458 Consumer Culture: Stuff, Shopping, Self, Society
How does consumer culture affect psyches and societies? Applying cultural theory to popular culture and daily life, this course explores consumerism as a source of happiness and depression, bonding and anti-socialness, creativity and conformity, subversive power and psychological manipulation, community and social injustice, and survival and ecological degradation. We’ll investigate consumer, producer, laborer, and citizen identities; competitive displays of taste and status; the commodification of objects, leisure, pleasure, and the arts; sites of consumption (the mall, Internet); and culture jamming, resistance, and economic alternatives.