COMMODITY CONSUMPTION AND THE FORMATION OF CONSUMER CULTURE ANTH 277 / FGSS 278 TUESDAY / THURSDAY 10.30 – 11.50AM ROOM: FISK 210 Fall 2012 Professor Sarah Croucher Email: scroucher@wesleyan.edu x 4489 Office hours: Wed 2-4pm or by appointment (ANTH 26) Professor Betsy Traube Email: etraube@wesleyan.edu x 3066 Office hours: Thurs 3:30-5:30pm or by appointment (ANTH 1) Course Description In all societies goods have symbolic as well material uses, but what is variously known as “consumer culture”, “commodity culture”, or “the culture of consumption” is associated with the expansion of commodity production and the capitalist economy. Otherwise put, all people consume goods and convey meaning through their consumption practices, but individuals have only recently, and unevenly, learned to define themselves as consumers and to experience commodity consumption as central to the formation and expression of identities. The periodization of consumer culture remains a contested issue. Some analysts reserve the term for the increasingly segmented markets that began to be produced in Euro-American societies over the latter part of the twentieth century, while others have backdated its origins to the early modern period. In this course we take the latter approach and begin with changes in workingclass and middle-class consumption habits over the 18th century as people began consuming new goods, some produced domestically and others in the colonies. Rather than a close, detailed historical account of particular cases, we will present a series of thematically focused reflections centered on particular moments in the development of consumer culture in the UK and the US; we also look at issues in the globalization of consumer goods in several “developing” nations. Throughout, we emphasize the role of things in connecting people separated by distance, time, interests, and resources. We call attention to: relations between production and consumption; the trajectories or “social lives” of things-in-motion; the multiple forms of value they may carry; the roles of producers and consumers in giving meaning and value to things; the different social positions from which people confront the “world of goods” and the ways in which they incorporate particular goods into their everyday lives; inequalities in access to consumer goods, as well as the diverse styles and identities created through consumption. Page 1 of 10 All readings are available on Moodle: there are no assigned books for this class. Please check Moodle regularly for readings; if there is a change in relation to the syllabus, the Moodle version will be the correct version. Assessment: » Class presentation (10 -15 minutes, in small groups), Thursday September 27 (worth 5% of grade) » One 3 page short paper, due Friday October 12, 5pm (worth 20% of grade) » One 2 page reading response paper, due Tuesday October 30, 9.30am (worth 10% of grade) » Participation in class debates (including preparation), Thursday December 6 (worth 5% of grade) » Research paper outline including annotated bibliography, 2-3 pages, due Tuesday November 20, 5pm (worth 10% of final grade) » Final research paper based on consumption practices (9-12 pages), due Wednesday December 14 (worth 50% of final grade) We have included several small items that encourage active and thoughtful participation through the semester, and a research project which we would encourage you to think about early in the semester. Class attendance will be taken into account and active, thoughtful participation may count positively towards final grades. Both of us are sympathetic towards those who may require extensions on written work. However, all extensions must be authorized and arrangements should be made with us well in advance of the deadline. Missing in-class assessed work (presentations and debates) will require an email (prior to the class) from your dean to let us know that you cannot attend because of illness or for other reasons. We will expect some form of equivalent written work to make up any missed in-class assessment. Optional fieldtrip to Whole Foods: Two different times are available for this trip (Friday October 12 and Wednesday October 17). Please sign up early to ensure your spot in the trip which best suits your timetable. We would strongly encourage you to participate in these trips. They will help you to think about viewing consumer culture through an ethnographic lens as you begin to develop your final projects. We have also been promised some free samples during the tours as an extra incentive to attend. Page 2 of 10 Please read Moodle for our full policy on laptop computers. We encourage their use as an aid for class work. However, we request that they are not used in the back three rows of the classroom, and that you do not use your computer for email, Facebook, or similar applications during class. We find that following these guidelines helps those who use laptops in class to stay more focused. Disability Policy It is the policy of Wesleyan University to provide reasonable accommodations to students with documented disabilities. Students, however, are responsible for registering with Disabilities Services, in addition to making requests known to me in a timely manner. If you require accommodations in this class, please make an appointment with one of us soon as possible (by preference during the first two weeks of the semester), so that appropriate arrangements can be made. The procedures for registering with Disabilities Services can be found at http://www.wesleyan.edu/studentaffairs/disabilities/studentguide.html. Page 3 of 10 Class Schedule and Readings: Tuesday September 4 Introduction; no assigned reading Capitalism and Commodities: A Brief History Thursday September 6 Fulcher, James. 2004. Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, OUP. Pp. 1-9 & 19-26 Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, Penguin. Chapter 2: ‘Production.’ Pp. 19 - 72 Tuesday September 11 Marx, K. 1976. Capital, Volume 1. ‘The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.’ Pp163 – 177 Harvey, D. 2010. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. Pp. 38-47. Consumers: The Romantic Origins of Modern Consumerism Thursday September 13 Campbell, C. 1983. Romanticism and The Consumer Ethic: Intimations of a Weber-Style Thesis. Sociological Analysis 44(4): 279-296. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711611 Page 4 of 10 Gift/Commodity: Entangled Transactions Tuesday September 18 Appadurai, A. 1987. Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value. In Appadurai, A (Ed.), The Social Life of Things. Carrier. J. 1991. Gifts, Commodities, and Social Relations: A Maussian View of Exchange. Sociological Forum 6(1): 119-136. Thursday September 20 Thomas, N. 1991. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Chapter 3 (The Indigenous Appropriation of European Things) Herrmann, G.M. 1997. Gift or Commodity: What Changes hands in the U.S. Garage Sale? American Ethnologist 24(4): 910-930. Commodification of Intimate Life Tuesday September 25 Hochschild, A. 2012. The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times. Chapter 1 (You Have Three Seconds), Chapter 4 (“Our Baby, Her Womb), & Chapter 5 (Her Baby, Our Womb) Gupta, J. A. 2012. Reproductive Biocrossings: Indian Egg Donors and Surrogates in the Globalized Fertility Market. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 5(1): 25-51. [Concentrate on pp. 31-44] Thursday September 27 Class presentations, readings TBA Page 5 of 10 Advertising, Branding, and Media in Capitalist Modernity Tuesday October 2 Ohmann, R. 1996. Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century, Chapter 6 (Advertising: New Practices, New Relations) & Chapter 8 (The Discourse of Advertising). The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Weinbaum et al.). 2008. The Modern Girl Around the World: Cosmetics Advertising and the Politics of Race and Style. In Weinbaum, et al. The Modern Girl Around the World. Thursday October 4 Curtin, M., and Shattuc, J. 2008. The American Television Industry, Chapter 2 (Audiences and Advertising). Shopping Spaces: Department Stores and Malls Tuesday October 9 Laermans, R. 1993. Learning to Consume: Early Department Stores and the Shaping of the Modern Consumer Culture (1860-1914). Theory, Culture & Society 10: 79-102. Bowlby, R. 2001. Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping. Chapter 4 (The Passer-By and the Shop Window) Thursday October 11 Cohen, L. 1996. From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America. The American Historical Review 101(4): 1050-1081. http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/2169634 Chin, E. Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture. Chapter 4 (“Hemmed In and Shut Out”) Page 6 of 10 Supermarkets Whole Foods Fieldtrip option I: Friday October 12 : Recommended reading, Johnston (see below) Tuesday October 16 FALL BREAK, no class Whole Foods Fieldtrip option II: Wednesday October 17 : Recommended reading, Johnston (see below) Thursday October 18 Bowlby, R. 2001. Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping. Chapter 9 (The Jungle and Other Post-War Supermarkets) & Chapter 12 (The Deviant, The Checkout, and the Future). Johnston, J. 2007. The Citizen-Consumer Hybrid: Ideological Tensions and the Case of Whole Foods Market. Theoretical Sociology 37: 229-270. [Concentrate on pp. 248 – 261] Taste, Class, and Lifestyle Tuesday October 23 Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Chapter 3 (The Habitus and the Space of Life Styles) Recommended: Bennett, T., Emmison, M., and J. Frow. 1999. Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures. Chapter 5 (Care of the Body, Care of the Self) Thursday October 25 Johnston, J. & Baumann, S. 2010, Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscapes. Chapter 2 (Eating Authenticity) & Chapter 3 (The Culinary Other: Seeking Exoticism) Page 7 of 10 Ethical Consumption: The Case of Coffee Tuesday October 30 Roseberry, W. 1996. The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States. American Anthropologist 98(4): 762-775. Two page reading response due by 9.30am Thursday November 1 West, P. 2012. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social world of Coffee from Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press. Chapter 7 (International Coffee) Sassatelli, R. 2007. Consumer Culture: History, Theory, and Politics. ‘Alternative Consumption and Social Movements,’ Pp. 182 - 189 Style and Identity: How Clothes Make Men Tuesday November 6 Peiss, K. 2011. Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style. Chapter 1 (Making the Suit Zoot) & Chapter 2 (Going to Extremes) Moss, M. 2011. The Media and Modes of Masculinity. Chapter 3 (Masculine Adornment) Thursday November 8 Guest Lecturer: Nikko Misko Lencek-Inagaki (Wesleyan 2007) Page 8 of 10 Style and Identity: Refashioning Bodies Tuesday November 13 Weber, B. 2009. Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship and Celebrity. Chapter 1 ("Makeover Nation") Thursday November 15 Edmonds, A. 2010. Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Part 3 (Engineering the Erotic) Global Consumers Tuesday November 20 Hansen, K.T. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chapter 7 (Clothing Retail Practices) & Chapter 8 (The Work of Consumption). Hand in paper outline Thursday November 22 THANKSGIVING BREAK Bodies for Sale Tuesday November 27 Wacquant, L. 2001. Whores, Slaves and Stallions: Languages of Exploitation and Accommodation among Boxers. Body and Society 7(2-3): 181-194. Moss, M. 2011, The Media and the Modes of Masculinity. Chapter 10 (Sports and Media Culture) Thursday November 29 Scheper-Hughes, N. 2001. Bodies for Sale: Whole – or in Parts? Body and Society 7(2-3): 1-8. Page 9 of 10 Class Debates Tuesday December 4 Preparation session, Readings TBA Thursday December 6 In-Class Debates Final Research Paper, due Wednesday December 14, 5pm http://500px.com/photo/6702392 Page 10 of 10