It’s not who you know, but what you wear. Such is the advice from dedicated followers of fashion and others who might urge us to declare our identities and allegiances through the codes of consumption. The pursuit of the good life has been replaced by that of the goods life. As the globalization process seeks to expand the market economy, this expansion requires the manufacture of desire for ever more stuff and an industry devoted to the creation of the false hope that just one more purchase may buy happiness. This course tackles some of the most compelling interpretations of the function of consumption. Through exposure to a variety of contemporary and classical theories, students reflect on the social patterns of consumption and how these patterns reproduce, subvert or reformulate inequalities. In order to promote self-reflexivity about our own role in the marketplace, methods of resistance are studied and arguments for ecological constraint are considered.
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