As I walked to the bus this morning, I looked down at my outfit and began tallying up how much it cost me – in it's entirety. The number is not important, but it was quite large and caused me to step back and question my need to buy expensive fashion (or fashion at all). While this is an isolated situation in my own life, it made me wonder how few people consciously think about their involvement in consumer culture. One idea I would like to propel my research study this semester is the personal conception of consumer culture of the people who exist within it. Because media begets consumer culture and consumer culture begets media, we are so immersed in the system that we often cannot see the way it controls us.
Some questions to ask during my process will include: “How often do people of a higher socioeconomic status recognize their involvement in a consumer culture? In what way? What about people of a lower socioeconomic status? How has this changed over generations? In the year 2010, how do different age groups view/exist within consumer culture? What are people willing to give up? Why would they give anything up? How has consumer culture been changed by the 'recession'? What about the green revolution? How does America's consumer culture affected the rest of the world? How is America's consumer culture affected by the rest of the world? What media outlets are most effective in mass communicating consumerism/consumer culture?”
I plan on using texts that thoroughly examine what consumer culture means to each individual. They wont be solely American texts, although because of the nature of the project focusing on American culture would be most effective. One article I found to use, called “Understanding the Socialized Body: A Poststructuralist Analysis of consumers' Self-Conceptions, Body Images, and Self-Care Practices” in the Journal of Consumer Research, seemed to be perfect for the analyzing of consumer perceptions. While the article is from 1995, I believe it can still provide insights. The Journal of Consumer Research will also be a useful tool for scholarly articles. I couldn't find as many scholarly articles on the effects of the recession upon consumers, but there were plenty of articles from sources such as Advertising Age (“Meet Melissa, Your Recessionary Consumer”). These articles were more directed towards small instances of the consumer world affecting people and companies, so perhaps they would provide good topics for my blog.
