Fall 1997Daphne Berdahl
Meetings: T Th 11:15-12:30Department of Anthropology
Office Hours: M 10-11:30, Th 1:30-3:00 270 Ford Hall
Telephone: 624-6551
e-mail:
Anthropology 5910
Culture and Consumption
Course objectives: This course considers the interrelationship of culture and consumption. Although anthropologists have long recognized this dynamic in their studies of exchange systems, cargo cults, or prestige goods, recent studies of consumption and commodities both within as well as outside of anthropology offer new and exciting possibilities for further developments in the field. Taking as our premise a notion suggested by Appadurai (among others) that consumption has become the "driving force of industrial society," we will examine the implications of consumption for other areas of study in anthropology like class, identity, resistance, creativity, globalization, "modernity," and "post-modernity." Our readings derive from a diverse literature on the subject, including social theory, ethnography, history, cultural studies, and fiction. Throughout our discussions, we will remain alert to what anthropology's contribution to the study of consumption has been, or might be.
Course organization and requirements:: This course is designed as a bi-weekly seminar. We will read and discuss together literature on a specific topic. I have taken special care to limit weekly readings to 100-150 pages in order to facilitate close readings of texts. In addition to regular class participation, students will be expected to complete the following written assignments:
1) Weekly one-page writing assignments on the major points, issues or questions raised by the readings. These statements are to be typed and handed in before class on Thursday. They should not exceed 1-2 pages and they need not be polished; I expect them to be something like reading notes you might make for yourself. Weekly writings be graded only with a or a + and will contribute to the overall grade.
2) Students will also be required to write a research paper of approximately 10-12 pages in length. We will talk about the term paper in class, and I will be available during office hours to discuss possible topics, etc. Paper abstracts and bibliography, will be due at mid-term (October 23). The papers will be due at the end of fall quarter (December 13). Recommended readings are listed for most sessions and may be consulted as possible resources for these papers or as time and interests permit.
Grades will be based on regular attendance and class participation (20%), weekly writing assignments (30%), and the final paper (50%).
Books and readings for purchase:
Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, Cambridge University Press.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. Harvard University Press.
Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. St. Martins Press.
Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light. Routledge.
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power, Penguin.
In addition, a course sourcebook will be available at the Copy Center in Coffman Union. All readings are on reserve at Wilson Library Reserves.
9/25 Introduction: Consumption and Anthropology
Miller, Daniel 1995. "Consumption Studies as the Transformation of Anthropology." In Miller, ed. Acknowledging Consumption. London: Routledge.
OR
Miller, Daniel 1995. "Consumption and Commodities." Annual Rev. Anthropology 24:141-61.
Recommended:
Friedman, Jonathan. 1994 "Introduction." In Consumption and Identity, Jonathan Friedman, ed.
Furlough, Ellen 1996. Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective: A Selected Bibliography. In The Sex of Things, Victoria de Grazia, ed. University of California Press, pp. 389-410.
Orlove, Benjamin and Henry Rutz 1989. "Thinking About Consumption: A Social Economy Approach." In The Social Economy of Consumption, Henry Rutz and Benjamin Orlove, eds. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Week I (9/30- 10/2). Money and Commodity Fetishism
Marx, Karl. "Part I: Commodities and Money", "Part II: The Transformation of Money into Capital" (from Capital) in Marx Engels Reader, pp. 198-232
Simmel, Georg 1971. "The Metropolis and Mental Life." In Selected Writings, Donald Levin, ed., pp. 324-339.
Recommended:
Parry, J. and M. Bloch, eds. 1989 Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simmel, George 1978 (1907). The Philosophy of Money, ed. By David Frisby. London: Routledge.
Zelizer, Viviana 1994. The Social Meaning of Money. New York: Basic Books. Esp. pp. 1-118.
Week II (10/7-10/9). Consumption, Taste and Class
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984. Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Introduction, Chapter 3, Chapter 6 (pp. 1-7; 169-225; 318-371).
Recommended:
Douglas, Mary and Byron Isherwood 1996 [1979]. The World of Goods. New York: Routledge., pp. 3-90.
Weber, Max. "Class, Status, Party," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. pp. 180-195.
OR: Part III, Chapter 4 of Economy and Society
Sahlins, Marshall 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Veblen, Thorsten The Theory of the Leisure Class
Week III (10/14-10/16). The Political Economy of Consumption
Mintz, Sidney 1985. Sweetness and Power. New York: Penguin Books. Especially Introduction and Chapters 5 and 6, (but try to read the whole thing).
Recommended:
Schneider, Jane 1978. "Peacocks and Penguins: The Political Economy of European Cloth and Colors." American Ethnologist 5(3): 413-447.
Taussig, Michael 1987. "History as Commodity in Some Recent (Anthropological) Literature." Food and Food Ways 2.
Week IV (10/21-10/23). Gifts, Commodities, Things
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introduction by Appadurai, pp. 3-63.
Munn, Nancy 1983. "Gawan Kula: Spatiotemporal Control and the Symbolism of Influence." In The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange, J.W. Leach and E. Leach, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, pp.. 277-308.
Recommended (there is, of course, a huge literature within and outside of anthropology on this topic, so what follows is a small sampling):
Carrier, James. 1994. Gifts and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism since 1700. London: Routledge
Ferguson, James 1988. "Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities." Cultural Anthropology 3(4):488-513.
Gullestand, Marianne 1984. Kitchen Table Society. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Humphrey, Caroline and Stephen Hugh-Jones, eds. 1992. Introduction. In Barter, Exchange and Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kopytoff, Igor 1986. "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," in Appadurai.
Leach, J.W. and Edmund Leach, eds 1983. The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange.
Lederman, Rena 1986. What Gifts Engender: Social Relations and Politics in Mendi, Highland Papua New Guinea. New York: Cambridge U. Press.
Malinowski, Bronsilaw 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London.
Mauss, Marcel 1954. The Gift. London: Cohen & West.
McCracken, Grant 1988. Culture and Consumption. Chapter 5 "Meaning Manufacture and Movement in the World of Goods."
Munn, Nancy 1986. The Fame of Gawa. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press.
Tambiah, Stanley 1984. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weiner, Annette 1992. Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving. Berkeley: U. California Press.
Week V (10/28-10/30). The Production of Consumption
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer 1972 (1944). "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception," in Dialectic of Enlightenment, John Cumming, trans. New York: Continuum. pp. 120-167.
DeBord, Guy 1994 [1967] The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Pp. 12-34.
Baudrillard, Jean 1988. "Consumer Society." In Selected Writings, edited and introduced by Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. pp. 29--56.
Recommended:
Barthes, Roland 1983. The Fashion System. New York: Hill and Wang.
Ewen, Stuart 1976. Captains of Consciousness: Adverstising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ewan, Stuart 1988. All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books.
Gottdiener, Mark 1997. The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces. Westview Press. (See especially the chapter on the Mall of America!)
Haug, W.F. 1986. Critique of Commodity Aesthetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kowinski, W.S. 1985. The Malling of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise. New York: Pantheon.
Eric Larsen, The Naked Consumer. New York: Penguin.
Marchand, R. 1985. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Williams, Raymond 1980. "Advertising: The Magic System." In Problems in Materialism and Culture, London: Verso. pp. 170-195.
Week VI (11/4-11/6). "We Are the World System": Capitalism, Commodification, Modernity
Sahlins, Marshall 1988. "Cosmologies of Capitalism: the trans-Pacific sector of the World System." Proceedings of the British Academy, LXXIV:1-51.
Orlove, Benjamin 1997. The Allure of the Foreign: Imported Goods in Postcolonial Latin America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Selections.
Recommended:
Friedman, Jonathan 1994. "The Political Economy of Elegance: An African Cult of Beauty." In J. Friedman, Consumption and Identity, pp. 167-188.
Howes, David 1996 ed.. Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities. New York: Routledge.
Miller, Daniel, ed. 1995. "Introduction." In Worlds Apart: Modernity Through the Prism of the Local, D. Miller, ed. London: Routledge, pp. 1-22.
Miller, Daniel 1994. Modernity: an Ethnographic Approach. London: Berg Publishers.
Rowland, Michael 1994. "The Material Culture of Success: Ideals and Life Cycles in Cameroon." In Consumption and Identity.
Silverstone, R. and E. Hirsch. Consuming Technologies. London: Routledge.
Taussig, Michael 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism. Chapel Hill: University of N. Carolina Press.
Wilk, Richard 1994. "Consumer Goods as Dialgoue about Development." In Consumption and Identity, J. Friedman, ed. London: Harwood, pp. 97-118.
Week VII (11/11-11/13). Resistance, Creativity, and the Politics of Consumption
Hebdidge, Dick 1988. "Object as Image: The Italian Scooter Cycle." In Hiding in the Light, London: Routledge, pp. 77-115.
McRobbie, Angela 1989. "Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket." Zoot-Suits and Second-Hand Dresses, Angela McRobbie, ed. London: MacMillan, pp. 23-49.
Löfgren, Orvar 1990. "Consuming Interests." In J. Friedman, ed. Consumption and Identity. London: Harwood Press, pp. 47-70.
Recommended:
Fiske, John 1989. Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Human.
Nava, Mica 1991. "Consmerism Reconsidered: Buying and Power." Cultural Studies (5(2): 157-173.
Willis, Paul 1990. Common Culture. London: Open Univ. Press
Week VIII (11/18) No Class Thursday 11/20 (AAA Meetings). Gender and Race
Auslander, Leora 1996. "The Gendering of Consumer Practices in Nineteenth Century France." In The Sex of Things, Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough, eds. pp. 79-112
Austin, Regina 1994. "'A Nation of Thieves': Consumption, Commerce, and the Black Public Sphere." Public Culture 7(1): 225-48.
Recommended:
Abelson, Elaine S. 1989. When Ladies Go A-Theiving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
De Grazia, Victoria 1996, ed. The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Garvey, Ellen 1996. The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880's to 1910's. Oxford University Press.
Howes, Daid 1996. "Cultural Appropriation and Resistance in the American Southwest: Decommodifying Indianness." In Cross Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities, David Howes, ed. New York: Routledge, pp. 138-160.
McRobbie, Angela and Mica Nava, eds 1984. Gender and Generation. New York: Macmillan.
Modeleski, Tania 1982. Loving with a Vengeance. New York: Routledge.
Morris, Meaghan 1988. "Things to do with Shopping Centres," in Grafts: Feminist Cultural Criticism, ed. Susan Sheridan. London: Verso Press, pp. 93-225.
Pieterse, Jan N. 1992. "Blacks in Advertising." In White and Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, p.. 188-210.
Radway, Janice 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Weston, Kath 1993. "Do Clothes Make the Woman? Gender, Performance Theory, and Lesbian Eroticism." Genders 17: 1-21.
Week IX (11/25) No Class Thursday 11/27 (Thanksgiving). Consumption and Postmodernism/Postmodernity
Jameson, Frederic 1988/1993. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." In The Anti-Aesthetic, Hal Foster, ed.. London: Pluto Press. Pp. 111-125.
Coupland, Douglas 1991. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.
Recommended:
Featherstone, Mike 1991. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage Publications.
Jameson, Frederic 1984. "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." New Left Review 146:53-93.
Harvey, David 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Löfgren, Orvar. n.d. "Creativity and Consumption: Some Reflections on the Pairing of the Two Concepts." Unpublished manuscript.
Week X (12/2 – 12/4). Periodicities
Appadurai, Arjun 1993. "Consumption, Duration, and History." Stanford Literature Review 10(1-2): 11-33.
Carrier, James 1993. "The Rituals of Christmas Giving," in Unwrapping Christmas, Daniel Miller, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 55-74.
Recommended:
Belk, Russell 1993. "Materialism and the Making of the Modern American Christmas," in Miller, pp. 75-104
Löfgren, Orvar 1993. "The Great Christmas Quarrel and Other Swedish Traditions," in Miller, pp. 193-234
Schmidt, Leigh Eric. 1995 Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Restad, Penne 1995. Christmas in America: The Buying and Selling of an American Holiday. Oxford U. Press.