SOC317H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Juliet Schor, Walter Benjamin, Urban Decay
Document Summary
Introduction: why shopping matters: shopping refers to a specific way of acquiring goods through the marketplace, as a social category, consumption is much broader than shopping and can include acquiring and consuming goods through non-market means. Shoppers choose what they want, and the market works to serve their needs. This relates to the consumer sovereignty thesis, which suggests that consumer demands drive social good because consumers are autonomous actors who send messages to companies to produce things. Is shopping a social problem: from the perspective of an economist interested in growth, shopping is not a problem. From an environmentalist perspective, shopping is a problem. A psychologist might see shopping as a social problem because of its connection to feelings of loneliness and social isolation. A marxist sociologist might see shopping as a way that hegemony is achieved a way interests of powerful groups come to be accepted as common sense therefore a social problem.
