digital culture and sociology session 6 – susana tosca digital culture and sociology consumption...

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 6 – Susana Tosca

Digital Culture and Sociology

Consumption and Industry


• Conceptual introduction• Adorno/Horkheimer &

Negus: Grey Tuesday

• Conceptual introduction• Baudrillard: the mobiles• Jenkins: fan movies

about today

break

production

consumption


a straighforward connection?

Production

Production

Production

Production

Consumption

Consumption

Consumption

Consumption

Adorno/Horkheimer

Negus

Baudrillard

Jenkins


culture & economy

• opposed terms? spiritual vs. material, hard vs. soft

• related, no side dominates the other:– Economic processes are cultural phenomena– Cultural material is “manufactured”

• The notion of cultural economy: economic processes depend on meaning (also language and representation) for their effects and to have particular conditions of existence

• Businesses reflect on their organizational culture

du Gay et. al.


cultural economy

Culture is increasingly important to do business in the contemporary world:

1. Global entertainment corporations product and distribute culture all over the world, powerful agents

2. More and more goods become “cultural goods”, growing aesthetization

3. Increasing influence of cultural intermediaries: advertising, design, marketing

4. Internal life of organizations is also the object of cultural reconstruction

du Gay et. al.


main points

• Analysis and problematization of synergy concept (through a case study), no neat fit production-consumption,

• companies are not totally rational unities: culture clashes within corporations: workers’ groups, George Michael

• The excellent introduction to Adorno and Horkheimer’s culture industry ideas, including standarization and pseudo individuality

• Gendron’s critique to standarization in music (source of pleasure)

Negus


conclusionsNegus

“I have challenged the idea that the corporations of the culture industry are able to directly ‘control’ production and creative work simply through their formal ownership of the ‘means’ of production. (...) I have indicated at various points how the practices of production take place in relation to the activities of consumption. You should also have become aware of the ways in which the issue of identity is important for occupational groups, companies and artists” (p. 102)


The Grey Tuesdaywww.greytuesday.org


The Grey Tuesday

• Theme of the control of culture industry by corporations through ownership of means of production

• Relation to the activity of consumption• Standarization & Pseudo-

individualization• What kind of a product is The Grey

Album?


http://www.deloresart.com/images/cofee%20cup.jpg


consumption meanings

• “using up, destruction, waste...”

• a disease (pulmonary phthisis)

• as the antithesis of production in old economic theory (Raymond Williams), secondary

• popular language: = use

• cultural studies: active process, pleasure

Hall et. al.


traditional consumption

• secondary to production, less worthy, frivolous (protestant ethos)

• male work more important than female domestic area

• Commodification of culture (Frankfurt School), standarization, false needs, leisure and ideological control, consumers as passive

Hall et. al.


contemporary view

• important role as shows how cultural artifacts are used in everyday life

• active consumers• Started with Veblen (1899), leisure class.

Bourdieu continues, different groups + capacities for cultural value in symbolic goods, taste, articulation of identity (no gender and class as given)

• Consumption tied to lifestyle rather than class (marketing)

• Postmodernism: the increasing significance of the symbolic, Baudrillard. (focus on youth)

Hall et. al.


consumer societyThe adquisition of objects is without an object.

Consumer behavior, which appears to be focused and directed at the object and at pleasure, in fact responds to quite different objectives: the metaphoric or displaced expression of desire, and the production of a code of social values through the use of differentiating signs. That which is determinant is not the function of individual interest within a corpus of objects, but rather the specifically social function of exchange, communication and distribution of values within a corpus of signs. (49)

The truth about consumption is that it is a function of production, and not a function of pleasure, and therefore, like material production, is not an individual function but one that is directly and totally collective.

Baudrillard


Mobile phones

Wearing technology might just be the next big thing Plus: Louis Vuitton jewels

Over the years we’ve seen mobile phones morph from lunch box-sized contraptions to tiny, must-have flashy gadgets. Technology is slowly but surely weaving its way into our clothing (Techno Material TC) and accessorizing our outfits (Fashion Tech TC). Here is a list of products that we may see (or wear) in the near future:

-Wrist phones-Digital jewels-Talk to the hand


http://www.deloresart.com/images/cofee%20cup.jpg


contemporary view II

• empirical studies of subculture (Hall, Jenkins)• protest against elitist culture• related to the pleasures of consumption

approach: creativity of consumerism (De Certeau): empowering of subjects

• consumption is not the end of a process, but the beginning of another

• always situated• the value of qualitative, observational and

ethnographic research methods (ex. Mackay, Lister et.al.)

Hall et. al.


Interactive audiencesPoaching vs. Jamming:

“Culture jammers want to opt out of media consumption and promote a purely negative and reactive conception of popular culture. Fans, on the other hand, see unrealized potentials in popular culture and want to broaden audience participation. Fan culture is dialogic rather than disruptive, affective more than ideological, and collaborative rather than confrontational. Culture jammers want to “jam” the dominant media, while poachers want to appropriate their content, imagining a more democratic, responsive, and diverse style of popular culture. Jammers want to destroy media power, while poachers want a share of it” (9)

Jenkins


matrix xp


matrix xphttp://www.matrix-xp.com/

What is the Matrix XP?

A good question... an even better question would be "Why all that effort?" " What for?" . We would like to answer this question with "Well, for the glory and money and women" but unfortunately the film has not brought us any of the above mentioned. Instead it ate up our savings and tied us up in front of the computer for month effectively cutting us of from any social interaction... (OK it wasn't THAT bad...) Anyway, the honest answer to the question would probably be "We couldn't help it"... ;-)

our little thing aims at dismantling a bit of the Matrix myth. Not out of disrespect just because a good movie deserves a good spoof.

We hope our little work will be noticed in the vast cyberspace of the internet and we all look forward to get on with our normal live now. Oh by the way! WE had the idea with the multiplying agent MONTH before the first teaser for Matrix Reloaded ever hit the internet... great brothers think alike ;-) !

http://www.matrix-xp.com/index2.php?page=about2&lang=eng


complementary bibliography

CASTELLS. 1996, 1997, 1998. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture (three volumes). Oxford: Blackwell

DE CERTEAU, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: UCLA Press.

HALL, S. and JEFFERSON, T. 1976. Resistance Through Rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain. London: Hutchinson.

VEBLEN, T. 1899 (1989). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan

NOTE: There is a list of related and interesting bibliography in the Negus article.

digital culture and sociology session 6 – susana tosca digital culture and sociology consumption...

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