SOCY306 Consumer Culture Assignment 1, 2025 | QU

SOCY306 Consumer Culture Assignment 1

Paper 1:

Write a paper that describes and critically reflects upon your typical consumption activities on an average day, connecting them to relevant concepts from weeks 1-4.

Details

First, describe the activities involving consumption that you typically engage in. This should be an essay-style account of your typical activities, reflecting on what kinds of consumption they involve or require, and how these might have been shaped by your social circumstances (e.g. where you live, family composition, gender, race, social class).

Second, try to connect that description to one or two of the ideas we have explored so far and reflect upon your activities more critically. Think about commodification, manipulation, branding, emulation and status-seeking, conspicuous consumption, your self-identity, and so forth, and how these help connect your individual experience to larger dimensions of the social world.

Just for example, how do the activities you have identified relate to your sense of what consumption "needs' are? Where have these 'needs' come from, and have these changed over time? What activities involving consumption or specific commodities do you particularly value, and why do you think that is? Do you think that these will change in the long run?