Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer

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СКАЧАТЬ the many Indians who live there); McLaks, a grilled salmon sandwich served in Norway; and McHuevos, a hamburger with a poached egg served in Uruguay.

      Thus, cultural imperialism needs to be examined in the context of the counterreactions to it, counterflows from elsewhere in the world, and the combination of global and local influences to produce unique cultural elements.

      Consumer Culture

      Consumption is clearly highly valued in the United States (and elsewhere; see Nwachukwu and Dant 2014). That makes American culture a consumer culture, one in which the core ideas and material objects relate to consumption and in which consumption is a primary source of meaning in life (Berger 2015; Slater 2015; Wiedenhoft Murphy 2017b). In a consumer culture, meaning may be found in the goods and services you buy, in the process of buying them (in shopping malls, cybermalls, and so on), in the social aspects of consumption (shopping with your friends or family), and even in the settings in which consumption takes place (e.g., the Venetian or some other Las Vegas hotel-casino, eBay; Ritzer, Goodman, and Wiedenhoft 2001). There are norms for the consumption process as well. For example, customers should wait patiently in the queue for the cashier, gamblers at a Las Vegas casino should not flaunt their winnings in front of other gamblers and should tip dealers, and so on.

      Contemporary consumer culture is unique (Trentman 2016). In the past, culture has generally focused on some other aspect of social life, such as religion, warfare, citizenship, or work. In fact, in the not-too-distant past in the United States and other developed countries, the core ideas and material objects of culture related to work and production. People were thought to derive their greatest meaning from their work. This was true from the Industrial Revolution until approximately 1970, when observers began to realize that developed societies, especially the United States, were beginning to derive more meaning from consumption (Baudrillard [1970] 1998). Of course, work continues to be important, as do religion, warfare, and citizenship, but many people in the world now live in a culture dominated by consumption.

      It could be said that the rise of consumer culture was linked to the rise of the modern world in the West (Campbell 1987). Today, of course, consumer culture has arguably become the culture of the modern West and, indeed, of modernity in general. But consumer culture has also been globalized to a great degree. It has become firmly entrenched in such non-Western places as Singapore (see the excesses of consumption there as depicted in the 2018 movie Crazy Rich Asians), Hong Kong, and Dubai. Japan has been called the premier consumer culture. Even in today’s China, known for its production-oriented culture, a billion-plus citizens are becoming more and more consumption oriented. Shanghai is already studded with huge modern shopping malls, and a Disney theme park opened there in 2016.

      Children in a Consumer Culture

      The most controversial aspect of consumer culture may be the involvement of children (Sparman 2015). In a consumer culture, it is important that children be socialized into, and become actively involved in, consuming (Cook 2004; Pilcher 2013). Consumption by children has not always been valued, however. In fact, there were once strong norms against it. Children were not considered to be able to make informed choices about consumption and were therefore seen as even more susceptible than adults to exploitation by advertisers and marketers.

      An important change began to take place in the mid-nineteenth century with the advent of department stores. Some stores offered supervised play areas so that parents could shop more easily. A key development by the mid-twentieth century was children’s sections in department stores; they were eventually subdivided into shops for babies, children, and teens. Also during this period, radio programs, movies, and TV shows were increasingly directed at children. Disney was a leader in this trend. TV shows of the 1950s, such as the Davy Crockett series (King of the Wild Frontier), prompted the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of simulated coonskin caps and other merchandise for children. More recently, children have come to be targeted directly by advertisers on Saturday-morning TV shows and cable channels such as Nickelodeon that specialize in children’s programming.

      In fact, marketing aimed at children is now pervasive. This is portrayed in detail in the documentary Consuming Kids (2008). For example, the Walt Disney Company directly markets baby products, and thus the Disney brand, to new mothers in maternity wards. In schools, branded products are sold at book fairs, and corporate sponsorships adorn everything from sports stadiums to classroom supplies. Brands and logos are woven into textbook problems and examples. Market researchers observe the way in which children use and respond to products and advertising messages not just in focus groups and in the lab but also in natural settings such as school and the home. Marketers have also discovered the importance of the “pester power” of children. This is the ability of children to nag their parents into buying things. It is effective not only for selling children’s products but also for getting children to influence their parents’ purchases.

      Overall, children are much more immersed in consumer culture today than ever before. They learn at an early age to value it as well as the norms involved in participating in it. As adults, then, they will fit well into a culture with consumption at its core.

      Nontraditional Settings for Consumption

      An interesting aspect of consumer culture is the way in which it has spread beyond the economy to other aspects of society. For example, higher education is increasingly characterized by consumer culture. Students and their parents shop around for the best colleges and the most conspicuous degrees or for the best values in a college education. College rankings, such as those published by Kiplinger and U.S. News & World Report, are a big business. In spite of a great deal of criticism (and some recent failures) for-profit colleges have become a booming industry. Enterprises such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University enroll hundreds of thousands of students who pay for the opportunity to earn their degrees on a flexible schedule (Cottom 2017; see Trending box in Chapter 11).

      Not long ago, students were largely passive recipients of what educational systems had to offer, but now they are more active consumers of education. For example, college students shop for the best classes, or the best class times, and regularly rate their professors and choose classes on the basis of the professors’ ratings. They are also much more likely to make demands for up-to-date “products” and attentive service from their professors and colleges, as they do from shopping malls and salespeople.

      A key site of consumption is now the internet (Miller and Slater 2000; Zuev 2015). A good portion of the time people spend online is related to consumption, either directly (by purchasing items on sites such as Etsy or Amazon) or indirectly (by buying things on game sites such as CastleVille Legends with real dollars). Among the changes wrought by the internet is a great increase in consumer-to-consumer sales on sites like eBay. In 2000, only 22 percent of Americans had used the internet to buy products online, including books, music, toys, and clothing. By 2015, 79 percent of Americans shopped online (Smith and Anderson 2016). The growing importance of online consumption is reflected in the increasing amount spent each year on “Cyber Monday” (the Monday after Thanksgiving). Cyber Monday 2018 set a new record for online shopping, generating almost $8 billion in sales. Significantly, consumers used their mobile devices to generate over $2 billion in sales. In addition, in a process known as “contextual advertising,” advertisements are often woven seamlessly into the content of internet sites—even into games designed for children. Beyond that, many websites carry pop-up ads for goods and services targeted to the interests of the individuals viewing the sites. More specifically, if you use Google to shop for shoes or Amazon for books, ads for shoes and books will pop up for days, or even months, later on many of the sites you visit.

      YouTube offers several innovations in consumption, including “shopping haul” СКАЧАТЬ