OUGD501 - Context of Practice: Consumerism Seminar

Today our session with Richard involved recapping our consumerism lecture to start with. He asked us all what we could remember from the lecture regarding key points. We came up with the following as a group:

• Desire based on a false need for commodities
• Promotes a form of greed
• Not just a false need, it is a necessary part of the system
• Manufacturing desire
• Social control versus freedom

- Causes mass inequality
- System disguises this inequality giving the illusion that you are free

• Stratification
• Consumerism acts as a palliative - drug
• Mass production is intrinsically linked
• More and more meaningless stuff
• Big businesses create the need for things through advertising
• Freud - Irrational desires and animal instincts
• Bernays - Public Relations and links to movie stars, politicians
• We are given the illusion that we have free choice

We then had to get into groups of about 5 people and read through the following text taken from John Berger's Ways of Seeing book. Our group was given the following pages:

Page 148-151

• We all feel as though we have the right to be happy but we are still under the influence of social control
• Whilst we work we feel as though we have earned the right to these things
• 'No two dreams are the same' - The effect of advertising
• Being popular you feel feel better than others
• Consumerism hides global values

We then had to share what we had found with the rest of the group. We decided to use the Chanel advert 'Share the fantasy' as an example to explain what we had come up with. When watching the advert we thought of how it would make you feel more popular and links to being dreamy.