Chapter 5: Economic Theory, Marxism, and Material Culture

Chapter 5: Economic Theory, Marxism, and Material Culture

1. Human Labor

   • Labor that involves everything from designing, manufacturing, transporting, advertising and selling

2. Marxist Theory and Alienation

   • Separation of man's true nature from his sense of self
   • Consumer Cycle
     • We purchase things in order to assuage our sense of frustration with our situation, not recognizing why we act the way we do.

3. Class Conflict/Struggle: unequal distributions of goods

   • Bourgeoisie: own the means of production, ruling class
   • Proletariat: the workers exploited by the bourgeoisie
   • "False Consciousness" (Amrican Dream)

4. Advertising

   • Main engine of consumer/capitalist culture. Dominates everyday life and social relationships
   • Immediate goal is to sell artifacts/products. Turn away attention from exploitation

5. Henri Lefebvre

   • Advertising gives all objects their valuation
     • Industry inducing people to buy objects/products that gives value and status.
       • Has taken control of everyday life and gives everyone attitudes and sense of style, informing their purchases and lives.

6. Thorstein Veblen

   • consumption = enhanced sense of self
     • Looking for hidden functions of objects to understand the role they play in our lives. Problem, never satisfied

7. Max Weber

   • Argues Calvinist theology is behind the creation of capitalism, attitudes towards possessions
     • "Divine Providence"
       • Determines economic fate, justifies the unequal distribution of wealth is a great comfort to those who form the ruling class, justifying position and lifestyle
   • Material goods have gained inexorable power over lives of men

8. Georg Simmel

   • Deal with the development of the new models of artifacts we use
     • Infinite regress in fashion, creating "new" stuff.

9. Walter Benjamin

   • Interested in the impact of mass production on objects
   • Aura = Authenticity
     • Loss of it in mass produced objects, relies upon the presence of originals,
       • Art no longer is based on focus on the creative artist and process
     • Band products/good name attached to the creator

10. Postmodernism

    • Dissolves boundaries between elite culture and popular culture
    • Authenticity not important
    • Publicity
      • Language in itself, used to make a single proposal
      • Feeds upon the real, always about the future buyer.
      • Is about social relations, not objects