SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Georg Simmel, Consumer Behaviour, Social Inequality
Document Summary
3:04 pm: people like to join communities. Imitate other community members: people like to exclude other people from their communities, compete with other communities. Role of social inequality is to reward group members and punish outsiders. Sociology is about the ways people relate to one another in communities and societies: people communicate, teach, learn from, imitate one another, people cooperate, compete, reward and punish one another. People spend time and money together: consumer behavior = social behavior. Insight into what people value: how they deal with others in seeking what they value. Fashionable clothing does this, according to georg simmel (on individuality and social forms) Ironically, the items we buy are often produced in mass quantities and sold to millions of other shoppers hoping to be just as unique as ourselves. Thus, consumer buying is an indicator of group membership: what we buy distinguishes us from others while also grouping is with others.
