COMN 3700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Commodity Fetishism, Patina, Moodle

• School: York University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMN 3700
• Professor: Natalie Coulter

Document Summary

Changed her office hours to 1:45-2:30 email her for appointment. Oral history assignment on moodle, read for next week. The materials economy: from extraction to disposal of items: extraction-running out of resources, production using energy to mix with products, toxics are in the products , pollution, distribution externalized costs, consumption- Planned obsolesce designed for the dump (mops, computers, cds) making products to have a short life time and make you buy a new one. Perceived obsolesce- convincing us to throw away thing that are perfectly good for new one. We see 3,000 ads a day, the point is to make us unhappy with what we have already, and we need to go shopping: disposal- we burn the garbage, and the toxics go out into the air. Gickman problematizes living in a consumer society, he inquires of what it is. 3 broad social transitions; pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial (consumer society) There was control over the whole process of work.