SOSC 1040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Consumerism, Tangled, Consumer Protection
Document Summary
Reification and consumerism as forms of social control. About buying things to make yourself better in relation to the other; competitively; buy things they don"t need but have been convinced that they need. The concept of reification refers to how people get influenced into thinking and behaving in ways which do not represent their own best interests, but have been convinced that they do. Reification is a type of self-deception that can result in self defeat competing with oneself, thinking oneself as lesser or inferior can entail the destruction of the self. Reification begins with the manipulation/tampering of one"s ability to think critically by and for themselves and thus resist being socially controlled. Reification is a condition that the individual is not consciously aware of it often masks its own workings in the form of pleasure, belonging, self assertion etc. Reification leads to competition with oneself because of feelings of personal inadequacy get intensified by cultural meanings.