SOC 808 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: World Food Programme, Consumerism, Media Culture
12 Mar 2016
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Chapter 4 - you are what you eat. A description of late-industrial capitalist societies where consumerism reigns supreme. While other cultures give symbolic weight to material objects, consumer culture is characterized by extensive capitalist commodification and the ubiquity of consumer imperatives in everyday life. Cultural "tool kits" or "repertories" instead of seeing culture as "the ultimate ends", which implies a cohesive view of culture, culture should be viewed as a collection of culturally defined elements. People can pick elements that sustain habitual behaviors or can select tools to explore new ways of acting in the world. Not only do people use culture, but culture in turn "uses people" People have some agency about what they eat, but culinary tastes and ideas about. "good" food are also influenced by broader structural forces, ie. ethnic background, social class, family socialization and gender. Strong political-economic forces shape available cultural repertoires about food and are influential in ways that ppl cannot always fully articulate.
