SOCI 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Thorstein Veblen, George Ritzer, Conspicuous Consumption
11 Feb 2018
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Consumption is the way we purchase and use goods and services. As critics such as george ritzer have observed, the sociology of consumption is underdeveloped in north american sociology. According to ritzer, consumption is a topic that many sociologists consider too (cid:1688)trivial(cid:1689) to warrant the kind of serious study that goes to what he calls (cid:1688)traditional sociological issues(cid:1689) George ritzer argues, socialists could reach a much broader audience by writing about issues that would be of interest to many readers who spend far more time in malls that they do in, say, factories. Karl marx spent a good chunk of his sociological career studying and writing about the relationship between wealth and the means of production, and he established it as an important sociological consideration. Marx(cid:1685)s means of production is about the main social means needed for producing wealth namely, agricultural land in pre-industrial times and factory machinery and start-up capital since industrialization.
