Sociology 2172A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Gender Identity, Visual Literacy, Advertising Campaign
7 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
The market place is major structuring institution of contemporary consumer society. In agrarian-society before industrial, other institutions (family, community, ethnicity, religion) were dominant. Public discourse soon became dominated by discourse through and about objects: at first, this was transmitting info about products. Development of image saturated society = the 1920s. Advertising industry had to sell more of nonessential goods in competitive marketplace. 1920s saw integration of people into messages. Many ads had written material explaining the visual material: consumer society taught how to read commercial messages. In contemporary world, messages about goods are all pervasive. Advertising talks to us as individuals and addresses us about how we can be happy. Answers are all the purchase of goods and services. People want control of their life, self esteem, happy family, good relationships, good leisure. Commodities only weakly related to sources of satisfaction (cid:862)so(cid:272)ial(cid:863) life, (cid:374)ot (cid:862)(cid:373)ate(cid:396)ial(cid:863) life. Market society guided by principle that satisfaction should be achieved via marketplace.
