Consumer Culture Analysis

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According to Slater (1997), consumer culture can be defined that the relations between needs and social structures as well as it would be a power and identities in commercial system and society. In other words, it can be meant how people want to live and organize the society in various social conditions such as commercial and industrial capitalism. Capitalism means that “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and wealth are held primarily by individuals and corporations” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001: p.350). Besides, globalization leads to increase commercial and industrial capitalism which includes economic knowledge to global markets and people can purchase goods manufactured in another country. However, because of the process of commodities, some problems might come up. It is because consumer culture can be involved in diverse fields in terms of ethics, identity. Moreover, despite industrial problems reveal in the market, consumers still have focused on consumption of products. Advertising helps to hide the problems with glamorous images. Therefore, this essay shows how consumer culture can be represented with industrial problems. Consumer culture will be addressed regarding to child labour which is occasionally carried out illegally in the world. In the essay, firstly, it will look at both child labour and consumer culture and then coherence of them with focusing on capitalism. The series documentary of ‘Blood, Sweat and T-shirts and Luxuries’ will be mainly analyzed in the second part with some examples. Lastly, it will discuss what benefits consumers and companies gain from exploitation of child labour.

To begin with, capitalism is one of the...

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...U.S. to sell even though they had exposed in toxic environment. Firstly, this series documentary highlighted individualism of each person, absence of value which is related to money and labour, and prejudice about the poor in capitalist society through performers` thought. Consumption is also considered necessary function in capitalism as a part of ideology. Secondly, it emphasizes the social relations of consumption and commodity chain from production to sales. It gives chances to consumers for organizing what they consume and how they choose the products by their sense of value with exception of commodity fetishism. Furthermore, through mass media; the documentary helps audiences make realized commodity fetishism with critical view. If hidden parts of commodity chain can be appeared significantly, defetishization might occur in terms of commodities (Lewis, 2011).

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