Consumer Society Research Articles

Generating desire: Chocolate, chromolithographs, and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy's fairy tales

There existed a fascinating means of collecting fairy tales in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that has hitherto remained unexplored: the collection of chromolithographs or “chromos,” used as a marketing tool by French department stores like Le Bon Marché and by chocolate producers like Poulain. Scholars such as Emily Cormack, Laura Kalba, and Pearl Michel have carried out essential research on the deployment of chromos in the rise of consumer society, but this is the first study with a specific focus on chromos that feature fairy tales. In mid-century, Victor-Auguste Poulain, a French chocolatier from Blois, found the means to mass produce chocolate and sought to transform the nineteenth-century conception of chocolate from being an elite privilege or a medicinal product to being a plearurable food accessible to the middle classes. It was under the direction of Victor-Auguste's son Albert that chromos, including fairy-tale themed chromos, became an important marketing tool for the company in the 1880s. Children in particular were encouraged to purchase the mass-produced chocolate by the insertion into the packaging of fragments of tales like “The White Cat,” “The Doe in the Woods,” and “Beauty with the Golden Hair.” Each chocolate bar would include a beautiful color chromo of the tale on the recto, with the narrative fragment on the verso. This marketing strategy becomes a desire-generating machine: the desire for more story fuels the desire to purchase more chocolate, which subsequently fuels the desire for more story. In effect, as I hope to show through this case study of Poulain's use of tales by d’Aulnoy, narrative desire gets converted into consumer desire through Poulain's marketing campaign.

Multi-level education for sustainability through global citizenship, territorial education and art forms

This article is aimed at addressing concepts, approaches and challenges that are both very characteristic of the era we are living in and that would also greatly benefit from being more and better integrated into our learning systems (both in the formal and non-formal educational systems and lifelong learning). Those issues and themes have emerged from, or have been exacerbated by, socio-economic systems in place since the middle of the 20th century, promoting amongst other things, a consumption society based on a linear over-exploitation of natural resources, the globalization of exchanges, a rapid urbanization process and not-always-harmonious mixes of cultures and communities. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have culminated in triggering reflections on what matters most and, conversely, on what makes our world so un-sustainable and non-resilient. From these, a new momentum has been generated on reviewing where our efforts on teaching and learning about ‘sustainability’ got us to. Our focus here is on new approaches to education for sustainability at global, community and personal levels, as well as at levels that connect those. From linking the local to the global through ‘global citizenship,’ to experiential learning generated through practical projects such as urban agriculture, to an emotional involvement into understanding sustainability issues through art forms, we re-visit sustainability through the eyes of the learners, questioning the boundaries of the ‘sustainability educational project’ beyond the ones which, for (too) long, have paralleled those of neo-liberal reforms.

Эволюция коллективов в металлической музыке: между творчеством и коммерцией

In the consumer society, music turns into an entire industry that brings a lot of money. Having originated as an underground and being a cultural phenomenon of the last quarter of the XX century, heavy metal music finaly joined the music industry and was fully commercialized. However, metal groups are the most creative groups that compose and perform their own works themselves. The emerging contradictions between creativity and commercial success affect the fate of these groups, their creative development. At the same time, they can both maintain popularity, that is, the commitment of their fans, and lose it. In this study, based on the analysis of the commercial success of albums of some representatives of the direction of heavy metal music, I identified the main trends in the development of the creative path of these collectives, and I proposed the main archetypes of metal groups. I was taken as empirical data the most authoritative charts of the Billboard Top 200 (USA) and UK Albums Chart (UK) sales of music albums.

From hedonism to frugality: consumption desires in different age groups across 20 years

This article examines different kinds of consumption desires of Finnish consumers by asking how they would change their consumption habits if they had more money at their disposal. As previous research on consumption desires has been mainly based on the essence of desires and the cycle of fulfilling hedonistic desires and creating new ones, this study analyses the desires in the context of the ages of both consumers and consumer society. The focus was differences in consumption desires between age groups and changes across 20 years. The data were derived from three repeated surveys collected in 1999, 2009 and 2019 in Finland (N = 5,459), which were analysed with principal-axis factor analysis and ANCOVA. The factor analysis extracted three types of consumption desires: hedonistic, charitable-cultural and materialistic. Saving-oriented desires were analysed as a single item. Hedonistic consumption desires were the most typical for the youngest age group (18–25), and materialistic desires were the highest for young adults aged 26–35 across all three years of measurement. Older people had the most charitably and culturally oriented desires in 1999, but older age groups’ orientation to saving and charitable giving and culture decreased across 20 years. Hedonistic consumption desires generally decreased over 20 years, particularly in young age groups. Conversely, young people’s desire to save increased significantly, whereas the oldest age groups saved less. The research shows that both changes in consumer values and economic circumstances are manifested in people’s consumption desires.

IMAGES OF JIHAD AND PROBLEMS OF LEGITIMATION OF RELIGIOUS PROTEST AS A FORM OF CLASS CONFLICT AND SOCIAL LIBERATION

Background. The author analyzes the texts of the Dune cycle in contexts of modern historiography, including its universal methods that allow analyzing “oriental” images in literature through the prism of constructing and deconstructing narratives that form the image of Jihad as a form of political, social and religious struggle of oppressed communities and minorities.
 Purpose. The purpose of the article is an “orientalist” reinterpretation of the images of Jihad in the novels belonging to the Dune cycle including the prequel text presented by Dune. Butlerian Jihad and Dune. Paul.
 Materials and methods. The author uses the methodological tools of intellectual history and studies of nationalism, including the concept of the invention of traditions, which allows to analyze the images of Jihad in science fiction as one of the invented traditions of mass US science fiction literature using the texts of the Dune cycle. Orientalism as a method is used to analyze Muslim motifs in the prose of F. Herbert, B. Herbert and K. Anderson, which, as the author of the article presumes, were inspired by political, ideological and religious stimuli. The author states that the orientalist approach can be an effective interpretative model for an interdisciplinary analysis of American science fiction as a cultural landscape for the development of Jihad images in the Western intellectual tradition of the consumer society.
 Results. The ideological and political foundations for the development of images of Jihad as a social concept of American science fiction are studied in the article. The article analyzes the ideological origins, as well as the political prototypes and archetypes of the Muslim radicals of the Dune cycle. The author analyzes the ideological discourse of radical Islamism, presented in American mass culture through the prism of religious war images as attempts to implement the doctrine and social liberation. The article analyzes the attempts of American writers to form a positive and attractive image of a radical political protest under religious Muslim slogans. Therefore, it is shown that American science fiction prose actualized the mobilization potential of Islamism, imagining and inventing it as a form of legitimate social and economic protest of the oppressed masses against discrimination. The author presumes that some American authors revised the images of Jihad, offering its interpretation as a radical social and class protest based on religious legitimation.

Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral. Buying into Change: Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco’s Spain, 1939–1982.

Buying into Change is an aptly titled book with a simple premise: that while much has been written about the liberal political culture that fueled Spain’s democratic transition, insufficient attention has been paid to the role that mass consumption played in the liberalization of Spanish society during the Franco regime. In five clearly organized chapters, Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral explains how the rise of Spanish department stores, consumer magazines, the Spanish advertising industry, and foreign-influenced supermarkets resulted in the development of a Spanish mass consumer society that helped to pave the way for Spain’s remarkably peaceful transition from Francoism to democracy. The main contribution of the book to existing scholarship on the Spanish democratic transition is its historiography of the emergence and development of Spanish department stores and self-service supermarkets. Food and clothing are fundamental cultural elements, and the author offers a compelling argument that the adoption of new foreign ways of buying and selling unwittingly became politically subversive by undermining the Francoist notion that “Spain is different” from other Western nations.

Development of The Economic Sector Through Zakat Funds by LAZISMU: AHP Approach

The human development index (HDI) in 2019 showed that Indonesia is ranked 111 out of 189 countries. The slowdown in Indonesia's HDI rate is because the poverty rate in Indonesia is still relatively high. Resolutions are needed to change the character of a consumptive society into a productive society through zakat funds that can be utilized for productive efforts in capital, facilities, and infrastructure procurement. This study aims to identify the management and role of zakat funds in economic development. This current study is qualitative in the form of field research. The primary data from the first source and recipients of zakat funds were obtained through direct and in-depth interviews and supporting data from institutions. This study employs Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a method. The results revealed three priorities for using zakat funds used by beneficiaries from LAZISMU DIY: 1) opening business fields, 2) increasing access to education services, and 3) increasing access to health services.

TO GENERATE DATA AT ALL COSTS FOR TRAFFIC CELEBRITIES: THE REMAKING OF CHINESE NEW POOR THROUGH DATA-DRIVEN FAN CULTURE

Among Chinese fans of ‘traffic celebrities’ (liuliang mingxing, 流量明星), to generate excessive data either on digital platforms or in various sales charts so as to inflate certain entertainer’s popularity has become a normalized ritual to demonstrate one’s fan identity. The so-called fandom economy effectively mobilizes fans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to consume and participate, thus, generates tremendous revenues. However, when some fans could easily satisfy their consumerist desire for being economically powerful and socially successful, many more—who are seduced by the communitas of fan activism and agency as consumers —are unable or not yet fully prepared to afford this lifestyle. Depending on an eighteen-month ethnography, this study unpacks how these fans are seduced, to some extent included, but still exploited in the transitional Chinese consumer society as new poor (Bauman 2005), where digital platforms become new structuring nexus and transform existing power dynamics.

Significance of Corporate Non-Financial Information Disclosure for Sustainable Economic Growth

According to the objective of achieving "an intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth" in the European Union (EU) 2020 agenda, the information disclosure regarding sustainability of large companies mainly aims to contribute to the potential of the single market, thus creating sustainable development and employment levels. It is very important for companies to increase their transparency for interested parties, improve their risk management and provide better results. High transparency, including the diversity of management bodies, determines the trust growth of people in companies and markets, and allows more efficient capital distribution and the possibility of making a more realistic decision (e.g., by investors) according to available information. For current challenges, such as global warming, effects of the consumption society on environment, emphasis of disparities, worsening of environmental problems and urbanization of population, related replied have been made, representing that more efforts have been made for the transition towards a green model and for meeting the sustainable development objectives. Significant steps have been taken in this direction, but greater efforts should be made. The new economic system should rely on sustainable development, which is the solution to overcome current social, environmental and economic problems. Non-financial reporting is just a tool. In order to add value, companies should use the tool to contribute more, thus being closer to the global initiatives related to the green economy and building a sustainable society. Increase of these global trends has a significant impact on business environment, leading to measures taken immediately. Therefore, the true benefits of non-financial reporting will not be noticed unless entities change their focus from strict evaluation of financial performance to non-financial elements and integrate sustainability in their business model. Meanwhile, companies should focus on reporting the aspects, which are significant for them, the interested parties and the investors, and ensure that all these aspects are communicated to the management. Analysis of the non-financial information, presented by the active entities in the field of electrical energy production in Romania between 2017-2020, showed that only six companies met the legal requirements of non-financial information disclosure, which are state-owned companies with full or majority state capital and state-owned companies/societies.

Analysis of the Knowledge Payment Phenomenon of Chinese Women (Age 25-49)

China's Internet penetration rate continues to rise, and the scale of smartphone users continues to expand, providing the soil for the development of the knowledge payment industry. Among the industry's consumer groups, female Chinese consumers play an important but rarely discussed the role. The article will use Jean Baudrillard's consumer society theory to discuss the payment motivation of Chinese female consumers. Baudrillard believes that in a consumer society, women become the group with the most consumption power. The article will use a specific female-target app, Jane's academy, as an example to analyze the reasons for the knowledge payment in China from the four perspectives. First, women in society pay for knowledge products to ease their anxiety about facing all types of work and family problems. After they pay for the products, they would have the illusion that the problem in their life has been fixed already. Second, women, as an individual nowadays, focus on self-improvement, and they are willing to invest in themselves. Third, the influence of Chinese traditional culture creates an atmosphere in Chinese society that learning is the most effective way to promote people's social status. Fourth, paying for knowledge is a consequence of the common anxiety of human beings in the Information Age. In a nutshell, an attempt to relieve anxiety lies behind the phenomenon of knowledge paymentt.

Evaluation of the agri-food supply chain risks: the circular economy context

PurposeCircular supply chains (CSC) are particularly important for the agri-food sector, which faces strict requirements generated by increased food consumption as a consequence of world population growth, changes in lifestyle, development of consumer society and increasing health awareness. Recent disruptive factors have placed the vulnerability of agri-food supply chains in the spotlight. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to identify the most manageable groups of risks in order to ensure the smooth operation of agri-food circular supply chains.Design/methodology/approachSeven main risk groups were evaluated in relation to nine criteria. To solve this multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, a novel MCDM model, which integrates the best-worst method (BWM) and the COmprehensive distance-Based RAnking (COBRA) method in a grey environment, was developed.FindingsThree risks were singled out, namely, product features risks, logistics risks and managerial risks. The obtained risks are those whose management would create the most positive effects for the stakeholders and help them achieve their primary goals regarding the circularity of agri-food supply chains.Originality/valueThis study investigates the main characteristics of the CSC in the agri-food sector, identifies, simultaneously explores and ranks all main risk groups associated with them and expands the possibilities for solving these kinds of problems by developing a novel MCDM model. It also identifies the most significant risks, both for individual stakeholders and for all stakeholder groups together.

ECOLOGICAL MARKETING IN THE PARADIGM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECT

Theoretical and methodological approaches to the development of the field of marketing in the information society based on the principles of sustainable development are considered, which is due to the task of creating and maintaining, with the help of marketing, competitive advantages compatible with the tasks of the concept of sustainable development, adapting the marketing orientation of organizations to the needs of sustainable development in order to harmonize interaction «nature-society». It is shown that in the field of marketing, the focus on the concept of sustainable development actualized the formation of the ideology of sustainable marketing and sustainable consumption, a sustainable marketing organization and contributed to the formation of ecological marketing, which focuses on the demonstration of positive social and environmental behavior by companies to ethical consumers, responsibility for environmental safety, life and health consumers. In accordance with Ukraine’s course of integration into the European Union, the economic policy of the state is faced with the task of building the economy based on the principles of sustainable development. The issue of the need to combine the efforts of the state and civil society to implement the concept of sustainable development has been updated. It is indicated that in order to overcome the dominance of resource- and energy-intensive industries and technologies, the raw material orientation of exports that dominates in Ukraine, state policy should consider the achievements of the Fourth Technological Revolution and support science-oriented industries. The role of the achievements of the Fourth Technological Revolution, to solve the problems of sustainable development thanks to technologies of alternative energy production, «smart» technologies for the house, and cloud technologies, which become the basis for calculating the economical distribution of resources and optimal satisfaction of consumer needs, is considered. It is shown that with the efforts of civil society, with a formed environmental consciousness, it is possible to overcome the ideology of consumer society, which led to the global environmental crisis and prevent business from neglecting the requirements for environmental protection, saving capital investments in the ecological sphere.

A “lifeline out of the COVID‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

A “lifeline out of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

Money, Debt and Finance: Reclaiming the Conditions of Possibility in Consumption Research

This article provides an argument for why the sociology of consumption should be reorientated towards a money and finance sensibility. Proceeding from the observation that the rise of financialised capitalism has gone largely ignored in in the field, we suggest that the conditions of contemporary consumption – shaped by austerity, inflation and an energy crisis – render this neglect untenable. In omitting money, the field not only elides its conditions of possibility but also abandons understanding of credit and consumer society to other fields that do not adequately acknowledge the dynamics of consumption. The article offers: (1) an account of why money has been absent from the sociology of consumption; (2) an auto-archaeology of data from our previous studies of household consumption in the UK, but reinterpreted and read through the lens of money and finance and (3) an indication of future research priorities and pathways for a reorientated sociology of consumption.

Buying into Change: Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco's Spain, 1939–1982 by Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral

Reviewed by: Buying into Change: Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco's Spain, 1939–1982 by Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral Annabel Martín Keywords Spain, Europe, United States, Consumerism, Mass Culture, Advertising, Department Store Culture, Galería Preciados, Corte Inglés, Sears, Supermarkets, Francoism, Dictatorship, Spanish Miracle, Internationalization, Democracy, Gender, Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral, Annabel Martín gómez del moral, alejandro j. Buying into Change: Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco's Spain, 1939–1982. U of Nebraska P, 2021, 366 pp. Buying into Change: Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco's Spain, 1939–1982 is a sharp and intelligent study of the development of a consumer society and its effects on Spanish cultural and social mores during the Franco regime. Segments of Spanish society of the 1960s were invited to join Europe's consumer society and did so with a vengeance. The accumulation of goods, the habitus of the new bourgeoisie, and the depoliticization of the working classes through consumption (goods and tourism) was not "Spanish" in intent, but rather the necessary outcome of a model of early neoliberal modernization grounded on the widespread decoupling of the economic sphere from all others in developed western societies. The Franco regime might have been anachronistic in the limitations it secured in most political, social, and cultural manifestations, but it was, on the other hand, a model student in its placing of capitalist market structures, a new service sector centered on tourism and consumption, at its core. In this new socioeconomic scenario, Spain proved itself a worthy European neighbor, given how the lack of political freedom or the repressive state discourses on cultural and gender mores were overshadowed by rapid, market-driven, and speculative [End Page 319] economic development. Buying into Change sets out to document just how important the new capitalist model of development was in accomplishing this by focusing on several of the pillars of capitalist consumption: the prolific offer of consumer goods in retail stores, the reordering of the country's food supply thanks to the success of the supermarket, and the role of modern advertising and of consumer magazines in this process. If the market, and not politics, is what articulates this new society, then modernity is secured for the dictatorship, provided it follow the laws of profit and gain. In The Consumer Society (1970), Baudrillard reminds us that consumer goods present themselves not as the products of labor but rather as the harnessing of power (33). Within a dictatorship, goods can appear to magically remedy the shortcomings of the political system, a magic that turns abundance into "an effect of nature," into an "inalienable right" (33) thanks to advertising and its invention of "truth." Individuals who bore this process in Spain and did so with a blunt political imagination did not automatically link a change in the political regime with the improvement of the conditions of life, for "progress" was, for the most part, exclusively branded in economic terms, measured in degrees of consumption, just like for fellow citizens in neighboring western democracies. This fresh age of affiuence immersed Spaniards within a burgeoning material abundance, regardless of its actual accessibility. One begs to ask, then, if capitalist economic and social structures are not actually custom-made for dictatorships. It would not be extravagant to think so given how consumer logic does away with the messiness of societies, thanks to its logic of efficiency (control and uniformity) despite parading as varied and plural in options and choices. If this is the case, the effects on democracy are also quite straightforward shortening, therefore, the road Spain needed to travel to become more like its democratic neighbors. However, one must not forget that consumerism also withholds a promise of change, of hope, a momentary arrest of the difficulties of life brought about by the political and economic impossibilities that the working poor faced in Spain. No one pointed to these contradictions within consumer society like Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga in El verdugo (1962), quite possibly the most provocative critique of the Franco regime ever screened. In the film, the violence of the dictatorship can comfortably coexist within consumer society, constricting...

Methodological Aspects of the Process of Digitization of the Education System in the XXI Century

The author discusses methodological aspects of digitalization of the education system in Russia. The author's research team focuses on the philosophical-anthropological and socio-pedagogical dimensions of the studied phenomenon of the XXI century. It is shown that in the field of education, the first steps towards digital literacy of all participants in educational relations were made back in the late 1990s. During this period, this process was called "informatization" of the educational environment of educational institutions. The transition to the introduction of a wide range of information and computer technologies into the pedagogical process took place during the implementation of the first national project "Education" (2005-2010). In the 2010s, big data analytics, the all-encompassing use of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, testing the possibilities of virtual and augmented reality, the use of 3-D printing in teaching – these and other new technologies allowed us to move to a new stage in the development of the Russian education sector. The formation of the educational environment in the context of digital transformation encourages understanding of the prospects and significant risks that the digitization process brings to the consumer society. The use of philosophical and anthropological analysis allowed the authors to identify the following risks: the risk of the formation of an individual with a "one-dimensional consciousness" in the educational environment, the tendency of the destruction of the ideological matrix of personality under the influence of digitisation, the risk of destructive transformation of the role of the teacher with the subsequent replacement of the latter with "gadgets" and software shells with "artificial intelligence", the risk of dictate from the "technocrats-developers" of educational content, the risk of worsening the health of students due to the adverse effects of digital technologies.

НОВЫЙ ПАНОПТИКОН: ИМИДЖ В СИСТЕМЕ СОЦИАЛЬНОГО ДИСЦИПЛИНИРОВАНИЯ И КОНТРОЛЯ

The article deals with the image analysis as one of the instruments for monitoring and managing the social behaviour of people in the modern consumer society. Under the conditions when the utilitarian role of goods has largely fallen by the wayside, the symbolic status reality appeared for the first time, whose material signs are goods. The image without losing its full instrumental function in some particular cases usually acquires a new role commonly recognized and legalized from the position of the internal coercing apparatus in order to ensure the intersubjective organization of internal experience within the stable and predictable functioning and reproduction of the system. On the one hand, the traditional external coercing apparatus in its repressive and supervisory function is applied to the antisocial behaviour, its experiencers are oriented to the symbols outside the system requiring reproduction. Secondly, its effect also extends to those social strata that for one reason or another have dropped out of the "race for consumer status". But even in this latter case, it also tends to reduce the direct impact in favour of autonomous self-control.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon's Cultural Conceptual Framework

Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon's Cultural Conceptual Framework

American Consumer Culture as Reflected in Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe and Green Coca-Cola Bottle

Andy Warhol was in an extremely prosperous post-World War II United States when Pop Art was flourishing in America, when art was becoming civilianized and began to focus on the daily lives of the public. Andy Warhol was keenly aware of the effects that consumer society brought to the mass culture and he brought the commodities and elements used by the masses into Pop Art, such asGreen Coca-Cola BottleandMarilyn Monroewhich concentrated and distinctly embodied the cultural characteristics of the consumerist. This paper applied The Consumer Society written by Jean Baudrillard to argue the consumer culture reflected in two of Andy Warhol's classic paintings, namely Green Coca-Cola Bottle and Marilyn Monroe. The former reflected the state of consumption-controlled production in America, while the latter reflected the emergence of the consumer protagonist as the new concern of popular culture, the rise of mass media and the frenzied pursuit of consumer symbols. Lastly the inspiration he brought to us that is to provide an in-depth and well-reasoned understanding for the consumer culture reflected in Warhol's paintings and the implications for modern consumer society and contemporary art.