Culture - Commodities Are "Good Essay

Total Length: 887 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 6

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Other commodities are consumed to derive pleasure or entertainment which explains why one goes for a certain television brand or a type of car. The choice of cars among the youths and the purpose of owning the cars among other gadgets have something to do with what their peers will think of them not the utility part (Scott Atkins, 1995).

Baudrillard, (2012) another individual who studied material culture called it the sociology of consumption. He studied the objects and not the consumer; he asserted that consumption should be taken seriously as an important institution where social class status and prestige are displayed. Certain objects depict a certain class in the society and when one possesses those prestigious objects then there is a message to the society in terms of the social status. The objects therefore have symbolic value as he mentions the objects of the modern consumer, it is implied that consumption in the modern society simply involves manipulation of signs and ordering of objects to mean what the consumer want them to. The objects are contextual and when taken out of their boundaries then we think differently about them by either misjudging or assigning new meanings.


There are the opposing points-of-views on these principles; the works of Baudrillard, Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes have been heavily criticized that they are culturally deterministic in some way. They have also been said to be extremely static, inflexible and do not incorporate or depict the changing cultural patterns which are dynamic in nature due to the social interactions and the intercultural activities (Geoff Stahl, 1999)

They have also been claims that they are too broad and universal that they ignore sphere-specific logics, that they do not explain specific aspects of culture which can be easily pointed out (Philip Smith, 2000)......

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