Consumption in action. Mapping consumerism in international academic literature

The consumer-citizen and more generally, the emergence of active forms of citizenship mediated by consumption point to a change in the relations of production, consumption and distribution. These forms of citizenship come to encompass opposite poles of consumption such as hedonism and social responsibility. When consumption choices are associated with the social and environmental issues connected to manufacturing and distribution processes, the space claimed by the active consumer comes to represents a form of social identity recognition. This \u2018political\u2019 sphere, made up of individual and/or collective claims mediated by consumer society comes in the wake of a long period of market de-politicization. On the basis of these assumptions, this article surveys and evaluates the topics related to critical consumption that are most discussed in the social sciences. Such forms of socially oriented consumption \u2013 enacted in the form of individual or collective consumer choices \u2013 represent a new form of political participation and are understood as practices of active-citizenship promotion. The findings of this article are based on data gathered from 478 peer-reviewed articles published between 2004 and 2013. The articles were selected from Scopus on the basis of their broad connection to critical consumerism and forms of socially oriented consumerism. A software-based content analysis run through T-Lab software was used to generate an analytical model of the main research axis of the most recent international literature on these arguments. The heterogeneous body of scholarly literature on socially oriented consumption reflects the rich diversity of perspectives adopted to understand the political and ethical role of consumers in contemporary societies

Becoming consumers: Socialization into the World of Goods

Abstract: The following article examines consumer socialization from a sociological perspective. Recent sociological scholarship on both childhood and consumption has dedicated little attention to investigating the process by which norms and values are internalized through consumer culture. However, the growth of the international market for children's products and the intensification of marketing and advertising campaigns which targeting both male and female children -like the daily practices transmitted through the family and school that teach children consumption habits -require us to reflect on consumption's pervasive influence on the identity construction of children, on their way to becoming consumer-subjects. Today, advertising addresses above all the individual subject. This is true with regard to the worlds of both adults and children. In the process of consumer socialization, the related practices, norms and behavioral models become interwoven with the culture of a society transmitted through the implicit and explicit messages of advertising. The identity of the individual is formed through a process of socialization in which cultural representations are transmitted. This includes cultural representations from consumer culture that are then reinterpreted by one's family, school, peer group, and the mass media. Although a subject never stops learning and adapting in their lifetime, the following article focuses above all on childhood: a crucial phase in the cognitive and moral development of the individual in which the family and the school play a critical role in the transmission of values from one generation to the next

Driven by nostalgia: A study of classic cars' social representations among Italian youth

The article will investigate images and social representations of classic cars and the possible stereotypes among their consumers. This study involved a group of 49 students from the Universities of Verona, Venice and Padua, all between 19 and 32 years old, who participated in the Drive your Heritage hackathon at the Classic Cars and Motor Show (Auto e moto d'epoca) in 2017. Initially, each student was asked to take three pictures depicting objects or people in the 'world of classic cars' for creative stimulus and to introduce them to the research topic at hand. Subsequently, structured interviews were conducted to uncover possible trends among car owners. The data analysis, which was based on studies about social representation (Secondulfo, 2012, 2015), yielded two main findings: 1) the presence of nostalgia about an unlived past, which results from a shared family memory or is learned through mass media (films, comics, cartoons, etc.), and 2) that stereotypes about classic car owners among the young people in our sample are based on exclusivity, luxury and care for cars

Utilit\ue0: un concetto economico-sociale

L\u2019articolo confronta la teoria economica e sociologica relativa al concetto di utilit\ue0. Pur tenendo in considerazione l\u2019esistenza di una distanza tra gli assunti epistemologici delle due discipline, l\u2019obiettivo \ue8 di ricostruire il contributo degli studi economico-sociali alla costruzione del concetto di utilit\ue0, con l\u2019intento di ampliare la capacit\ue0 interpretativa della figura dell\u2019Homo oeconomicus. Il concetto di utilit\ue0, al centro della teoria marginalista e tuttora strumento di analisi per interpretare i consumi, \ue8 una debole costruzione teorica, poich\ue9 basata esclusivamente su variabili economiche che estromettono dall\u2019analisi il contesto sociale in cui si espleta l\u2019azione. Il proposito \ue8 di porre a confronto le due teorie e di far emergere, in tal modo, l\u2019esistenza di una domanda di beni di consumo, interpretabile attraverso il concetto di utilit\ue0 nella sua duplice dimensione: economica e sociale. L\u2019emergere della prospettiva sociale nei meccanismi di funzionamento del mercato consolida l\u2019incontro tra economia e sociologia, comportando per il sociologo: \uabla necessit\ue0 di interpretare anche quella forma del tutto particolare di agire sociale che \ue8 l\u2019agire economico\ubb. Ragionare sul concetto di utilit\ue0, come spazio di integrazione tra teoria economica e sociologica significa confrontarsi sia con l\u2019agire individuale sia con il contesto dell\u2019azione, considerando entrambi i piani di analisi in un rapporto di reciproca influenza. La logica razionale guida il consumo, ma \ue8 una lente interpretativa sfocata se il suo ambito di applicazione si riduce all\u2019esclusiva analisi economica. La sua completezza esplicativa pu\uf2 essere raggiunta solo abbracciando la \u2018vicina\u2019 dimensione sociale, elaborando una forma di razionalit\ue0 che sia adatta ad interpretare il fenomeno del consumo in veste di azione sociale culturalmente dotata di significato. Se consideriamo la casualit\ue0 la chiave interpretativa della costruzione e del mantenimento dei rapporti sociali rinunciamo a ricercare sia le cause che li hanno provocati, sia il contesto nel quale vengono elaborati, ed accantoniamo la possibilit\ue0 di prevederne la trasformazione. In breve, la ricchezza interdisciplinare del fenomeno del consumo diventa la \u2018gabbia d\u2019acciaio\u2019 che ne imprigiona l\u2019interpretazione

Becoming Consumers: Socialization into the World of Goods

The following article examines consumer socialization from a sociological perspective. Recent sociological scholarship on both childhood and consumption has dedicated little attention to investigating the process by which norms and values are internalized through consumer culture. However, the growth of the international market for children’s products and the intensification of marketing and advertising campaigns which targeting both male and female children - like the daily practices transmitted through the family and school that teach children consumption habits - require us to reflect on consumption’s pervasive influence on the identity construction of children, on their way to becoming consumer-subjects. Today, advertising addresses above all the individual subject. This is true with regard to the worlds of both adults and children. In the process of consumer socialization, the related practices, norms and behavioral models become interwoven with the culture of a society transmitted through the implicit and explicit messages of advertising. The identity of the individual is formed through a process of socialization in which cultural representations are transmitted. This includes cultural representations from consumer culture that are then reinterpreted by one’s family, school, peer group, and the mass media. Although a subject never stops learning and adapting in their lifetime, the following article focuses above all on childhood: a crucial phase in the cognitive and moral development of the individual in which the family and the school play a critical role in the transmission of values from one generation to the next

Society\u2019s Visible Patrimony. A Sociological Approach to Understanding Consumption and Material Culture

This essay explores the unique advantage that a sociological approach to the study of consumption and material culture can provide. While in anthropological literature objects, goods, things, exchanges and gifts are treated with the same weight as values, ideologies and collective beliefs, in sociological literature the amount of analytical and interpretive attention given to material culture has been the result of a longer process of coming to understand the symbolic nature of the world of objects. The increasing prevalence of consumption processes in everyday life merits an investigation of material culture\u2019s symbolic and explicatory potential as an area of symbolic mediation. An area in which the subject constructs social ties and relations and activates processes of self-identification and mutual recognition

Consumer Culture, Identity and Processes of Socialization

This monographic issue represents an attempt to begin bridging the gap between scholarship in the fields of the sociology of education and the sociology of consumption. In order to approach consumption - as a form of social action possessing meaning and an instrument of social communication - as an object of study of the sociology of education, we must first recognize the pervasive presence and influence of consumption on processes of identity formation in contemporary society.The seven articles which make up the present issue Consumer Culture, Identity and Processes of Socialization all share the objective of investigating the dialectic of socialization practices and social conditioning originating in the culture of consumption. Through the use of different research methodologies and the study of different social practices or influences, all of the articles illustrate processes of education or socialization into the variegated world of consumption

Per una sociologia della merce: un'analisi sociologica del consumo e della cultura materiale

La tesi si occupa di studiare i processi di consumo e comunicazione sociale legati alla forma merce. Interpretando il consumo diamo lettura dell\u2019universo di significato costruito dai soggetti, leggiamo le singole dimensioni individuali per fonderle all\u2019interno di un\u2019unica realt\ue0: la societ\ue0 dei consumi. Scoprire, descrivere e analizzare la ricostruzione dei significati sociali della cultura materiale \ue8 alla base della ricerca sul campo. La riduzione del ciclo di vita dei prodotti \ue8 una prassi aziendale, in special modo nelle societ\ue0 occidentali e, in questo studio, \ue8 considerato un assioma. La prospettiva socio\u2010economica ha rilevato l\u2019esistenza del concetto di Nuovo: una forma di consumo che trascende la materialit\ue0 della merce. Tale concetto non emerge come alter ego del processo di innovazione aziendale ma si presenta, al pari di un feticcio, dotato di vita propria.The key concept of the thesis is to analyze the meaning and the evolution of material culture studies. Many theories have been formulated in the following fields: anti\u2010consumerism, historical, anthropological, socio\u2010anthropological, communicational and aesthetic. In each of theese traditions there is a concept which has helped to stimulate material culture studies. The thesis would demonstrate how different fields of study show the relevance of material culture nowadays and in the past. The discussion of the goods\u2010people relationship brings each approach to focus its analysis on a distinct abstract idea; for example, anti\u2010consumerism theory is sustained by fetishism construct. Another further general aim of the thesis is to describe the evolution of Sociology of Consumption in Italy, an academic field of study which saw the light in 1964 thanks to Alberoni's book: Consumption and Society. Then, as a reverse process, I'd like to stress the role of the culture \u2010theoretical construct\u2010to create the Sociology of Consumption and to find out how the construct of material culture have founded the Sociology of fashion and Semiology. In the field research the intention is to observe the relatioship between a new goods and the suject who uses it. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the relationshp between goods and people to find out if there is something deeper within a new goods which cannot be included in the Sociology of fashion

L\u2019arcipelago dei punti vendita tra consumi \u2018fisici\u2019 e shopping divide

Un anno fa il Sole 24 ore pubblicava un articolo dedicato alla ripresa delle aperture dei punti vendita (fisici). Nel 2016 i negozi chiusi superavano quelli nuovi mentre il 2017 era stato nominato \u201cl\u2019anno della ripresa di aperture di negozi\u201d, poich\ue9 si era registrato un saldo positivo a favore di nuovi spazi di vendita della moda e del lusso. I dati sul commercio al dettaglio, oltre ad essere influenzati dalla congiuntura economica, risentono delle preferenze espresse dal consumatore, che incorporano abitudini di acquisto incapaci di essere spiegate attraverso una logica puramente economica perch\ue9 orientate da un agire razionale da un punto di vista sociale (Fabris, 2003; Sassatelli, 2007; Secondulfo, 2012; Setiffi, 2012) e frutto di una continua ridefinizione dell\u2019equilibrio tra rinunce e concessioni, resistenza e innovazione (Sassatelli, Santoro, Semi, 2015). Un\u2019ulteriore variabile in grado di spiegare la scelta dei punti vendita riguarda ci\uf2 che nel titolo del capitolo abbiamo chiamato \u2018shopping divide\u2019, una sorta di \u2018digital divide\u2019 applicato ai consumi. Infatti, la classe di et\ue0 del soggetto \ue8 di sicuro la variabile che maggiormente ci permette di spiegare le differenze tra coloro che acquistano online e offline (Riva, 2014). In aggiunta, gli stessi luoghi di consumo rappresentano un valido strumento di lettura della metamorfosi dei consumi poich\ue9 la loro trasformazione storica-sociale \ue8 l\u2019emblema dell\u2019odierno processo di spettacolarizzazione della merce (Codeluppi, 2000) e di progressivo consolidamento della GDO (Grande distribuzione organizzata) e delle vendite online