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Complete Summary Diversity and Inclusion in Consumer Culture and Consumption
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Diversity and inclusion in consumerculture and consumption
Lecture 1: Introduction to the Course
Intersectionality → investigates how intersecting power relations influence social relations across
diverse societies as well as individual experiences in everyday life. As an analytic tool,
intersectionality views categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, class, nation, ability, ethnicity, and
age – among others – as interrelated and mutually shaping one another. Intersectionality is a way of
understanding and explaining complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences” (Hill
Collins & Bilge, 2020, p. 2)
Mirrors of intersectionality→ Showing us categorical forms of disadvantage marginalization of
oppression. (People with disabilities aren’t in those ads)
Social constructs → Theory of knowledge, products of how humans think of things. Social
constructions don’t have meaning until we humans bring meaning into them.
- Are not natural, not fixed and embedded in relations of power and privilege.
Advertising= the major ideological tool for the marketplace. Its goals= To maximize profits and to
serve a set of corporate interests. Media texts in general are intended to influence our identities and
behaviours.
Identity
- The way we identify ourselves are shaped by our culture (We distinguish our self by our
social categories, our culture forms our personality).
- The images/representations surround us are part of our culture
- The images/representations shape our identity e.g., what to be a woman/man, our certain
racial, sexual, class, national backgrounds
- Consumption practices shape our identity
Advertising as cultural pedagogy
‘Disney sells more stuff than films’
- Teaches us values (what is good and what is bad), concepts of love and sexuality, of success
and what is normal: what to think, feel, believe, desire, fear and what not.
- Tell us who we are, who we should be, how we should treat each other.
‘What is desired, what is not. What is popular, what is not. – If we do this, we get popular.
Advertising images appear normal. This course is about how to become sophisticated citizens. Who
can see social injustice.
Media often produce and reproduce the dominant ideology. Media plays an important role in
perpetuating the dominant ideology: The ideology accepted by most members of the society.
The codes of gender
Advertising images appear normal
The Codes of femininity
- The feminine touch→ Female hands (weak and cradling, trace the outline of objects, delicate,
superficial), - women touching our holding themselves.
, - The ritualization of subordination →lying down, the bashful knee-bend, the head-cant,
defenseless.
- Licensed withdrawal→ Women often seem to be psychologically adrift: spaced out,
inattentive, unconscious, unaware of their surrounding environment, asleep, nervous,
emotionally vulnerable, helpless, knocked-out or even dead.
- Infantilization
The Codes of masculinity
- Ritualization of domination→ Embodied in masculine postures and facial expressions: men
show in upright positions / looking prepared and assertive with a direct gaze – the masculine
gaze.
- The masculine touch → Male hands -powerful, assertive, bold, controlling, manipulate the
environment.
- Licensed establishment → Men usually portrayed as focused, active, aware, monitoring, in
charge of their surroundings, their emotions in check. // Reproduce an image of men as active
an din charge.
*We need what was invisible visible, so that we have a choice to make about how we want to
participate in the words we inhabit. (We need to get the fish to think about the water→ Become
critical about media images).
Principles of media literacy
1. All media are constructions→ They are built and set-up, instead of realistic. However, for
the public t seems realistic. Media are the productions of ideologies and fantasies of the
people who make them. The productions are so successful because of the seeming
naturalness in which they are presented.
Just like Gopaldas and Siebert (2018) emphasize in their work, media images not only shape,
but are shaped by reality. But this manifests in such a natural form that is barely noticeable.
2. Media construct reality→ Our reality based on what we see in our social environment,
including media. What is depicted in the media, influences our ideas.
3. Audiences negotiate meaning in media→ The message sent out by de media can be
interpreted in many different ways.
4. Media have commercial implications→ The main goal of the producer of media messages is
making profit, often, an advertisement want to make people feel like they need the certain
product, otherwise they will feel excluded of society.
5. Media contain ideological and value messages→ Media affirm and reaffirm the status quo.
Inequalities and subordination are produced by privileging the values and interests of the
dominant group.
6. Media have social and political implications→ Media try to alter our behaviour.
Power shapes what representations we see and also do not see (inclusion/exclusions)
Power relations – complex interactions between
- Power exerted by others on us (via advertisements)
- Power we exercise upon ourselves to accept our resist the power exerted by others
Audiences negotiate meaning in media
Audience decoding → How media is perceived by audiences may differ form the meaning encoded.
Always multiple readings/interpretations.
Cultural studies approach to media – production, textual, analysis and audience reception
, An integration of a textual analysis with questions of
production and reception.
The goal of media literacy
=To help people become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers
- To consider social constructions of differences and its effects
- To resist media manipulation
- To appreciate and argue for alternatives to a dominant commercial media system
=A way of extending democracy.
Lecture 2: Commodification of Gender & Otherness
Feminism= Social/political movement and academic field
- To transform unequal power relations between women and men, also among women.
- To bring about equality for all
-Women as change agents
-Gender as an entry point for analysis
Sex→ The categories of male and female. The biological characteristics and properties of bodies
placed in these categories.
Gender→ The assignment of masculine and feminine characteristics to bodies in cultural contexts.
Sexuality→ Human behaviour classified or interpreted in many different ways: Erotic, libido,
heterosexual/homosexual, reproduction, desire and so on.
*Gender is not fixed. But only fixed forms of gender are marketed
*Feminine / Masculine
*Gender is something we perform
*Gender is relational. It’s relational to our body. Male body’s, Female body’s, Intersex body’s.
*Sex is a biological category. Gender belongs to culture
, Commodification of gender / Gender as commodity
= The process of turning gender into commodity for sale.
Gender as commodity is the process of turning gender (men/women) into
things or commodities for sale. Gender is seen as something fixed and frozen,
as one-dimensional conceptualization of men and women.
After WW2→ Blue for works and mariners, zo blue became associated with boys. Pink for girls,
created by marketers. A set of rules (signified) – what to be a women started associating with the
colour pink (signifier).
Due to this separation marketers are able to sell more clothes
Often In these products, male products are put as dark, masculine and rectangular, and stiff, while
female products are put as light, feminine and curvy (M. Roberts, 1998)
Problematic: Kids are growing up with the idea that there is a difference between boys and
girls and that there is a sort of inequality between them. Children are put in
boxes: you are a boy or a girl, there is nothing in between. Girls have to play
with Barbie, and boys have to play with Lego. For girls is it not appropriate to
play with Lego and for boys it is not appropriate to play with Barbie.
Example→ colour blue for boys, pink for girls /// Racers for women and race for men but it’s the
same product/// Coco Cola light for women, Coca Cola zero for men /// Lego for boys, Lego for girls
Gender display → The processes whereby we perform the roles expected of us by social convention.
Commodification of gender is embedded into our society and marketers use it to maximize their
profits. An example of this is the so called "Pink Tax", in which woman pay a substantial amount
more for products marketed for woman compared to equivalent products made for men
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