El artículo se centra en la evolución del consumo de bienes durables (heladeras eléctricas y cocinas a gas) —que constituyen electrodomésticos para uso del hogar—, y de bienes para el entretenimiento ...que gastan tiempo (autos y radios) en Argentina durante el periodo 1920-1970. Se investiga sobre los actores sociales de este proceso, atendiendo a la interacción entre los mismos y el consumo de bienes. A continuación, se analizan las razones del éxito de los bienes para el entretenimiento y su posterior ralentización entre las décadas de 1920 y 1940 y de las razones técnicas entabladas en la masificación de los electrodomésticos por la reducción en el precio de la electricidad y el gas. Finalmente, se estudian las razones del avance de los electrodomésticos con la estrategia de las empresas. Metodología: Se investiga en la información cuantitativa relativa a la producción, la oferta y la demanda de los bienes durables estudiados a la luz de fuentes de diverso tipo (visuales, demográficas, así como sucesiones y reportajes de prensa) en las que quedó evidencia sobre las expectativas, los gustos y las transformaciones de las clases medias argentinas, así como los distintos tipos de relaciones que sus integrantes establecieron con vehículos, aparatos eléctricos y a gas en la época que cubre este trabajo. Originalidad: Este artículo establece que la ampliación de las clases medias, que permitió un aumento en la demanda y que llevó a transformar la industria y la actividad productiva local, fue la que, a su vez, contribuyó a afianzar la idea de que el bienestar estaba asociado directamente con la posesión de bienes durables que hacían más cómoda la vida en el hogar. Las relaciones establecidas entre consumo y ascenso de las clases medias consolidaron y transformaron la industria y se volvieron factores decisivos en la cultura del consumo. Conclusiones: El análisis de la evolución del consumo de bienes durables muestra cómo se desarrollaron las estrategias en la esfera de la oferta y la demanda de tales artículos, evidenciando la interacción entre los actores sociales y dichos bienes en el periodo estudiado. Como conclusión, se puede ver que tal interacción permitió un cambio en el estilo de vida de los argentinos durante el periodo analizado.
Consumption Graeber, David
Current anthropology,
08/2011, Letnik:
52, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Beginning in the 1980s, anthropologists began to be bombarded with endless—and often strangely moralistic—exhortations to acknowledge the importance of something referred to as “consumption.” The ...exhortations were effective; for the past 2 decades, the term has become a staple of theoretical discourse. Rarely, however, do anthropologists examine it: asking themselves why it is that almost all forms of human self-expression or enjoyment are now being seen as analogous to eating food. This essay seeks to investigate how this came about, beginning with medieval European theories of desire and culminating in the argument that the notion of consumption ultimately resolves certain conceptual problems in possessive individualism.
The scientific paradigm of exploring health resort towns’ municipal economies is just emerging and becomes a relevant research issue, because the problems of maintaining, promoting and restoring ...population health have been gaining particular significance recently. The paper aims to generalise about and systematise the scientific heritage concerning the factors behind and conditions of appearance, as well as peculiarities of economic structure and dynamics of urban settlements, the principal function of which is providing health resort services. The methodological basis of the research rests on an interdisciplinary approach that combines the achievements of economic and social geography (principles underlying the typology of settlements), economic sociology (theory of the consumer society), and municipal science (municipal economics as its main part). The research benefits from methods of systematisation and formalisation, bibliometric analysis and content analysis. As a result, the study explicates the scientific paradigm of the research of health resorts’ municipal economies and exemplifies it by the case of Russia’s urban districts; identifies essential characteristics of the concept “urban district of a health resort type”; and justifies the peculiarities of functioning and transformation of municipal economies of health resort towns. The said peculiarities include special infrastructure, high degree of specialisation, distinct seasonality of municipal economy, dependence of business activities on the characteristics of the arriving population. The theoretical and methodological findings allow organising scientific achievements in the field of functioning and transformation of the municipal economies of health resort towns and outlining the directions for further exploration to complete the paradigmatic foundations and determine the key predictors of the future dynamics and economic growth.
Este artículo analiza la relación entre las políticas de promoción turística implementadas para atraer el primer turismo de élite a Catalunya y la producción de identidades nacionales en la primera ...mitad del siglo XX, en un contexto histórico de significativos cambios sociales y políticos tanto en España como en Europa. El análisis del proyecto de la Ciudad jardín de S’Agaró (1916-1926), junto con su documentación promocional, nos permite relacionar la construcción de los espacios destinados al turismo y el proceso de resignificación de los mismos en el marco de las confrontaciones y convergencias entre las políticas regionalistas catalanas y las nacionalistas promovidas por el régimen franquista. El resultado pondrá en evidencia cómo se escenificó y materializó el imaginario turístico en Cataluña, en estrecha correspondencia con la emergencia de la moderna sociedad de consumo.
This article analyzes the relationship between tourism promotion policies implemented to attract the first elite tourism to Catalonia and the production of national identities in the first half of the Twentieth Century, in a historical context of significant social and political changes in Spain and Europe. The analysis of the project of the Garden City of S’Agaró (1916-1926), together with its promotional documentation, allows us to relate the construction of the spaces destined to tourism and the process of resignification of them in the framework of the confrontations and convergences between the Catalan regionalist policies and the nationalist ones promoted by the Franco regime. The result will show how the tourist imaginary was staged and materialized in Catalonia, in close correspondence with the emergence of the modern consumer society.
Our growing demand for meat and dairy food products is unsustainable. It is hard to imagine that this global issue can be solved solely by more efficient technologies. Lowering our meat consumption ...seems inescapable. Yet, the question is whether modern consumers can be considered as reliable allies to achieve this shift in meat consumption pattern. Is there not a yawning gap between our responsible intentions as citizens and our hedonic desires as consumers? We will argue that consumers can and should be considered as partners that must be involved in realizing new ways of protein consumption that contribute to a more sustainable world. In particular the large food consumer group of flexitarians offer promising opportunities for transforming our meat consumption patterns. We propose a pragmatic approach that explicitly goes beyond the standard suggestion of persuasion strategies and suggests different routes of change, coined sustainability by stealth, moderate involvement, and cultural change respectively. The recognition of more routes of change to a more plant-based diet implies that the ethical debate on meat should not only associate consumer change with rational persuasion strategies and food citizens that instantiate “strong” sustainable consumption. Such a focus narrows the debate on sustainable protein consumption and easily results in disappointment about consumers’ participation. A more wide-ranging concept of ethical consumption can leave the negative verdict behind that consumers are mainly an obstacle for sustainability and lead to a more optimistic view on modern consumers as allies and agents of change.
Empirical data from a qualitative study of tourism industry by a local development zone in a China county is analysed in the context of the theories of McDonaldization, consumer society, and ...postemotional society. Tourism industry in China appears to run on the principles of 'McDonaldized Consumer Society', with notable differences from Western countries. We found that the central status of consumers has given way to governments at multiple levels including county and village. What Baudrillard calls the symbol system is established by local development zones in China by means of, Administrative Priority and Market Affinity mechanisms, and are implemented through the Project System and the Agent System with a process of Industry Planning, Administrative Simplification, Non-Market Translation, Selective Demarcation and Zoning Technology. The end result is an unsustainable, low quality, industrial development characterized by indifference on the part of bureaucrats and protests by villagers. We propose the implementation of non-government organizations (NGO's) as a way to remedy some of the issues we discovered in our research.
Objetivo: describir el significado y los efectos que tiene el consumo de comida rápida en la sociedad de Hermosillo, Sonora. Metodología: se construyó un modelo analítico exploratorio basado en los ...cambios generacionales y en un diseño metodológico mixto, que incluyó una etapa inicial de entrevistas aplicadas a una muestra aleatoria de personas conformada por cuatro grupos de generaciones distintas y una segunda etapa en la que se aplicó un cuestionario derivado de los resultados de la primera. Resultados: se verifican cambios significativos y marcadas diferencias en las decisiones sobre el consumo de comida rápida, en el concepto que tienen de ella los hermosillenses y en el significado que le dan, los cuales coinciden con los de las sociedades más avanzadas. Valor: el estudio contribuye a los debates actuales sobre el consumo de comidas rápidas en la modalidad de franquicias. Además, aporta evidencia empírica al estudio de las transformaciones alimentarias recientes apelando a herramientas conceptuales propias de la antropología de la alimentación y de la sociología contemporánea. Limitaciones: las diferencias por género y los efectos sobre la salud se abordan solo de forma tangencial, aunque se reconoce su importancia en el tratamiento del tema de los cambios alimentarios. Conclusiones: se advierte que si bien el modelo de franquicias fue en su momento un detonante de las transformaciones recientes del consumo de alimentos, ahora parece ser que es dicho modelo el que debe moverse al ritmo que marca el consumidor.
The article is devoted to the study of semiotics in the advertising communication of web 2.0 network social services. The purpose of the article is to analyze the publications of various brands on ...social Internet services focused on communication with the consumer and the subsequent study of the features of the use of semiotics tools. The relevance of the article is due to the fact that the modern information society has increased interest in semiotic systems, including in the field of Internet communication. The modern vision of semiotics has gone beyond the traditional framework and defined it as part of global and local communication in web 2.0 social network services, not only between Internet users, but also in the areas of B2B and B2C. The study of the possibilities of semiotics in advertising communication on web 2.0 social platforms, using the example of search engine applications, the social network Instagram, and company sites, in this article is based on the works of R. Barthes, J. Baudrillard, Y. Lotman, and U. Eco. This material confirms our hypothesis that today, especially since the beginning of the pandemic, communication on web 2.0 services is not limited only to text with a picture/photos or videos, more and more often there are visualized scenes created with the help of graphic design with the use of symbols and iconic signs that are familiar to the consumer, which he easily decodes, since they are inscribed in his socio-cultural coordinate system. The innovation of the research is based on the fixation of modern criteria of advertising Internet communication: polycode, intertextuality and multimedia, used as a way of working with target audiences. The novelty of the material consists of the understanding that semiotics today is a new look not only at the branch of scientific knowledge, but also at the practical possibilities of sign systems in the digital age, when the sign becomes a part of the socio-cultural space, a trend of the global world, a tool for transmitting information, knowledge, positioning, a tool for manipulation, influence, and attracting attention. Thus, brands working with the audience in todays realities should take into account not only the product preferences of consumers, but also broadcast their social / civic activity.