230070 VO+SE Sociology of consumption (2022W)

Content:
Consumption seems to be omnipresent in modern contemporary society and finds impetus in an oversupply of material goods and services. The production of goods is detached from the primary satisfaction of needs and represents a modern lifestyle. The selection of goods is not only possible, but necessary in the sense of social distinction.
From the perspective of consumer sociology, the role of consumers is particularly significant, as they are increasingly confronted with the demand for resource-conserving and sustainable consumption behavior and the assumption of personal responsibility in order to keep their "ecological footprint" as small as possible. How can problems of resource scarcity, waste as well as environmental pollution be dealt with? What can be done about the consequences of our consumption-oriented lifestyles? The environmental crisis and the associated future challenges thus call consumer society into question and face it with new challenges.

Method:
The course is designed in part as a lecture, which introduces basic concepts and ways of thinking in the sociology of consumption.
In an activating discussion, based on the individual interests of the students, questions of consumption sociology are elaborated and selected focal points of the lecture contents are deepened, which acquaint students with application and working fields of consumption sociology.
In the seminar part we work on visual materials, which are reflected and interpreted from a consumption sociological perspective. The topics are based on the lecture content and draw on artifacts from consumer society: objects, advertising subjects, video spots. Exemplary visual material will be provided by the seminar leaders, which can be used to understand the evaluation strategies of visual materials. For this purpose, the basics of qualitative work and various interpretative visual methods (photo interview, segment analysis, figurative hermeneutics or film and video analysis) will be introduced.

Objectives:
In this course, students acquire a knowledge base of selected central topics in the sociology of consumption. Empirical materials are interpreted in student working groups. The goal is to merge theoretical insights with empirical evidence. Students may also pursue their own research interests.