Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Spaces, places, landscapes, and scales of consumption emphasizing commodity cultures, marketing, retail, ideology, subjectivity, objects, technology, and tourism.

COURSE DETAILS:

Consumption is creatively destructive, conspicuous yet vague, complex but mundane, and as difficult to explain as it is impossible to avoid.  Consumption ranges from the repetitive act of eating porridge to the visual joys of watching movies on widescreen plasma televisions.  Under the aegis of “consumption studies,” researchers have used numerous theoretical frameworks in order to conceptualize consumption in terms of the interactions between people, objects, and society.  These studies have produced lively and enduring interdisciplinary debates that have sought to clarify the interrelations between, for example: taste, need, value, aesthetics, commodification, pleasure, exchange, capitalism, and spectacle.  The purpose of this course is not only to explore the diverse geographical contexts of consumption, but also to understand the various theoretical approaches through which consumption can be understood.  To consider the geographies of consumption we will explore the following related objects of analysis: commodity chains, the mall, food, pet-love, clothes, taste and class, art, and the paranormal.

Course Organization: Two hours of lecture and one hour of tutorial each week. 

Notes: There will be NO tutorials during the first week of class. 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: