Sociology of Consumer Culture
SOCY 430
400-Level Courses
Winter 2027
3 Units
In-person
3
one-way Exclusions
Seminar, private study
Please note that course information listed in the Arts and Science Course Calendar supersedes any information listed on the Sociology website.
For the most current course offerings, registered Queen’s students should consult SOLUS.
Course Description
A critical engagement with theories of consumer culture with emphasis upon the material, symbolic and practice-orientated aspects of consumption in sociological context; substantive focus upon shopping, taste, brands, tourism, services, digital commodities.
Learning Outcomes
- Understanding of the differentiated dynamics of consumerism in global terms.
- Understanding of several different approaches to the study of consumption, consumers, and commodities.
- Understanding of how these approaches have been used to analyze specific consumption practices.
- Understanding of central debates about commodification and consumerism.
- Understanding of how to use visual methods in contemporary sociology.
- Identify and explain the key features of debates about contemporary consumerism, articulate these accurately in verbal and written argument, and critically assess their explanatory power in relation to a range of contemporary phenomena throughout the course.
- Identify and articulate at least three features of contemporary perspectives on consumer culture, explain the continuities and discontinuities between ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ perspectives, and verbally and visually articulate connections between abstract concepts and lived experience.
- Identify and explain the similarities and differences between sociological and anthropological approaches to consumer culture as ‘material culture’ and explain the strengths and limitations of these in critically assessing their own consumption practices and patterns in verbal and visual form.
- Identify and explain the key features of sociological debates about visual consumption in contemporary society, critically reflect on their use of visual sources in communicating these features, and critically assess the centrality of vision to contemporary cultures of consumption.
- Identify, explain, and critically assess the similarities and differences between several materialist and discursive theories and concepts in the sociology of consumer culture, and can draw upon these to critically engage with seven substantive topics in verbal form, and at least one substantive topic in written form.
- Enhance their abilities in working in small groups, sharing and synthesizing ideas, constructing arguments as a group, critically evaluating their own understanding and their individual contributions to debate.