The Consumer's World: Place as Context

Abstract

The mass-produced products we consume embody elements from the realms of nature, meaning, and social relations. These realms are difficult to integrate on a theoretical plane, but as consumers of these products, we draw these elements together in everyday life and transform them to create places as contexts. These places, which are the basis of our built environments, are also loci for constituting modern-and some would say post-modern-paradoxes and contradictions. They become foils to social theory. Through our actions as consumers and through the language of consumption, modern paradoxes and modern places become inextricably intertwined. I will examine these processes through the rhetoric of advertisements in general and in the structure of real geographical "places of consumption" and places consumed "en masse." This analysis will assist u s in understanding the qualities of modern place, the characteristics of modern theory, and how our everyday acts as consumers mediate between them.

Signs of Masculinism in an 'Uneasy' Place: Advertising for 'Big Brothers'

“…Studies thus far may be loosely grouped into three overlapping categories: place promotion; representations of gender, race and sexuality; and the advertising industry itself. The rst of these is the most developed: there are numerous works devoted to the promotion and marketing of Downloaded by [Northeastern University] at 17:10 18 November 2014 speci c geographic localities, particularly tourist destinations (Ashworth & Voogd, 1990;Bryce et al, 1991;Burgess, 1982Burgess, , 1990Sack, 1992;Goss, 1993;Kearns & Philo, 1993;Gold & Ward, 1994;Urry, 1995); several studies on the ways places themselves are used to contextualise commodities (Sack, 1988;Fleming & Roth, 1991;Miller, 1991); and at least one examination of the relationship of advertising signs to the places where they are situated (Weightman, 1988). The second set includes studies on such topics as the masculinist portrayal of men and women in promotional campaigns for the British military and the English National Opera (Jackson, 1991); the cultural politics of irony employed through representations of masculinity and femininity in televised beer advertisements (Jackson & Taylor, 1996); the way advertisements may reinforce 'traditional' notions of femininity-domesticity, nature, the home-to resituate woman inside private space (Leslie, 1993); the representation, speci cally the racialisation, of black characters in American and British television advertisements (Taylor, 1997); and the use of black male celebrities-and their associated positive attributes of athleticism and sexuality-to reposition and endorse a soft drink (Jackson, 1994).…”

The City Unbound: Qualitative Approaches to the City

“…The turn to the past and to local specificity in post-modem design and commodification processes has meant that the surface appearance of shopping malls is increasingly differentiated (Sack, 1988 ;Goss, 1992) . Equipped with a full range of life-style attractions (from ice rinks to high art) the aestheticised shopping experience is home for the conspicuous consumption practices of the middle classes .…”

Apropiación y control social en un centro comercial de Santiago: prácticas socioespaciales y significaciones adolescentes

“…Por ejemplo, contamos con estudios que los han analizado y descrito como lugares expresivos de paradojas y contradicciones modernas que se producen en masa para, al igual que otros objetos, ser consumidos (Sack, 1988); espacios que evocan antiguas utopías comunitarias y donde se producen fantasías colectivas (Goss, 1999); ciudades arti ciales, deslocalizadas, protegidas y acondicionadas para el consumo (Amendola, 2000) o simplemente como "no-lugares" (Augé, 2004).…”