DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca Digital Culture and Sociology Consumption

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca Conceptual introduction “Consuming Communication Technologies at Home”, Mackay, Hugh. Case: “Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk”: Slash and the Fan- Writing Community, Jenkins, Henry about today break consumption case: slash

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca consumption meanings “using up, destruction, waste...” a disease (pulmonary phthisis) as the antithesis of production in old economic theory (Raymond Williams), secondary popular language: = use cultural studies: active process, pleasure Hall et. al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca traditional consumption secondary to production, less worthy, frivolous (protestant ethos) male work more important than female domestic area Commodification of culture (Frankfurt School), standarization, false needs, leisure and ideological control, consumers as passive Hall et. al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca contemporary view important role as shows how cultural artifacts are used in everyday life active consumers Started with Veblen (1899), leisure class. Bourdieu continues, different groups + capacities for cultural value in symbolic goods, taste, articulation of identity (no gender and class as given) Consumption tied to lifestyle rather than class (marketing) Postmodernism: the increasing significance of the symbolic, Baudrillard. (focus on youth) Hall et. al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca contemporary view II empirical studies of subculture (Hall) protest against elitist culture related to the pleasures of consumption approach: creativity of consumerism (De Certeau): empowering of subjects (not so for many) consumption is not the end of a process, but the beginning of another always situated the value of qualitative, observational and ethnographic research methods (ex. Mackay p ) Hall et. al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca

text goals explore communication technologies in the home (how they affect this space and are themselves domesticated, used and made sense of) consumption and production related social shaping of technology is explored, including technological determinism theories technology is not only utilitarian or material, but also symbolic note link to our last storytelling exercise in the chapter (i.e. P. 279), about personal impact of technology Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca What did you note down as you read the text? Interesting? Controversial? Dated?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca points for discussion Activity 1, p Discussion: progress and democracy vs. Withdrawal from community Technology is social = physical artifact + surrounding human activity + human knowledge behind it (265), example home computer criticism of technological determinism (266 + reading A) Appropriation and gendering of new technologies (telephone, radio, mobile) p , about reading B. How good is the ethnographic approach? Last section (6) how is the text dated? Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca slash Anglosaxon culture (American), moral standpoint, do we identify ourselves with the discussions A particular TV culture: series only Jenkins His text centered on sexual identity, our emphasis is consumption / appropriation / the Internet

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca Jenkins slash text discussion What kind of texts did you read + what was your reaction? (Bored / Amused / Offended / Indifferent...) Did the narratives adapt to the kind of content and structure Jenkins describes in his article? How far is slash from the originating texts? What kind of consumption is this? Does it work better with certain kinds of stories? What is the role of the Internet in this?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 5 – Susana Tosca complementary bibliography  DE CERTEAU, M The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: UCLA Press.  HALL, S. and JEFFERSON, T Resistance Through Rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain. London: Hutchinson.  MACKENZIE, D and WAJCMAN, J. (eds.) The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.  VEBLEN, T (1989). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan NOTE: There is a list of related and interesting bibliography in the Mackay article.