The aim of this research is to seek to situate women in the development of consumer culture in Japan in the period 1900-1930. This period saw the beginnings of mass consumption and the rise of what was to become one of its central institutions, the department store. One of the most important department stores to emerge was Mitsukoshi, which provided a site in which the new tastes and lifestyles of consumer culture and western modernity could be looked at, sampled and practiced. In effect the store could be seen as providing a new form of 'intimate public sphere' for women. Mitsukoshi also provided images and information on the new consumer culture classifications and learning processes through its house magazines. Other magazines, especially women's magazines, whose readership rapidly expanded in this period, reinforced this message. The extent to which women were seen as the central operators of the emerging consumer culture is a central focus of the thesis. The department stores were not only spaces for women to consume, but also to work. The emergence of saleswomen as a new category of working woman is also discussed. The ways in which an image of a new women emerged as they became employed in greater numbers in the new service occupations and became more visible in the city centre streets and consumption and entertainment sites, is also considered. One variant here was the 'modem girl,' whose image was both discussed and constructed in the media by intellectuals, writers and cultural intermediaries. One of the aims of this work is to sketch out the parameters of this process in Japan and ask how far the stores and other new urban spaces, along with the mediated sources such as magazines, newspapers and the cinema, helped to further some shift (however limited and temporary) in the balance of power between the sexes towards women, along with a concomitant redefinition of what it meant to be a women. The new woman, then, occupied a contested space which a number of parties sought to define: the consumer culture industries such as the department stores, press and cinema; the government with its various thrift and everyday life reform campaigns designed to keep women in the home, albeit as skilled housewives; the various movements for greater women's rights and reform, both in the middle class and the working class militant women workers; the intellectuals and cultural intermediaries, some of whom saw the 'modem girl,' as a new exciting phenomenon of urban modernity; and, of course, the women themselves, who not only reacted to these forces, but gained in their capacity and desire to have a greater say in the process and control over their own lives

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Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / Few would dispute the notion that consumerism is a prevailing feature of American culture. The extent to which consumer culture dominates the way most people see the world makes imagining alternatives to consumerism almost impossible. This stultification of imagination is highly problematic. As it stands, consumer culture, measured by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, demonstrably tends to inhibit human flourishing on personal, social, and global levels. There is a need to transform consumer culture in order to support human flourishing more robustly, and this barrenness of imagination impedes that transformation. This dissertation assumes that it is a task of teachers in faith to educate toward cultural alternatives that better support human flourishing. This task requires engaging in and developing what Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann calls "prophetic imagination." The prophetic imagination involves both deconstructing the taken-for-granted dominant culture and entering into a community whose practices, values, and ideals effect an alternative culture. While here focused on consumer culture, this model of educating for prophetic imagination has broader applicability; it can also be used, for example, to challenge cultures of racism, sexism, and militarism. This education in imagination develops in what scholars of management Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger call "communities of practice." Jesus and his disciples model for Christians a community of practice that imagines and acts prophetically. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination ought to measure their own imagination against Jesus's prophetic imagination, shaped by his understanding of the Reign of God. This portrait of communities of prophetic practice is fleshed out in an exploration of empirical studies of communities that engage learners and draw them into an imagination that re-shapes not only how they see what the world is but also how they envision what the world can be. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination can foster the transformation of consumer culture into a culture that better supports human flourishing. In order to do so, however, they must start with an anthropology that adequately understands what flourishing entails. These communities ought to be attentive to three aspects of the human person that tend to be given short shrift in consumer culture: the person's role as a creative producer, the person's inherent relationality, and the person's need embrace finitude, the limitations of human capability. The Church should be utilizing communities of practice to overcome the sterility of imagination and contribute to a culture of what might be called humanizing plenitude. This culture supports the fullness of human thriving by re-imagining what that thriving entails and engaging in practices to facilitate it. The Church as teacher can be involved in this education for the purpose of cultural transformation to enhance human flourishing in various arenas. Finally, this dissertation particularly proposes that this education can happen in higher education, in parishes, and in collaboration with the wider community. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

In attending to consumption as a defining feature of life in Western societies, existing consumer research has tended to envisage, construct and reproduce ‘the consumer’ as either enthusiastically embracing the delights of the market, or as actively resisting or rebelling against its evils. The extant research has therefore tended to assume a high degree of reflexive conscious engagement in consumption as the norm. In this research, I argue that this might have inadvertently obscured the possibility of non-participation in various aspects of consumption through disinterest. This appears within the field as a theoretical space where people relate to consumption opportunities with rather less reflection or emotion and allows for the choice not to buy to be part of an accepted and unreflected-upon aspect of existence; a diverse shadow-realm of consumer inactivity in which feelings of indifference may be significant. Though a general lack of interest in various aspects of consumption may constitute an ontologically common experience, indifference has remained a largely unnoticed and under-theorised element of social reality in a consumer culture. In this study, I explore the possibilities of indifference in a consumer culture, not as a psychological construct or symptom of pathology but as a lived experience, understood in different ways and constituted through different discursive contexts. In this research, I draw on 29 phenomenological interviews to offer an empiricallygrounded interpretation of what it means to be indifferent to consumption. From the stories the informants shared with me, I articulate how the experience of indifference can appear as a genuine blindness towards a spectacular world of consumption, underpinned by other sociocultural narratives that construct the marketplace as a remote, unfamiliar or unappealing domain. In other stories, experiences of indifference appeared to be maintained by a constant and taken-for-granted adherence to a classification system that denotes consumerism as a powerful source of physical and spiritual pollution. Whilst in other narratives, a general lack of interest in various aspects of consumption revealed a paradoxical desire for a personal identity forged from a dismissal of consumption; a culturally-shaped performance of pseudoindifference that involved refusing ‘consumer activity’ in order to construct a defiantly nonconsumer self. In addressing the cultural narratives and contexts that seem to account for nonconsumption through indifference, this study contributes to wider debates on processes of disengagement and less material living, and invites consumer researchers to develop a greater sensitivity to indifference within sociological accounts of consumption.

In recent years, men¡¦s fashion magazines have become a new media genre that attracts lots of attention. The sales, advertisements, and publications of the men¡¦s fashion magazines have reached a remarkable performance. Media is an important social institution to shape gender images. Thus, this study aims to explore what kind of masculinity that men¡¦s fashion magazines in Taiwan represents? How to achieve the masculinity through consumption? Are there any differences in masculinity between transnational and local men¡¦s fashion magazines? What is the variation in men¡¦s fashion magazines in different periods? This study expects to describe the masculinity represented in men¡¦s fashion magazines of Taiwan to enrich the media and men¡¦s research resources. This study drawn on the masculinity theory based on the sociologist R.W. Connell¡¦s, and applied a methodology of quantitative content analysis. The subjects were the international Chinese edition of men¡¦s fashion magazine GQ and the local men¡¦s fashion magazine men¡¦s uno. The reason to focus the analysis on GQ and men¡¦s uno is due to the fact that they are the most popular and long-running men¡¦s fashion magazines in Taiwan respectively. By means of analyzing these two magazines published during 1997 to 2006, this research tries to understand the masculinity styles represented on the magazines¡¦ cover. The major finding revealed that the large numbers of men represented in men¡¦s fashion magazines of Taiwan were young men who aged between 18 and 35 (with 74.8% appearing in the ¡§cover figure¡¨ category and 71.2% in the ¡§featured people¡¨ category). Most of the men in the magazines were entertainment workers with appealing looks (with 90.1% appearing in the ¡§cover figure¡¨ category and 81.9% in the ¡§featured people¡¨ category). As for men¡¦s appearance types, the Trendy Cool type (43.2%) was the majority, the next types were Gentle (14.4%), Tough/Strong (11.7%), and Serious/Sophisticated (11.7%). Secondly, 60.5% of the article headlines on the magazines¡¦ covers were related to the consumption issues. The topics of the headlines were centered on fashion (39.6%) and featured people (29.8%). Furthermore, comparing the transnational with the local magazine, there were differences in men¡¦s age, occupation, appearance type, body type, and the topic and product category that the magazine emphasized. In conclusion, men¡¦s fashion magazines of Taiwan indeed appear a different kind of masculinity that I identify as ¡§stylish masculinity¡¨. This kind of masculinity focuses much attention on men¡¦s appearances, and it¡¦s achieved through a variety of ways of product consumption. The stylish masculinity overthrows some definitions of the traditional masculinity, but on the other hand, it still maintained some disciplines of traditional masculinity. Analyzing the transnational and local men¡¦s fashion magazines, we can understand even if the international men¡¦s fashion magazine, like GQ, appeared and influenced the local male in a global way. From different cultures, magazine origins and readerships, the local men¡¦s fashion magazine still can present some diverse features in many aspects. Finally, when the transnational fashion magazines introduce the international fashion information to local readers, it also conveys many global viewpoints about masculinity at the same time. However, it¡¦s still possible that the publisher takes a localized strategy in order to cater for the local life and culture.

This thesis aims to investigate women&rsquo / s oppression through analyzing the overlapping features of hegemonic ideology of beauty and fashion. The major goal of the study is to examine how beauty ideology is constructed and how it is practiced in the case of fashion. Additionally, the intersecting discourses of capitalist system and patriarchy have been questioned to understand women&rsquo / s oppression, as suggested by Dual-System theorists. Therefore, throughout the study, the common interests of capitalist and patriarchal systems in reproducing oppressive body politics have been demonstrated.

This study qualitatively examines the synergetic relationship between marketing communication, identity formation, and consumer behavior within the context of black and white males of the Millennial Generation. The sample consisted of 20 males between the ages of 18-29; ten self-identified as black and 10 self-identified as white. This project expands the knowledge base of consumption/identity research by incorporating intersectionality into the present body of consumer behavior work. A consumer’s identity project is far more complex than what is represented by current consumer behavior scholarship. Consumers must navigate multiple sites of identification that constantly shift in importance and involvement. To more closely reflect consumers in the flesh, this study incorporated multiple sites of identity projects into the analysis. By taking a more “true-to-life” approach to consumption/identity research, this project unearths new knowledge that is proximate to the lived experience of consumers. Consumer culture theory (CCT), a division of consumer research that moves the discussion of consumption behavior deep into the realm of cultural impact was used as the conceptual focus of this project. Autodriving was utilized to collect data. This form of photo elicitation involves the use of informants taking photos of a particular phenomenon and then “driving” the interview by discussing the photos they have taken. In the context of this study, informants were furnished a disposal camera and asked to photographically document representations of the following: achievement & success, morality, humanitarianism, nationalism, and freedom. Informants were strongly encouraged to also visually document anything that did not fit into the abovementioned categories but represented something they found particularly interesting or offensive. To examine the impact of marketing communication on the informants’ identity projects, print advertisements featuring different configurations of masculinity and manhood were explored. Three key themes emerged from the data. All informants used the marketplace to express values. The concept of identity elasticity was developed to explain the significant difference in identity potentiality between white and black informants. Many white and black informants shared the perception that they live in a post-racial society. However, the experience of a post-racial society was highly divergent based on racial formation. / text

This thesis uses the content analysis of a large sample of advertisements to trace a narrative of changing self experience in post-war consumer culture. The thesis challenges the tendency in cultural studies of advertising to see texts solely as a record of advertisers' commercial intentions. It questions the assumption that advertising secures producers' control of the symbolic economy. As a complement to such 'producer narratives' the thesis presents a 'narrative of readerships'. This traces changes and continuities in readers' orientations to objects of consumption in the period. A detailed examination of the theoretical underpinnings of critical approaches to advertising leads to the proposal of an alternative to the models of reception evident in text based studies. This alternative model draws on object relations psychoanalysis. The thesis asserts the value of the close empirical study of advertising texts. This provides evidence to counter both negative and positive generalisations about advertisements as 'creativity 1 or manipulation. The thesis proposes instead that advertising serves a range of commercial, practical, aesthetic and social communicative functions. The thesis questions the validity of analyses of advertising textualities in the 'diagnosis' of pathologies of the self and culture, suggesting that the ascription of such pathologies depends upon an inadequate model of reception. The thesis sets out an account of psychosocial change binding an analysis of disruptions to sociologically conceived trajectories to an account of an increasing prevalence of anxiety in psychosocial experience. Advertising, seen in the light of these disruptions to cultural inheritance is presented as an increasingly important communicative mode because of its contribution to a symbolically rich cultural environment which can facilitate 'identity work'. The thesis presents evidence for a continuing preoccupation amongst consumers with function and practicality. This finding is explored as evidence, not only of a persistent strand of consumer rationality, but as an indicator of an emerging new orientation to materiality in culture. The thesis proposes that totalising narratives, either optimistic or pessimistic, about the cultural experience of consumption are suspect. A more complex and variegated account is more likely to capture the consumer experiences The thesis suggests the necessity for close empirical analysis of changing consumer cultures as a counter to overarching narratives of cultural change

vii, 237 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School may be the only culinary expert from the Progressive Era who remains a household name today, but many other women took part in efforts to reform American foodways as well. Employing "scientific cookery," cooking based on the sciences of nutrition and physiology, these women paradoxically formed their careers within a prescribed culture of women's domesticity. At a time when the food industry was rapidly growing, culinary authorities engaged in commercial enterprise as intermediaries between producers and consumers by endorsing products, editing magazines and advertising recipe booklets, and giving cooking demonstrations at food expositions. This study examines the role of cooking experts in shaping the culture of consumption during the forty years beginning in 1876, when the first American cooking school based on scientific principles was founded in New York. Consumer culture here refers not only to advertising and a set of beliefs and customs regarding shopping at retail stores. Expanding the definition of consumption to include cooking (producing meals entails consuming foods) and eating, this dissertation also explores how cooking experts helped turn middle-class women into consumers of food. Drawing on cooking authorities' prescriptive literature, such as cookbooks, magazine and newspaper articles, and advertising cookbooks, this study takes a bifocal approach, illuminating the dynamic interplay between rising consumerism and foodways. Culinary experts not only helped develop the mass marketing and consumption of food. They also shaped a consumerist worldview, which exalted mental and physical exuberance, laying the groundwork for consumer culture, especially advertising, to grow. They adopted commercial aesthetics into their recipes and meal arrangements and, claiming that the appearance of foods corresponded to their wholesomeness, culinary authorities suggested eye-appealing dishes for middle-class women to make and consume. The entwinement of culinary and consumer cultures involved cooking teachers' insistence on the domesticity of women, especially their role of providing family meals. This gender expectation, along with consumer culture, characterized twentieth-century America. Culinary reformers helped modernize American society at large at the turn of the twentieth century. / Committee in charge: Daniel Pope, Chairperson, History; Ellen Herman, Member, History; James Mohr, Member, History; Geraldine Moreno, Outside Member, Anthropology

Academic perspectives on the meanings of luxury often link luxury to status or conspicuous consumption, assuming that luxury derives its meaning primarily from a traditional viewpoint, in which it is narrowly associated with generic economic and social displays of superiority, as attained through the rhetoric of wealth (Vickers and Renand, 2003; Vigneron and Johnson, 2004). However, this traditional view of luxury fails to appreciate the cultural and emotional complexity of luxury consumption: this rather limited interpretation therefore risks rendering consumers as passive and primarily homogeneous entities. This thesis argues that the term ‘luxury’ has little meaning unless it is integrated within the current ‘practices’ of consumer culture. Thus, the study conceptualises luxury from a consumer perspective, wherein meanings are understood as resulting from luxury consumption practices adopted by diverse sets of consumers across cultures. Sixteen UK and Sixteen Thai undergraduate and postgraduate students were selected to participate in two stages of data collection, involving collage construction, in-depth interviews and further fieldwork. The findings extends the existing research on luxury by developing four practices of luxury consumption: caretaker, escapist, self-transformation, and status-based. Accordingly, the study proposes an alternation view of luxury as ‘everyday luxury’, a view in which consumers can transfer and incorporate self-defined luxuries into everyday contexts. The notion of everyday luxury fundamentally allows us to move beyond a purely materialistic understanding of luxury in order to reach a metaphysical account of luxury as a subjective, moral, ephemeral and immaterial concept present in our everyday living. Moreover, this idea considerably fulfils our understanding of contemporary luxury so that traditional luxury (Veblen, 1902) and everyday luxury can co-exist within the concept of luxury. Overall, the subjective truth of the meaning of luxury in a cross-cultural context is regarded as combining the construct and outcome of a reciprocal interaction between both traditional and everyday luxury, the understanding of the self and morality within different cultures and societies, and different reflections on individuals’ lived experiences.