Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This thesis further explores the relationship between capitalism and Christianity by examining current changes to the style in which Evangelical Protestantism is practiced within the context of America's transition to consumer society. Using a theoretical framework of the marketplace theory of religious change and critical cultural studies, I argue that by displacing religion as the dominant mediator of ultimate meaning, the pressure consumer society places on religious content and practices to adapt may be part of a process of colonization through which the alignment between capitalism and Christianity is continued and its potential to be a critical cultural resource is reduced. To this end, I employ a mixed methodology of participant observation, unstructured interviews and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the cultural content of Lakewood Church in Houston, TX, America's largest Protestant church. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Paul Gray / There is an image associated with BC students that most, if not all, undergraduates can describe. Though the more superficial explanation only includes expensive preppy brand names, Apple products, and working out at the Plex, the BC image is more multifaceted. A study of consumerism, fashion, status, narcissism, collective consciousness, the self and the generalized other, and even Jesuit ideals provides the theoretical background to the analysis. The data were collected through focus group interviews, surveys, pictures, and observations to form a complete idea of BC image. This thesis explores the many sources of this image, its definition, and the extent to which students identify with it. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Sociology Honors Program. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Alan Richardson / Burgeoning exotic consumerism in the eighteenth century supplied British consumers with an increasingly material “Orient,” which never seemed so accessible as when it could be physically consumed, in the form of exotic groceries or ingestible substances like opium. My dissertation investigates how the linguistic representation of foreign, ingestible substances – which I call “exotic ingestants” – problematizes such attempts to access or master the Orient by underscoring the gap between literary trope and material thing. In the writings of Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Moore, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and others, exotic ingestion provides a flexible figure through which British authors do not just imagine the Orient, but also critically diagnose the ways in which that Orient functions as a cipher for domestic fears and fantasies. Their texts self-consciously highlight how both consumer practices and discursive representations fetishize, appropriate, or otherwise distort the Oriental “other” in question. A self-reflexive discursive mode, however, does not imply a consistently anti-imperial agenda. The authors in this study interrogate cultural binaries for a range of purposes, but what does remain consistent is that they do so in order to construct, renovate, or re-imagine their own sense of self. Going beyond the models of contamination or domestication that critics usually deploy when considering cultural representations of opium and tea, I investigate scenes of exotic ingestion as dynamic sites of identity formation, where British authors negotiate their national and transnational subjectivities by consciously engaging with constructions of cultural otherness. Each chapter compares two authors to spotlight one distinctive mode of cross-cultural imagination, and the way it plays out through figurations of exotic ingestion. Together, the four chapters trace a historical trajectory. The evolving scene of exotic ingestion offers an exemplary window into Britain’s construction of its own imperial identity, which develops in response to historical events such as the eighteenth-century consumer revolution, the 1851 Great Exhibition, and the Opium Wars with China. The prominently consumerist mode of British imaginations of China explains that rival empire’s particular, though not exclusive, significance to this project. Treating China as a case study but contextualizing it within both Sino-British relations and the Orientalist discursive tradition that emerged out of Britain’s reception of the Arabian Nights, this dissertation contributes to ongoing efforts at relocating British consciousness at the intersection of national, imperial, and global discourses and practices.

Eternity Now is a collection of 7 outfits on witch I haveprojicised my will.This made the collection:* The philosophical “studios”/ places for big thinking- thebotanical garden in Gothenburg, Schloss Shönbrunn in Vienna.Nature is the only thing we really need. It’s the maininspiration for shape and colour. The art of balance.* Bodil Malmsten & Owe Wikström. Authors that in poeticways speak of time, process and nature. Existentialists thathave made this method possible, a method that is compareableto Bodil Malmstens way of writing books. You knowyou can, but you don’t know when you can. And that is ok,if it works in the end.* Alchemy as natural philosophy and graphic art. Made theprints and views on life in general.* Slowfashion/ Sustainable fashion. The only right way tothink about clothes theese days. We can’t go any faster thanthis if we want to keep the planet. This work is related toideas of slowfashion. / Program: Modedesignutbildningen

This thesis investigates to role consumerism plays when young, black, underclass characters try to build their identities in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give (2017). Through implementing intersectional analysis and postcolonial theory this essay discusses how social positions are read and understood in a mass culture that heavily favours the visual. In this culture we are all judged by our appearance and I will argue that for the poor, black, female characters in the novels, that means being the underdogs of consumer culture. Although the two novels are published half a century apart, both relate to consumer culture and how it affects the African-American community. In addition, each of the novels are produced during a wave of black uprising and strong civil rights movements. In Morrison’s novel the characters are left longing for the looks and lifestyle of white Americans, emphasising the need of the social movement’s claim ‘Black is Beautiful’. In Thomas’ novel there are a multitude of consumer objects that are coded black, such as Jordan sneakers and hip hop-music. Yet, the police shooting of young Khalil cannot be avoided by the success ‘Black is Beautiful’ brought in terms of commercialising blackness. The shooting instead brings attention to 2017’s great campaign ‘Black Lives Matter’. What is similar in both novels is that the characters, who find themselves othered in Western discourse, strive to become someone recognised as a subject, a Self. In the quest to move beyond the stereotypes ascribed to them, almost all the characters long for goods that signal their social position as someone who has succeeded, living the American Dream. Yet, in Morrison’s novel there is a critique against capitalism and consumerism, an idea that you cannot consume a subject position in a racist society. That kind of critique against capitalism is absent in Thomas’ novel.

The central aim of this dissertation is to provide a conceptual framework for people wishing to consider how their desires are shaped by forces often unnoticed by them and how they can regain some degree of control over those desires. To this end, it offers a model for desire that acknowledges the importance of social forces in shaping a person's desire, and consequently moral character. It examines the specific social context of American capitalism, and American consumption, in order to understand how it is that many Americans seem to desire and act in ways that appear contrary to their well-being. This dissertation is a work of descriptive Christian virtue ethics, meaning that it considers the desire for and consumption of material goods in light of a person's commitment to a greater system of beliefs and values. Taking the approach of virtue ethics, it considers how a person's desires are shaped by what she takes to be constitutive of her well-being, or her telos. It argues that many Americans participate in practices that dispose them to acquire habits of desiring, consuming, and enjoying material goods in ways that tend over time to distort participants' abilities to judge and reason well about the ends that are really worth pursuing, both on the part of individuals and on the part of societies. When a person participates in a practice she acquires habits of thinking, feeling, and acting that enable her to engage in such practices effortlessly. A practice is often oriented by certain rules and standards of excellence that orient the practitioners to certain ways of thinking, feeling, and acting over others. Taking advertising as a key example, participants often acquire habits that lead them to accept a conception of well-being that is based on the ideas that growth is always to be pursued and more of a good thing is always better. Such an orientation, in turn, can direct a person's desires so that she becomes disposed to satisfy her immediate desires without seriously considering whether those desires will contribute to her well-being and, more broadly, whether the vision of the good life she has in mind is truly worth pursuing. This dissertation offers a way of engaging in critical reflection that can enable a person to bring to awareness many of these unseen social forces, and consider the ways in which participation in her many practices does or does not contribute to her well-being. It suggests that, for Christians in particular, a vision of the good life might focus on the cultivation of virtue--especially the virtues of temperance and justice. Considering a person's practices in light of virtue can be helpful for articulating clearly and strategizing effectively about how to engage in consumer activity in ways that contribute to her well-being.

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This collection of work grew from a guided journey and an exploration of ideas that has not only encouraged my growth as an artist, but as a responsible citizen sharing this world with others. Over the duration of this evolution I have become increasingly attentive to what I feel is our collective manufactured existence; the things that we produce and the influence that this production has on our lives. From the built environment, material and immaterial commodities, advertising and marketing, consumption, sustainability, etc., all these continuously shifting factors act as constants in our lives and shape our psychosocial development. To better understand this, I have delved into looking at both myself and others for evidence of the various effects from living in a consumer culture. Drawing also from extensive research in the history of as well as contemporary theories on production, mass media culture, addiction, exploitation of people and resources, and the growth of technology, I look to increase not only my own awareness on these subjects, but to also educate others. My process of making work is a meditation in order to better facilitate inspection intertwined with introspection. A finished piece becomes an externalization of this effort, but not as a conclusion. The various mixed media included in All These Things is the culmination of an ongoing search that encourages conversation and further evaluation of our roles in a commodity culture. By coming at this multi-faceted topic from different directions, I am offering a radial view into the many possible considerations for what it means to be a consumer and how this affects us all.

"I would have been better off using the tuition money to heat my apartment last winter." "Three of my friends got As in his class and my friends are dumb." "The movies are so bad, even he has to leave the room." These are just a few of the "Funny Ratings" from a page on RateMyProfessors.com, a web site dedicated to providing information to students so they may make a difference in (their) education (http://www.RateMyProfessors.com/ faq.jsp). The online evaluations differ in origin, use and content from traditional teaching evaluations as they are the result of a virtual atmosphere created for students and perpetuated by students, where comments and ratings are instantaneously available to anyone with Internet access for application and critique. This paper includes a review of literature on the rationalization of the university system, on the image of students as reluctant consumers, on the use and future of traditional teaching evaluations, and on previous attempts to obtain data from web sites. Through a content analysis of RateMyProfessors.com, I observe evidence that students have discovered a new way of participating in their education. Instead of being the property of professors and schools, these online evaluations reveal for anyone some popular ideas of what constitutes a good course and a good professor. The categories created by the students differ in subtle but important ways from traditional teaching evaluations. While traditional evaluations give professors and administrators insight on teaching effectiveness, these online evaluations act more as advice columns and mini-syllabi for future students.

This thesis critically comments on the unapologetic consumerist society that is feeding the obesity epidemic in the United States. Utilizing the medium of animation, this work displays the paradox advertisement creates by enticing individuals into an unhealthy life style, while simultaneously shaming their excessive indulgence by exhibiting images of ideals. The appealing surface level of this piece masks the dark underlying implications, similar to the colorful boxes of food that disguise illness as nourishment.