Course Syllabus Consumer Culture and Consumer Society Research Course Description: The Module is designed to acquaint students with the theoretical perspectives, methods, practices and research in the area of sociology of consumption and consumer society. Focusing on practice and application, it tries to help students to do certain empirical research using such methods as observation, interview, fieldwork, survey etc, to get a better and wider understanding the consumer culture and consumer society in diversified national and ethnic backgrounds. Expected Student Outcomes: ? To re- define consumer culture and consumer society in Global context ? To understand consumer culture environment – both for macro-environment & microenvironment, of different societies ? To understand the relations between markets, business and tradition , social change of consumer culture in your country ? To explore and research important theoretical and practical issues in the area of consumption using sociological or anthropological perspectives or approaches Course Requirements and Evaluation This course requires students to complete the following: Participation: 20% Presentation: 30% Final Report: 50% About classroom participation: While the grade cannot be based on attendance per se, students should plan to be in class and ready to discuss the readings/ lectures. If the class is large enough, students will be divided into small discussion groups at the beginning of the term, and topics for presentation will be assigned to each of group members. About in-class presentation: Each student will conduct a 30-minute PPT presentation (the list for signup will be passed out on the first week) and also provide the questions and discussions for a 15- minute discussion on the topic provided. The presentation should be informative on the topic, insights and creativity is more than welcomed. Final Report: each student is expected to finish a defined academic report individual, which would focus on a certain area of consumption. Policy on late assignments and missed exam: It will be marked down by 0.1 each day for a late turning in an assignment without making prior arrangements. It will be marked zero for the missed exam. CLASS SCHEDULE(instructor’s presentations of his own research may follow after some sessions) Lecture 1: Warm-up, assignments and cases of research of the instructor Shanghai’s Unlicensed Taxi(Hei Che) ： Insights for Informal Economy Grassroots Social Governance Crisis in New Booming Gated Communities Shanghai ML Xiaoqu and Beyond Reuse and Recycle in Boston 2007-2008 fieldwork What kind of consumer culture and whose consumer society——rural-urban migrant workers in 2006 Ningbo and 2010 Shanghai fieldwork Lecture 2: Food, Culture and and Social Change China's Big Mac Attack (James Waston)；Globalizing Asian Cuisines: From Eating for Strength to Culinary Cosmopolitanism（James Farrer) Lecture 3: Gifts and Commodities Just doing it ：enjoying commodity fetishism with Lacan （Bohm and Batta） Sale, Gift or Commodity What Changes Hands in the U. S. Garage Sale（Herrmann） Lecture 4: Debating China’s consumer culture Subsumption or consumption: the Phantom of consumer revolution Globalizing China by Pun Ngai , 2003, Cultural Anthropology,18(4), 469-492. Urban Consumer Culture (Deborah Davis) ,China Quarterly 2005:692-709. Lecture 5: Consumption, Social Identity, Ethnicity and Consumer-Citizens Playing with modernity: the decolonization of Indian cricket(Arjun Appadurai) Consumer-Citizens of china🙌🏼：The role of foreign brands in the imagined future China(Kelly Tian and Lily Dong ),Chapter 3😿、4 and 7) Lecture 6: Body: fitting for consumption Prosperity versus pathology: a social history of obesity in China (James Watson) Looking Good: Consumption and the Problems of Self-Production (Jennifer Smith) Lecture 7: Material Culture Consumption and Commodities (D. Miller); IGOR KOPYTOFF,The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In Arjun Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, NY: Cambridge U.Press, pp.64 91. Lecture 8: Shopping and consumer practices (discussing final reports) Uncertainty and the problem of value: Consumers, culture and inequality in urban China (Amy Hanser) Shopping , Pleasure and the sex war(Colin Campbell) in Pasi Falk and Colin Campbell eds,1997,THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE, SAGE Publications Lecture 9: Sustainable consumption Debating_the_Sharing_Economy (Juliet Schor) ; Thrifty, green or frugal: Reflections on sustainable consumption in a changing economic climate (David Evans) Lecture 10:Theory and History (submission of final reports) Introduction to the Sociology of Consumption（Alan Warde）;"Writing to be Read：Changing the Culture and Reward Structure of American Sociology"，Chapter 1 of Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption （Georg Ritzer） New Historical perspectives on Consumption by Frank Trentmann COURSE TIME: 1 course hour =45mins Preparation time before courses: 1 hour Preparation time after courses: 1 hour Preparation time for exam: 6 hours ______________________________________ 10 Weeks Course ( 4 Courses hours/per week) Sum course hour: 40 hours Projects/ Assignments/Presentation : 4 hours Preparation time for courses: 80 hours Preparation time for exam: 6 hours ______________________________________ Sum Time: 130 hours Instructor: Prof. Dunfu Zhang, Professor of Sociology. School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University, dunfuzhang@gmail.com