Consumption and Lifestyles

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

Working sessions are organized around the collective debate on the main themes. Debate is based on selected readings and illustrative empirical cases brought to discussion both by students and the lecturer. Assessment is based on the elaboration of an individual thematic essay.

Learning Outcomes

This course unit complements contents related to the consumption thematic more directly connected to the marketing specialty area. It aims to provide a theoretical training of sociological, anthropological and sociopolitical nature about the formation process and development of consumption society and the social and symbolic logics that underlie the practices and habits of consumption in the contemporary world. Consumption is analyzed towards the more wide processes of lifestyle formation.
Students must acquire: a) reflexive capacities of enlarged comprehension about the creation processes in taste, preferences and consumption practices; b) conception and operation skills of methodological instruments to analyze and evaluate those practices, having in account the diversity of processes (economic, social, political and symbolic) that interfere and associate them to the more wide processes in lifestyles creation.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

- Consumer society and consumer culture: the formation of modern consumption
- Tastes and lifestyles: the expressive dimension of consumption and the logics of social differentiation
- Culture, leisure and lifestyles
- Travel, tourism and the links between consumption, leisure and well being
- Consumption patterns: segmentation, eclecticism, omnivores.

Head Lecturer(s)

Maria Paula Abreu Pereira da Silva

Assessment Methods

individual thematic essay
Synthesis work: 100.0%

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean (1981), Para uma crítica da economia política do signo. Lisboa: Edições 70.

Featherstone, Mike (1991), Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London, Newbury Park and New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Gomes, Rui Telmo (2001), “Práticas culturais dos portugueses (1): atividades de lazer”, Folha OBS (Observatório das Atividades Culturais), nº 2 (versão eletrónica: http://www.oac.pt/menuobservatorio.htm).

McCracken, Grant (1990), Culture & Consumption. New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Orbasli, Aylin (2000), Tourists in Historic Towns: Urban Conservation and Heritage Management. London: E & FN Spon.
Warde, Alan; Martens, Lydia; Olsen, Wendy (1999), “Consumption and the Problem of Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction and Dinning Out”, Sociology, 33 (1), 105-127.