Twentieth century developments in Sociology
In the early 20th century, sociology expanded in the United States, together with developments in both macro sociology interested in evolution of societies and micro sociology. Based on the pragmatic social psychology of George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer and others inspired sociologists developed symbolic interactionism. In Europe, in the Interwar period, sociology usually was both attacked by increasingly totalitarian governments and rejected by traditional universities. At the same time, originally in Austria and later in the U.S., Alfred Schultz developed social phenomenology. Also, members of the Frankfurt school developed critical theory, integrating critical, idealistic and historical materialistic elements of the dialectical philosophies of Hegel and Marx with the insights of Freud, Max Weber and others. In the 1930s in the U.S., Talcott Parsons developed structural-functional theory which included the study of social order and “objective” aspects of macro and micro structural factors.
From the World War II, sociology has been invigorated in Europe, although during the Stalin and Mao eras it was suppressed in the communist countries. In the mid-20th century, there was a general trend for American sociology to be more scientific in nature, due partially to the prominent influence at that time of structural functionalism. Sociologists developed new types of quantitative and qualitative research methods. In the second half of the 20th century, sociological research has been more and more employed as a tool by governments and businesses. Equivalent with the rise of various social movements in the 1960s, theories emphasizing social struggle, including conflict theory and neomarxist theories, began to receive more attention.
In the late 20th century, some sociologists embraced postmodern and poststructuralist philosophies. Increasingly, many sociologists have used qualitative and ethnographic methods and become critical of the positivism in some social scientific approach. Much similar to cultural studies, some modern sociological studies have been prejudiced by the cultural changes of the 1960s, 20th century Continental philosophy, literary studies, and interpretivism. Others have maintained more objective empirical perspectives, such as by articulating neofunctionalism, social psychology, and rational choice theory. Others began to debate the nature of globalization and the changing nature of social institutions. These developments have leaded some to reconceptualize basic sociological categories and theories. For instance, inspired by the thought of Michel Foucault, power may be studied as detached throughout society in a wide variety of disciplinary cultural practices. In political sociology, the power of the nation state may be seen as transforming due to the globalization of trade and the expanding influence of international organizations.
The Spanish essayist and philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), was born in Madrid of a patrician family. He was educated at a Jesuit college and the University of Madrid, where he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1904. Ortega spent the next five years at German universities in Berlin and Leipzig and at the University of Marburg. Appointed professor of metaphysics at the University of Madrid in 1910, he taught there until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil war in 1936. He was also active as a journalist and as a politician. In 1923 he founded the Revista de occidente, a review of books that was instrumental in bringing Spain in touch with Western, and specifically German thought. Ortega's work as editor and publisher helped end Spain's isolation from contemporary western culture.
Ortega led the republican intellectual opposition under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1936), and he played a role in the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII in 1931. Elected deputy for the province of León in the constituent assembly of the second Spanish republic, he was the leader of a parliamentary group of intellectuals know as La Agrupación al servicio de la república ("In the service of the republic") and was named civil governor of Madrid. Such a commitment obliged him to leave Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, and he spent years of exile in Argentina and Europe. He settled in Portugal in 1945 and began to make visits to Spain. In 1948 he returned to Madrid and founded the Institute of Humanities, at which he lectured.
A prolific writer, Ortega was the head of the most productive school of thinkers Spain had known for more than three centuries and helped place philosophy beyond the reach of a centuries-old reproach that it was somehow un-Spanish, and therefore dangerous.
What follows are excerpts from his influential work on social theory, The Revolt of the Masses, first published in 1930.
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There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at its present moment. The fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power. As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general, this fact means that actually Europe is suffering from the greatest general crisis that can afflict peoples, nations and civilization.
Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself -- good or ill -- based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to motions born in the café. I doubt whether there have been other periods of history in which the multitude has come to govern more directly than in our own.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: "to be different is to be indecent." The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.
It is illusory to imagine that the mass-man of to-day will be able to control, by himself, the process of civilization. I say process, and not progress. The simple process of preserving our present civilization is supremely complex, and demands incalculably subtle powers. Ill-fitted to direct it is this average man who has learned to use much of the machinery of civilization, but who is characterized by root-ignorance of the very principles of that civilization.
The command over the public life exercised today by the intellectually vulgar is perhaps the factor of the present situation which is most novel, least assimilable to anything in the past. At least in European history up to the present, the vulgar had never believed itself to have "ideas" on things. It had beliefs, traditions, experiences, proverbs, mental habits, but it never imagine itself in possession of theoretical opinions on what things are or ought to be. To-day, on the other hand, the average man has the most mathematical "ideas" on all that happens or ought to happen in the universe. Hence he has lost the use of his hearing. Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his "opinions."
But, is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-man can have recourse. There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal. There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred. There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognize the necessity of justifying the work of art.
When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveler knows that in the territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
Under Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, the "reason of unreason." Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. In their political conduct the structure of the new mentality is revealed in the rawest, most convincing manner. The average man finds himself with "ideas" in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation. He has no conception even of the rare atmosphere in which ideals live. He wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words.
To have an idea means believing one is in possession of the reasons for having it, and consequently means believing that there is such a thing as reason, a world of intelligible truths. To have ideas, to form opinions, is identical with appealing to such an authority, submitting oneself to it, accepting its code and its decisions, and therefore believing that the highest form of intercommunication is the dialogue in which the reasons for our ideas are discussed. But the mass-man would feel himself lost if he accepted discussion, and instinctively repudiates the obligation of accepting that supreme authority lying outside himself. Hence the "new thing" in Europe is "to have done with discussions," and detestation is expressed for all forms of intercommunication, which imply acceptance of objective standards, ranging from conversation to Parliament, and taking in science. This means that there is a renunciation of the common life of barbarism. All the normal processes are suppressed in order to arrive directly at the imposition of what is desired. The hermeticism of the soul which, as we have seen before, urges the mass to intervene in the whole of public life.
The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The original was first published in 1929; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by the author. While the published version notes that the translator requested to remain anonymous, more recent editions also record that its US copyright was renewed in 1960 by a Teresa Carey, and the US Copyright Office's published list of US copyright renewals for January 1960 gives the translator as J. R. Carey.
In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them. His summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author's own views on his work: "In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analyzing his behaviour as regards the very civilization into which he was born". This had to be done because that individual "does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation ..."
As an essayist Ortega y Gasset was one of the finest of the 20th century in any language. Most of his books were collections of articles and essays. He wrote in lucid Castilinian with mastery of the language. Most of his writings were originally published in Spain's leading newspapers and journals, or delivered as lectures. As a lecturer and orator Ortega was charismatic and his expressiveness is apparent throughout his writings. Ortega hoped to incite readers to take up and develop the issues under discussion - life was for him an intense dialogue between oneself and one's environment. The Revolt of the Masses presented that society is composed of masses and dominant minorities. The work echoed the warnings of 19th-century liberals that democracy carried with it the risk of tyranny by the majority. When earlier masses had recognized the superiority of elites, in modern times masses wanted to dominate. Bolshevism and fascism were symptoms of usurpation of power by the "mass man." Ortega sees that the mass man demands nothing and lives like everyone else, without vision or compelling moral code. The distinction does not correspond "upper" or "lover" classes, but goes between people who live in the service of ideals and myopic scientists, the prototype of "learned ignoramus." 'The modern world is a civilized one; its inhabitant is not.'
How does culture relate to mass communication?
Culture can be defined as the beliefs, values, or other frameworks of reference by which we make sense of our experiences. It also concerns how we communicate these values and ideas.
Mass media are centrally involved in the production of modern culture.
Media production, media texts and media reception are like a series of interlinked circuits. What is produced is influenced by cultural values; how the texts are formed and represented are influenced in the same way and the readings of the texts are also subject to both abstract and particular cultural viewpoints.
What is popular culture?
Historically (until the 19th century, at any rate) the term 'popular' was quite a negative thing, with overtones of vulgarity and triviality. Something not 'nice' or 'respectable'. In the modern world, the term means 'widespread', liked or at least encountered by many people. It has also come to mean 'mass-produced', i.e. made for the 'mass' of people. There is a downside to this, of course, in that it can also be interpreted as 'commercial' or 'trashy'.
This leads into a further consideration, which is the definition of 'popular culture' as 'low' culture, something not for the elite, but for the 'common' people. Cultural value ('high' culture) has been traditionally associated with dominant or powerful groups - those who have appreciation of classical music, art, ballet, opera and so on. 'Low' or popular culture is everything not approved of as 'high'. It is vulgar, common, or 'easy'.
Another definition of 'popular' is literally 'of the people', a kind of 'folk' culture and this is an interesting area, because it encompasses the idea of an 'alternative' culture which includes minority groups, perhaps with subversive values. The 'indie' music scene is an example of this. So 'popular' culture can and sometimes does, challenge the 'dominant' cultural power groups.
What is postmodern culture?
It is argued that modern culture has entered a so-called 'post-modern' phase. Put simply there are four areas of definition here:
1. Because popular culture and media images dominate the age, they dominate our sense of reality. The world is now 'intertextual' (images, copies, simulations and so on are so global that there are no authentic originals any more) The result is that popular culture has replaced art and 'high' culture and the contrived and the simulated has replaced the reality of experience and history. How and what we consume has become more important than what and how we produce.
2. Postmodernism is about style. Pastiche, collage, bricolage (the mixing and re-using of images, signs and symbols) are emphasised at the expense of content or substance.
3. Time, space history and place have become less secure - more confused. The forces of global communications and networks are eroding national cultures. This causes tension and uncertainty.
4. Postmodernism is sceptical about absolute truths, artistic, scientific, historical or political, so a secure sense of time and place is becoming more difficult to sustain. Once secure theories are now open to question and doubt.
So what do we mean by 'mass communication' or 'mass media'?
Think of it as the transmission (sending) and reception of 'messages' on a very large scale.
Most communication is done on a direct face-to-face basis in a situated cultural context and it is a two-way process. The received message can be responded to instantly. There is 'feedback'.
With mass communication there are four main distinctive features, as follows:
1. There is a gap or an institutional break between the 'sender' of the message and the 'receiver'. The makers of the media texts, the 'senders' of the messages, do not have an obvious feedback relationship with the audience. (Shouting at the TV screen does not count as feedback!) Audience responses are rarely 'heard'. This means that mass-mediated culture tends to be a one-way process. Producers have to target imaginary, generalised or stereotypical audiences. They can (and do) 'shape' products accordingly. They also make assumptions about audiences that are based on conceptual ideas of what people are like, rather than how they really are. Look at any glamour magazine and you can see what the makers of the texts think men and women should look like, for example.
2. Specialised technologies, especially the internet, have begun to affect the one-way system of communication described above. In addition, these technologies have made it possible to 'capture' messages in a very physical form (photographs, film, tape-recordings) which in turn has led to historical permanence or records. Our sense of 'history' is thus affected (and some would say, constructed.)
3. Media messages can be extended 'outwards', so that events taking place regionally or locally now have global coverage (9/11, for example) Audiences are frequently calculated in billions! This has major significance in terms of media institutions. Lots of profit to be made from selling syndicated rights to the whole world's media!
4. Media messages have therefore become a modern commodity - an industry - a product. Market forces thus have a definite impact on the production and distribution of media texts. It is argued that as mass media have become 'facts of life' and we have all become socially and culturally more dependent on them.
It is argued that the media now occupy a central role in defining and interpreting the very nature of the world according to certain values, cultural principles and ideologies. We inhabit an information and consumer society as a result and concerns are expressed about exactly what effects the media have on society.
Ideology - a set of ideas or a view of the world that is selective and gives a particular version of reality. Sometimes seen as deliberately constructed by powerful groups in order to maintain power and control.
There are three major areas of concern, as follows:
1. Mass media has a political and a persuasive power over us. Radio, TV, the press and film can manipulate whole societies. Political propaganda, advertising and the so-called 'mind-bending' power of the media are long-standing causes of debate and concern.
2. Since the 19th century there has been a mistrust of so-called 'popular culture', which is thought to debase or degrade cultural traditions and standards. The ongoing debate about the future of public service broadcasting in Britain in the 1990's is an example of this. What exactly is 'quality' and cultural value in broadcast output?
3. The most contentious issue concerns the effects of the mass media on social behaviour, in particular violence and delinquency. The media have regularly been accused of 'causing' outbreaks of unrest in society.
McLuhan is known for the expressions "the medium is the message" and "global village". McLuhan was a fixture in media discourse from the late 1960s to his death and he continues to be an influential and controversial figure. More than ten years after his death he was named the "patron saint" of Wired magazine.
Global Village is a term closely associated with Marshall McLuhan, popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). McLuhan describes how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology[2] and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time [3]. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree [4].
Today, the term "Global Village" is mostly used as a metaphor to describe the Internet and World Wide Web. On the Internet, physical distance is even less of a hindrance to the real-time communicative activities of people, and therefore social spheres are greatly expanded by the openness of the web and the ease at which people can search for online communities and interact with others that share the same interests and concerns. Therefore, this technology fosters the idea of a conglomerate yet unified global community. Due to the enhanced speed of communication online and the ability of people to read about, spread, and react to global news very rapidly, McLuhan says this forces us to become more involved with one another from countries around the world and be more aware of our global responsibilities. [6] Similarly, web-connected computers enable people to link their web sites together. This new reality has implications for forming new sociological structures within the context of culture.
"Hot" and "cool" media
In the first part of Understanding Media, McLuhan also stated that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium. Some media, like the movies, were "hot" - that is, they enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with "cool" TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part of viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which due to their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition", requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value. "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue."
Hot media usually, but not always, provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus. For example, print occupies visual space, uses visual senses, but can immerse its reader. Hot media favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photography. Cool media, on the other hand, are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Therefore, according to McLuhan cool media include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons. McLuhan describes the term "cool media" as emerging from jazz and popular music and, in this context, is used to mean "detached." This concept appears to force media into binary categories. However, McLuhan's hot and cool exist on a continuum: they are more correctly measured on a scale than as dichotomous terms.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)
This book, published in 1967, was McLuhan's best seller,[45] "eventually selling nearly a million copies worldwide."[46] Initiated by Quentin Fiore,[47] McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium.[48]
Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these effects which were compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from "reading" typographic print to "scanning" photographic facsimiles—reinforcing McLuhan's overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium.
In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan also rehashed the argument—which first appeared in the Prologue to 1962's The Gutenberg Galaxy — that media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds.
Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century", brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television.[49]
An audio recording version of McLuhan's famous work was made by Columbia Records. The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan interrupted by other speakers, including people speaking in various phonations and falsettos, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought. Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording "the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video."
Technology has now created the possibility and even the likelihood of a global culture. The Internet, fax machines, satellites, and cable TV are sweeping away cultural boundaries. Global entertainment companies shape the perceptions and dreams of ordinary citizens, wherever they live. This spread of values, norms, and culture tends to promote Western ideals of capitalism. Will local cultures inevitably fall victim to this global "consumer" culture? Will English eradicate all other languages? Will consumer values overwhelm peoples' sense of community and social solidarity? Or, on the contrary, will a common culture lead the way to greater shared values and political unity? This section looks at these and other issues of culture and globalization.
Culture is defined as patterns of human activity and the symbols that give these activities significance. Culture is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold, and activities they practice. Globalization has joined different cultures and made it into something different. As Erla Zwingle, from the National Geographic article titled “Globalization” states, “When cultures receive outside influences, they ignore some and adopt others, and then almost immediately start to transform them.”[65]
One classic culture aspect is food. Someone in America can be eating Japanese noodles for lunch while someone in Sydney, Australia is eating classic Italian meatballs. India is known for its curry and exotic spices. France is known for its cheeses. America is known for its burgers and fries. McDonalds is an American company which is now a global enterprise with 31,000 locations worldwide. This company is just one example of food causing cultural influence on the global scale.
Another common practice brought about by globalization is the usage of Chinese symbol in tattoos. These tattoos are popular with today's youth despite the lack of social acceptance of tattoos in China.[66] Also, there is a lack of comprehension in the meaning of Chinese characters that people get,[67] making this an example of cultural appropriation.
The internet breaks down cultural boundaries across the world by enabling easy, near-instantaneous communication between people anywhere in a variety of digital forms and media. The Internet is associated with the process of cultural globalization because it allows interaction and communication between people with very different lifestyles and from very different cultures. Photo sharing websites allow interaction even where language would otherwise be a barrier.
. Globalization is undoubtedly an important constitutive feature of the modern world. One of the current interdisciplinary assumptions is that globalization necessarily amounts to the loss of cultural identity. A particular culture is usually singled out claiming some sort of cognitive and ethical absolutism. In contrast to this view, there have been other approaches urging us to rethink our conceptions and commitments to culture, but leading to a malign relativism that regards all forms of cultural expression as equally valid. In any case, culture and globalization came to be understood as mutually exclusive or incompatible. If the ideal Hegel suggests through philosophical reasoning helps us to overcome this alleged dilemma, it is interesting to ponder over its future in the current circumstances of globalization. These circumstances stress the need for global communication and recognition among the different, and quite often conflicting, cultural creations. The challenge the Hegelian philosophy of Bildung (culture) has to deal with is to steer a viable theoretical middle way for the values of current Bildung. It has to avoid, on the one hand, the arrogant complacency of those values that claim any kind of absolutism. On the other hand, it has also to avoid a rampant relativism that distributes validity and praises to all forms of cultural expressions in the name of the need to self-expression.
Consumer Culture. The term “consumer culture” refers to cultures in which mass consumption and production both fuel the economy and shape perceptions, values, desires, and constructions of personal identity. Economic developments, demographic trends, and new technologies profoundly influence the scope and scale of consumer culture. Social class, gender, ethnicity, region, and age all affect definitions of consumer identity and attitudes about the legitimacy of consumer‐centered lifestyles.
The intellectual roots of consumer culture date to seventeenth‐century Western Europe and the antimercantilist idea that domestic markets could adequately sustain national economies. By the 1770s, as early capitalist ideology and early industrialization took hold in England, a widespread culture of consumption arose. This early English consumer culture influenced life in colonial America. Colonists acquired English‐made goods as markers of status and respectability. Despite Jeffersonian Republican and religious protests against luxury and aristocratic emulation, the ties between gentility and commodity consumption grew after the Revolutionary War, especially as early industrialization and commercial and transportation revolutions made consumer goods more easily available and less expensive. These developments led white women in middle‐class, urban communities to relinquish many familiar tasks of domestic labor, such as making soap. By the 1830s, consumption had become central to how middle‐class women defined themselves as wives and mothers.
Consumer culture began to assume its modern contours after the Civil War. The explosive growth of industrialization and its accompanying techniques of mass distribution made the consumption of ready‐made goods possible on an unprecedented scale. Urbanization and population growth broadened markets for consumption. By 1900, department stores, mail‐order catalogs, and mass‐circulated magazines made consumer culture broadly accessible. As mass production pushed prices down, and as department stores offered cheap knockoffs of expensive goods, immigrants and working‐class Americans got their own taste of consumerism. Consumer culture had also expanded beyond its urban base. Mass magazines and catalogs kept the remotest corners of the nation abreast of new styles and merchandise.
Some Americans resisted consumerism. In 1899, the cultural critic Thorstein Veblen derided what he called the “conspicuous consumption” of luxury goods. Progressives both condemned the “profligate” consuming patterns of workers and immigrants and reacted politically when corporate monopolies, inflation, and unsafe merchandise threatened their own increasingly commodity‐centered lifestyles. Some, like Florence Kelley, sought to organize a consumer movement as a force for reform, but most middle‐class Americans simply took consumerism for granted.The rise of national “brand name” products added a new dynamic to consumer culture. During the early 1900s, merchandisers began promoting brand names in order to gain leverage in marketing and distributing their wares. By the 1920s, much of this promotional work had passed to advertising agencies. Using dramatic graphics and carefully honed copy to associate brand name products with desirable personality traits and social values, advertising agencies became cultural arbiters of style and taste.Some historians suggest that brand names, national advertising campaigns, the movies, and, by the 1930s, chain stores and radio led to a homogenization of American culture. But ethnic enclaves, unions, and competing values contributed to distinct cultures of consumption. During the 1950s, however, economic prosperity, suburbanization, and a Cold War emphasis on Americanism and idealized nuclear families undermined these distinctions. With the advent of television and ubiquitous commercial icons like Holiday Inn and McDonald's, and the spread of shopping centers and malls, Americans absorbed a larger set of shared cultural references and consumer‐centered aspirations.Critics like Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders, 1957) and cultural subgroups like the Beat poets and writers of the 1950s and the 1960s counterculture rejected what they saw as the homogenizing effects of mass consumer culture. But even in the postwar era, demographically distinct cultures of consumption existed—in part, because marketers increasingly relied upon market segmentation. Women's consumerism continued to revolve primarily around home and family. Leisure and entertainment industries, in particular, triumphed by targeting previously untapped markets. Record companies focused on the ascendant youth culture and its growing access to disposable income. Sporting‐goods makers and magazines like Playboy profited by exploiting the consumer interests of men. African‐American entrepreneurs succeeded by meeting the needs and interests of black shoppers. Other manufacturers courted consumers abroad. U.S. foreign policy‐makers encouraged this globalization of American consumer culture as a weapon in the Cold War.
Consumer culture's ability to nurture common bonds while appealing to the interests of distinct groups continues. By meaning different things to different people, while nonetheless upholding the centrality of commodity consumption, consumer culture managed to deflect critics and become a powerful presence in American society.
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