culture consumption Essay

BC 3227 Sociology of US Economic Life Final Paper

Social Stratification and Cultural Consumption Under Cultural Art

Hwa chiung Tsai (HT2193)




Culture consumption began as a subculture paradigm, but as consumer preferences and spending developed into a phenomenon of natural audience segmentation, it is of a sociologist's interest to find out the relations and reasons behind consumer differentiation.In modern industrial societies, cultural goods and production usually come from informal folk and communal sources. In this respect, mass media takes advantage of mass technology and mass communication to disseminate cultural goods to a national or even global scale. As industrialization and political parties take over human civilization, classical cultural production appears to become less and less of a priority in the society. Mechanized and mass produced goods makes it harder for traditional forms of customs to exist, resulting in an increasingly one-dimensional society and market. Even ethnic cultural arts are often combined with political ideology, such as patriotism and independence, when broadcasted on mass media. By producing a mono-type of goods and services in a mass production society, life styles across different social classes become increasingly de-differentiated. Market experts are paid to provide predictions and analysis of market products, and often their predictions of what are the best selling products will become the truth because consumers make purchase judgements heavily based on reviews by experts and other consumers. This network effect both gathers people into a social circle as well as categorizing them into different networks.

Consumption of artistic performance culture, in it's hand-made nature, is considered least vulnerable to mass production. The mass of consumers are faced with two main choices, the industrialized pop culture are most popular among the working class and younger population, but classical music, such as...