Re-visiting The History of Consumerism: The Emergence of Mass Consumer Culture as a Distinctive Feature of Capitalist Societies

The Frankfurt School was the first school to discern the roles of the media in shaping human thought, influencing politics, and increasing the insatiable demand of consumers in capitalist societies. The analysis brought to the fore by Adorno and Horkheimer regarding the ‘Culture Industry’ illustrated a model of media as tools of hegemony and social control advanced by Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jurgen Habermas. The School also examined the repercussions of mass culture and the rise of the consumer society on the proletariat that was aimed to be the instrument of revolution in the classical Marxian scenario. Another thing that was analyzed is how the culture industries and consumer society were considered as stabilizing forces of contemporary capitalism. Therefore, they were among the first to see the expansion of communication and mass media roles in politics, socialization and social life, culture, and the construction of docile subjects as Foucault puts it. In the present article, I review the contributions to media and social theory advanced by the Frankfurt School. The integration of psychoanalysis, aesthetic theory and the critique of mass culture, and the critique of the Enlightenment are the main components discussed in the present article.

Talent on Strike: The Musicians’ Union and the Early Agonies of the Creative Class

In November 1865, the membership of New York City's Musical Mutual Protective Union went on strike. Spurred by low wages and professional disrespect, union men came together around an ensemble ethic emphasizing mutual obligation among players. This powerful code of conduct—enforced through the union's internal structure and the musicians’ employment model—sustained several weeks of strike action in the face of public indifference. It also pushed musicians to close their ranks and ensured the homogeneity of the orchestra pit. The strike invites us to historicize the “creative economy,” with equal attention to the material conditions of workers and the durable conceptual categories created by the culture industries.

Indirect Subjects

In Indirect Subjects, Matthew H. Brown analyzes the content of the prolific Nigerian film industry's mostly direct-to-video movies alongside local practices of production and circulation to show how screen media play spatial roles in global power relations. Scrutinizing the deep structural and aesthetic relationship between Nollywood, as the industry is known, and Nigerian state television, Brown tracks how several Nollywood films, in ways similar to both state television programs and colonial cinema productions, invite local spectators to experience liberal capitalism not only as a form of exploitation but as a set of expectations about the future. This mode of address, which Brown refers to as “periliberalism,” sustains global power imbalances by locating viewers within liberalism but distancing them from its processes and benefits. Locating the wellspring of this hypocrisy in the British Empire's practice of indirect rule, Brown contends that culture industries like Nollywood can sustain capitalism by isolating ordinary African people, whose labor and consumption fuel it, from its exclusive privileges.

Mass Media and Consumer Culture in 20th-Century Mexico

In 20th-century Mexico, as in many other places, consumer culture and mass media have shaped everyday experiences, helped give meaning to ordinary lives, and opened up spaces in which political ideologies could be created and contested. Cultural forms such as dance, song, cuisine, clothing, and sports have been deployed to distinguish regions from one another, while at the same time, print media, radio, television, recorded music, film, and other cultural forms have connected Mexicans across regional and international borders (and across lines of gender, class, ethnicity, language, religion, political affiliation, and more) from the 1880s to the present day. Consumer culture—meaning the distribution, sale, and use of mass-produced goods such as clothing, as well as agricultural commodities like sugar and coffee—linked Mexico to a wider world in the historical era in which Mexico joined in the global process of rapid-fire modernization. The study of mass media and consumer culture in Mexico has been, at its best, highly interdisciplinary: historians and art historians, literary critics and cinema studies specialists, sociologists, and ethnographers have worked with journalists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and others in developing a sophisticated scholarly literature. This literature has its roots in two interrelated schools of scholarship: one that interpreted the products of culture industries as well as the creativity of ordinary people in a search for clues to Mexican national identity, and another that interpreted both locally made and imported mass media to understand how they shaped and supported the political, social, and economic status quo, both locally and globally. Since the 1980s, however, scholarly attention has broadened its focus from the images, narratives, movements, sounds, and objects produced by Mexican and foreign culture industries, and recent scholarship has looked to processes of creation, distribution, criticism, and consumption as well. Identities—whether regional, national, local, ideological, sexual, or political—are no longer understood as stable categories, but rather as a highly contested set of ideas, stories, and pictures that have changed radically over time. Much scholarship on mass media and consumer culture now begins with the understanding that culture industries have provided the tools with which discourses of identity could be shaped and reshaped, and that audiences and consumers have sometimes picked up those tools and turned them to their own purposes. And they have moved beyond taking the nation as a central category of analysis to ask how Mexican consumers and culture industries have participated in international and transnational processes of modernization.

Adaptation studies in Europe

Adaptation is a creative process that crosses and blurs boundaries: from page to stage, from small screen to big screen – and then, sometimes, back again. Beyond questions of form and medium, many adaptations also cross national borders and language barriers, making them important tools for intercultural communication and identity formation. This paper calls for a more intensive, transnational study of adaptation across print, stage, and screens in EU member and affiliate countries. For the highest possible effectiveness, interdisciplinarity is key; as a cultural phenomenon, adaptation benefits from perspectives rooted in a variety of fields and research methods. Its influence over transnational media flows, with patterns in production and reception across European culture industries, offers scholars a better understanding of how narratives are transformed into cultural exports and how these exchanges affect transnational relationships. The following questions are proposed to shape this avenue for research: (1) How do adaptations track narrative and media flows within and across national, linguistic, and regional boundaries? (2) To what extent do adapted narratives reflect transnational relationships, and how might they help construct Europeanness? (3) How do audiences in the EU respond to transnational adaptation, and how are European adaptations circulated and received outside Europe? (4) What impact does adaptation have in the culture industries, and what industrial practices might facilitate adaptation across media platforms and/or national boundaries? The future of adaptation studies and of adaptation as a cultural practice in Europe depends on the development of innovative, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches to adaptation. The outcomes of future research can hold significant value for European media industries seeking to expand their market reach, as well as for scholars of adaptation, theater, literature, translation, and screen media.

CONSUMERISM PRACTICES OF KOREAN POP FANS COMMUNITY ANNISA WIDOWATI SUNDARI DANCERS IN JAKARTA

Globalization facilitates the spread of culture from one country to another. From globalization, K-Pop has finally begun to be enjoyed by Indonesian society. One of the effects of the Korean culture fever in Indonesia is the consumptive behavior or lifestyle among teenagers who are K-Pop fans. Annisa Widowati Sundari Dancers Community or what is commonly called as AWS Dancers community is one of them. The reason why this community has been chosen as the object of this research is because AWS Dancers community is popular among K-Pop fans in Jakarta. This study used a cultural study approach that is analyzed qualitatively. Data collection is carried out by the method of observation, interviews, and document studies related to K-pop culture in Indonesia. Data were analyzed with hegemony theory and culture industry theory. The results of this study show that the emergence of the K-Pop culture industry ultimately inspired K-Pop fans to form a community, namely AWS Dancers who performed dance cover activities. In addition, K-Pop culture industries such as music, drama, food, cosmetics and electronic goods made teenagers who are members of the AWS Dancers community was hegemonied to buy and consume these things. As a result, various implications arise, such as dissipation among the members of AWS Dancers, hyperreality towards South Korea, the increasingly eroded Indonesian culture and celebritization among members of the AWS Dancers community. Keywords : consumerism practices, korean pop, AWS community, hegemony, culture industry