Social Science - Consumer Oriented Society

General Education Capstone Course

Event/Experience Details and Guideline Form

Gen. Ed. category event should be listed under:  Social Sciences

SCC competency addressed by event: 

1. Develop and communicate hypothetical explanations, predictions, and descriptions of human behavior with in an historical, spatial, and/or social context.
   
   
2. Draw on the social sciences to evaluate the diversity and complexity of contemporary local and global issues to provide a better understanding of the student’s relationship to those social issues.

Event experience title: Enchantment in An Increasingly Rationalized, Consumer Oriented Society

Anticipated learning outcome

Upon successful completion of this project, the student will have a clearer understanding of what Max Weber and George Ritzer meant when they said modern society is extremely rationalized and disenchanted. They will gain some understanding that, as Ritzer has said, in an attempt to become re-enchanted, the modernized world has adopted consumerism as a kind of quasi religion which has its own sacred places, i.e., cathedrals of consumption. The successful student will see that in those “sacred” places, people are enticed into hyper-consumption that glorifies material things as a means to “salvation” from the mediocrity and problems of everyday life. The student will begin to understand that shopping malls have much in common with churches and temples of traditional society insofar as they meet people’s needs to connect with each other by means of various rituals and ceremonies.

Guidelines or rubric for accomplishment of event

The student will visit a “cathedral of consumption”. As the result of sociologically focused participant and non-participant observation, the student will make notes of ethnographic data. Then, the student would be required to compile that data into a journal entry discussing the impact of cathedrals of consumption on individual lives as well as on the collective life of society as it relates to culture, class-structure, world view, human relationships, and major social institutions. In his/her essay, the student would evaluate the mall as regards its success or failure to re-enchant, i.e., render ultimately meaningful, a disenchanted, bureaucratized world.

In writing the essay, the student should pay attention to the following:

1. What are the most striking aspects of the mall that first catch your attention as you enter? What perhaps caused you to notice those things immediately?
   
   
2. Briefly describe the various types of stores included in the mall.
   
   
3. Are there particular stores designed to attract people of a particular socio-economic class?
   
   
4. How do the stores advertise their merchandise and services? Are the signage, advertising, and décor designed to make people believe that shopping in the store will definitely enhance their lives and lift them beyond the ordinary?
   
   
5. In what ways does the mall give shoppers a sense of enchantment similar to that which one feels upon entering a church, cathedral, synagogue or mosque?
   
   
6. Reflecting on your experience at the mall, discuss how successful or unsuccessful it is in giving people a sense of enchantment* in an otherwise disenchanted, everyday world?
   
   
7. Did you observe any behavior on the part of the shoppers that can be described as ritualistic or ceremonial?
   
   
8. In what specific ways is the mall attempting to get people to define and evaluate themselves by how much material stuff they are able to accumulate?
   

*Enchantment: A sense of wonder and awe one experiences when one believes that there is a reality beyond the ordinary, everyday, practical experiences of everyday, workaday existence.

Evaluation:

1. Does the student demonstrate the ability to see patterns of economic behavior as ritualistic as opposed to a merely rational way of meeting material needs?
   
   
2. Does the student reveal an awareness of economic institutions and behaviors as important characteristics of a society’s culture?
   
   
3. Does the student appear to understand that various economic institutions such as shopping malls and the patterns of behavior found therein function to legitimize and maintain society’s status quo?
   
   
4. Is the student aware that the definition of religion may need to be broadened to include institutions and behaviors other than those associated with the traditional concept of religion?

Contact name:  Any major shopping mall in the metropolitan area

Contact phone number: See phone book or web sites

Contact e-mail: listed on web sites

Contact Web site URL: look on the Internet for web sites of major shopping malls and then choose one that is convenient and may be data productive.

SCC event creator: Bill Kristen

Estimated time for full completion:  four hours.