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The relationship between consumption and identity
Relationship between consumption and identity
Identity in consumerism
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Introduction
According to Gans in his book Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste (1974), people make choices from the available content provided by a homogenous society and the relationship between the choices exist because they are based on similar values and aesthetic standards. This constitutes why there are diverse taste cultures and taste publics in America. Rather than belonging to one taste culture, I consider myself an omnivore because I “often make cultural choices from any menus (9),” meaning that I embody bits and pieces of different taste cultures.
Many factors can determine why someone belongs to a specific taste culture, but one factor that Gans (1974) believes is the most impactful is socioeconomic class. Growing up in a typical middle-class home with two parents who have only received a high school diploma, according to Gans, I belong in the lower-middle taste culture. However, I “turn to fiction that depicts the struggle of women to compete with men in male-dominated enterprises...and more recently, the potentialities and problems of women’s liberation (106). “ I read the New Yorker and Vogue, and shy away from Cosmopolitan or other women’s and homemaking magazines, which in essence means that I share more cultural
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Being African American means more than just having descendants from Africa or having distinct physical features. It is about a culture that has been resilient for hundreds of years in a country that devalued its people. The best word to describe African American or Black Culture is resourceful. There are aspects of this culture, such as the folk music and food that came about because slave used what they had available to them and made the best out of it. Now, it has grown to a culture that is not only valued by its people, but also is used by others that do not associate with being African American or
Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics of their own inherited culture. Therefore, in an African American society, a search for self identity is a pervasive theme.
Being a resident of South Carolina, African-American Culture was chosen as part of the applied learning project for the Intercultural Nursing class, because African-Americans make up more than a quarter of this state’s population. According to the 2010 United States Census Bureau, the total population for South Carolina (S.C.) is 4,625,364, with 27.9% being of African-American descent. The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding and sensitivity to issues and cultural variances or phenomena that are unique to the African-American Culture. Another goal is to identify nursing interventions that are important for the nurse to consider in caring for this population. These phenomena’s include variances in social organization, communication, space, perception of time, environmental control, and biological variations associated with the African-American culture. (Giger, 2013 and South Carolina minority, n.d.)
African American history plays a huge role in history today. From decades of research we can see the process that this culture went through and how they were depressed and deculturalized. In school, we take the time to learn about African American History but, we fail to see the aspects that African Americans had to overcome to be where they are today. We also fail to view life in their shoes and fundamentally understand the hardships and processes that they went through. African Americans were treated so terribly and poor in the last century and, they still are today. As a subordinate race to the American White race, African Americans were not treated equal, fair, human, or right under any circumstances. Being in the subordinate position African Americans are controlled by the higher white group in everything that they do.
The aspect of African-American Studies is key to the lives of African-Americans and those involved with the welfare of the race. African-American Studies is the systematic and critical study of the multidimensional aspects of Black thought and practice in their current and historical unfolding (Karenga, 21). African-American Studies exposes students to the experiences of African-American people and others of African descent. It allows the promotion and sharing of the African-American culture. However, the concept of African-American Studies, like many other studies that focus on a specific group, gender, and/or creed, poses problems. Therefore, African-American Studies must overcome the obstacles in order to improve the state of being for African-Americans.
The African Americans were tired of being slaves, and they wanted their rights back. They won the Civil War and earned their rights, but they were still discriminated against. For example, due to Jim Crow laws, they did not get the same quality transportation that the white people did. Even today, African Americans are being discriminated against by law enforcement and other people who believe that they are plebeians.
To wrap it up, African Americans lived an unfair past in the south, such as Alabama, during the 1930s because of discrimination and the misleading thoughts towards them. The Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws and the way they were generally treated in southern states all exemplify this merciless time period of the behavior towards them. They were not given the same respect, impression, and prospect as the rest of the citizens of America, and instead they were tortured. Therefore, one group should never be singled out and should be given the same first intuition as the rest of the people, and should never be judged by color, but instead by character.
...on American soil, they were treated with disrespect and forced into a life of servitude and pain. However, they were able to change adapt and find hope even when it didn’t seem as though there was any to be found. The African American culture has been greatly shaped around what their ancestors were put through and the struggles that they endured. The pain and suffering that was inflicted among them will never be forgotten and will forever be apart of the African American culture.
African-Americans were brought over as slaves having no rights at all, doing only what their master wanted, no matter what that entailed. Depending on their master and how he chooses to treat his slaves the conditions could be horrendous, leaving many to doubt that their lives would be any different from what they were currently living.
The African arts formed an essential platform for the promotion of the African American culture today. This culture could not have been created and maintained without the aspiring poets, artists, writers, and musicians that all played a role.
In our world, today there are many different cultures with their own beliefs, values, morals, and challenges. With each of those things comes diversity between all of the different cultures and ethnic groups. Each culture is unique in its own way. African Americans are one of the many ethnic groups found around the world and right here in the United States of America. They are descendants of both African culture and American-European culture, as they were both ethnic groups enslaved during 17th and 18th centuries. Since they are descendants of both cultures, they have a mix of aspects from each. The African American population in 2000 was 34,675,985 and grew to 41,359,936 by 2017. That is a large amount of growth for an ethnic group in the
The African American community is supposed to be united under the Black race, but that is where the problems come in. Under the ethnicity of African Americans, and have pride in their skin color and are supposed to be joined together, there is a system of separation within the different shades of “Black.” In the black community, there are all kinds of shades of black, yellow, light, brown, dark brown, and other shades. According to Dr. Ronald Hall, a social work professor at Michigan State University, "As a result of having been colonized particularly by Spaniards, the British, etcetera, a lot of people of color internalize and idealize values for lighter skin because that is considered the norm.... ... middle of paper ...
Stereotypes and generalizations about African Americans and their culture have evolved within American society dating back to the colonial years of settlement, particularly after slavery became a racial institution that was heritable. African Americans have been stereotyped for many years. As with every other identifiable group, stereotypes continue today. African Americans are often portrayed as violent, lazy and very religious. They are also portrayed as having a love for fried chicken, watermelon, corn beard, kool aide those are just many of their stereotypes being made of African Americans. Africans Americans wear slayed; white people put them in the category with dogs. They went through a great deal of
Just because a person is a little different from someone else, does not mean that they are worthless, or not as important as other people. African Americans faced many complications due to their race. Every day they had to live with disrespect from white people. They had an extremely difficult time with segregation. African Americans were to be separate from white people at all times.
The way in which we choose our foods can stem from events that occur during early childhood. When I lived in Jamaica as a child, I was only fed 'Jamaican style' cuisine. This involved lots of rice with peas, chicken, jerked pork, etc. However, I remember that my parents would take my brothers and I out to restaurants a few times a year as a treat. Our favourite place was a specific Chinese restaurant in a tourist area nearby our house. The food was prepared by Chinese workers and we got to experience what we believed was authentic Chinese cuisine. Another place in which we would enjoy was KFC. KFC represented an exotic 'Other' which allowed us to experience a different kind of social space. According to Finkelstein, this is known as an 'America place'. It is world-famous American food. Food consumption can be a social event where it is done solely for the experience. Interactions in restaurants are conditioned by existing manners and customs. Dining out allows us to act in imitation of others, in accord with images, in responses to fashions, out of habit, without need for thought or self-scrutiny. The result is that the styles of...
Taste has been deemed as “one of the key signifiers and elements of social identity”, as it influences who we interact with, how our daily lives are shaped, and how we categorise, and are categorised by, others (Jenkins, 1992, p. 90). It has such a power that it can even influence those who we associate, or even marry, as individuals “tend to meet and marry within, rather than between lifestyles, and the same can be said for social classes (Jenkins, 1992, p. 90). Turner and Edmunds note that cultural taste is socially constructed, and “…reflects an individual’s position in the social hierarchy” (2002, p. 220). A member of the ‘cultural elite’ may express their taste through their habitus, or lifestyle. By habitus we mean “the