LFU:online

Anthropological theories of consumption can be connected to theories of critical pedagogy in order to analyze how the structures of lifeworld are forcing us to consume ever more. The students will be able to reflect these consumerist  practices, that exist even in institutions of education.

Introduction into the anthropological theories of consumption. The analysis of old and new institutions (meals, marriages, burials, supermarkets, schools) helps to realize how modern lifestyles and practices are entangled with consumption.

Consumerist Designs and practices, that institutions  impose on their insiders, mediate between conscience and the material world. But they impede reflections about the ongoing subjection to the imperative of consumption.

Historical-anthropological studies show how this consumer culture could develop and how it can possibly be changed in order to enable the evolvement of new participative lifestyles that will not exhaust the planetary resources.

Lecture, discussions, presentations of students, analysis of case studies and of common practices of everyday life

Either the students make presentations in the second part of the course or they compose their term papers on their preferred themes by means of theoretical inputs given in the first part of the course.

Themes are proposed by the teacher and can be proposed by the students as well.

Course with formative assessment, i.e., students are graded on the basis of written and/or oral tasks assigned regularly over the term.

Gabriele Sorgo: Abendmahl in Teufels Küche. Wien 2006.

mailto: Gabriele.Sorgo@univie.ac.at