Consumer Audit

After watching the "Story of Stuff" video and having some preliminary discussion (before being rudely interrupted by a fire drill--darn the bureaucracy & its efficient-inefficiency), it may be a good idea to just look at consumerism on a microlevel before we start going into our next set of readings.


Complete the "Consumer Audit" sheet posted on Blackboard by listing the rationale and details for anything you buy or throw away this Saturday and Sunday.  Then give a short response to the following questions here on the Blog!  If you want, you can add an image or something too.

Were there any patterns that you noticed in your purchasing and waste habits?  Did intentionally monitoring yourself make a difference in your habits?  Did anything you threw away actually hold meaning at one time?

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The Story of Stuff

We are opening our Sociology of Consumerism course this semester by having a little eye opener on what "stuff" is--and what it means to us.  Today we did some introductory stuff and the normal 1st day of class BS.  However, on Friday and next Monday we will be watching the movie "The Story of Stuff" and just talking about the concepts discussed.  I felt like it would be good to look at this basic view before we got into all of the theory stuff later on.  And especially before we started the "Disenchanted" Ritzer book.

The Story of Stuff Blog

The Story of Stuff website