CULTURAL CAPITAL

·         Term used by Pierre Bourdieu to refer to forms of cultural knowledge that give you special social advantages.  He also talks about SOCIAL CAPITAL (who you know, your social networks and the opportunities they provide you), SYMBOLIC CAPITAL (prestige, celebrity, honor,) and CAPITAL CULTURE (refers to the forms of cultural knowledge that give you social).

COMMODITY

Defined as things that are bought and sold in social system exchange.  The concept of commodity culture is intricately allied with the idea that the consumer products that inhabit our lives.

In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services.

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      - This is what media theorist Stuart Ewen has called the “commodity self,” the idea that our selves, indeed our subjectivities, are mediated and constructed in part through our consumption and use of commodities.

        - Clothing, music, cosmetic products, and cars, among other things, are commodities that people use to construct their identities and project them outward to those around them.

BRAND

The naming and investment of meaning into companies or products in order to sell them as commodities.

- Often is a process that includes naming, packaging, advertising, and marketing.

- Sometimes the company is the brand (like Nike) not the particularproduct.

- Branding is associated with the concurrent trademarking and copyrighting as intellectual

- property all those aspects of design andmarketing that constitute the brand.

- A brand is often a name we know about even if we don’t own or buy their products

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                - logos and repetitive visuals are crucial to branding (example iPod ads)

USE VALUE

refers to what they really cost in a particular system of exchange.

COMMODITY FETISHISM

Term used by Karl Marx to refer to the process by which commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production (how, who, why they were made) and filled instead with abstract meaning (usually through advertising).

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        IT IS A PROCESS OF MYSTIFICATION

EG: Guess denim products no doubt produced for pennies somewhere in the world, comes to stand for free-spirited sexuality  

CULTURE JAMMING

Technique used by many anti-consumerist social movements, to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising.

- Culture jamming is often seen as a form of subvertising. Many culture jams are intended to expose apparently questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture.

- Common tactics include re-figuring logos, fashion statements, and product images as a means to challenge the idea of "what's cool" along with assumptions about the personal freedoms of consumption.