Captains of Consciousness
by Stuart Ewen · Stuart Ewen
Historical account of how American business in the 1920s used advertising to turn workers into consumers, tracing mass consumption's social roots. After reading, you can explain advertising as a tool of industrial and political management.
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More resources on Consumer Culture & Advertising
Consumption Markets & Culture Journal
Academic open-access articles on consumer culture (suggested in r/academia, r/sociology)
Adbusters
Anti-consumerism magazine and culture jamming resources (rec'd in r/collapse, r/anticonsumption)
The Story of Stuff
Animated critique of consumer culture (frequent rec in r/environment, r/ZeroWaste)
The Century of the Self (Full Adam Curtis Documentary)
Adam Curtis documentary on Freud, Bernays, and rise of consumer culture (highly upvoted in r/Documentaries, r/sociology)
The Consumer Society
Baudrillard's 1970 sociological study, translated into English, argues that consumption organizes modern society as a system of signs rather than satisfaction of needs. Readers gain a framework for analysing advertising, affluence, and mass media as structures of meaning.
Consumer Culture
University of London course taught by Alan Bradshaw, running three modules on marketing, gender and ideology; digital surveillance and algorithmic targeting; and sustainable consumption. Finishing it, you can analyse marketing practice using sociological concepts rather than industry terminology.