Week 3--Barker Chapter 6--A New World Disorder?

Identity formation has moved from being thought in terms of production to that of consumption. But what’s really happening is a production/consumption movement in one stroke. As members of our culture consume and commodify they also produce trends and new cultural forms. This consumption-as-expression (production) is very much reflective of society’s increasing distrust and disillusionment regarding modern and Enlightenment modes of identity formation. I think people are sick of thinking of people as “self-made” or the Horatio Alger ethic of can-do Americanism. Instead, now most people aren’t ashamed of being passive (at least outwardly, seemingly aloof) consumers of cultural material, regardless of being potentially duped into it. People seem less and less ashamed of giving themselves over to the machinery of the culture industry, so it can have its way with them. I still think we distrust the whole industry of pop culture, but we give ourselves over to it because we know we have an increasing amount of freedom within it that allows us to define ourselves.