Per una sociologia della merce: un'analisi sociologica del consumo e della cultura materiale

The key concept of the thesis is to analyze the meaning and the evolution of material culture studies. Many theories have been formulated in the following fields: anti‐consumerism, historical, anthropological, socio‐anthropological, communicational and aesthetic. In each of theese traditions there is a concept which has helped to stimulate material culture studies. The thesis would demonstrate how different fields of study show the relevance of material culture nowadays and in the past. The discussion of the goods‐people relationship brings each approach to focus its analysis on a distinct abstract idea; for example, anti‐consumerism theory is sustained by fetishism construct. Another further general aim of the thesis is to describe the evolution of Sociology of Consumption in Italy, an academic field of study which saw the light in 1964 thanks to Alberoni's book: Consumption and Society. Then, as a reverse process, I'd like to stress the role of the culture ‐theoretical construct‐to create the Sociology of Consumption and to find out how the construct of material culture have founded the Sociology of fashion and Semiology. In the field research the intention is to observe the relatioship between a new goods and the suject who uses it. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the relationshp between goods and people to find out if there is something deeper within a new goods which cannot be included in the Sociology of fashion.