The practice(s) of going shopping in Puerto Rico are framed from a sociocultural approach which allow the identification of the different meanings and cultural practices derived from this phenomenon. This sociocultural study on consumer culture in Puerto Rico is part of the academic agenda of theSocial Science Research Center of the College of Socal Sciences, of the University of Puerto Rico, at the Río Piedras Campus. This project on shopping culture in our country will be developed as on-line research, whose website display and chart its different stages and components. You will have the opportunity to discuss and access a variety of information systems and services that deal with consumer practices. Our main objective is to offer different interactive services for scholars, professionals and general public interested in this theme. Through this website you will find academic exchanges and resources, as well as consumer services. The extensive information system of this website includes: paradigms and contemporary debates; bibliographies, videoclips of shopping centers in P.R.; international conferences, study groups and professional associations; and traditional and electronic courses on consumption culture at the local and international level. In addition to accessing these resources the site offers you the opportunity to participate in our survey on shopping culture, evaluate the website and view videoclips depicting urban shopping scenarios in Puerto Rico. This on-line research, in addition, offers information and links to public agencies that regulate the buying and sales of products/services, and consumer protection organizations in Puerto Rico and the United States.
Objectives
The general objective of the project is to encourage the generation and
dissemination of knowledge in the on-line social research domain on consumer
culture withing a local and global context. Through this on-line research
we shall be able to present a comprehensive view of a topic critical to
what we know as fin-de-siècle Puerto Rico. This research
also constitutes an academic interdisciplinary effort in which both professors
and students from different programs and disciplines will de able to investigate
contrasted research problems on consumer culture.
The specific objectives of this research project are:
- The production of a sociodemographic profile on consumers in Puerto Rico and other countries.
- Present videoclips that illustrate the urban cartography of shopping malls in the Island and the different experiences of consumers in these spaces.
- To know and ducument to what extend consumption practices have been a generative structure for the "making of society."
- To explore the different meanings that are inscribed in the practices of consumption and viceversa.
- Explore and document the intimate, ephemeral or long-lasting, and paradoxical relation between the consumer subject and the object/product - "the commodity".
- To critically engage local consumerist dicourse, identifying its economy and order.
- Explore the consumer culture phenomenon at the international level.