Example research essay topic: Third World Countries Corporate Culture - 1,789 words

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Research Paper (1) The concept of consumerism emerged after the end of WWII, when Western civilization began to change its essence, while becoming affected by post-modernity. After the war, United States was able to boost the effectiveness of its economy by increasing citizens buying power. This was being done with the mean of continuous monetary emissions, which in their turn, increased the demand for various commercial goods. People were having more extra money, which they were willing to spend on buying things that could hardly be described as essential for their physical survival. America was the country, where TVs, fridges and cars ceased to have a status of luxury items, for the first time in history.

The decreasing popularity of totalitarianism in the world resulted in more and more people adopting a skeptical attitude towards idealistic values and realizing that that the meaning of life was in attaining materialistic comfort. Citizens consumption ability was increasing every year, which encouraged manufactures to expand the range of their commercial activity. This also lead to the fact that more and more people were being attracted to pursuing careers closely related to the consumerist philosophy. Public relations representatives, estheticians, advertisement designers these professions have nothing to do with the actual process of producing goods or with maintaining social stability. They are meant to strengthen consumerist motives as such that define peoples behavior.

What is consumerism? Different dictionaries provide us with different interpretation of this term. For example, Your Dictionary. Com defines it as: The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards (Your Dictionary. Com. 2007).

However, the majority of people associate consumerism with individuals irrational drive to buy things, possessing of which is not essential to assuring his well-being. Consumerist culture is one of the aspects of materialist philosophy, which suggests that there can be no spiritual values, which people might strive to attain, because average individual is nothing but one big digestive organ. Alexander Rai in his article Good consumerism vs. Bad Consumerism, describes the essence of modern living: We devote so much of our life balancing interest rates, juggling portfolios: collecting paychecks at the end of the month, and invoices at the end of the day; trying to outdo Mexico and its lawn mowing immigrants in standards of living. Yet, our retarded minds, perpetually tormented and misguided by our economizing, forget what quality of life means (Rai, 2005). However, it would be wrong to suggest that consumerist culture has only a negative connotation; otherwise, it would not be affecting us, in the first place.

Apparently, many people think that there is nothing wrong with becoming fully dependent on their credit rate or with performing routine work every day, so that they could shop at the mall once a week. In this paper, we will try to analyze the issue of consumerism from negative and positive perspectives. (2) Many people think that the essence of consumerism is best depicted in movie Fight Club. It is hard to disagree with them. This movie portrays corporate culture as a self-efficient monster, which only requires people, in order to sustain its own existence. Movies main character, Tyler Durden, reveals the absurdity of post-modern values in his numerous monologues: God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

We " re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place (IMDb, 1999). In American schools, children are being taught that the most important thing in life is to be able to get a job, which would enable individual to earn the most money with the least effort applied. This is why the career of lawyers and drug dealers attract American high school students the most.

The fact is American society became obsessed with consumerism to such an extent that it often confuses it with democracy. Many Americans do not understand the reason why so many people in the world hate our country with such a passion. However, one does not have to be a genius to find and explanation to this question. People in Western countries enjoy high living standards because Third World countries are being mercilessly exploited.

U. S. Federal Reserve continues to print money that is deprived of any real value and, in order to prevent the rise of inflation in America, this money is just being sent abroad. It is a fact that the total value of American dollars that are in circulation abroad is five times bigger than the total value of our money in America. People in Third World countries often get paid as little as 5 dollars a day, while performing physically exhausting work at sweat shops that are being built by American companies, for the sake of making bigger profits.

Belize Lanes article Just Stop it: Nike, Gap Sweatshops Exploit Third-World Citizens, provides us with the insight on the real essence of Western consumerism: Behind the bright, colorful labels of the fashion world, there hides a less attractive truth about the clothes we wear. Workers hunch over sewing machines in sweatshops, kept awake by forced amphetamine ingestion on 72 -hour shifts. Child laborers work in sub-standard health conditions, receiving pay far below minimum wage in factories that distribute to mainstream clothing retailers (Lane, 2004). Before the concept of multiculturalism became American official policy, the consumerism in this country actually stimulated our industry.

However, the bulk of immigrants that come to U. S. nowadays are Mexicans and it does not matter whether they come here legally or illegally all of them posses the same mentality. It is in their blood to constantly look for the cheep bargains. In its turn, this creates a situation, when consumerist culture in America is now being closely associated with bargaining. The ultimate motto of modern consumerism can be - dig your own grave and save.

This is the main reason why more and more American companies move their production lines to Third World countries, while appeasing the consumerist attitudes of marginalized Americans and contributing to the rise of anti-American sentiment around the world. One of the good examples of how consumerism can affect peoples ability to rationalize is high sales of Fiji Spring Water. The small bottle of this water costs $ 3. 75. There are no special ingredients in it, which could explain why this particular brand of spring water is becoming so popular among Americans. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay for it, because they are convinced that they will benefit enormously from drinking it. Somehow, they associate a high price with high quality, which is logical, but this principle is simply inapplicable when we talk about spring water, because it is the same all over the world.

In his article Bottled Insanity, Michael I. Niman describes peoples obsession with buying Fiji Spring water in terms of mental deprivation: Im in Western New York State watching people drink Fiji Water out of little, indestructible plastic tanks adorned with colorful images of tropical flowers and waterfalls. But theres something very wrong here. Something very unnatural about this natural treat. Something that threatens the very existence of the tropical paradise depicted on the bottle. Something that lays bare the insanity of consumerism.

Here we are sitting on the edge of the Great Lakes home to one fifth of the fresh water on the planet. Were hours away from pristine Adirondack mountain aquifers. Yet we buy water that is transported to northeastern North America from a small South Pacific atoll whose population suffers from chronic water shortages (Niman, 2006). This example gives us a valid reason to suggest that consumerist culture needs to be analyzed within the context of psychiatry.

Apparently, it shifts peoples sense of priority to such a degree that they become unable to think critically about commercial advertising. In fact, they often loose their critical ability altogether, while giving in to their most primitive consumerist instincts. Learning about different aspects of brand loyalty now became essential for anyone who wants to become an economist. Today, many people are willing to pay money only to be associated with some particular commercial brand, because this raises their value in their own eyes. We can say that consumerist culture provides people with an artificial sense of worth, in exchange for their integrity as human beings. Therefore, the propaganda of consumerism is very dangerous for this country, especially given the fact that it often represents itself as something different.

For example, President Bush once told Americans that one of the reasons why Muslim fundamentalists dislike our country is because of our freedoms. Apparently, it is very offensive for the Muslims to observe women wearing short skirts. Thus, the ideals of freedom are actually equaled to the ideals of fashion. However, fashion is just one of the aspects of consumerist culture. Thus, the average American citizen thinks of terrorists as people who want to deprive him of his ability to consume, because this ability is it thought to be the actual freedom. Still, it is impossible to imagine a truly free individual, who is sensitive to fashion trends at the same time, because the reason he buys brand name products is that his psyche is subjected to corporate culture.

This allows us to conclude that the ideas of freedom and consumerism cannot correspond to each other in principle. If we look at the issue from this perspective, it will become clear why so many people are strongly opposed to Globalization. This is because Globalization is nothing but an attempt to give consumerist culture a new quality, when atomization of society is going to be officially proclaimed as something absolutely natural, when people are going to be told that their functions as individuals are going to only consist of working, eating and surrounding themselves with things they do not need. (3) Despite the fact that consumer culture is being mostly discussed in negative terms, there is another side to the story as well. Many critics of consumerism point out to the fact that it encourages people to give in to their immediate urges of buying, even though they do not possess a financial means. Apparently, consumerist culture provides individual with possibility of instant gratification.

Average individual in America is able to buy car, house and anything else, for as long as he has a good credit. This, of course, requires him to work his whole life just to be able to pay off debt. Nevertheless, the life is short why deny itself a pleasures, related to consumerism, when they are so easily available? Peoples desire to take as...

Research essay sample on Third World Countries Corporate Culture