Outline the ways in which rubbish can be said to have value in a consumer society.
In today’s ‘consumer society’ (Hetherington, 2009, p. 13) rubbish can be said to have a variety of value and uses. This is dependent on how rubbish is seen . Rubbish does now give us a lot of recycling business not just locally but also globally. Rubbish can be seen in many different notions of value.
Notions of value can be split in to four areas: use value, ‘intrinsic’ value, ‘economic’ value and ‘normative’ value (Brown, 2009, p. 105 ). Use value is something that is of use. It fulfils for fills its purpose, does the job it was designed to do. For example black plastic bags are brought to store waste in them and they for fill their role in many different ways. They have value by providing us with a way of getting rid of or storing items. Intrinsic value looks at objects, what is it worth and how it is viewed. Economic value looks on what people really want so one person’s necessity may be another’s luxuries this can be seen at any level regardless of income. When looking at the past a mobile phone was classed as a luxury but now it seems to be a necessity in the social process. (Hetherington, 2009, p. 25 Making Social lives, 2009) Normative value can be seen as what is we regard as right and wrong, usually in terms of conduct or relationships. To live according to your values is to live in consistent with what you think is right or what you think you ought to do. These four meanings are constructed socially by the user
Within a consumer society, the ‘value’ of rubbish can be influenced by the demand and supply of materials . There are many factors that influence demand; these are taste, fashion, income and expectations of future price ranges. Influences for supply are availability, costs and the degree of rarity of an item. All of these demands and supply factors have an influence on how rubbish is valued . With the rise in affluence family’s can afford to buy...