SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Patricio Galindo Chain

Today we don’t only live in a globalized world ruled by capitalism, but in a world where charity becomes part of our lives. The media culture has created the idea that implies that when you buy a product with the words «organic» or «charity» you automatically feel better, you feel with a cleaner conscious. «This is the post modern caring for ecology», says Slavoj Zizek. In  First as tragedy, then as farce, Zizek explains how the individual duty of anti-consumerism is already included within the product. Zizek highlights Starbucks Company, which represents the ideology of capitalism to its purest form. As Starbucks logo says: «it’s not what you are buying, it’s what you are buying into». By believing in this concept that implies that when you are buying a Starbucks coffee you are improving the world, anti-consumerism values automatically vanish. Investing for a cleaner conscious has become a global idea, which is now plagued over every major product worldwide. This good karma of consumerism has also spread to film, music and architecture. Due to this concept, sensibility and attachment to the real world seem further away. The belief that while consuming you become part of this global charitable community is actually the opposite: you are pushing yourself further away from a world of poverty and starvation.