Anthropologists+and+Merchants+of+Cool

Various social scientists devote their careers to helping us understand people who are different from us. For example, anthropologists study the structures and customs of a society or community. Ethnographers are anthropologists who focus on looking at the impact of culture on people's lives.

1. Are there parallels between "cool hunters" and anthropologists? Between market researchers and ethnographers?

2. Why might adults see teen society or culture as so different or closed that they need researchers to tell them what your life is really like?

To answer those questions, one must look at the realities of how society and its customs work today. Unlike the distant past - where it is, in every sense of the word a time where people essentially took care of their own affairs, today's society would only function well with the involvement of mass media. Whereas long before people would be more focused on meeting the daily needs of their lives, the increase of living standards in human societies allowed them to experience a new kind of luxury and innovation: Aesthetic developments and Media. With the advent of Art and the rise of Mass Media during the aftermath of the Renaissance in the 17th century and the Industrial Revolution that happened 2 centuries later, human life and Media/Art in Advertisements became more intertwined. Huge Corporations and Establishments that flourished in this period became the innovators and the ushers of this radical change. In short, Advertisements and mass media has been the defining shaper of human culture and human society in the modern age. Now we will look at the ways as to how Market researchers and Anthropologists are alike with regards to the effects of Advertisements and Mass Media in modern and post-modern human societies.

The Cool Hunter of today and the Anthropologist of the past share many similarities and differences. Whereas the Anthropologist studies human culture, history and forms of society throughout its' existence, the Cool Hunter/Market Researcher studies how humans create and develop media to its' present form and how it affects our daily lives. While some form of media had existed in the form of Stone Tablets and Papyri in the ancient past, they are, for general, looked upon as the **__indicator__** of human culture and society as opposed to it's **__shaper__**. The Modern society however was radically different from earlier societies in this regard. Mass media, advertisements and art shaped the way of how people think and how popular culture looks like. The select few individuals who ran the media has the immense power to control how the general populace think and act today. Looking at it from this perspective, the Cool Hunter/Market Researcher seeks out information of how people (particularly youths) think today in order to make the media improvise on ways of shaping people's thoughts. With the advent of huge corporations and their overtures to be the most successful one in advertising or marketing their goods to the general populace, one will always seek to understand how people (especially the younger generation) think and act today.

In saying, Anthropologists study **__HUMAN NATURE__** and **__HUMAN THOUGHTS__** to understand the human beings of the **__PAST__** and the **__PRESENT__**, while Market researchers study **__HUMAN NATURE__** and **__HUMAN THOUGHTS__** to understand the human beings of the **__PRESENT__** to shape and mold the **__FUTURE__**.

Teen society and culture today are a direct opposite of adult society as seen by some people. According to cartoons and many average teenage shows that I've ever seen and glanced at, the teenagers and the adults would always have some of distance between themselves. At best, they would be having some social ineptitude between themselves in one way or another (such as Teenagers hiding some sort of secret/double identity from their parents) and at worst, open hostility between both of them. While it is debatable as to how true the extent of this image is actively portrayed as such in the Media, we can be sure that this is how the media portrayed it, and that many of them work out in real life. So in order for us to understand the need for researchers specializing in Teenage culture or society, we must also look at how teenage culture is regarded differently by adults.

The average adult today would always find contemporary teen or youth culture as either "polar opposites" at best or "offensive", "Lustful", "Rebellious" and "hedonistic" at worst. The reason for this could very well be started during the Sexual or 'Hippie" revolution of the 1960's mostly by young liberals or leftists seeking to oppose and create a counterculture which was aimed at the dogmatic, warlike rhetoric of both the East and the West political spectrum and challenge the perceived cultural, moral and societal standards of conservatism which was in a prevalent-but-waning situation at that time. This certain counterculture continued to develop into different pop-culture spectrum, until the rise of capitalism and liberalism in the very end of the 20th century. This period then developed into the time where things once considered "controversial" and "unwholesome" became "commonplace" and is an integral part of contemporary youth culture. Added by the presence of "religious" or "social conservatives" as seen in some parents (although this is a generally declining trend), this more often than not created friction between both subgroups. Many teenagers, mostly ones coming from conservative families chose to estrange themselves over their parents due to the widening of the cultural boundaries, and they in essence created their own "world" as they saw fit. With youths less open about their real nature and likes, there is a necessity for the role of a youth-friendly market researcher, which, to all ends would try to glean out the teenager's interest and desire and in doing so, reinforcing a stereotype and an action that their conservative elders might not like or abhor altogether. So in conclusion, the widening of the rift between adult and teen societies are now getting deeper, and until the conservative generation completely "disappeared" (which still is impossible), the market researchers will always try to find out about teenage culture, society and likes, and inevitably further shape the minds of the next generation. The rift will always get wider, unless there is a change in mindset of the younger generation in the future, which given the power of the media today, would be very difficult to change or alter.