Key
Words
and
Concepts
from
“The
Sociology
of
Consumption
and
Lifestyle”


Slater,
Don
(2005)
from
The
Sage
Handbook
of
Sociology.

(Questions
from
Dr
Jane
Park.
Answers
from
Don
Slater,
Confusion
from
Me)



1. Consumer
culture
v.
consumption
–
what’s
the
difference?
And
why
has

sociology
favored
the
former
over
the
latter?



Sociology
not
only
has
had
a
productivist
bias
to
date,
where
the
individual

practise
of
consumption
is
seen
as
a
byproduct
of
the
production
of
goods,
but

studies
of
individuals
tend
to
fall
under
the
banner
of
psychology
or
marketing.

So
consumption
is
seen
simply
as
the
byproduct
of
capitalist
commodity
form

and
the
industrial
processes
creating
a
consumer
culture.
Even
the
study
of

consumer
culture
(en
masse)
is
seen
as
the
effect
of
economic
conditions
and

power
relations
largely
out
of
the
control
of
the
consumer.
However,
these
days

consumption
has
become
the
primary
site
of
identity
for
many
‘consumers’

rather
than
as
‘workers’
or
‘citizens’,
and
the
collective
provision
of
neoliberal

politics
such
as
the
welfare
state
has
become
subsumed
in
‘market
driven
models

of
consumer
sovereignty’.



2. What
are
the
major
points
re
consumption
from
the
Romantic
school

(Rousseau,
Leavis,
etc),
the
Critical
school
(Adorno,
Lukacs,
Marcuse)
and

liberal
economists
(Hume,
Smith)?
What
do
they
have
in
common?
How

do
they
differ?
Consider
in
particular
notions
of
authenticity,

preindustrial
capitalism
v.
industrial
and
postindustrial
capitalism,

reification,
fetishization
of
commodity,
alienation
of
labour.



Romanticism
and
Critical
Theory
are
both
concerned
with
the
‘loss
of
authentic

agency
in
consumer
culture’,
resulting
in
an
individual
alienated
from
their
own

needs
and
feelings
which
have
been
replaced
by
manufactured
desires.
Adorno

says
the
only
thing
differentiating
Romanticism
from
critical
Theory
was
lack
of

a
developed
theory
of
capitalism.
However,
in
common
with
Marxism,

Romanticism
frequently
posits
a
more
authentic,
organic
primitive
or
premodern

culture
that
has
been
lost,
not
simply
the
loss
of
the
individual,
ideal,
spiritual

and
authentic
under
the
onslaught
of
material
rational
modern
culture.




Critical
theory
further
analyses
these
processes
where
‘object
relations
(needs,

goods
and
their
meaning)
are
hitched
to
the
logic
of
profit
and
competition,

rather
than
the
autonomous
language
of
human
development’.
(Slater)
This

utilizes
the
logic
of
Marx’s
mystifications,
fetishism,
the
insertion
of
a
social

relation
between
things
(exchange
value)
or
reification,
objects
dominating
the

subject.



Lowenthal
calls
mass
culture
psychoanalysis
in
reverse,
miring
us
deeper
in
our

oppression
and
for
Marcuse
the
maintenance
of
the
capitalist
system
requires

consumer
culture
alienating
us
from
our
power
to
act.
We
are
no
longer
required

to
work
but
if
we
stop
consuming
the
whole
system
will
collapse.



Critical
theory
shares
with
neoliberal

(or
Enlightenment)
thinkers
the
belief
that

the
commercial
and
material
worlds
expand
the
scope
of
human
development.



3. What
did
sociology
draw
from
Cultural
Studies
re
consumption?
Popular

culture,
youth
culture,
semiotics/structuralism
(Baudrillard,
Barthes,
etc)

v
poststructuralism?



Both
Romanticism
and
Critical
Theory
arrive
at
a
loss
of
agency
in
consumer

culture,
through
the
‘drives
of
capitalist
competition
and
the
mystifications
of
the

market
place
rather
that
the
autonomous
needs
of
self
developing
individuals’.

(Slater)



The
re‐assertion
of
agency
in
sociological
treatments
of
consumption
has
come

from
Cultural
Studies,
firstly;
through
treating
lived
popular
culture
more

anthropologically
and
secondly;
via
semiotic
or
structuralist
analysis
of
the

‘codes’
determining
social
objects.



Cultural
Studies
initially
privileged
oppositional
or
political
consumption

however
via
feminism
and
postmodernism,
creativity
and
negotiation
was
found

in
all
engagement.
Willis
(1990)
believes
that
consumption
requires
symbolic

labour
and
creativity
in
order
actually
to
place
any
objects
within
our
lives;

agency
is
a
precondition
for
consumption
rather
than
a
property
of
more
critical

or
political
consumers.



While
structuralism
deconstructed
consumption
allowing
for
the
reinsertion
of

agency,
the
circular
logic
of
the
precession
of
simulacra
causes
an
inertial
crisis.

Codes
never
stabilize
and
meaning
is
an
ongoing
process,
in
which
agency

becomes
hedonistic
and
nihilistic.



4. Foucault’s
notion
of
governmentality?



Foucault’s
notion
of
governmentality
arose
in
critique
of
the
neoliberal
context.

Neoliberalism
posits
a
self‐motivated
‘responsibilized’
individual,
drawn
from

the
model
of
the
consumer,
in
opposition
to
the
passive
client
of
a
welfare
state.

Rather
than
a
political
citizen
exercising
collective
rights,
the
neoliberal
subject

is
an
individual
negotiating
the
market
place
of
previously
non‐commercial

services,
like
education
or
health
care.




Governmentality
approaches
not
the
degree
or
location
of
agency
in

consumption
but
the
discourses
by
which
we
understand
ourselves
as
agents
or

enterprises,
through
our
notions
of
freedom,
autonomy
and
choice.




5. Gidden’s
concept
of
post‐traditional
or
postmodern
subject
and

experience?
Shift
to
pluralism,
breakdown
of
authority,
skepticism,

mediation
via
communication
technologies
and
globalization:
“no
choice

but
to
choose”
(cf
end
of
Jameson
article)
–
defines
neoliberal
consumer

citizen
in
formation
in
Merchants
of
cool?



This
is
why
history
is
dead
and
identity
is
the
other
great
concern
of
the

sociology
of
consumption.
After
all,
who
has
the
agency?
And
why
do
we
need
it.

Identity
is
the
product
and
the
process
of
continual
negotiations
with

consumption
or
meaning.
Giddens
calls
it
the
‘reflexive
narrative
of
the
self’
or

the
continual
connecting
of
past,
present
and
future
to
establish
self‐coherence.

Which
creates
an
anxious
state
of
permanent
identity
crisis,
based
on
dominant

discourses
both
of
individuals
and
public
media.



6. Are
our
consumption
choices
so
integral
to
the
ways
we
see
and
construct

ourselves?
Are
we
really
this
defined
by
anxiety
brought
on
by
alienating

consumption
practices?



Identity
is
currently
the
dominant
discourse
of
media
and
consumption,
however

some
question
whether
anxiety
is
always
or
the
only
associated
emotion
with
the

gap
between
the
image
and
the
reality,
or
if
status
and
social
membership
are
the

only
arenas
in
play.



7. Can
postmodern
consumerism
be
liberating?
Neotribalism,
“consumption

communities.”
What
happens
then
to
our
histories?



De
Certeau
is
one
of
a
number
of
theorists
who
talks
about
game,
play
and
irony

all
forming
a
counter
to
Veblen’s
status
seeking
conspicuous
consumer.
That
the

myth
of
a
stable
self
is
itself
a
construct,
‘the
oppressive
and
normalizing
aspect

of
a
disciplinary
modernity’.



Neotribalists
describe
the
emergence
of
small
fluid
social
groupings
based
on

shared
lifestyle
expressions,
with
low
entry/exit
costs
in
comparison
to
older

class
and
status
orders.
The
obvious
difference
to
both
early
tribalism
and
social

orders
since
then
is
the
fluidity
and
lack
of
social
commitment
and
responsibility.




8. Bourdieu
on
structures
of
taste
and
habitus.
Consumption
as
personal

choices
that
socially
identify
us.
Identity
=
appropriate
consumption

habits
that
socially
reproduce
certain
class
communities.
Does
this
apply

to
the
teens
in
Merchants
of
Cool,
to
your
own
consumption
practices?



Bourdieu,
like
Giddens
and
Veblen,
describes
taste
as
the
social
classifier,
which

is
structured
by
group
membership,
the
habitus
being
a
set
of
tastes
leading
one

to
select
choices.
Groups
fight
for
their
hierarchy,
or
relative
merits
of
different

competing
structures
of
taste,
to
improve
their
socioeconomic
prospects.



9. What
happens
to
the
poor
and
the
working
class,
or
those
who
simply

refuse
to
consume
in
these
ways?
Who
doesn’t
belong
to
these

consumption
communities?
Are
they
“without
culture”?
What
does

culture
mean
anyway?



Bauman
describes
the
‘seduced’
and
the
‘repressed’.
Those
who
choose
to
play

and
those
who
can’t
afford
to,
however
again
the
actual
consumption
practises
of

those
who
can’t
compete
is
ignored
or
seen
as
a
necessity,
somehow
exempt
the

meaningful
structure
that
applies
to
everyone
else.
NOTES:
Remember
the

position
of
culture/art
in
capitalism
is
that
of
a
commodity.
McDonaldization
and

dehumanization
comes
with
the
rationalization
of
culture?



10. Division
between
goods
as
“meaningful”
or
“material”
–
Barthes
and

Douglas;
the
assumption
is
that
goods
should
be
functional,
useful,

material
(association
with
premodern,
working
class,
non‐industrial
and

nonwhite
cultures,
etc)
but
this
assumes
and
reinforces
binaries
such
as

“Culture”
v.
commercial
culture;
authentic
v.
inauthentic,
middle
class
v.

working
class.
When
in
actuality,
Slater
argues,
in
all
societies
goods
are

always
BOTH
meaningful
and
material.



This
argument
that
goods
are
meaningful
stems
from
both
semiotics,
where

meaning
is
produced
by
signs
in
relation
to
other
signs,
and
from
anthropology

where
objects
carry
social
ties
and
information.
Some
forms
of
understanding

the
production
and
reception
of
meaning
exclude
or
privilege
certain
social

groups
and
reinforce
a
meaning/materiality
dichotomy,
do
you
want
or
merely

need
the
good.



If
all
consumption
is
culturally
ordered,
the
privileging
of
more
‘meaningful’

consumption
(Barthes)
is
problematic,
and
it
also
hinges
on
the
assumption
that

materiality
is
somehow
more
objective,
more
natural.



“Ethnographies
of
shopping
indicate
that
postmodern
discourses
of
hedonism

and
identity
centred
consumption
were
articulated
by
many
shoppers
but
bore

little
relationship
to
either
the
meanings
or
practises
evidenced
in
their
actual

shopping…
largely
carried
out
by
women
and
focused
on
provision
their
families,

and
was
therefore
largely
concerned
with
understanding
and
negotiating
the

needs
of
others
as
a
basis
for
caring
for
them
and
sustaining
intimate

relationships.”



11. Fordism
and
post‐fordism
–
culture
over
social
structure
–
the

ascendance
of
the
brand



It
is
argued
that
cultural
practices
have
become
more
central
to
the
operation
of

contemporary
capitalism.
Mass
or
Fordist
production
focused
on
economies
of

efficiency,
not
multiple
choice
of
product.
Post‐Fordist
production
adds
value

and
efficiency
by
small
flexible
batch
production
of
brand
linked
objects.

Ownership
of
physical
production
is
dispersed.
New
business
organizations,

consultancies,
emerge.
Castells
describes
‘network
society’,
Las
and
Urry

describe
‘new
economy
of
signs
and
space’.
Slater
is
doubtful
that
real
conceptual

base
for
understanding
consumption
has
emerged
but
points
to
ANT
from
the

field
of
science
and
technology
studies
as
a
possibility.



12. How
does
increased
globalization
via
new
communication
and

transportation
technologies
affect/shape
our
consumption
attitudes,

habits,
etc?
McDonaldization
v.
cultural
flows,
emphasis
on
region,

hybridity,
creolization,
glocalization.



Last
century
of
consumption
study
generally
followed
the
Marxist

Americanisation
thesis,
that
gl
obalization
of
capitalism
was
inevitable
and

corrosive
of
other
social
orders,
whereas
Hume
and
Smith,
and
Durkheim
opted

for
‘civilizing’.
Naomi
Klein
and
Ritzer
(McDonaldization)
epitomize
this.

Modifications
of
the
position
proliferate
but
most
tellingly
from
local

ethnographies,
which
capture
the
diverse
meanings
and
materialities
given
to

goods
that
bear
no
relation
to
the
producers’
intentions,
creating
hybridized
or

creolized
goods.
Corporations
attempt
to
leverage
‘glocalisation’,
brand

recognition
combined
with
local
responsiveness.



Slater
endorses
an
ethnographic
approach
to
consumption,
based
in
practice
and

local
social
relations
contributing
to
a
more
nuanced
reading
of
power,
structure

and
political
economy,
rather
than
the
postmodern
consumer
carnival.